Living in Freedom and Hope: Editors' Introduction

Have radical discourses about children's sexual liberation/empowerment become normative technologies of neoliberal governmentality? How do we see sexualised representations of girls and what does the sexualised child look like? A contemporary consensus between media narratives and radical cultural critiques about the dangerous intolerance of child sexual abuse (CSA) moral panics suggests that the CSA moral panic discourse is caught up in the neoliberal “regulation of intolerance” (Brown 2006) through the governance of the gaze. Focusing on the 2008 Australian media event that erupted over Bill Henson's “art” photographs of naked girls, this article analyses how a perception that the images sexualised children was governed by experts as a reactionary and perverse CSA moral panic gaze. I argue that this form of governance depends on the exclusion of the political gaze of the survivor, a gaze that has been vital to a feminist critique of hetero-normative paedophilia. Re-claiming an affective feminist gaze involves thinking beyond the upwardly mobile discourse of CSA moral panic and through the occluded question of the sexual politics of paedophilia.     

Visibility patterns of gendered ageism in the media buzz: a study of the representation of gender and age over three decades

Abstract

The mainstream media provides a constant flow of visual images of men and women, whether it is via newscasts, billboards, magazines, or television. In media research, these different media types are usually investigated separately. The aim of this study is to analyse the accumulated gender representation of all images that we passively or actively take part in, here defined as “the media buzz.” To capture the representation of gender and age in the media buzz, this study focuses on images from one day in the most circulated media within Sweden: news, feature stories, fiction, and advertising. The empirical data is drawn from three different decades—1994, 2004, and 2014. Overall, the study indicates there to be a general male/female balance in terms of numbers. However, when turning older, both men and women become almost invisible, even though older men are more visible than older women. Older persons rarely reach the news and they are more likely to be found in advertising and feature material. The work presented here suggests that the structures of visibility and the clusters of gender-age representation in the media foster stereotyping. The media buzz not only contributes to ageism, but is also still distinctly gendered.     

Historicizing affect, psychoanalyzing history: pedophilia and the discourse of child sexuality

Within the last two decades in Australia, Britain, and the United States, we have seen a veritable explosion of cultural panic regarding the problem of pedophilia. Scarcely a day passes without some mention in the media of predatory pedophiles or organized pedophile networks. Many social constructionist historians and sociologists have described this incitement to discourse as indicative of a moral panic. The question that concerns me in this article is: If this incitement to discourse is indicative of a moral panic, to what does the panic refer? I begin by detailing, first, how social constructionism requires psychoanalytic categories in order to understand the notion of panic, and second, how a psychoanalytic reading of history might reveal important unconscious forces at work in the current pedophilia "crisis" that our culture refuses to confront. Here, I will suggest a repressed discourse of child sexuality is writ large. I will argue that the hegemonic discourse of pedophilia is contained largely within a neurotic structure and that many of our prevailing responses to pedophilia function as a way to avoid tackling crucial issues about the reality and trauma of childhood sexuality.     

Too sexy too soon,or just another moral panic? Sexualization,children, and “technopanics” in the Australian media 2004–2015

In this paper, I analyze the discourse of what I argue are two moral panics that played out in the Australian media during the period 2004–2015: the sexualization of children debate, and the sexting panic, which appeared some years later. I argue that while the issue of the alleged sexualization of children is nothing new, the way that the issue has been constructed in the media has shifted during the last decade, with greater focus on children’s use of technology. By comparing these two panics, we can diagnose a shift in the nature of mass-media-based panics, from concerns about external sources of sexualization to concerns about children’s own practices of self-representation via contemporary technologies. Both panics mobilized a range of broader social anxieties about the commodification and sexualization of culture and the increasing agency of children, and panics in relation to contemporary mobile technologies are a collective response to shifts in the power relations between children, their parents, and other figures of authority.     

