Gendered Media Ideologies

Gershon argues, “Content isn’t everything, media ideologies matter.” She talks about generational difference: older people (those who have handwritten letters) view email as less-than-formal, in opposition to the youth she interviewed. So how do media ideologies similarly map on to gender?

The most obvious and interesting factor in how and why media ideologies matter is in how they map on to gender – and yet, she doesn’t talk about this at all. I define “gender” as “the social organization of practices and expectation that are associated with bodies and what bodies do.” The way we communicate within and between genders is significant. In fact, there is a fifty-year-old conversation about language and gender that says so and to which Gershon has a contribution to make. (But she doesn’t do so here.)

In this chapter, she sees interesting gendered behaviors, like when people report receiving their break-ups “out of the blue” from their partners. (Yeah, right.) Break up style, with or without mediation, is gendered, therefore it must be that media ideologies are also gendered. Rose, the research participant, explained that a “woman never really knows whether the nodding man was actually listening,” but adds that text messaging provides certainty where there otherwise is none. This is also gendered, and yet she is silent on the topic.

I want to challenge us - because I know that we will end up talking about our personal experiences and social media habits - to think about our own media ideologies through a gendered lens. How do our beliefs about media and what is or is not an appropriate use of social media reflect the way that we perform or are expected to perform our genders?