Gender in Mediated Contexts

Gender and technology might seem unrelated on first sight because technology is often considered a neutral other that does not have anything to do with gender. Yet, taking a closer look at the language we use to talk about technology, at the images we rely on to represent technology, its uses and users, it becomes clear that gender stereotypes are more present than ever in the context of technology. Rather than subverting traditional gender roles, technology often reinforces and re-inscribes stereotypical behavior and ideas. Analyzing Apple iPad/iPhone advertisements, this paper will uncover some of the gender biases present in popular techno-narratives.

The purpose of this content analysis was to examine gender-related portrayals in popular G-rated films. Our research questions addressed the prevalence and nature of males and females in general-audience fare. To answer our research queries, 101 of the top-grossing box office films released theatrically in the United States and Canada from 1990 to early 2005 were assessed. The results showed that males outnumber females by a ratio of 2.57 to 1, which has not changed in fifteen years. Females were more likely than males to be young and depicted traditionally. In terms of personality traits, females were more likely to be smart, good, and beautiful than were males.

Considerable scholarly discussion has been given to the idea that we are moving toward a state of “posthumanism.” This essay examines some possible implications of a posthuman existence, specifically as it relates to that most basic of human needs—sexuality. I explore the spiritual aspects of sexuality to see what is lost and what is gained in technologically mediated forms of sexuality. To that end, I consider the interplay between sexual behavior and our conceptions of the sacred, how technologies are changing our views of—and realities concerning—our bodies, and the potential for a sacred posthuman sexuality.

Turkey has witnessed a proliferation of Islamic television channels since the liberalization of broadcasting in the 1990s. The programming of these TV channels was initially distinctly theological in character, with shows focusing on the doctrinal, scriptural, and ritualistic aspects of Islam. More recently, however, they have started producing family-friendly entertainment programs as well as shows aimed at “strengthening the family.” Islamic broadcasters intend their family-focused programming as civil initiatives against what they see as the increasing corrosion of the “moral fabric of the family” and devaluation of “family values” in contemporary Turkish society. In these TV shows, audiences are provided with guidance and techniques that would help them cultivate ethical dispositions, knowledge, and skills so that they could assume autonomy and responsibility for administering their families more effectively. Islamic broadcasters explicitly identify their role as assisting the state in  fighting social problems through their programming. Moreover, the discourses and sensibilities promoted on television articulate with the biopolitical concerns of the nation-state and the emerging rationalities of governance. While Islamic television professionals’ self-ascribed mission to “strengthen the family” emerges from a religiously inspired moral imperative to provide service, it simultaneously indicates their internalization of neoliberal rationalities of governance that promote the responsibilization of non-governmental actors for providing social services as well as that of individuals for supporting and caring for their family members. [Keywords: Islam, television, media, family, family values, secularism, neoliberalism, Turkey]

You can download the paper at: https://muse.jhu.edu/article/670934

L’obiettivo di questo lavoro è la ricostruzione di un oggetto mediale di cui ormai in Rete si sono perse le tracce: il webcinema, il cinema creato, realizzato e distribuito attraverso la Rete. Esso nasce e si sviluppa in una fase pionieristica del web tra la seconda metà degli anni novanta e i primi anni del XXI secolo, in un periodo segnato dalla sviluppo della tecnologia
dello streaming che consentirà la trasmissione di contenuti sonori e audiovisivi attraverso la Rete, ridefinendo il concetto del web stesso da collezione di testi a flusso di informazioni audiovisive, l’euforia della net economy e lo scoppio della bolla delle dot-com. Per analizzare questo fenomeno ibrido, di cui la teorizzazione coeva è scarsa e di cui la Rete sembra essersi dimenticata, adottiamo l’approccio metodologico della Actor-
network Theory che ci permetterà di investigare i veloci cambiamenti, l’instabilità e l’eterogeneità propria dei media digitali. Nello specifico, il webcinema sarà studiato evidenziando i network di attori eterogenei, umani e non umani, che lo compongono: la rete della produzione e del consumo, quella della distribuzione e della esibizione e la relazione che tutte queste componenti hanno con l’estetica. Con l’analisi del case history verrà evidenziata la complessa relazione esistente tra dimensione tecnologica e dimensione sociale che nel caso dei media digitali è improntata a momenti di apertura nei confronti della innovazione e di stabilizzazione e definizione di determinati modelli d’uso.