“Your a Ugly,Whorish, Slut”

In recent years, the mainstream media has identified on-line vitriol as a worsening problem which is silencing women in public discourse, and is having a deleterious effect on the civility of the public cybersphere. This article examines the disconnect between representations of “e-bile” in media texts, and representations of e-bile in academic literature. An exhaustive review of thirty years of academic work on “flaming” shows that many theorists have routinely trivialized the experiences of flame targets, while downplaying, defending, and/or celebrating the discourse circulated by flame producers. Much contemporary scholarship, meanwhile, ignores e-bile completely. My argument is that this constitutes a form of chauvinism (in that it disregards women's experiences in on-line environments) and represents a failure of both theoretical acuity and nerve (given that it evades such a pervasive aspect of contemporary culture). The aim of this paper is not only to help establish the importance of on-line vitriol as a topic for interdisciplinary scholarly research, but to assist in establishing a theoretical problematic where what is seen is barely regarded as a problem. Overall, my argument is that—far from being a technology-related moral panic—e-bile constitutes a field of inquiry with a pressing need for recalibrated scholarly intervention.     

Lingerie,Bikinis and the Headscarf

By tracing the repetitive visual themes and motifs contained in depictions of Muslim female migrants, this study aims to shed light on the various ways the German print media have tackled the issue of migration and represented cultural difference. An analysis of such images suggests that there are three major categories through which female migrants in Germany are visualized: (1) images that focus on alienation and lack of interaction with Muslims; (2) images that focus on contrasting life styles in shared spaces; and (3) images that construct the traditional and the modern via the female body. In most instances these images are not used to provide information about the circumstances of Muslim female migrants in Germany, but rather to make a statement about Muslim migrants in general and underline their lack of integration into the host society. Different visual conventions are recurrently used in each of these categories, creating patterns in the representation of migration. This study explores the visual conventions recurrent in each category and the ways they stereotype Muslim female migrants in Germany.     

“The devil destroyed us”: Satanism and gender violence in South Africa

In October 2011, a young South African woman named Kirsty Theologo was set on fire and left for dead by a group of her high school contemporaries in Linmeyer, Johannesburg. The killing was defined as a “Satanist murder,” leading to media, judicial, and religious interventions aimed at countering the apparent Satanic threat. This article examines press material surrounding Kirsty Theologo’s death and the subsequent arrest and trial of her killers. It argues that the ongoing moral panic around Satanism in contemporary South Africa has obscured the often gendered nature of so-called satanic violence, showing the way in which the murder was instead placed within a familiar framework of Satanic panic in an act of collective displacement that elided the structural and historical contexts of acts of extreme violence perpetrated by young South African men on the bodies of young South African women.     

#Slane Girl,beauty pageants and padded bras: flashpoints in the sexualisation of children debate in Irish media and political discourse

Public and academic concern about the sexualisation of children first emerged in the early 1980s in the US, and has been traced back to the early 1990s in the UK. By contrast, public concern about child sexualisation is relatively new in Irish public discourse. In 2013 in particular, a number of “flashpoint” events occurred in Ireland, prompting both political and media reactions, which set the dominant tone of Irish discourse on this issue. This article examines how the sexualisation of children has come to be specifically framed in Irish media coverage and political debate. It derives from the first ever government funded study on the sexualisation and commercialisation of children in Ireland, which was also conducted by the authors of this article. The section of the study that is addressed here involved a broad qualitative analysis of print media coverage of child sexualisation in the period 2011–2013 and Parliamentary discussions from the first mention of child sexualisation (1998) to the time of analysis (2013). This article thus revisits data collected for the report, and subjects it to further analysis We conclude that the current status of Irish public debate on this issue lacks clarity and complexity, and indicates an urgent need to respond to Duschinsky and Barker’s call for a more sophisticated and nuanced discussion that eschews moral panic responses in favour of listening to the opinions and experiences of young people.     

