Commission on the Status of Women 2016 Abstracts
x#UVARAPE: Twitter Reactions to the Rolling Stone’s U.Va. Rape Article • Angela Rulffes, Syracuse University • This study utilizes textual analysis of tweets to examine, through a feminist lens, public discourse surrounding a 2014 Rolling Stone article regarding the alleged rape of Jackie, a U.Va. student. Results indicated that Twitter users blamed feminists and the media for the article’s discrepancies. Initial tweets focused on campus rape issues. Support for Jackie came after people began questioning her story; however, negative tweets regarding Jackie remained pervasive and illustrated a perpetuation of rape myths.
Are Parents Gendering The Problem?: Gender’s Role in Parents’ Discussions about Sex and Sexual Media Content with Their Children • Bailey Thompson, Texas Tech University; Mary Norman, Texas Tech University; Eric Rasmussen, Texas Tech University • Research suggests media acts as a sexual socialization agent for young people, especially when they depend on media for their sexual information. This can be problematic as they form sexual attitudes and behaviors. While parental mediation is suggested as a way to combat sexual media content, in-depth interviews revealed parents may be gendering both concerns about sexual media content and discussions about sex with their children, complicating parental mediation and discussions about sex and media.
Selling to Soldiers: A Cultural Shift from Class Division to Warrior Heroes in Stars and Stripes • Cindy Elmore, East Carolina University • An analysis of Iraq war advertising in the Stars and Stripes newspaper finds a masculine Warrior Hero archetype was constructed. Ads constructed women as the dependent helpmate/mother who waits and worries; the victim who needs rescue, financial support, or a marriage visa from the Warrior Hero; or the embodied reward for the Hero Warrior when he returns from battle. World War I advertising, however, had a rhetorical frame that emphasized socioeconomic class difference.
A Longitudinal Analysis of the Gender Income Gap in Public Relations From 1979 to 2014 • David Dozier, San Diego State University; Katie Place, Quinnipiac University; Jennifer Vardeman-Winter, University of Houston; Hilary Fussell Sisco, Quinnipiac University; Bey-Ling Sha, San Diego State University • This study provides a longitudinal analysis of the pay inequity between men and women in public relations. A thirty-five year compilation of data from surveys of a random sample of public relations professionals, track the progress of income disparity between genders and other influencing factors such as professional experience and manager role enactment. Unfortunately, we found that pay inequity still exists between men and women practitioners because of their gender, after controlling for all the other covariates. Possibly most disheartening is that women are still paid less despite enacting the managerial role.
“Caught up in the Times”: Women in Sports Newsrooms, 1975-1990 • Dunja Antunovic, Bradley University • The change in gender relations resulting from the women’s movement in the United States opened doors for women in sports journalism. This study documents the lives of five women who entered the sports journalism industry in the 1970s and broke gender-based barriers. Drawing upon oral history interviews, this study reveals how women experienced being “firsts” in the newsroom and assesses the contributions of these women to sports journalism and to women’s sports coverage.
Rape, Storytelling and Social Media: How Twitter Interrupted the News Media’s Ability to Construct Collective Memory • Dustin Harp, University of Texas at Arlington; Josh Grimm, Louisiana State University; Jaime Loke, University of Oklahoma • This study, using the Mary Kay LeTourneau interview on ABC’s 20/20 television program, investigates the concept of how social media coupled with citizen’s voices interact with mainstream media in the telling of a story and the construction of collective memory. Grounded in discourse analysis, this research examines the 20/20 story and accompanying Twitter conversations to understand how dominant and feminist ideologies about gender, rape, sexuality and love are presented and countered in these texts. In doing so, this study considers how a newly opened public sphere via social media may have the capabilities to influence our collective memories and remove the long-held power away from traditional mainstream media.
Adolescent perceptions of objectifying magazine ads and feelings of body consciousness • Jason Wheeler, Washington State University; Stacey Hust; Kathleen Rodgers • Purpose: To examine how adolescents perceive objectifying media, and how perceptions are associated with feelings of body consciousness. Method: Experimental survey study using a national sample of 15-17 year olds. Results: The objectified advertisement condition had a positive and significant effect on body consciousness for boys. Adolescent perceptions of the ads differed, and associated differently with body consciousness. Conclusion: Adolescents’ perceptions of women in magazine advertisements may play a role above and beyond mere exposure.
