Description
Book SynopsisFor decades, scholars have repeatedly found the inequity of gender representations in informational and entertainment media. Beginning with the seminal work by Gaye Tuchman and colleagues, we have repeatedly seen a systemic underrepresentation and misrepresentation of women in media. Examining the latest research in discourse and content analyses trending in both domestic and international circles, Media Disparity: A Gender Battleground highlights the progressor lack thereofin media regarding portrayals of women, across genres and cultures within the twenty-first century. Blending both original studies and descriptive overviews of current media platforms, top scholars evaluate the portrayals of women in contemporary venues, including advertisements, videogames, political stories, health communication, and reality television.
Trade ReviewArmstrong has assembled an impressive collection of original research studies, theoretical essays, and literature reviews that, taken together, investigate not only stereotypical, harmful, and progressive representations of women and men but also contexts of media production, representation, and usage still in need of improvement. Contributors use an array of methods, including qualitative and quantitative content analysis, rhetorical and discourse analysis, and interviews. They investigate numerous topics, including gender portrayals and sexual scripts in music and advertising; news coverage of women's health; representations of female and male politicians and athletes; coverage of sex trafficking; and the gender gaps of Wikipedia, reality TV, and virtual environments . . . [T]he collection will be an important resource for anyone interested in media criticism, history, and production. Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty and professionals. * CHOICE *
Media Disparity: A Gender Battleground, edited by Cory L. Armstrong and published by Lexington Books, with a roster of well-known media scholars contributing chapters on women in news (special attention is given to political coverage of female candidates), sports, health communication, advertising, music, television entertainment, and cyberspace. A special treat is the preface by Gaye Tuchman, reflecting on the changes that have occurred since the 1978 publication of Hearth and Home: Images of Women in the Mass Media, which Tuchman coauthored with Arlene Daniels and James Benet. . . . The scholarship that Armstrong has gathered from her contributors documents continuing distortion in media representations of women, underscoring the need for continued media monitoring and activism around the results. * Media Report To Women *
We are well overdue for an overview of gender and gendering in traditional and digital media. The chapters provide exceptional detail on employment, sourcing, coverage and representation in myriad media globally. This book needs to be a requirement in today's introductory mass communication classes. -- Pamela J. Creedon, University of Iowa
Media Disparity, the latest bookshelf essential on women and representation, is going right next to my 1978 copy of Hearth & Home. In Media Disparity, editor Cory Armstrong doesn’t just revisit symbolic annihilation 35 years later. She enlists Gaye Tuchman along with some of the smartest feminists in mass communication to contribute. Both primer and update, Media Disparity demonstrates creative ways to look at a persistent problem across platforms and around the world. -- Kim Golombisky, University of South Florida
Table of ContentsPreface Gaye Tuchman Part One Introduction Cory L. Armstrong Chapter 1: Women’s (mis)representation in News Media Tracy Everbach Chapter 2: Gendered Sexual Scripts in Music Lyrics and Videos Popular among Adolescents Stacey J.T. Hust, Kathleen Boyce Rodgers, and Weina Ran Chapter 3: Women in health news and communication Julie L. Andsager Chapter 4: Newspaper Coverage of Women Running for the U.S. Senate in 2012: Evidence of an Increasingly Level Playing Field? Dianne Bystrom and Valerie Hennings Chapter 5: From annihilation to ambivalence: Women in sports coverage Dunja Antunovic and Marie Hardin Part Two Chapter 6: Wikipedia’s Gender Gap Stine Eckert and Linda Steiner Chapter 7: The Good, the Bad and the Beautiful: How Gender is Represented on Reality Television Adriane Grumbein and J. Robyn Goodman Chapter 8: Adverting the Gaze: Advertisers’ Construction of Female Masculinity through the Athleticism of Olympians Abby Wambaugh, Lindsey Vonn, and Marlen Esparza Kim Bissell and Sim Butler Chapter 9: Gendered Performance in Virtual Environments Donna Z. Davis Part Three Chapter 10: Bic for Her and Crisps for Him: Contemporary Gendered Targeting and Representation in Advertising around the World Alexandra M. Vilela, Michelle R. Nelson, and Hye-Jin Paek Chapter 11: Women Making News (or Not) in Uganda Steve J. Collins and Timothy Brown Chapter 12: Blame Narratives: News Discourses of Sex Trafficking Barbara Friedman and Anne Johnston Chapter 13: Gender Differences in Covering Public Health Crises in China Fangfang Gao Part Four Chapter 14: Media and Public Discourse: The Limits of Feminist Influence Carolyn M. Byerly Conclusion: The next frontier in gender representation Cory L. Armstrong Bibliography