#BlackDontCrack: a content analysis of the aging Black woman in social media

Abstract

This paper examines how positive social media representations of aging Black female bodies problematize existing notions of aging as an almost uniformly negative phenomenon. Using the social media platform Tumblr, this study reveals that the framing of age, race, and gender is both complex and nuanced. Images which challenge deeply set historical notions of female beauty include those of celebrities, noncelebrities and comparisons between aging Black women and historically standardized representations of physical attractiveness. Findings illustrate that managing impressions vis-à-vis social media is a complex, sometimes messy performance in which images both challenge and substantiate problematic assumptions. Some images that framed Black women positively but did so at the expense of other women. This paper adds to the body of work that explores how social media is used as a vehicle for counter narrative messaging. These findings offer additional insight into how impression management theory is used to analyze social media content.     

Good Gay Buddies for Lifetime: Homosexually Themed Discourse and the Construction of Heteromasculinity Among Chinese Urban Youth

Starting as an Internet meme, the homosexually themed gao-ji discourse recently became popular among Chinese urban youth in describing intimate relationships among heterosexual men. Positioned within a body of scholarship on the interplay between language, homophobia, and the construction of heteromasculinity, this article suggests that the gao-ji discourse manifests a form of male homosociality, through which new boundaries of Chinese heteromasculinity may be renegotiated. Based on qualitative interviews with college students, the article first tracks the genealogy of the gao-ji discourse in the wake of China’s booming Internet culture. The main body focuses on unpacking the daily use of the gao-ji discourse, with an attention to the two latent functions it serves (i.e., expanding heteromasculine behaviors and reiterating heteromasculine identities). In conclusion, I argue that the prevalence of the gao-ji discourse mainly resolves straight men’s anxieties against the background of growing public awareness of homosexuality; therefore, it cannot necessarily translate into social acceptance of homosexuality.     

Culture,Cohort, and Cosmetic Surgery

ABSTRACT

This paper theorizes a parallel between idealized images of women in the media and the mainstreaming of cosmetic surgery as commonplace in our culture. The paper tracks images of women in film, television, and advertising from 1940 to the present and uses them as guides to understanding and interpreting appraisals contemporary women make of their bodies. Data are presented from 24 women, ages 29 to 75, who participated in a pilot study examining social, psychological, and developmental factors that precipitated cosmetic surgery. Women's self-evaluations were consistent with media depictions of women during subjects' adolescent and early-adult years. Age, or more specifically, cohort membership, determined assessments of body-image. The fact that body-satisfaction decreased proportionately with age in the women sampled is credited to the progressive license taken by the media in depicting female nudity, graphic sex, and violence against women.     

The Postfeminist User

This paper is part of a preliminary investigation toward a postfeminist analysis of “the user.” It critically examines the pervasive liberatory rhetoric of interactivity through situating it within a widespread cultural context also rife with liberatory rhetoric: postfeminism. Two media properties, heavily marketed for interactivity, are examined: the first three films of the Final Destination film series and the reality television program Big Brother (US). I situate each as postfeminist texts, and then analyze their interactivity through this lens, demonstrating the utility of applying postfeminism to technology study. Following the feminist method of analyzing popular texts as modes of understanding feminine ideals, thereby articulating contours of a feminine subject position, I argue that analyses of postfeminist culture are productive broadly applied to cultural products, such as interactive media, augmenting feminist media theory. To understand ideals of technological usership, one must understand the culture in which they are embedded. Therefore, articulating the contours of the user as a subject position benefits from understanding postfeminist cultural sensibilities. Through this analysis, I describe the user, contrary to much new media theorizing, as exhibiting an illusory rhetoric of agency, hyperembodiment suffused with temporality and mobility, and an interactivity better understood as ongoing assessment and adjustment.     

