Despite the
widespread perception of an abundance of literature and opportunities for
discussion about gender and media, “researching the gender-media dyad is still
an important project for media scholars” (Ross, 2010, p. 3). One reason for the
prominence of the topic is the richness and rapidity of the evolution of media
products, technologies and actors. Indeed, the contemporary media landscape and
its cultural dimension are the result of the accumulation and juxtaposition of
content, media forms, production and consumption practices, and everything in
between (Bolter, 2020). Rigid and stereotyped images of women, men and other
subjectivities coexist with critical content, as the result of practices of
remix, sharing, co-creation and contestation.
The
relationship between gender and media also appears to be of interest due to the
growth of studies about the complexity and variety of subjectivities,
identities, orientations and social and sexual relations in the media universe.
Indeed, in the last two decades, theoretical reflections and empirical analyses
have flourished in the scientific debate, thematizing the gender-media dyad
beyond the conspicuous theme of representations, beyond binary opposing and
heteronormatively visions (Buonanno, Faccioli, 2020; Farris, Compton, Herrera,
2020; Kay, 2020; Scarcelli, Krijnen, Nixon, 2020; Ross, 2020). Moreover,
gender and media studies have recently been enriched by wide-ranging
interdisciplinary analyses that look at the topic from a prismatic,
intersectional perspective, which deepens the encounter between sociology and
feminist media studies (Corradi 2008; Buonanno, 2014; Byerly, 2017). In this
regard, there is an increasing sensitivity to the transformations in the social
discourse of feminism due (also) to its mediatisation and the re-signification
of feminist terms in a neoliberal perspective (Banet-Weiser, 2018; Gill, 2016;
McRobbie, 2020; Rottenberg, 2018).
