engleski

What Can We Learn About Feminism from Web Portals? – Analysing Media Bulletins

In contemporary society, the media are a powerful social force capable of actively supporting but also negating feminist values, regardless of the fact that today the feminist perspective is woven into the political and institutional lives of western countries (McRobbie, 2009). Feminism is considered to be instrumentalized and words such as “empowerment” and “choice” are often used in the media and popular culture “as a kind of substitute for feminism” (McRobbie, 2009: 1). This paper presents a media analysis of articles published by the five most visited Croatian web portals in 2019. The content of the articles was analysed by qualitative method that is by thematic analysis. The results show that feminism is a neglected topic on web portals and is most often found in “news”, “culture” or “film” sections. The results of the thematic analysis identified five thematic frameworks which encompass the published articles: feminist pioneers, female politicians and feminism, celebrity feminism, feminist activism, and feminism and film. The first framework “feminist pioneers”, along with the “feminist activism” framework, are more educational in the nature of their reporting, while the “celebrity feminism” framework deals more with the topics of violence towards women, women’s relationship with their bodies and gender equality in general. The presentation of female politicians within the framework dealing with politics and feminism is the most neglected because it is practically devoid of any political-feminist content while the “film and feminism” framework is almost entertaining in character because it is mostly based on commenting upon movie characters and their lifestyles as well as screenwriter choices. Although all the identified frameworks mention and broach a series of subthemes, except in the case of feminist activism, these subthemes are not problematized nor can the audience reach a wider comprehension. Young people, as regular consumers of news content on the most visited web portals, can’t acquire a realistic image of feminism, and rarely in few occasional news, can get a cursory education on feminist values.

Feminism, media, web, celebrity, film, female politicians, thematic analysis

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