Neoliberalism,Soul Food,and the Weight of Black Women

This article examines the representation of Black women's weight in contemporary diet advertising and African American film. It positions socioeconomic class as a significant factor that distinguishes between “good” weight and “bad” weight. I argue that there is a distinction to be made between representations of poor and working-class fat Black women and middle-class fat Black women. The increased presence of Black women as diet spokeswomen is also questioned. The social construction and filmic representation of the African American cuisine “Soul Food” and the political economic notion of neoliberalism are used as frameworks to deconstruct how notions of self-discipline, personal responsibility, and citizenship impact upon Black women's bodies. As a case study, I examine the careers of Oprah Winfrey and Gabourey Sidibe and the ways in which their weight has been differently coded based on class, the neoliberal rhetoric of “personal responsibility,” and food. I ultimately critique how contemporary media has helped to shape contemporary discourses on Black women's weight.     

Homophobic and sexist yet uncontested: examining football fan postings on Internet message boards

Although a homophobic and sexist archetype of heterosexual masculinity has been thought to permeate competitive teamsport, matters have been rapidly changing. This is evident in research on openly gay athletes, attitudes among heterosexual athletes, and recent studies on decreasing homophobia among sport media content. In this research, however, we examine how some men still adhere to a homophobic and sexist masculine deposition when discussing sport on the Internet. A textual analysis was used to analyze hegemonic masculinity from a popular American football message board. Although posts related to hegemonic masculinity did not permeate the data, we found that this traditional form of masculinity was upheld through misogyny, homophobia, and the objectification of women. Thus, whereas mainstream sport media is increasingly policed for homophobia and sexism, this research shows that the anonymity of the Internet permits hegemonic masculinity to flourish in specific locations, without contestation.     

Mediating Healthy Female Citizenship in the HPV Vaccination Campaigns

Analyzing the HPV awareness and Gardasil® vaccine campaigns for the United States (US), we argue that the campaigns reflect “the new public health” model that positions individuals as neoliberal citizens responsible for managing their health and maximizing public health opportunities. The campaigns, directed primarily at girls and young women and their mothers, also mobilized neoliberal discourses of risk, choice, and self-management alongside postfeminist political rhetoric that values empowerment, freedom, choice, and rights. Postfeminist tropes were co-opted by Merck's marketing imperatives in order to produce girls and young women as an agentic, niche market of health consumers. We then foreground a low-budget counter-narrative alternative media campaign produced by young women and disseminated through YouTube. This campaign demonstrates the role of new media in producing alternative perspectives on agentic female citizenship and disrupts Merck's campaign imperatives.     

The Seduction of the Surface: From Alice to Crash

Drawing on a qualitative analysis of Swedish newspaper debates in 1979 and 1995, this article examines how Swedish newspapers refer to biological sex difference as central to drinking practices. The study shows that women are a special category of concern in debate about gender and drinking in both 1979 and 1995. Further, it shows that Swedish newspapers draw upon biology in different ways in the two years. In 1979, debate about drinking during pregnancy and Fetal Alcohol Syndrome (FAS) is central and newspapers link biomedical research on FAS to the moral idea that mothers do anything to avoid harm to children. In 1995, debate about girls' drinking habits is central and newspapers link sex hormones and neurotransmitters to the moral idea that girls shouldn't “drink like men.” These differences are discussed in the context of Swedish media interest in evolutionary psychology and biomedical solutions to alcohol problems during the 1990s.     

Medicalization and Teen Girls' Bodies in the Gardasil Cervical Cancer Vaccine Campaign

To explore the impacts of health advertising campaigns on media consumers' perceptions of their health and bodies, I applied the concept of medicalization to a current health media campaign about a cervical cancer vaccine, Gardasil. Literature about medicalization, women's reception of body images, and girl-centered communication studies framed the study. Thirty-nine teens from various backgrounds, aged between fourteen and seventeen years old, were interviewed in six states. Individual and dyad interviews and focus groups helped obtain thick, rich details. A grounded theory approach allowed previously unexplored themes to emerge. Findings suggest that girls believe that media messages about their sexual health—such as the Gardasil TV commercial—instruct them as to health topics they should be concerned about, the social rules that girls should follow—particularly in how, when, and with whom they can discuss sexual health—and how the practice of sex intersects with morality in personal and peer identity formation. Among other implications, this study suggests how campaign designers can re-situate health communication with teen girls. The study also suggests the importance of seeing medicalization effects within an intersectional framework of race, class, and parenthood status.     

