Gender And Journalism

Journalism, Gender and Power revisits the key themes explored in the 1998 edited collection News, Gender and Power. It takes stock of progress made to date, and also breaks ground in advancing critical understandings of how and why gender matters for journalism and current democratic cultures. This new volume develops research insights into issues such as the influence of media ownership and control on sexism, women’s employment, and "macho" news cultures, the gendering of objectivity and impartiality, tensions around the professional identities of journalists, news coverage of violence against women, the sexualization of women in the news, the everyday experience of normative hierarchies and biases in newswork, and the gendering of news audience expectations, amongst other issues. These issues prompt vital questions for feminist and gender-centred explorations concerned with reimagining journalism in the public interest. Contributors to this volume challenge familiar perspectives, and in so doing, extend current parameters of dialogue and debate in fresh directions relevant to the increasingly digitalized, interactive intersections of journalism with gender and power around the globe. Journalism, Gender and Power will inspire readers to rethink conventional assumptions around gender in news reporting—conceptual, professional, and strategic—with an eye to forging alternative, progressive ways forward.

In many countries, the majority of high profile journalists and editors remain male. Although there have been considerable changes in the prospects for women working in the media in the past few decades, women are still noticeably in the minority in the top journalistic roles, despite making up the majority of journalism students. In this book, Suzanne Franks looks at the key issues surrounding female journalists - from on-screen sexism and ageism to the dangers facing female foreign correspondents reporting from war zones. She also analyses the way that the changing digital media have presented both challenges and opportunities for women working in journalism and considers this in an international perspective. . In doing so, this book provides an overview of the ongoing imbalances faced by women in the media and looks at the key issues hindering gender equality in journalism.

Today, a variety of gender-based threats and discrimination continue to characterize journalism. Both male and female journalists are prone to online and offline threats, casual stereotypes in their routine work, and discrimination (especially in terms of job opportunities, promotion, and pay-scale). Working in a safe and non-discriminatory environment is the right of all journalists, regardless of their gender. The Handbook of Research on Discrimination, Gender Disparity, and Safety Risks in Journalism is a critical reference book that highlights equal rights in journalism to ensure the safety of women and men. The book investigates the level and nature of threats, both online and offline, faced by journalists as well as gender discrimination in journalism. Best practices and examples that can promote a safe working environment and gender equality in journalism are also presented. Highlighting important themes such as online harassment, sexism, and gender-based violence, this book is ideal for journalists, reporters, media organizations, professionals, researchers, academicians, and students working or studying in the fields of journalism, media and communications, human rights, and women’s studies.

Hacking Gender and Technology in Journalism addresses the question of whether journalism’s new digital spaces suffer from the same gendered structures as traditional media organisations, or whether they go beyond such bias. This book offers insights into the challenges that women journalists face in relation to technological innovation, as well as the potential for developing strategies for empowerment that it offers. More specifically, there is a focus on the gendering of digital skills, the construction of gender in new digital spheres of journalism, and how these changes can lead to the disruption of gender inequalities in journalism. This book will be of interest to scholars in multimedia journalism, media ethics, and gender studies. Chapter 2 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.

Written in a clear and accessible style, with lots of examples from Anglo-American media, Gender and the Media offers a critical introduction to the study of gender in the media, and an up-to-date assessment of the key issues and debates. Eschewing a straightforwardly positive or negative assessment the book explores the contradictory character of contemporary gender representations, where confident expressions of girl power sit alongside reports of epidemic levels of anorexia among young women, moral panics about the impact on men of idealized representations of the 'six-pack', but near silence about the pervasive re-sexualization of women's bodies, along with a growing use of irony and playfulness that render critique extremely difficult. The book looks in depth at five areas of media - talk shows, magazines, news, advertising, and contemporary screen and paperback romances - to examine how representations of women and men are changing in the twenty-first century, partly in response to feminist, queer and anti-racist critique. Gender and the Media is also concerned with the theoretical tools available for analysing representations. A range of approaches from semiotics to postcolonial theory are discussed, and Gill asks how useful notions such as objectification, backlash, and positive images are for making sense of gender in today's Western media. Finally, Gender and the Media also raises questions about cultural politics - namely, what forms of critique and intervention are effective at a moment when ironic quotation marks seem to protect much media content from criticism and when much media content - from Sex and the City to revenge adverts - can be labelled postfeminist. This is a book that will be of particular interest to students and scholars in gender and media studies, as well as those in sociology and cultural studies more generally.

This thoroughly revised second edition provides a critical overview of the contemporary debates and discussions surrounding gender and mediated communication. The book is divided into three parts: representing, producing, and consuming, with each section made up of three chapters. The first chapter of each section attempts to answer the most basic questions: ‘Who is represented?’, ‘Who produces what?’, and ‘Who consumes what?’. The second chapter of each section draws attention to the complexity of the relationship between gender and media, concentrating on the 'why'. The third and final chapter of each section addresses the latest debates in the fields of media and gender, adding a vital layer of understanding of the topic at hand. Throughout, text boxes provide additional information on the most important concepts and topics, and exercises help bridge the gap between theory and everyday life media practices. The second edition has been updated in light of current developments with regard to gender, media technologies, and globalisation, including recent theoretical insights and examples. This is an ideal textbook for students studying gender and media, and for general courses on gender studies, sociology, cultural studies, and women’s studies.

The media carry significant notions of social and cultural norms and values and have a powerful role in constructing and reinforcing gendered images. The news in particular has an important role in how notions of power are distributed in the society. This report presents study findings on how women and men are represented in the news in the Nordic countries, and to what extent women and men occupy the decision-making positions in the media. The survey is based on the recent findings from three cross-national research projects. These findings are supported by national studies. The results indicate that in all the Nordic countries women are underrepresented in the news media both as news subjects and as sources of information. Men also dominate in higher-level decision-making positions. The report includes examples of measures used to improve the gender balance in Nordic news.

How do gender relations affect the practice of journalism? Despite the star status accorded to some women reporters, and the dramatic increase in the number of women working in journalism, why do men continue to occupy most senior management positions? And why do female readers, viewers and listeners remain as elusive as ever? News, Gender and Power addresses the pressing questions of how gender shapes the forms, practice, institutions and audiences of journalism. The contributors, who include John Hartley, Pat Holland, Jenny Kitzinger and Myra Macdonald, draw on feminist theory and gender-sensitive critiques to explore media issues such as: * ownership and control * employment and occupation status * the representation of women in the media * the sexualization of news and audience research. Within this framework the contributors explore media coverage of: * the trial of O. J. Simpson * British beef and the BSE scandal * the horrific crimes of Fred and Rosemary West * child sexual abuse and false memory syndrome * the portrayal of women in TV documentaries such as Modern Times and Cutting Edge.