The phrase the media is commonly employed both inside and outside the academy as a cultural and technological catchall. It is referenced to describe a range of media, both old and new. For example, I have heard college students use this generic term in relation to the content of Hollywood films and national newspapers, as well as social networking sites like Facebook. Often, when we think of the media, we consider the importance of the meanings of popular messages and images that are consumed by a mass audience. In this context, and at its most benign, mass media may be viewed as an outlet to provide us with information, or as a source of entertainment, pleasure, and escape. Conversely, “the media” has been criticized as politically liberal (or conservative), pornographic, superficial, and ultimately too influential in the daily lives of children and young adults. Intuitively, we know that all forms of media matter at the start of the 21st century, as they structure and saturate both the public sphere and the most personal aspects of our lives. As media scholar Douglas Kellner asserts, media culture provides the “materials out of which we forge our very identities, our sense of selfhood, our notion of what it means to be male and female, our sense of class, of ethnicity and race, of nationality, of sexuality, and of ‘us’ and ‘them.’” Clearly, the relationship between gender and media is a significant subject within academia and in the everyday lives of women and men.

While this work examines mass media as a social institution and diverse media texts produced from within cultural industries, its focus is on gender in media. Over the last 30 years, technological changes have broadened our conception of, and relationship to, media in terms of both form and content. The advent of the Internet has ushered in a new relationship between media and user. As discussed in the articles on social networking sites, dating sites, and online video games, these platforms provide space for interaction, creativity, and what scholars have termed a “bleed” between real-world activities and those that occur within mediated environments. At this historical moment, more people not only use some kind of media everyday (from reading a magazine to searching for a word on Google) but also produce media in the form of texts, images, and videos. Given the ubiquity of cameras and video technology in cell phones and the interactivity made available via the Internet, there is a new generation of media users who are simultaneously media creators. People post updates of images on their Facebook walls and upload home videos onto YouTube. Others blog about their personal experiences, create online dating profiles, or debate whether or not we have entered an era of “postfeminism.” Thus, media is a multifaceted rubric that includes not only forms of media—from cable television and college radio to multi-user online video games—but also the production, consumption, and creation of media content.

The Internet in particular has transformed how business is conducted in late-capitalism and has altered the way we obtain information. It has revolutionized communication, broadening the possibility of real-time interaction between people who live in different countries and time zones. In particular, e-mail and software programs such as Skype facilitate the potential for interconnectivity across cultural and geographical borders. Time and space have literally sped up, imploded, and virtually collapsed for those who have access to a computer with an Internet connection. Technological advances have radicalized the amount of information that may be available at the click of a key. While much of popular American mass media has been globally exported via print, film, video, records, and television for many decades, becoming familiar in numerous cultures, those living within developing countries have more opportunities not only to gather knowledge [Page xx]but also to create and transmit local media within a larger global media landscape.

Today the spectrum of mediated experiences often challenges binary boundaries, blurring how we conceptualize public and private, real and virtual, and old and new media. It is possible to participate in virtual sexual encounters in the online social world of Second Life via a laptop computer in a coffee shop. We can also stream television shows and read the New York Times on an iPhone. With this in mind, this volume explores the complexity of media across diverse platforms, technologies, and cultural, economic, and political landscapes. The ubiquity of mass media and the emergence of new media technologies have had a significant influence on culture (defined here in the broadest sense of the word), as well as our intimate daily experiences. Understandably, the relationship between gender and the media has become an increasingly salient subject within the last few decades.

As an agent of socialization, media has an enormous impact on how we make sense of the social world—from what occurs in the local community in which we live to our understanding of transnational politics. Media, whether in the form of text or technology, literally mediate our relation to social institutions that structure our lives, including educational, healthcare, and economic systems. For example, media content can provide knowledge of a financial crisis, and access to types of media determine how (or if) we may participate in the postindustrial global labor force. Yet, media content also shapes our self-identity and, in turn, our gender identity. In the articles that appear within this text, gender is delineated as a socially constructed system of classification that hinges on the binary categories of masculinity and femininity. As a result, certain behaviors, expectations, and subjectivities are attributed to that which is deemed masculine and that which is categorized as feminine. Within the context of patriarchy, characteristics and social roles associated with masculinity are more highly valued than those that are defined as feminine. Furthermore, it is important to stress that the social construction of gender is directly related to power, as men have more political, cultural, and economic power, broadly speaking, than women. For example, men disproportionately hold upper-level positions in media industries and are more often owners of major media outlets such as television broadcasting companies, advertising agencies, and social networking sites.