During the onslaught of the Islamic caliphate on Kobanî, Syria, media outlets across the globe broadcast pictures of brave and often unveiled Kurdish women fighting the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS), a quintessentially male force of destruction. The images of women fighting Islamist male aggressors aroused outrage, admiration, and pity among observers. But had all Kurdish fighters been male or had women fought for ISIS, viewers might have reacted differently. To examine some of the most widely disseminated gendered pictures and videos of the Syrian uprising in the media, this article draws on Mohja Kahf’s three categories, which typify how Muslim women, Arab women, or both are perceived by the Anglophone reading and viewing public: the first is victims; the second, escapees; and the third, pawns of patriarchy and male power. While this typology helps in examining gendered images of the Syrian uprising, it also obscures the socioeconomic realities on the ground.

We propose the concept of 'impromptu crowd science' to analyze the Bechdel-Wallace movement. We argue that the practice of using this test to evaluate movies generates a form of digitally distributed knowledge that reveals a challenging conceptual impasse. The current organization of the movement, mainly through blog and newspaper articles, quantitative analyses and wiki syntheses, does not encourage the formulation of theoretically innovative answers, remaining captive in a rhetorical style of balancing pros-and-cons. We propose that hybridizations between such impromptu crowd science and academic inquiries could stimulate crowd theorizing, and we extend this challenge as an invitation for HCI researchers.

This book documents the first life-cycle of the Post-Media
Lab (2011-2014). Taking up Fèlix Guattari’s challenge, the Lab aimed to combine social and media practices into collective assemblages of enunciation in order to confront social monoformity. Here we draw together some key essays, images and art projects by the Lab’s participants, as well as a close documentation of its associated events, talks, and exhibitions, to create a vivid portrayal of post-media practice today.

Edited by Clemens Apprich, Josephine Berry Slater, Anthony Iles & Oliver Lerone Schultz

With contributions by: Clemens Apprich, Josephine Berry Slater, Micha Cárdenas, Sean Dockray, Mina Emad, Bogdan Dragos & Inigo Wilkins, Fabien Giraud, Adnan Hadzi & James Stevens, Martin Howse & Jonathan Kemp, irational.org, Anthony Iles, Oliver Lerone Schultz, Gordan Savičić, Moritz Queisner, Rózsa Zita Farkas
– Part of the PML Books series. A collaboration between Mute & the Post-Media Lab

Download a free pdf at the link above

Based on 15 months of ethnographic research in the city of Alto Hospicio in northern Chile, this book describes how the residents use social media, and the consequences of this use in their daily lives. Nell Haynes argues that social media is a place where Alto Hospicio’s residents – or Hospiceños – express their feelings of marginalisation that result from living in city far from the national capital, and with a notoriously low quality of life compared to other urban areas in Chile.

In actively distancing themselves from residents in cities such as Santiago, Hospiceños identify as marginalised citizens, and express a new kind of social norm. Yet Haynes finds that by contrasting their own lived experiences with those of people in metropolitan areas, Hospiceños are strengthening their own sense of community and the sense of normativity that shapes their daily lives. This exciting conclusion is illustrated by the range of social media posts about personal relationships, politics and national citizenship, particularly on Facebook.

The hypothesis of this paper is that—similar to media “bandwidths”—complex degrees of COHERENCE define spiritual states of being. The “humanitarian” estate is an incipient evolutionary collective human organism which exists in sufficiently coherent frequencies that it can “receive” spiritual frequencies or “bandwidths”.  Reception of entrained spiritual “Heart” frequencies can be optimized when humanitarian organizations worldwide establish solidarity of humanitarian intent according to the dynamics of entrainment.

The purpose of this dissertation is to explore the relationship between gender and technology in the contemporary occult film. More specifically, I investigate the role the camera plays in those occult films that utilise a ‘shaky camera’ aesthetic and how this form of technology underpins the representation of gender (femininity and femaleness) and the inherent masculinity associated with that technology (i.e. – the camera). As the chapters incorporate film marketing, narrative analysis and genre theory respectively, I have employed an interdisciplinary methodology, investigating issues of feminism and the gender-technology relationship. In order to conceptualise the interplay of gender with(in) technology in the contemporary occult film, I use the Paranormal Activity franchise ([2007] 2009-2011) as my case study. I have selected this franchise for two reasons: (1) its immense success and mass appeal indicate a particular site of interest for the exploration of gender, marketing and technology; and (2) its indirect influence over the occult subgenre recycled a film style many had hoped would remain with The Blair Witch Project (1999). Gender-technology relationships, therefore, are the central focus of this dissertation, particularly how technology (dis)engages with the male or female body.