Surviving Silence: The Internalized Communication of Meaning as an Active Strategy for Surviving Acquaintance Rape • Jennifer Huemmer, Texas Tech University; Lindsey Blumell, Copenhagen Business School/Texas Tech University • Public communication and reporting are traditionally considered “active” rape survival strategies. This emphasis has resulted in a body of literature that is informed almost exclusively by the data collected from rape survivors who report or publicly acknowledge their rape. This study analyzed the interview data of five non-reporting rape survivors through the lens of symbolic interaction. Results revealed the internalized negotiations of meaning that occurred as survivors performed silence as an active strategy for survival.
What Can We Change with a Hashtag? A Case Study of #iamafeminist • Jinsook Kim, The University of Texas at Austin • This article explores feminist activism via the hashtag #iamafeminist on Twitter in South Korea. #iamafeminist started to resist against prevailing misogyny and anti-feminist sentiment. Although critics often dismiss the potential of hashtag activism due to its ephemeral nature, I reveal that the hashtag #iamafeminist – what I call the “mother tag” – lasted for three months, by continuing to connect to other hashtags regarding real-time gender issues, and by initiating activism against misogyny both online and offline.
Reconstructing Collective Professional Identity: A Study of Women Journalist Associations in the Post-Second Wave Feminist Movement • Joy Jenkins, University of Missouri; Yong Volz • This study explores the relationship between social movements and professions by focusing on the development of women journalist associations in the post-feminism era. We consider this phenomenon through the prime example of JAWS (Journalism and Women Symposium), including 41 oral history interviews with JAWS members and archival research. The analysis illustrates how members of JAWS defined, contested and negotiated the collective identity of their organization as well as the meaning of women journalists more broadly.
I want to be like her: Celebrity lifestyle brands on Pinterest • Lindsey Conlin, The University of Southern Mississippi; Coral Rae, Columbia University; Richard Anthony Lewis, The University of Southern Mississippi • The current study analyzed celebrity lifestyle brands Pinterest pages in order to determine how they framed their brands to female users. Pinterest features an almost-entirely female user base, and users employ the site to collect items that they aspire to purchase, or aspire to be like. Results indicate that celebrities use their lifestyle brands to promote their celebrity status, give advice on home décor and design, and tell audiences what clothes they should buy and wear. Interestingly, purchasable items were not more likely to be repinned or liked, contradicting the idea that celebrity lifestyle brands are “aspirational” places for women, as female users do not seem to be interested in purchasable items any more than do-it-yourself crafting projects or food.
Burning brides and baby killers: A meta-analysis of journalistic depictions of violence against women in India • Meenakshi Durham, University of Iowa • This paper interrogates news depictions of sexual violence against women in India through a meta-analysis of the scholarship on this topic, tracing the trajectory of news narratives from colonial times through the present day. The analysis demonstrates how structures of gendered power are transcoded discursively to reassert geopolitical hierarchies. The findings highlight the major contributions of this body of research and identify gaps in the literature that represent new avenues of inquiry for feminist scholars.
Spanning the Decades: An Analysis of Monica Lewinsky’s Image Restoration Strategies During a 2015 TED Talks Appearance • Mia Moody, Baylor University; Elizabeth Fassih, Baylor University; Macarena Hernandez, Baylor University • This case study uses a feminist lens to explore Monica Lewinsky’s use of a TED Talks speech to counter narratives of shaming that emerged in the late 80s and remained for several decades. The Lewinsky-Clinton scandal occurred before social media and the term ‘cyber bullying’ existed, but the case has implications today as the same narratives that plagued Lewinsky endured in the 90s are much more prevalent. Findings indicate the speech was well-received, as audience feedback was favorable on Twitter and the TED site that showcased a video of her talk and a transcript. The former intern used the TED Talks platform, not only to delve into the biggest political scandal of recent history, but also to discuss timely topics such as Internet shaming, suicide and bullying. While Lewinsky opted not to use mortification, she reduced the offensiveness of the affair by using humor and building on the narrative that she was young and did not know any better.
