Feminist Approaches to Media Theory and Research

Dustin Harp, Jaime Loke, Ingrid Bachmann, Dustin Harp, Jaime Loke, Ingrid Bachmann, Dustin Harp, Jaime Loke, Ingrid Bachmann

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9783319908380
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Media Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

Feminist Approaches to Media Theory and Research tackles the breadth and depth of feminist perspectives in the field of media studies through essays and research that reflect on the present and future of feminist research and theory at the intersections of women, gender, media, activism, and academia. The volume includes original chapters on diverse topics illustrating where theorization and research currently stand with regard to the politics of gender and media, what work is being done in feminist theory, and how feminist scholarship can contribute to our understanding of gender as a mediated experience with implications for our contemporary global society. It opens for discussion how the research, theory, and interventions challenge concepts of gender in mediated discourses and practices and how these fit into the evolving state of contemporary feminisms. Contributors engage with discussions about contemporary feminisms as they are understood in media theory and research, particularly in a field that has changed rapidly in the last decades with digital communication tools and through cross-disciplinary work. Overall, the book illustrates how the politics of gender operate within the current media landscapes and how feminist theorizing shapes academic inquiry of these landscapes.

© The Author(s) 2018

Dustin Harp, Jaime Loke and Ingrid Bachmann (eds.)Feminist Approaches to Media Theory and ResearchComparative Feminist Studieshttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-90838-0_1

Begin Abstract

1. Through a Feminist Kaleidoscope: Critiquing Media, Power, and Gender Inequalities

Ingrid Bachmann¹ , Dustin Harp² and Jaime Loke³

(1)

School of Communications, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Santiago, Chile

(2)

Department of Communication, University of Texas at Arlington, Arlington, TX, USA

(3)

Bob Schieffer College of Communication, Texas Christian University, Fort Worth, TX, USA

Ingrid Bachmann

Email: [email protected]

Dustin Harp (Corresponding author)

Email: [email protected]

Jaime Loke

End Abstract

Media and their messages—including access to the production of these messages—have long been a key concern of feminist scholars. As the chapters in this edited volume show, the struggle over meanings and values of what it means to be a woman and what the category of gender entails is as relevant in the twenty-first century as it was more than fifty years ago, when second-wave figure Betty Friedan’s (1963) The Feminist Mystique first addressed the power of mass media in defining gender roles. Indeed, inroads toward gender equality notwithstanding, women today still face many problems of marginalization and misrepresentation in all kinds of media discourses and practices (e.g., Byerly and Ross 2006). Access to media systems and the ability to shape media content contributes to feminist scholars’ concerns. To be sure, media are sites of considerable ideological negotiation and contestation (Kearney 2012), and gender negotiations are no exception. Exploring, understanding, and challenging the implications of gender have been at the core of feminist media studies. This edited volume presents examples of where theorization and research currently stand in regard to the politics of gender and media, what work is being done, and offers ideas for where it should be headed. These samples of feminist media scholarship reinforce the importance of the idea that gender is a mediated experience that takes on meaning through communicative practices such as those found in media content (Dow 2006). The book as a whole illustrates how feminist media scholarship can contribute to our understating of these issues, and their implications for both women and men in our contemporary global society.

We set out to illustrate the breadth and depth of feminist perspectives in the field of media studies through essays and research that reflect on and are a reflection of the present, past, and future of feminist research and theory at the intersections of women/gender, media, activism, and academia. This volume is thus divided into three parts: feminist theories, feminist issues and arenas, and feminist strategies and activism. The chapters in these parts—one focusing on theorizations of gender and media in the current media landscape, another addressing current feminist issues in divergent contexts, and a third on feminist-informed activism and mainstreaming feminist ideals—together offer a glimpse into the varied perspectives and global spaces from which feminist scholars are engaging with, theorizing, and critiquing communication and media systems.

Two common themes stand out among the chapters in this volume. The first is a clear illustration of how feminist theorizing, research, and academic activism make a difference today. While there are some historical elements in the book’s contributions, these chapters address feminist media studies in a contemporary context—in terms of media systems, gender definitions and expectations, and specific geographic locations. This includes chapters on how foundational feminist media theories must be reconsidered as they are applied in contemporary contexts and specific geographic locations; how perspectives on the mediated sexualization of girls must be contextualized through intersectionality; and how women’s voices through social media affect ideas about women and gender.

