Omnipresence Of Gender In The Media

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The existence of gender and the ways that it is practiced are present practically everywhere in our society today. People draw on ideas of what gender is, and what it means to be male or female, from many different places. Doing one’s gender begins even before birth, when parents decide what color to paint their child’s room and what clothes to buy based on whether the child is a boy or a girl. From then on, as that child grows up, there are many different influences teaching them what it means to be a boy or what it means to be a girl. One of the most prominent guides when it comes to performing gender is the media itself, due to its omnipresence in society today, and the media exists in various forms. Two very important components of …show more content…
Although gender ideologies are prominent in the mainstream media, social media is also an outlet for people to both portray and challenge gender stereotypes. With social media and the prevalence of the Internet, men, women, and everyone in between have the ability to portray themselves in a certain way, whether they mean to or not. The popularity of social media puts people on the grid in a way that was essentially impossible just a few years ago. The use of language on social networking sites gives individuals the opportunity to characterize themselves through semantics, genres, and speech activities. Social media users can explicitly state their opinions, as well as inadvertently perpetuate an idea or stereotype about themselves based on what they are saying and how they are using syntax. These various aspects of the media are equally powerful in both teaching and preserving ideas about gender. Gender perceptions and stereotypes are commonly perpetuated through language in the media, with important outlets being both mainstream media and social media. Mainstream media offers a perspective for how genders are portrayed in general and how they are perceived by others, while social media gives people a chance to paint their own pictures of themselves and represent their …show more content…
While many people may see these kinds of sources as objective, they often are skewed towards a certain viewpoint. Although many news stories and coverage of events are based on indisputable, factual information, how they are presented to the public can display a bias in some cases. The kinds of language in the media are used to maintain gender stereotypes, whether it is intentional or unintentional. Subtle gender differences are displayed in Jones and Greer’s article, “Go ‘Heavy’ or Go Home: An Examination of Audience Attitudes and Their Relationship to Gender Cues in the 2010 Olympic Snowboarding Coverage” (2012). This study examined both how sports announcers described male and female snowboarders in the Olympics, and how spectators reacted to the athletes. It was found that female snowboarders had more comments made on their appearance and gracefulness, while male snowboarders had more comments made on their skill and aggressiveness, with almost no commentary on how they looked. “Female snowboarders received significantly more comments about their aesthetic ability, whereas male boarders received significantly more comments about their athletic performance, following gender stereotypes” (Jones and Greer 614). Additionally, viewers who watched more female

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