The history of mass media, both behind the scenes and in front of the camera/screen/microphone, has been a history of exclusion. In terms of media presence and participation, women, as well as nonwhite people and other minorities, have played limited roles, particularly in network television, Hollywood film, newspapers, and radio. For example, as discussed in this volume, within the history of network television news, women rarely held behind-the-scenes positions as reporters and writers, and only a few women sat behind the news anchor desk prior to the 1970s. Notably, in the 1970s Barbara Walters coanchored with Harry Reasoner, and later in the 1990s, Connie Chung coanchored with Dan Rather. However, it was not until 2006 that the coveted nightly news anchor position was given to a woman, Katie Couric. Before Couric, women had never anchored the news solo (that is, without a male coanchor). Until fairly recently, print newsrooms had a similar history of excluding women as key reporters. Historically, women have been relegated to covering “soft” news stories that are presumably of interest to female audiences. Female reporters and editors traditionally worked on articles and content centering on fashion, health, beauty, celebrity, entertainment, and human interest. The coverage of “hard” news, information that is culturally and politically significant, has been the domain of men. Implied within this tradition of exclusion and topical gender stereotyping is the idea that issues of great importance and seriousness “naturally” fall under male purview and authority.

Media representations contain veiled and explicit scripts pertaining to gender. These narratives edify audiences regarding social roles and personal characteristics that are accepted and valued for men and women, as well as those that are undesirable. For example, female characters are more likely to be shown in television and film as mothers and caregivers, as compared with male characters. Although it is a biological fact that women have children, this gendered televisual script reproduces the notion that women are innately better at child rearing. Although gender is based on the biological categories of male and female, gender differences are not a “natural” fact. Gender roles have been traditionally read as a given in popular culture, as illustrated in the popular maxim “boys will be boys and girls will be girls,” but masculinity and femininity exist on a continuum and have never been static categories. Gender bending, [Page xxi]drag, and even the recent arrival of the metrosexual male (thanks in part to the television show Queer Eye for the Straight Guy) are examples of how gender is performed, negotiated, and challenged.

The gender binary is directly connected to hetero-normativity, as men or women who transgress gender boundaries may risk being identified as butch, fag, or queer (in the pejorative sense of these words). Recently, there have been more representations of transgender and homosexual people in the media, from transgender guests such as Susan Stryker and a very pregnant Thomas Beatie, who both appeared on Oprah, to television shows, such as Queer as Folk and The L Word, that feature mainly gay and lesbian characters. Although the inclusion of homosexual and transgender people in mainstream media has allowed for greater visibility within heteronormative popular culture, it is imperative to examine whether sexual and gender stereotypes are being reproduced or transgressed within media. Such representations, which increase the visibility of alternative gendered and sexual experiences, are never neutral and emanate from within a larger cultural framework that is predominantly heterocentric.

In addition to examining the role of media in enabling, facilitating, or challenging the social construction of gender in our society, this work acknowledges media and feminist theorists who have made significant contributions in the social sciences, humanities, and visual studies, including cinema studies and new media. The study of both gender and media as distinct areas of academic inquiry is a relatively recent phenomenon that reflects larger social and historical changes. Media and communication studies emerged as distinctive areas of inquiry within American universities and colleges within the late 1960s and 1970s. Not surprisingly, the study of media has become a progressively popular field of specialization across a range of disciplines, including not only communication and media studies programs but also sociology, anthropology, cultural studies, and the visual arts. While the output of media scholarship is currently unparalleled, many contemporary scholars have drawn from early theoretical works. For example, Canadian media theorist Marshall McLuhan, who placed emphasis on the specificities of television as a medium in Understanding Media (1964), has influenced current media scholarship. Additionally, media theory has been shaped by the work of European sociologists and philosophers, notably French literary critic and semiotician Roland Barthes (1915–80), as well as German Frankfurt School theorists such as Theodor Adorno (1903–69), who considered the impact of the emergence of the “culture industries” in the 20th century.

The 1960s and the 1970s were a particularly important time not only for the burgeoning field of media studies but also for the institutionalization of feminist theory and women's studies programs. The women's rights movement of the 1960s ushered in what is commonly referred to as the “second wave” of feminism, an umbrella term for a divergent range of theoretical perspectives, including liberal, radical, Marxist, and socialist feminism. Notably, second wave feminists examined the connection between images of women in popular media, particularly magazines and advertisements, and the perpetuation of sexism and misogyny. Liberal feminist Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique (1963) analyzed the content of women's magazines, critiquing how advertisements and articles normalized and exulted women's place within the home. Friedan argued that media content reinforced the idea that all women were to fulfill their “natural” social roles as dutiful wives and mothers. Similarly, radical feminist Andrea Dworkin asserted that there is a direct relationship between pornographic images of women and the lived experiences of the women who work within the porn industry. She argued that pornographic media should not be protected as “free speech,” as it is based on and contributes to the perpetuation of sexual assault and violence against women. While these feminist scholars problematize very different forms of mass media content, they both argue that there is a real link between the lives of men and women, and media representations. More contemporary, or third wave feminists, have continued to highlight and deconstruct media messages in popular culture. Notably, Bitch magazine, founded in 1996, is an independent quarterly devoted to providing a critical feminist response to mainstream media. A decade and a half later, Bitch continues to take a radical and oppositional approach, now offering a Website with video and interactive content.