A second prominent theme throughout the book is the notion of intersectionality, which is a far cry from Freidan’s conceptualization of feminist concerns when she brought feminism into mainstream American society in the 1960s. Kimberle Crenshaw (1991) coined the term “intersectionality” as a way to explain the oppression of African-American women. Intersectionality theory explains how people’s subjectivities and experiences are defined through a set of complex interwoven identities based on gender, race, class, ethnicity, disability, sexuality, among other markers. Many of the chapters in this book explicitly address and engage with intersectionality, while other chapters include concepts like Chicana feminism, Asian feminism, black feminism, or global South feminism. Together the chapters illuminate the various ways in which feminist media studies is addressing women’s intersectionality across the globe. Beyond these strands of commonalities, the chapters offer diversity—in approaches, perspectives, sites of interest, and geographic spaces—and appropriately illustrate the diversity of feminisms in contemporary global culture. These chapters, however, are just a sampling of the important and distinct work occurring in feminist media studies yet offer a glimpse of the types of work occurring in this important area of scholarship.

Feminism, Theory, and Media

With ties to social movements that originally challenged the status quo of women, especially the idea that women naturally lacked rationality and thus could not be considered full citizens (Donovan 2012), feminist media scholarship is an umbrella concept encompassing multiple practices that theorize about the status of women and the nature of gender in mediated messages and practices. As with feminism itself, it conveys varied ideological perspectives, which is why most authors prefer talking of feminist theories—plural form—to address the varied philosophical, political, and social frameworks informing this line of inquiry and critique. This is why both feminism and feminist theories are often paired with other terms, such as liberal, socialist, radical, psychoanalytic, cultural, black, and postcolonial.¹

Accordingly, while there is not necessarily an amalgamated perspective that can be labeled “feminist theory,” these approaches have common elements: attention to the status of women in society, the nature of gender, and the interpretation of the condition of being a woman as a basic differentiating label organizing different individuals’ lives (e.g., Cirksena and Cuklanz 1992; Donovan 2012; Ross 2010)—often to the extent of legitimizing women’s subordination and oppression. When it comes to feminist media studies, the focus is on how these issues are created, promoted, and normalized in one of the most important institutional sites for hegemony—mass media. Given their scope and reach in public understandings of human experiences, this is no minor endeavor.

Thus, feminist media theory goes beyond concerns and promotion of granting women certain rights, and pays close attention to matters of power, culture, voice, agency, hierarchy, and representation in media practices and discourses (Cirksena and Cuklanz 1992; Donovan 2012; Harp 2008; Loke et al. 2017, Van Zoonen 1994). In theorizing gender, feminist media scholars regularly address the multiple dichotomies and dualisms that have served to justify women’s taken-for-granted lesser status, including the public/private divide, and the concepts of reason/emotion, mind/body , and subject/object. While these notions are more interrelated than what a dichotomous categorization might suggest, they have proven to be persistent in media discourses, and are often presented as commonsense differences that serve to dominate and relegate women to inferior status.

This is not to say that all women are the same, or that their circumstances and experiences are identical everywhere. Quite the opposite, in their theorization of “the woman question,” and their acknowledgment of different influences, feminist theories understand that women are not a unified constituency and that their identities are diverse and multifaceted (Ross 2010; Steiner 2008; Van Zoonen 1994). This theory of intersectionality is prominently applied throughout the chapters in this volume. However, while being careful not to fuse all women together, feminist scholars assert that there are commonalities in women’s status regardless of their different circumstances, and that sexism results in important inequalities.

It is precisely the insight into inequalities and constructed (often symbolic) differences in media practices with very real consequences in everyday life that form the main contribution of feminist media theory and research, and what the chapters in this book are concerned with. Feminist scholarship exposes patriarchal notions that set up the male (or masculine) as the norm, and the female (or feminine) as “the other” (Rakow and Wackwitz 2004), and underscores the roles of media as contemporary mediators of hegemony, what is socially acceptable, and what should be accepted as reality (e.g., Carter and Steiner 2004; Van Zoonen 1994). In sum, while feminist media scholars disagree on the best approach to challenge systems of differences based on gender, they concur on the fact that the circulation of meanings in media discourses is not ideologically neutral. Accordingly, a big question in feminist media studies is thus “how, and to whose avail, particular ideological constructs of femininity are produced in media content” (van Zoonen 1994, 24).

Feminist Theorizations

With three sections in this volume, the first attends to feminist media theories. Carolyn Byerly’s chapter begins this section by summarizing and situating the complexities of feminist theorizations. Her overview offers a landscape f...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Front Matter
• 1. Through a Feminist Kaleidoscope: Critiquing Media, Power, and Gender Inequalities
• Part I
• Part II
• Part III
• Back Matter