Jacobson, Maria. Young People and Gendered Media Messages.
Raphael, Chad
Jacobson, Maria. Young People and Gendered Media Messages.
Goteborg: NORDICOM, 2005. Pp. 66. ISBN 91-89471-29-6 (pb.) 12 [euro].
Attempting to give a picture of "what is going on in the field
of gender and media in a broad sense" (p. 5) around the world, as
this research report does, is an ambitious undertaking. Author Maria
Jacobson, a freelance journalist and chairperson of a nonprofit
organization that monitors the media, covers a good deal of ground in a
few pages. Yet this report is limited by its brevity and lack of a
unifying central argument, theoretical framework, or organizing
principle.
The report contains six main chapters. The first chapter, on
sexuality and consumer culture, begins by drawing the clear and familiar
connection between how commercial media portray commodities and
sexualized youth similarly as objects of desire and images for
consumption. This part also touches on how the media industries segment
audiences by gender as a marketing strategy for delivering desired
audiences to advertisers. Chapter 2 examines visibility in news and
children's entertainment, reporting findings from several
international studies of news, children's television, Japanese
manga, and computer games, all indicating that children are dramatically
under-represented compared to adults, and females compared to males.
The next two chapters examine the construction of gender roles in
media messages. Chapter 3 focuses on images of femininity, including
stereotypes of women as passive, powerless, domestic, and sexualized.
Jacobson also discusses studies that consider how "the young female
body is, in many cases and countries, an arena for a symbolic battle
between Westernization, modernity and traditional values" (p. 19).
She goes on to report on several studies of how global media set beauty
standards. Chapter 4 examines representations of masculinity, how they
emphasize power and mastery, but also how media increasingly promote
obsession with males' appearance.
The last two chapters depart from media messages to consider the
research on gendered uses and effects of media, and how youth negotiate
gender roles with media. The chapter on uses discusses a handful of
studies that point to gender (as well as race) as an influence on media
preferences. It also reports the results of another recent literature
review of the effects on girls and boys of gender role portrayals on
television, impacts of media on body satisfaction and eating disorders,
and whether media representations of sexuality shape youth attitudes and
behaviors. A final chapter notes that youth also use media to play with
and negotiate gender roles in complex ways that can be both empowering
and disempowering, offering a nod to cultural studies of media and
gender. Jacobson also appends to the report two documents aimed at
journalists and media monitors: the International Federation of
Journalists' guidelines for reporting on children's issues and
UNESCO's guide to gender-sensitive reporting.
Young People and Gendered Media Messages is valuable as a source of
citations to international studies, especially those outside the
Anglo-American literature. The report could benefit scholars and
students who are conducting literature searches on recent work on gender
and media content, uses, and effects.
The report is less well-suited to serve as an introduction to the
field of gender and media. It would benefit from a more clearly stated
argument or theoretical framework for organizing the field. At the
outset, Jacobson writes that gendered media messages are characterized
by two main themes: "consumerism and sexuality often turned into
sexism and sexualization or hyper-sexuality" (p. 11). Yet much of
the report departs from these themes without explanation, so that it is
not clear exactly what guides the inclusion of some areas of the field
and studies rather than others. In addition, competing theoretical
approaches, such as media effects and cultural studies of active
reception, are presented side-by-side without much explanation or
inferred to be compatible with one another. Amore useful introductory
text would explain and highlight (rather than obscure) the different
assumptions of major research traditions and help students to recognize
them.
This report contains notes and references but no index.
--Chad Raphael
Santa Clara University