Women's Experiences of Work in the Iranian Broadcast Media (IRIB): Motivations,challenges, and achievements

This paper examines Muslim women's work experiences in the Iranian broadcast media (IRIB) through a study of their motivations, challenges, and achievements. These women have resisted family and social constraints that prevent them from working in broadcast media; (re)constructed a new identity for themselves as Muslim women active in modern media; reformed some restrictions and pushed back conservative norms and regulations in the organization; and improved the representation of women in the broadcast media. Before the 1979 revolution, many religious communities and families were deeply skeptical about film and broadcast industries. It was deemed that such media were instruments of decadence and “Westernization.” For many practicing Muslim women, working in the broadcast media at that time was not an option. Since the 1979 revolution, and the assumption that the media has become “Islamic,” many religious women have begun working in broadcast media. Using data from thirty semi-structured interviews with these women, it can be seen that Iranian Muslim women have negotiated a better space in IRIB, although they are still far from equal with men. These women have constructed new, complex identities that go beyond simplistic dichotomies such as traditional/modern, submissive/liberated, and religious/secular.     

“Whatsapping” the continuity of postpartum care in Switzerland: A socio-anthropological study

BackgroundDigital media such as Apps, Internet and social networks have become integral parts of the maternity experience for more than a decade. These media can support or undermine women’s experiences as has been shown in digital sociology research. Using Immediate Messaging Applications to provide information and support to women during the perinatal period is an emerging practice.AimThis article analyses how health and social care professionals – with a focus on community midwives – and women communicate between postpartum home visits through Immediate Message Applications in Switzerland.MethodsA socio-anthropological study that relied on qualitative methods including semi-directed interviews with midwives and health and social care professionals (n = 30) and immigrant women (n = 20).FindingsSince the introduction of Immediate Messaging Applications, women and their carer converse more regularly between post-partum home visits. Women send questions, pictures and videos to them, often allowing swift responses to their concerns. Midwives encounter difficulties answering women’s questions when they cannot be solved through quick communication (e.g. infant crying). To them, texting frequency forms a clinical clue to women’s mental health. Not all women contact their carer through digital messages; immigrant women are less likely to know and use this service.Discussion and conclusionImmediate Messaging Applications form a promising communication tool, complementary to home visits, and contribute to woman-centered care and continuity of care. As an emergent practice, it has not been framed by a guideline yet. Policy makers and practitioners should ensure that its use does not contribute to unequal access to care.     

Scene of the Crime

The brutal gang rape and murder of a young woman on a New Delhi bus became a media spectacle, flooding the news stream worldwide with articles, commentaries, blogs, and images. Drawing on theoretical insights from transnational feminism and social geography, this analysis focuses on the mediated deployment of space and place as potent signifiers of gender and sexuality in news coverage of the event. Using feminist critical discourse analysis to interrogate the verbal and visual texts in mainstream US news media during the first two weeks of coverage, this analysis found that the American news media invoked archetypes of the Third World as a primitive and undisciplined place populated by savage males and subordinate women, a space in which women's mobility is constrained and where state authority is complicit in rendering women vulnerable to sexual assault due to its incompetence. The study found that through this limited and ethnocentric lens, the US news media reinscribed social geographies of power in terms of sex and gender. The overall tenor of the coverage obscured the incidence of sexual violence in the First World/global North, effectively countermanding transnational feminist praxis and collective action against the worldwide problem of sexual violence against women.