Media Acts And Its Impact On Society

This book was written in a clear style with lots of instances from Anglo-American media, Gender and the Media. It provides a critical introduction to the study of gender in the media and updated assessment of the crucial issues and debates. The book looks in detail at five kinds of media: news, advertising, talk shows, magazines and contemporary screen and paperback romances. It is examined how presentations of female and male are changing in recent years. Gill asks how useful nations such as objectification, backlash and positive images are for making sense of gender in today’s western media.

When turning on the TV, a car commercial appears with men justifying driving an expensive and powerful sports car by complaining about what females in their lives require. Though women slowly gain economic power, the media never represents them as leaders thus reflecting American culture’s view of women. Sexism prevails in American culture and workforce, teaching sexism while denying its presence. Americans must shift their culture to impede sexism because it oppresses women.

Gender and the Media by Rosalind Gill addresses gender stereotypes that are brought onto women and men through the media resulting in objectification and subjectification. Gill discusses how the representation of gender is altered as a result of the media in Western societies. Gender and the Media is aimed to address the rapid transmission of media and how those changes affect the construction of feminine and masculine gender roles in society. Gill uses her interest in the contradictions of gender construction by society, to analyze gender and the media. Using feminism as a backbone for her research, Gill and many commentators support the idea that feminist ideas are common and may even affect the media. Gender and the Media addresses multiple forms of media: postfeminism in advertising, gender in the news and journalism, and gender in magazines. Gild aims to address the construction of gender representations, elements for gender analysis, and feminist culture with Gender and the Media.

A major modern problem with the media is the sublimation of, and reaffirmation of, stereotypical female gender roles. “The media treats women like shit” (Cho). Which is a serious issue because of Marshall McLuhan’s famous words, “The Medium is the Message” (Warwick). The medium up for discussion is the media, which can be fundamentally defined as the most significant “single source of information that people have today (Katz). Therefore, in order to understand “what’s going on in our society” (Katz) it is “absolutely imperative to “understand media” (Katz). Media and technology are “shaping our politics, our national discourse and most of all, they’re shaping our children’s brains, lives and emotions” (Steyer). Caroline Heldman, PhD, and

Burek explains how the role of women in the media contributed to the increasing role of women in society, especially in the political world and their place in working towards gender equality. Women in the media today are still portrayed negatively, as men dominate the world of media. Again working towards gender equality, Jennifer Ann Burek quotes feminist author Susan Schultz Huxman, as Huxman writes about the impact of women in the media in her examination of The Woman’s Journal, in her essay, “Perfecting the Rhetorical Vision of Women’s Rights.” She explains that the role of women in the media particularly in The Woman’s Journal “broadened intellectual horizons,” “groomed confident, public communicators,” “and demonstrated sophisticated writing and

This chapter ties in with the film as they both agree that mass media undermines and misrepresents women and has deleterious effects for all. The only platforms women are given in media are the motherly, homemakers or those seeking love or pursuing a romantic interest. The narrative media has portrayed of women is narrow-minded. Even when there are women who are in the political/leadership arena, they are criticized for their physical appearance first and their policies secondary. Women who do not fit into the straight, beautiful, young, White female trope, then their stories are not told or they are ridiculed. The stereotypes media illustrates are one-sided even though women are getting more involved in the professional world. Women do not have as much footing in the media industry as men do, there are few networks geared towards women. These networks cater to the negative stereotypes of women—that they are competitive, vain, catty, followers, domestic

Margaret Gallagher, a researcher specializing in gender and the media and the author of, “Women, Media And Democratic Society: In Pursuit Of Rights And Freedoms” once said, “in the name of freedom of speech, the media claim the right to represent women as they wish.” In society today women have degrees, doctorates, own businesses and even run entire countries yet they are still underrepresented in one of the largest and most well known industries: the media, including news, magazines, TV, radio programs and so fourth. Although women are representing entire countries there is only a very small portion managing high senior positions in media corporations. Media has been known to portray women as beauty and not brains they are seen in magazines as merely objects and in news reports as just a pretty face. It is time that women who are qualified get the chance to take control of media and start representing men and women as equals by giving both genders the same opportunities in front of the camera as well as equal opportunities to reach senior positions in media networks.

