How is gender constructed in the media? To what extent do portrayals of gender influence everyday perceptions of ourselves and our actions? In what ways do the media reinforce and sometimes challenge gender inequalities? Critical Readings: Media and Gender provides a lively and engaging introduction to the field of media and gender research, drawing from a wide range of important international scholarship. A variety of conceptual and methodological approaches is used to explore subjects such as: entertainment; news; grassroots communication; new media texts; institutions; audiences. Topics include: Gender identity and television talk shows Historical portrayals of women in advertising The sexualization of the popular press The representation of lesbians on television The cult of femininity in women's magazines Images of African American women and Latinas in Hollywood cinema Sexual violence in the media Women in popular music Pornography and masculine power Women's relationship to the Internet. This book is ideal for undergraduate courses in cultural and media studies, gender studies, the sociology of the media, mass communication, journalism, communication studies and politics.

· What next for audience research in the 21st century?

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 lively and engaging text introduces students to the key contemporary issues in the study of gender and the media. Integrating cultural theory with text-based criticism, Gender in the Media analyses recent debates in feminist cultural theory, masculinity studies and queer theory, before applying these cultural paradigms to critical readings in relevant media contexts. Richardson and Wearing address a wide range of new media texts and topics, covering television dramas, make-over shows, life-style magazines, internet dating and more. Critical, current and far-reaching, this book is invaluable for all students of media and gender studies, as well as for anyone interested in gender representation in different media forms.

-51 contemporary articles are new to this edition, with 14 classic pieces retained from prior editions.

The media strongly influences our everyday notions of gender roles and our concepts of gender identity. The Encyclopedia of Gender in Media critically examines the role of the media in enabling, facilitating, or challenging the social construction of gender in our society. The work addresses a variety of entertainment and news content in print and electronic media and explores the social construction of masculinity as well as femininity. In addition to representations of gender within the media, we also analyze gender issues related to media ownership and the media workforce. Despite an abundance of textbooks, anthologies, and university press monographs on the topic of gender in media, until now no comprehensive reference work has tackled this topic of perennial interest in student research and papers. Features and benefits: 150 signed entries (each with Cross References and Further Readings) are organized in A-to-Z fashion to give students easy access to the full range of topics within gender in media. A thematic Reader's Guide in the front matter groups related entries by broad topical or thematic areas to make it easy for users to find related entries at a glance, with themes including "Discrimination & Media Effects," "Media Modes," "New Media," "Media Portrayals & Representations," "Biographies," and more. In the electronic version, the Reader's Guide combines with a detailed Index and the Cross References to provide users with robust search-and browse capacities. A Chronology in the back matter helps students put individual events into broader historical context. A Glossary provides students with concise definitions to key terms in the field. A Resource Guide to classic books, journals, and web sites (along with the Further Readings accompanying each entry) helps guide students to further resources for their research journeys. An Appendix provides users with a number of reports related to gender in media.

"Race/Gender/Media" contains 43 readings that help readers to think critically about issues of race and gender in the media. The readings address a multitude of topics in three major sections-Production, Content, and Audience-and approach the matter of race and gender in the media from rhetorical, social scientific, and critical/cultural perspectives. The author places a strong emphasis on introducing the material in the book and orienting the reader to the content through overviews, context-specific introductions, and descriptions of each reading.

This book examines the professional discourses produced in women’s media in Malaysia and the subject positions that they make available for career women. Drawing on feminist critical discourse analysis, critical stylistics and feminist conversation analysis, it identifies a range of gendered discourses around employment and motherhood that are underpinned by postfeminism and neoliberal feminism. Through close linguistic analysis of magazine and newspaper articles and radio talk, the study reveals that these discourses substitute balance, individual success, self-transformation and positive feelings for structural change, and entrench the very issues hindering gender workplace equality. Chapters discuss topics such as sexism, work-family balance, extensive and intensive mothering, breadwinning, gender stereotypes, beauty work, ‘synthetic sisterhood’, media practices and gender equality policies. This book will be of great interest to students and scholars of language and gender, discourse analysis, and media, communication and cultural studies as well as policy-makers, media practitioners and feminist activists.

The Handbook of Gender, Sex and Media offers original insights into the complex set of relations which exist between gender, sex, sexualities and the media, and in doing so, showcases new research at the forefront of media and communication practice and theory. Brings together a collection of new, cutting-edge research exploring a number of different facets of the broad relationship between gender and media Moves beyond associating gender with man/woman and instead considers the relationship between the construction of gender norms, biological sex and the mediation of sex and sexuality Offers genuinely new insights into the complicated and complex set of relations which exist between gender, sex, sexualities and the media Essay topics range from the continuing sexism of TV advertising to ways in which the internet is facilitating the (re)invention of our sexual selves.

What does the Frankfurt School have to say about the creative industries? Does the spread of Google prove we now live in an information society? How is Madonna an example of postmodernism? How new is new media? Does the power of Facebook mean we're all media makers now? This groundbreaking volume – part reader, part textbook - helps you to engage thoroughly with some of the major voices that have come to define the landscape of theory in media studies, from the public sphere to postmodernism, from mass communication theory to media effects, from production to reception and beyond. But much more than this, by providing assistance and questions directly alongside the readings, it crucially helps you develop the skills necessary to become a critical, informed and analytical reader. Each reading is supported on the facing page by author annotations which provide comments, dissect the arguments, explain key ideas and terminology, make references to other relevant material, and pose questions that emerge from the text. Key features: Opening chapters: ‘What is theory?’ and ‘What is reading?’ bring alive the importance of both as key parts of media scholarship Pre-reading: substantial Introductory sections set each text and its author in context and show the relevance of the reading to contemporary culture Post-reading: Reflection sections summarise each reading’s key points and suggests further areas to explore and think about 4 types of annotations help you engage with the reading – context, content, structure, and writing style .... as well as questions to provoke further thought Split into 4 sections – Reading theory, Key thinkers and schools, Approaches and Media Theory in context New to the second edition: New chapters on New Media, and Audiences as Producers Reading Media Theory will assist you in developing close-reading and analytic skills. It will also increase your ability to outline key theories and debates, assess different case studies critically, link theoretical approaches to a particular historical context, and to structure and present an argument. As such, it will be essential reading for undergraduate and postgraduate students of media studies, cultural studies, communication studies, the sociology of the media, popular culture and other related subjects.