GENDER COMMUNICATION IN SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS: MEDIA

Christopher Hawkes

CMS 498

April 29th 2013

Table of Contents

1. What is a Institution?

2. Media as a Social Institution

3. Media and Money

4. The Power of Media

5. The Power of Media cont.

6. Interlocking Institutions

7. Media and Gender

8. The Gaze(s)

9. The Gaze(s) cont.

10. The Oppositional Gaze

11. Media Good or Bad?

What is a Institution?

Definition: established patterns of behavior with a particular and recognized purpose; institutions include specific participants who share expectations and act in specific roles, with rights and duties attached to them.

Media as a Social Institution

Based on the definition given, some may find it strange to call media a institution at all.

However, looking at media as a whole, and not just a few mediums, makes it clear that media is a very significant institution.

“Media is one of the primary mechanism that reiterate gender while also providing locations in which resistance can occur, in both construction and reception”(Defransico & Palczewski 2007 p.237).

Media and Money Money plays the single most important

part in media as we know it today. “Media messages are not simply

artifacts created for art’s sake, economic processes and institutional patterns govern them”(Defransico & Palczewski 2007 p.237).

Television is a non stop reminder of this fact. For every show there will be commercials specifically targeting the particular audience.

Now more than ever there seem to be commercials and ads everywhere you look, media is all about the money, and as a audience, its important to remember that.

The Power of Media

Money and power go hand and hand in America, media is a vast wealth of resources, so with it comes a very powerful institution.

While money is important to power, it’s the influence of media that is most powerful.

Media is constantly influencing social norms like race, class, nationality and gender.

The Power of Media cont.

A great exmaple of media power as it relates to gender is the ideal body.

Female beauty is the most prominent, women you see on TV and in magazines look “perfect” (traditional gender/sex expectations). It portrays the idea that this is what women are supposed to look like. It is very harmful because no one is perfect, yet it causes women to strive for it.

The same goes for men, except the social pressure to look “perfect” is not as strong as what women face.

Interlocking Institutions

Media is by far the most interlocking of the institutions we studied.

The reason being is that media represents and creates norms for each of them.

Media influences to the audience what a family, work, religion, and education are supposed to be like.

A large portion of shows and movies will represent all three at the same time, with the typical Christian family, kids go to college, a wife that stays at home, and a man that is the breadwinner.

Media and Gender

A study done on media content showed that women are greatly underrepresented in the media.

On the Sunday morning news shows only 14% of the guests were women.

One the major news stations (ABC,NBC,CBS) women reported just 25% of the stories in 2004.

In the entertainment industry 39% of characters were women, while men accounted for 61%. (Everitt & Gibbons 2005)

While equality has made some significant strides, this is an example of the fact that we still have a long way to go.

The Gaze(s)

John Berger writes in his book Ways of Seeing (1972) that “Men act and Women appear….Thus she turns herself into an object of vision: a sight”(p.47).

This is significant to possibly understanding media and some of the problems caused by it.

“The presumed sex of the viewer is male, and even when the viewer is female, she views herself though a mans eyes” (Defransico & Palczewski 2007 p.249).

It is important to keep in mind that this is a generalization from Berger, which has flaws, and the book is quick to point out that he often slips from “discussing media-produced “ways of seeing” to describing how real men look at real women in their everyday lives.

The Gaze(s) cont.

Laura Mulvey also published a very popular essay about the gaze. “Her position was “that cinema not only highlights woman’s to-be-looked-at-ness but actually builds the way a women is to be looked at into the film itself. ”(Defransico & Palczewski 2007 p.251).

Brenda Cooper had a much different position on the topic. She felt that gaze was determined by the viewer. She also felt that multiple gazes exist, and “rejection of the dominant male gaze can be found in mainstream Hollywood films” (Defransico & Palczewski 2007 p.250).

The Oppositional Gaze

After looking at all the different scholars view on gaze, Bell Hook offers the Oppositional gaze.

The idea is that as long as you understand gaze, and how the media uses it, the gaze is what you make it.

“Media ‘s positioning of the audience is not determinative as long as audiences are conscious of media’s attempt to position them. Audience members can reposition themselves” (Defransico & Palczewski 2007 p.251).

Media: Good or Bad?

The media is a never ending cycle of performance of gender, as well as many other things.

Media is a great source of entertainment and pleasure for many people.

For most of us it’s a part of our everyday lives regardless of whether we want it to be or not.

The most important factor of media as it relates to gender is to always think critically, and employ the oppositional gaze.

Using these practices wont solve the gender based issues with media, but it will keep you from being a passive recipient of media, and make you an “active participant in culture”.

Work Cited

DeFrancisco, Victoria L., and Catherine Helen. Palczewski. "Media." Communicating Gender Diversity: A Critical Approach. Los Angeles: Sage Publications, 2007. N. pag. Print.

"Google Images." Google Images. N.p., n.d. Web. 29 Apr. 2013.