Abstract

Over the past decades have witnessed a strong development of feminist media studies which became an important influence in the fields of communication and culture studies. In this workshop, we will seek to map this scientific area which, amongst us, is still taking its first steps.

Feminist media studies closely follow the feminist movements in their variations and richness, addressing the important issues that women experience in their interaction with the media and that simultaneously help us make sense of the media that surround us.

The media representations of men and women are one of the most important issues of concern in this area of ​​study, given the multiple invisible assumptions that, through them, are developed in the form of common sense. Other problems include a focus on how audiences actively engage in media around landscape and how gender crosses over the norms and values ​​that inform the practices and conventions of the media production industry. And if these are concerns that traverse the field since its beginning, today, the cultural shift towards a "post-feminism" putative strongly linked to neoliberalism, poses new issues and challenges to think about the media, their cultural productions and uses that we make of them.

In a broad and comprehensive overview of this field of study, we will try to present a conceptual overview of feminist research approaches to contemporary media. In this path, we will focus important theoretical and methodological issues that shape the way we conceive the position of women compared to mediated and cultural spaces in all areas of production and consumption of multiple communication technologies in their practices and values​​.

Bio note

Maria João Silveirinha  holds a Phd. in Communication Sciences, at the  Universidade Nova de Lisboa  and is associate professor at the Faculty of Arts and Humanities of the University of  Coimbra, where she teaches subjects related to communication, media and journalism research and gender studies. Her research interests focus on the issue of relations between identities and communication as a medium of social interactions. It is in this sense that she has particularly investigated the themes of  communicative rights of women. She has authored several books and scientific articles in this field and has led and participated in projects of national and international research on the topic. She is a consultant and referee of several national and international publications on communication.

Articles up for discussion

Sarikakis, K. (2011), ‘Arriving at a crossroads: Political priorities for a socially relevant feminist media scholarship’, Feminist Media Studies, 11(1): 115-122

Van Zoonen, L. (1994), Feminist Media Studies, Londres; Sage, cap. 1 e cap. 2

Gill, R (2007), Gender and the Media. Cambridge: Polity. Cap. 1 e 2

Gill, R. (2007), 'Postfeminist media culture: Elements of a sensibility'. European Journal of Cultural Studies, vol. 10(2): 147-166

Dow, B. J. e Celeste M. Condit (2005), ‘The state of the art in feminist scholarship’, Journal of Communication 55(3): 448–478

[Those who wish to participate and previously read the article up for discussion should send an email to gw@ces.uc.pt]