In addition to examining feminist theoretical paradigms and theorists, this volume highlights contemporary scholars who have contributed to and expanded our understandings of how the media play a role in perpetuating not only gender inequalities [Page xxii]but also those based on race, class, and sexuality. Included are biographies of cultural studies scholars such as bell hooks, who has underscored the connection between sexism, racism, and identity through a variety of popular media, including advertisements, film, and rap music, and Stuart Hall, whose encoding/decoding model of communication illuminates how mass media perpetuates dominant ideologies that are often accepted by audiences. It is significant that there are numerous individuals who have broadened our understandings of the power of media as an economic and political force, such as journalist and media reform activist Bill Moyers and writer/theorist Douglas Rushkoff, who has written extensively on digital media and cyberculture; both are included in this volume.

Feminist scholars have critically analyzed the negative impact of hegemonic representations of masculinity and femininity, both past and present. Susan Bordo's Unbearable Weight (1993) and media literacy documentaries produced by the Media Education Foundation, such as Jean Kilbourne's Killing Us Softly series, Sut Jhally's Dreamworlds films, and Jackson Katz's Tough Guise: Violence, Media, and the Crisis in Masculinity (1999), describe how gender binaries are reproduced in media texts, negatively affecting the bodies and subjectivities of men and women. For example, an idealized female body, one that is unattainably thin, beautiful, and typically white, has become a normative standard by which women judge themselves and in turn are judged by others. Low self-esteem, poor body image, and eating disorders such as anorexia and bulimia have been attributed to media representations that reify an unreachable standard of what constitutes an attractive, and by extension a feminine, body. Likewise, masculinity, as embodied in media texts is often drawn in binary opposition to that which is deemed feminine. Men often appear taller, more muscular, and powerful—physically, economically, and culturally—as compared to women. While women are portrayed as thin, weak, and sexually objectified, men take on the role of emotionally vacant, oversexed macho aggressor.

As noted above, our relationship with the media is complex, and scholars have debated the extent to which the media influences the ideological construction of gender and hegemonic understandings of masculinity and femininity. Media consumption studies have focused on how audiences interpret texts, attempting to assess the degree to which individuals critically and reflexively engage with media. Reception theories have purported that all people are not simply passive consumers when it comes to encountering media content. For example, as discussed within, Janice Radway's 1984 study of women's interpretation of romance novels—which typically perpetuate traditional gender roles vis-à-vis plotlines based on old-fashioned ideas of romance, marriage, and sexuality—showed how readers of such novels reinterpreted the narratives, viewing female characters as empowered and independent. Studies in this vein reject a naïve “injection” model approach to media—that is, one that views media consumption as simply unidirectional. Notwithstanding, even if individuals reflexively revise and reinterpret media narratives, these alternative readings do not challenge dominant social structures and institutions that reproduce gender-biased, heterosexist, and racist media content.

Given the fact that we live in an era that is more image-saturated and technologically mediated than at any other time, media scholars and activists have championed media literacy. As discussed in this volume, media literacy calls for reflexive engagement with media, including the ability to read, understand, evaluate, differentiate, and deconstruct media materials. Media literacy recognizes that media are forms of cultural pedagogy. In this vein, Kalle Lasn, author of Culture Jam (1999) and founder of Adbusters magazine, has advocated “culture jamming” as a means to critique and subvert media narratives and wage “meme warfare.” Culture jamming, as discussed in this book, refers to social critique centered on the relationship between the rise of consumer society and what is commonly referred to as the mass-media spectacle. Culture jammers posit that the media-consumption nexus is slowly corroding the human psyche (we are free to resist, but it never occurs to us to do so) and that the mediated public sphere is not public, as it is not free and, by extension, not democratic. Rather, it is controlled by corporations, owned by a small cadre of individuals who profit from the production of media content that reiterates narratives that are predictably stereotypical and ultimately easily consumable given their simplicity. Culture jamming takes many forms, from tweaking advertisements, to subtly revealing a subtext, to staging anticonsumer demonstrations in Disney stores.

In addition to detailing the politics of media production and consumption, this volume addresses alternative media made by individuals, feminists, and media activists who have not only critiqued media but also created content that is subversive and oppositional. For example, the Riot Grrrls music and zine movement that was born out of a merger between punk and political activism in the early 1990s is an example of the do-it-yourself (DIY) approach to cultural creation. In addition to forming all-girl bands, such as the influential Bikini Kill, the Riot Grrrls spawned a generation of young women who took a personal and proactive approach to independent media production (before the ubiquity and accessibility of the Internet). Since then, zines—handmade, low-budget, self-distributed Xeroxed magazines—have continued to be an accessible alternative to mass-media messages and imagery. In an era of media convergence, both traditional zines and e-zines share a common culture online and off, circulating amid more dominant and hegemonic media forms and representations. As new media technologies continue to influence and structure our everyday lives, it is crucial to be reflexive consumers, users, and creators of media content.

Thanks to the women's liberation movement of the 1960s, in the past half century women and other minority populations have become a more integral part of the labor force and a more visible and vocal presence in public life. Women's participation, not only in media but also within the spheres of politics and education, has invariably influenced how we think about traditional gender roles and has led to shifting understandings of masculinity and femininity. As media owners, makers, and producers continue to become more diverse, including not only women but other ethnic and cultural minorities as well, underrepresented perspectives and experiences will both challenge dominant media representations and empower a new generation to participate actively in the increasingly heterogeneous media landscape.