Framing Domestic Violence: How Gender Cues and News Frames Impact Attitudes • Natalee Seely, UNC- Chapel Hill • The literature has identified common news narratives and framing devices within coverage of domestic violence incidents. A 2 (story frame) X 2 (source gender) experiment was conducted to determine how a “gendered” news frame and “de-gendered” news frame, as well as the gender of a journalist, may influence individuals’ perceptions of both news credibility and societal blame for domestic violence. Results found that viewing the gendered frame story—which quoted a domestic violence advocate and included statistics on domestic violence incidents—resulted in higher attribution of blame on societal factors for domestic violence, indicating individuals viewed it as more of a social issue rather than a personal or isolated incident. Results also found that viewing the gendered story resulted in lower perceptions of news credibility, indicating that framing a domestic violence story as a more contextualized social issue may cost the news media credibility in the minds of readers. No differences were found between the story written by a male reporter and the story written by a female reporter.
“When I ask a question, they look at me strangely”— An exploratory study of women political reporters in India • Paromita Pain, The University of Texas at Austin; Victoria Y Chen Chen • This study uses qualitative interviews with 60 women journalists from the print, broadcast and online media in India, to understand how women political reporters assigned to the political beat negotiate gender issues and organizational and news routines while being effective journalists entrusted to cover matters of policy and enhance political awareness among audiences. Using Shoemaker and Reese’s (1996) hierarchy-of-influences model that introduces the five levels of influence on news content and feminist readings of Habermas’s theory of the public sphere, this study explores how institutional, news gathering and societal procedures and practices influence the functions of women journalists on the political beat and percolate into the content they produce. The results show that in India’s growing media market, organizational and news routines as well as the contentious issue of gender controls access to beats, especially the political beat, and percolate into news content produced by women political journalists.
Gendered shushing: Girls’ voices and civic engagement in student journalism • Peter Bobkowski, University of Kansas; Genelle Belmas, University of Kansas • Prior research has demonstrated that women and girls are disproportionately silenced compared to men and boys. However, no study has focused on the censorship of high school female journalists. This paper shows not only that female student journalists are willing to address serious topics that can contribute to their civic engagement, but also that they are more often told not to cover sensitive issues and are more likely to self-censor than their male counterparts.
What’s Wrong with Being #Confident? Female Celebrity Identity on Twitter • Roseann Pluretti • Social media, including Twitter, allow celebrities and adolescents to create their own self-representations to a wide audience. This study observed how female celebrities create their identities as women in their Twitter profiles. The researcher conducted a qualitative content analysis of 211 tweets from four female celebrities. Results reveal the female celebrities’ brand and strategic friend identities as well as traditional and nontraditional femininity. These representations may serve as templates for female adolescent gender identity formation.
Teaching girls online skills to tackle STEM gender gaps: Results of the WIKID GRRLS intervention • Stine Eckert; Jade Metzger • This study conducted interviews and surveys with 37 girls participating in an after-school program we implemented 2013-2015 to teach online skills. Girls’ online skills and confidence in them increased due to the program. Using theories of feminist intervention and the reader-to-leader framework, we argue that such interventions bring immediate learning rewards for participants. Yet, we conclude that digital skills need to become regular features in school curricula to narrow gender gaps in STEM, including Wikipedia.
Monica Lewinsky and Shame: 1998 Newspaper Framing of “That Woman” • Tracy Everbach, University of North Texas • This study examines mainstream newspaper coverage of Monica Lewinsky in 1998, the year her relationship with President Bill Clinton came to public light. It looks at how a private citizen became a media phenomenon and takes into account Lewinsky’s 2015 TED Talk, in which she discussed her public shaming. The analysis of 175 articles in The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times showed that Lewinsky was among the first viral Internet sensations. As she noted in her talk 17 years later, the news media exploited and shamed her, speculating about her life to an extent that apparently no other private figure had endured. The research confirmed that newspapers framed Lewinsky in a trivial manner by reducing her to stereotypes, mocking and humiliating her. The newspapers also portrayed feminists as a homogenous group that was hypocritical in its responses. The male-dominated culture of newspapers replicated stereotypical coverage that symbolically annihilated women.
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