The uptake of blogs proves that reports of the death of the author are greatly exaggerated. The Author is alive and well, and has a blog.

In the speculative era of cyberculture criticism in the early 1990s, many authors claimed electronic text would destabilise the institution of authorship (Poster 2001; Landow 1994; Bolter 2001). They argued changes of material form of writing would decrease the power of the author. They connected this claim with critics such as Roland Barthes, Jacques Derrida and Michel Foucault who had questioned conventional assumptions about authorship, and speculated on the possibilities of texts without authors. While the claims of these electronic writing advocates were contested theoretically (Grusin 1994), the popularity of blogs empirically demonstrates the persistence of authorship, and how progress often works backwards.

Authorship is so familiar it’s almost invisible, and so flexible it cannot be defined. Certain elements of a text attribute it to a source: an author’s name on the book cover, a newspaper by-line, or the author information in a blog. The Author emerged in the West alongside a range of economic, technological, social, political and legal changes associated with the rise of individualism, capitalism, rationalism, democracy and rule of law. Authorship functions as a boundary abstraction that connects each of these discourses. It gives authors the legal protection of copyright, economic connections with the printing and publishing industries and provides the key field to locate books on the shelves of booksellers and libraries. In silent reading, it provides a persona for the reader to imagines, completing a text’s meaning. Canons of authors provide symbolic figures whose names become shorthand for concepts and stories. The convention of reading a text with reference to its author is ingrained, even if this institution is only 500 years old. Blogs have succeeded because they are less innovative than other online forms.

Far from dissolving authorship, blogs perpetuate, coexist with, and transform it. Authorship re-emerges in proportion to the distance that a text moves from its context. Specific features of blogs allow them to invoke Foucault’s author-function more effectively than static personal home pages: the inverted narrative structure of the archive, the consistent voice, the time stamp that positions posts in a reference to a temporality shared with readers. However, the practices associated with blogs also do transform authorship. The reader’s capacity to give feedback through comments compensates for the conversational mode of writing. Many blogs’s authority comes from positions outside institutions.

Blogs gravitated towards two discourses that reflect the conventional split between public and private domains: the political polemic blog, and the confessional diary. Media events that brought certain blogs into the public sphere in 2003 and 2004 followed standard scripts for each side of this split. The role of political blogs in discrediting Dan Rather’s report on Bush’s war record was generally celebrated as evidence that blogs were legitimate players in the public domain. On the other hand, the most high profile personal diaries were those that presented narratives of transgressive sexuality: Muzimei in China, the London Callgirl in the UK, and Washingtonienne in the US. By contrast with the political bloggers, these authors who brought the private sphere to the public were subject to a moralistic collective tribunal.

While packaging is a common marketing subject, this illustration paper provides an alternative perspective through the linguistic examination of packaging as discourse, focusing on male grooming, masculinity and metrosexuality. Male grooming is often perceived as trespassing into feminine space and creating ambiguity in gender borders. This study aims to explore how packaging designers negotiate masculinity, in order to persuade men to accept grooming products through social interactions within the packaging of L'Oréal Men Expert. Employing Scollon's mediated discourse analysis and incorporating the Barthesian order of signification, the study analyses how different social actions within the packaging discourse are mediated by multimodal features. The findings reveal five negotiating strategies, i.e. constructing a hegemonic masculine image; negotiating (a masculinised) metrosexuality; empowering men; giving men a logical reason to groom; and a different portrayal of skincare products. The key aim of this paper is to illustrate the differences between marketing and linguistics and propose possible collaboration.

The inventors ciezanos could not be idle. When not occupied by factories, industries and workshops are used in making ingenious machines that help families in their attempts to stretch the meager savings of the first decades of the twentieth century.The result of our investigations we have made a discovery in the history of our region. A patent of 1913 that united for a common purpose, the engineer Bernard H. Brunton and the industrialist Luis Anaya Amorós. Patented which may be one of the first cash machines world.

