We'll Get the Data, You Do the Explaining

Gill and van Zoonen both to a really good job at explaining how content analysis is used as an objective tool for looking at media. Gill specifically, says that content analysis is often used as a way to make an argument about various media representations more persuasive, in some cases give reason to start having a conversation about media representation. I liked this approach a lot because I think content analysis is very helpfully in being able to see all the ways media represents gender, or race, or class in an easy to digest format. Take for example the data on page 71 in van Zoonen. Even without background as to what this data was looking to find, its very obvious that the two columns labeled women and men are displaying very different representations. Firstly, the men’s column is much longer than the women’s column, offering more choices in profession with more even numbers of how many media men do those tasks. The women on the other hand have far less professions and have a very clear front-runner with more than half the percentage in one occupation. Even with very little context by reading this information you can immediately start a conversation about why this data is the way it is. You might also be able to say, with almost certainty, that there is something problematic about what this data reflects. This content analysis doesn’t explore why the data is the way that it is, or how media executed these various representations; it just presents the data in an objective manner and requires someone else to figure out the significance of it.

The follies of content analysis

This weeks readings were about the basics of content analysis, and I think the readings did a good job of talking about the promises and pitfalls of this research method. However, I would like to expand on the problem of a lack of deeper meaning/the use of stereotypes.

            As Gill and Van Zoonen point out, content analysis depends on the researchers ability to classify media images according to stereotypes. I think this is problematic for three reasons. First, by using cultural stereotypes, such as the dumb blonde, to categorize media representations,the research does little to upset the stereotype. Additionally, because much of this analysis uses the theory that the media is--or should be--a reflection of society, the use of these stereotypes in research seems, at least to me, to be perpetuating the stereotypes.

            My second major issue with content analysis is that in using stereotypes, content analysis ignores the multiple meanings each media image could have in different contexts and focuses just on the simple, dominant meaning. This is similar to the example used in class of how a cartoon by The Onion is considerably less offensive when one knows it was created by a satirical newspaper. Using content analysis, one could conclude that some ironic media representations are “bad” when, in fact, due to their irony, they have may have been “good.”

            Finally, while I understand the desire to obtain hard, quantitative data, I believe that content analysis is not generally useful (in the sense that it gives us a deeper understanding of the text being analyzed) due to its tendency to see images as having only one meaning. If post-modernism has taught us anything, I think it is that meaning is not singular and fixed but multiple and fluid, and the fact that content analysis ignores this makes me doubt its validity and utility as a research method.

Van Zoonen, Women in the media, Gender

After completing Friday’s (1/27) readings, two main ideas stuck with me: the topic of gender as a binary concept and van Zoonen’s discussion of distortion of women by the media. We live in a society that labels and categorizes constantly and often in a binary manner – man vs. woman, masculine vs. feminine, democrat vs. republican, etc. I am currently taking Intro to Queer Studies and we just had a class discussion about the tendency to view gender in a binary manner. Just as van Zoonen talked about how (although it may be difficult to imagine) it is possible to conceive of a situation in which gender and discussion of binary gender categories is “relatively unimportant” (van Zoonen pp. 33). Such a place does exist! Egalia Preschool in Sweden is a gender neutral preschool. Girls are not expected to be girly and pretty and boys are not expected to be manly and rough. Here, children are allowed to be whoever they are, play with whatever type of toys they choose, and remain unrestrained by gender stereotypes.

An interesting point made by van Zoonen and one that we have touched upon in class was that many things about the portrayal of women and their lives are not reflected accurately in the media.Van Zoonen gives the examples that many more women work than are typically portrayed in the media, many real-life women are not the femme fatales that are presented, and many women have other wants than hearth and home. Van Zoonen also talked about distortion which refers to the idea that women are underrepresented in the media when compared to the 50% of the population which they actually make up. An example that I think illustrates this idea very nicely is the portrayal of women in the movie The Social Network. In this film, the women that are presented to the audience surely are not an appropriate or accurate portrayal of the actual women of Harvard. Stephen Colbert interviewed writer Aaron Sorkin. Starting 3 minutes and 40 seconds into the interview, Colbert confronts Sorkin with the question of why all of the women in this movie are either drunk, high, or otherwise "occupied" in a bathroom somewhere. While the question never really gets answered (other than a statement about the women in this movie being "prizes"?), Colbert gives us something to think about. Is this how all Harvard women are? Is this how all college women are? Is this how all young women are? The distortion of women in this film is a widely talked about topic and as the author of this link points out -- it may not be of interest that the writers of The Social Network altered the reality behind the story, but it definitely is interesting to look at how they changed the story and why and the link above addresses some of the changes.