Year: 1994
Type: article
Abstract: The thesis evaluates feminist media critiques in terms of their capacity for promoting sufficient systemic change to correct the patriarchal optic of hegemonic media institutions.It analyses how media interpret and frame feminisms and it probes the evolution of a feminist critique committed to producing a paradigm shift in news -.-" production.Media critique traditions are reviewed primarily within the context of feminist interventions with the Canadian state.The development of these critiques is explored by extracting contributions from three theoretical frameworks.The thesis examines, in a first instance, feminist theory and its various conceptualizations of gender which have influenced political strategies.Secondly, features of the Gramscian hegemony theory are considered, particularly as they acknowledge the agency of social movements in the negotiation of both hegemony and oppositional practices, as well as the role of news media in the process of ideological hegemony.Finally, feminist contributions to communication theory are reviewed.Subsequent to the identification of the theoretical constitution of a feminist media critique, the thesis correlates the evolution of this critique with analogous cycles in feminist epistemologies.It proposes that the direction of feminist analysis and advocacy related to the 'women and the media' question corresponds to initial stages in the feminist critique of traditional epistemology and could therefore be informed by the trajectory of this arguably more mature critique.The thesis identifies within a feminist media critique, the tension between traditional empiricist values of dualisms and of objectivity and more critical analyses located in the social construction of knowledge.It points to the value of current liberal feminist interventions but sees their influence as confined within a transitional stage of deconstruction of sexist practices in media industries.It suggests that liberal feminism must experience fully its inherent contradictions before it can assist the feminist project of paradigm replacement.The thesis argues that to achieve a paradigm shift in the news discourse, feminist interventions should proceed to the second stage of reconstruction, and mobilize for the infusion in media industries of a critical mass of female journalists articulating feminist politics.
Source: Summit (Simon Fraser University)
Author: Suzanne Monique Strutt
Language: French
Topic: Gender, Feminism, and Media
Subfield: Gender Studies
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
SDG: Gender equality
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W861049339