RESUMEN

Pretendemos, por medio de esta investigación, unificar diversos ejes relacionados con un conjunto de tematizaciones de interés antropológico. Nuestra investigación intenta ahondar en la esfera de lo religioso en tanto eje de construcción identitaria, a través de la indagación de las mitologías, memorias y narrativas posibles en el marco de la memoria colectiva y social de un grupo específico: la comunidad rural denominada San Javier (Departamento de Río Negro, Uruguay). La matriz religiosa de esta Colonia se afinca en su propio proceso fundacional: San Javier fue fundado en el año 1913, en el Uruguay, por un grupo de inmigrantes rusos pertenecientes a la “Comunidad Nueva Israel” (Novo Israilskaia Obchina), corriente religiosa escindida de la Iglesia Ortodoxa Rusa a mediados del siglo XVIII. A través de esta investigación tratamos de profundizar en las narrativas de los habitantes de San Javier, estudiando las diferentes temporalidades que atraviesan a las mismas y las fragmentaciones espacio-temporales sobre las cuales estas narrativas se construyen. En el espacio de la temporalidad que relaciona religión y memoria – y que señalan el declino de Nueva Israel, religión fundadora de San Javier- , ingresan un conjunto de fragmentaciones que construyen varios Otros en un proceso de alteridad interna a la propia Colonia . Sumado a esto, las relaciones de la Colonia San Javier con la sociedad nacional uruguaya y con la Unión Soviética, y particularmente, las temporalidades del Terror vividas por los habitantes de San Javier bajo la influencia del estalinismo en la URSS y la dictadura militar en el Uruguay, hacen que esa producción del Otro adquiera diversas modalidades, y que el espacio pluralizado y fragmentado donde conviven religión y memoria, se encuentre poblado por narrativas conflictivas, estableciéndose una tradición de la temporalidad sanjavierina basada en y para el conflicto.

Abstract

This research study is intended as a unifying link for a variety of topics that relate to a number of anthropological subject-matters. The research is aimed at an indepth analysis of the religious aspect as the central theme in building an identity. The study investigates mythologies, memories and narratives that can possibly be part of the collective and social memory of a specific group: a rural community known as San Javier (in the Department of Rio Negro, Republic of Uruguay). The religious mold of this colony is a result of its very own founding process. San Javier was founded in 1913 by a group of Russian immigrants who were part of the “New Israel Community” (Novo Israilskaia Obchina), a religious current that broke away from the Russian Orthodox Church in the mid 18th century. In order to attentively study the narratives of the people of San Javier, our work considers, in ample detail, their various temporalities, and the spatial and temporal fragmentations upon which such narratives have been created. A number of fragmentations that constitute several Others as part of an internal alterity process of the colony, are included in the space of the temporality that relates religion and memory – pointing at the decline of New Israel, the religion responsible for the founding of San Javier. Also, such production of the Other assumes a variety of forms, by virtue of the relations of the San Javier colony with Uruguayan society and with the Soviet Union; and in particular, due to the temporalities of Terror experienced by the inhabitants of San Javier during Stalin’s influence in the USSR and during the military dictatorship in Uruguay. In addition to this, the pluralized and fragmented space where religion and memory coexist becomes filled with controversial narratives, determining a tradition of the San Javier temporality, based on and toward conflict.

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 ...

This book documents the first life-cycle of the Post-Media Lab (2011-2014). Taking up Fèlix Guattari’s challenge, the Lab aimed to combine social and media practices into collective assemblages of enunciation in order to confront social monoformity. Here we draw together some key essays, images and art projects by the Lab’s participants, as well as a close documentation of its associated events, talks, and exhibitions, to create a vivid portrayal of post-media practice today. Edited by Clemens Apprich, Josephine Berry Slater, Anthony Iles & Oliver Lerone Schultz With contributions by: Clemens Apprich, Josephine Berry Slater, Micha Cárdenas, Sean Dockray, Mina Emad, Bogdan Dragos & Inigo Wilkins, Fabien Giraud, Adnan Hadzi & James Stevens, Martin Howse & Jonathan Kemp, irational.org, Anthony Iles, Oliver Lerone Schultz, Gordan Savičić, Moritz Queisner, Rózsa Zita Farkas – Part of the PML Books series. A collaboration between Mute & the Post-Media Lab

This book documents the first life-cycle of the Post-Media Lab (2011-2014). Taking up Fèlix Guattari’s challenge, the Lab aimed to combine social and media practices into collective assemblages of enunciation in order to confront social monoformity. Here we draw together some key essays, images and art projects by the Lab’s participants, as well as a close documentation of its associated events, talks, and exhibitions, to create a vivid portrayal of post-media practice today.