Through critical analysis of the media in relation to how they perceive women such as Theresa May, Angela Merkel and Hillary Clinton, I will determine whether the media creates an environment in which women are stereotyped beyond no more than how they dress or act in public. The language that is used to describe these women will be compared to the language used to describe their male equivalents to ascertain whether women are discussed with misogynistic or sexist undertones. While there hasn’t been much academic study into this subject there have been numerous accounts of female politicians being undermined by the tabloids which have painted them as self-centred and vain. Due to there being little research in the area it is vital that this is studied and investigated as the media affects the public’s perceptions of not only female politicians, but on a wider scale, women in general.

Julia T. Wood’s article “Gendered Media; The Influence of Media on Views of Gender” argues the media’s portrayal of the two gender uses images that are unrealistic,

In the contemporary media, the much-criticised gender stereotypes, their appearance and the other roles are more prevalent in magazines than in any other media. Female representation in the advertisements, that the feminist movement criticised for so many years are still going strong, particularly in magazines that are specifically targeted to their

The portrayal of any sub-group of a society in media as an academic subject for discussion in communication and other humanities and social sciences has received much attention and continue to do so. There has been a lot of research on the representation of different classes of people and more specifically, men and women in the media. Gender representations, according to Luyt (2005), takes shape through language or other symbolic forms and offers shared ways of understanding it. Gender representation occurs at an individual, interpersonal and institutional level. The different television genres like talk shows, reality shows, news and advertising and other programmes on radio, and also projections in the print and other electronic media, with

Ross (2010, p.110) demonstrates anti-female media biases are often subconscious, identifying, “…[journalists] tend to use people like themselves.” Hence, as journalists are predominantly men, they overwhelmingly utilise male sources, particularly given males’ conventionally reputable, powerful social status (Ross 2010, p.110). Further, journalists justify the dearth of female sources as, “…there are relatively few women in positions of authority” (Ross 2010, p.110). Nevertheless, when women are interviewed, they are often portrayed in stereotypical roles, which victimise or objectify (Ross 2010, p.110). Ultimately, North (2012, p.66) highlights the media’s short-sighted insularity, stating, “…while the news media often shine a light on gender inequity in other occupations, they have failed to investigate their own gender bias issues.” Collectively, this reinforces cultural attitudes and ideologies, rather than critically challenging

Dating back to the 1920’s mass communication mediums of film, television and print have all been means that act as powerful tools of propaganda and thus play an integral role in the lives of individuals. It is for this reason that it is often widely accepted that the media is to be used as a tool, which represents a common public interest. Men and women are represented through forms of media in different ways, which create images depicting stereotypical traits and characteristics. The problem brought fourth by this is concerned with the issue of gender or the ‘discourse’ of gender and how individuals perceive themselves (Gauntlett, 2008) As the media is such a big part of everybody’s lives, there is not doubt that when this powerful function is synthesized with the medium’s capacity to accentuate present day realities on our screens the result tends to elicit a dominant ideology; which in turn presents an argument for major ethical implications in regard to public stigma and subsequent prejudice. This essay shall critically consider gender representation in Sex and the City (HBO, 1998-2004) and the extent to which these characters challenge the patriarchal privilege.

Media has always been an important element in the propagation of ideas in the society. Feminism has been one of the issues that media has given enough attention over the years. However, the way the media represents feminism and feminists have not been positive especially in the 19th and 20th centuries (Johnson, 2014).

Gender is a social construct—that is, a society 's assumptions about the way a man or woman should look and behave. It is argued that the media plays a big role in the way that gender is created and is influenced over society. The Mass media plays a significant role in a modern world, by broadcasting information in fast pace and giving entertainment to vast audiences. This essay is going to assess whether a focus on gender can enrich our understanding of contemporary media, by analysing gender roles within the television show Sex in the City.