Blogs rest at the cross‐section of politics, media, and discourse. This relatively new medium has injected itself into the spectacle that is campaigns; competing narratives seek to define candidates, lure voters, and wage a war over the ownership of symbols and meaning‐making. Blogs influence the formation of narratives within the political spectacle of campaigns. This article seeks to describe local/regional blogs as social and discursive phenomena that participate in, and provide part of, the discourse of political spectacle. The article looks at this political subculture and attempts to express through an analysis of form, function, and meaning this new, palpable discursive force — a counter to the existing hegemony. The case studies utilized are the local/regional blogospheres that have developed in the states of Connecticut and Virginia. In Connecticut, we analyze the metonymic chains built in the Ned Lamont versus Joe Lieberman senatorial race and, in Virginia, Jim Webb against former lobbyist Harris Miller in the primary and Senator George Allen in the general election.

... Tags. Blogs and the crisis of authorship. by: Chris Chesher. RIS, Export as RIS which can be imported into most citation managers. BibTeX, Export as BibTeX which can be imported into most citation/bibliography managers. PDF, Export formatted citations as PDF. ...

Consumption inequities have been explored within the con-sumer behavior and public policy literatures in marketing, but few investigations within these domains have examined their global dimensions. To help fill this gap, the authors investigate the gender aspects of consumer inequality worldwide using measures of quality of life at the societal level. After a brief introduction, a discussion of the theoretical foundation of our work and the measures used to examine inequities between men and women are presented. Analyses and results ...

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 ...

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 ...

This book documents the f irst life-cycle of the Post-Media Lab (2011-2014). Taking up Fèlix Guattari’s challenge, the Lab aimed to combine social and media practices into collective assemblages of enunciation in order to confront social monoformity. Here we draw together some key essays, images and art projects by the Lab’s participants, as well as a close documentation of its associated events, talks, and exhibitions, to create a vivid portrayal of post-media practice today.

This book documents the first life-cycle of the Post-Media Lab (2011-2014). Taking up Fèlix Guattari’s challenge, the Lab aimed to combine social and media practices into collective assemblages of enunciation in order to confront social monoformity. Here we draw together some key essays, images and art projects by the Lab’s participants, as well as a close documentation of its associated events, talks, and exhibitions, to create a vivid portrayal of post-media practice today. Edited by Clemens Apprich, Josephine Berry Slater, Anthony Iles & Oliver Lerone Schultz With contributions by: Clemens Apprich, Josephine Berry Slater, Micha Cárdenas, Sean Dockray, Mina Emad, Bogdan Dragos & Inigo Wilkins, Fabien Giraud, Adnan Hadzi & James Stevens, Martin Howse & Jonathan Kemp, irational.org, Anthony Iles, Oliver Lerone Schultz, Gordan Savičić, Moritz Queisner, Rózsa Zita Farkas – Part of the PML Books series. A collaboration between Mute & the Post-Media Lab

This book documents the first life-cycle of the Post-Media Lab (2011-2014). Taking up Fèlix Guattari’s challenge, the Lab aimed to combine social and media practices into collective assemblages of enunciation in order to confront social monoformity. Here we draw together some key essays, images and art projects by the Lab’s participants, as well as a close documentation of its associated events, talks, and exhibitions, to create a vivid portrayal of post-media practice today. Edited by Clemens Apprich, Josephine Berry Slater, Anthony Iles & Oliver Lerone Schultz With contributions by: Clemens Apprich, Josephine Berry Slater, Micha Cárdenas, Sean Dockray, Mina Emad, Bogdan Dragos & Inigo Wilkins, Fabien Giraud, Adnan Hadzi & James Stevens, Martin Howse & Jonathan Kemp, irational.org, Anthony Iles, Oliver Lerone Schultz, Gordan Savičić, Moritz Queisner, Rózsa Zita Farkas – Part of the PML Books series. A collaboration between Mute & the Post-Media Lab

The paper presents a case study of the educational exploitation of group blogging for the implementation of a “learning by design” activity. More specifically, a group of students used a blog as a communication and information management tool in the University course of ICT-enhanced Geometry learning activities. The analysis of the designed learning activities, the blog content and log files, as well as the points of view of the students (via a questionnaire and a group interview) expressed upon completion of ...

What You See is What You Get: Cyberchix and Virtual Systers Susan Myburgh University of South Australia, St Bernard's Road, Magill SA 5072Adelaide, Australia Abstract. The metadiscourse of the Internet phenomenon could reveal as gendered a culture as the real world that ...