1. |
- Alvinius, Aida, Docent, 1979-, et al.
(author)
-
Blaming and shaming in the shadow structure : individual resistance towards genderequality work as expressions of social conflict
- 2023
-
In: Feminist Media Studies. - : Informa UK Limited. - 1468-0777 .- 1471-5902. ; 23:1, s. 83-100
-
Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- This article explores individual resistance related to a military organization’s gender equality work as expressed in online contexts. Resistance is explained as expressions of wider social conflicts, grounded in experiences of threats towards military masculinities, challenged by societal and political transformation processes perceived as feminine. The data consists of defence-related blogs and comments. A thematic analysis finds that individual resistance can be understood as blaming and shaming strategies. Five sub-themes are identified: blaming the “feminised” organization, blaming and shaming women’s abilities to serve, individualisation of structural problems, verbal violence and violations, and objectification of men working with and supporting gender equality initiatives. The analysis exemplifies how social conflict is transferred to organizations through individual resistance. As gender equality policies are questioned, organizations need to confront resistance also within the online context.
|
|
2. |
- Askanius, Tina, 1978-
(author)
-
Women in the Nordic Resistance Movement and their online media practices : Between internalised misogyny and ‘embedded feminism’
- 2022
-
In: Feminist Media Studies. - : Taylor & Francis. - 1468-0777 .- 1471-5902. ; 22:7, s. 1763-1780
-
Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- This paper is based on a case study of the online media practices of the neo-Nazi organisation, the Nordic Resistance Movement, conducted in the context of an ongoing project on contemporary forms of violent extremism in Sweden. Focusing on the activities of female “online influencers”, the paper explores the contradictory discourses around the role of women as “race warriors” and “Nordic wives” as this is articulated both by the women in the organisation themselves and in the online universe of the organisation more generally. On the one hand, women’s positions are determined and heavily policed by men in an organisation that openly propagates women’s subordination to men and their natural and biological role in the realm of homemaking. On the other, the discourses produced by these women are saturated by ideas of female empowerment, sisterhood, emancipation and the importance of women in the reproduction of the white race. The content analysis of online propaganda produced by female activists about the role of women positions these contradictory pulls of “White femininity” inherent to the white supremacist movements at the current political juncture in which the extreme right is growing and actively looking to recruit women as part of a broader strategy to “mainstream” in Sweden and mobilise internationally.
|
|
3. |
- Beccaria, Franca, et al.
(author)
-
From housekeeper to status-oriented consumer and hyper-sexual imagery : images of alcohol targeted to Italian women from the 1960s to the 2000s
- 2018
-
In: Feminist Media Studies. - : Informa UK Limited. - 1468-0777 .- 1471-5902. ; 18:6, s. 1012-1039
-
Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Advertisements not only mirror ideals of masculinity and femininity that prevail in a specific place and time, but also contribute to influencing them. This article analyses alcohol-related advertisements published in women’s magazines from 1967 to 2008 in Italy. The main aim is to understand cultural processes that underlie gender differences in drinking and more generally in Italian society. The sample consists of 376 direct and indirect advertisements collected from well-established women’s magazines. The study identifies continuities and changes in women’s subject positions in alcohol-related advertisements. Italian advertisements of the 1960s and 1970s still reflect a female condition that entails no recognition of women’s own desires and tastes. Advertisements from the 1980s and 1990s reflect a more complex representation of female consumers, associating them with their own desires and pleasures. In the 2000s, the focus on women’s physical appearance and social image has become the prevailing feature. In conclusion, the study shows that changes in female representations in advertisements in the last 50 years do not represent a shift toward a more balanced gender representation. The insistence on women’s appearance, with a correlated predominance of bodily pleasures and attractiveness, reproduces old stereotypes about drinking women.
|
|
4. |
- Bergnehr, Disa, 1974-, et al.
(author)
-
Hardworking women: representations of lone mothers in the Swedish daily press
- 2021
-
In: Feminist Media Studies. - : Taylor & Francis. - 1468-0777 .- 1471-5902. ; 21:1, s. 132-146
-
Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Lone mothers are a diverse group but it has been argued in the previous research that they tend to be homogenised. This article explores representations of single mothers in Swedish newspapers. Material from the two largest morning papers and the two largest tabloids was collected from the years 2015–2017. The results of the study suggest that although the newspaper representations do not fully reflect the diversity of social realities, there are indeed varying images of lone mothers in the sample. A recurring representation is as a comparatively poor and hardworking—even heroic—woman, who in political argumentation is referred to as someone in need of societal support and policy reforms. A less frequent representation, that often occurs in lengthy, in-depth pieces, is the affluent official person who despite her prosperity struggles with combining single (good) motherhood with her career, or the middle-class woman who becomes a lone mother via assisted reproductive technologies. Teenage motherhood (i.e., age), race/ethnicity, sexuality, and welfare dependence are seldom, if at all, alluded to. There is no vilification or condemnation of the lone mother, as has been found in research on other national contexts.
|
|
5. |
- Bergnéhr, Disa, 1974-, et al.
(author)
-
Single parenthood, the non-residential parent and co-parenting in Swedish Daily News
- 2023
-
In: Feminist Media Studies. - : Taylor & Francis Group. - 1468-0777 .- 1471-5902. ; 23:4, s. 1559-1574
-
Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Since the 1960s, Swedish family policies have encouraged parents to share their parental obligations equally, and in the 1980s joint legal custody became standard after divorce or separation. Mothers as well as fathers are expected to financially provide for the family and to take part in the everyday care and fostering of the child. This study explores how single parenthood, non-residential parents and co-parenting play out and become conventionalized in daily news in this national context. The material consists of articles that mention single parenthood and “the other parent” from the four most widely read newspapers published in the period 2010–2019. The analytical focus has been on the written language and what is spelled out, alluded to or ignored, and dominant and less dominant representations. The results show that there are contrasting depictions of mothers and fathers. While the mother as a single parent, co-parent and non-residential parent overall is represented as good and attentive, the father is more of a split figure. He recurrently comes across as absent and negligent as the non-residential parent, but as committed and involved as the primary parent or co-parent with joint residential custody.
|
|
6. |
- Bernhardsson, Josefin, et al.
(author)
-
Drink Sluts, Brats and Immigrants as Others : An analysis of Swedish media discourse on gender, alcohol and rape
- 2011
-
In: Feminist Media Studies. - : Routledge. - 1468-0777 .- 1471-5902. ; 12:1
-
Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Drawing on an analysis of the media debate on two Swedish rape cases involving alcohol, the present article argues that social norms and power structures are made visible both when debaters ascribe explanatory power to alcohol and when they do not. Using feminist intersectional theory,we argue that when debaters employ the concepts of “foreign culture” and “jet-set drinking culture,” respectively, to explain the rapes, they simultaneously (re)produce stereotypical discourses on gender, sexuality, class and ethnicity/nationality. The troublesome positions of the Immigrant, the Drink Slut and the Brat symbolize how these discourses intersect in the specific cases. To understand why alcohol is central in explaining rape in a fashionable area, but not in a socially disadvantaged area, we suggest that the official image of Sweden as a gender-equal, sexually liberal and multicultural society with small class differences blocks discussion of existing inequalities within the country. When rape happens in a place constructed as a “Swedish middle and upper-class area,” alcohol and intoxication are used to symbolize the “uncivilized,” unpleasant and malicious among Swedish men. When rape happens in “socially disadvantaged neighbourhoods” populated by “immigrants,” the unpleasant instead resides in the “foreign culture.”
|
|
7. |
- Bogren, Alexandra, 1976-
(author)
-
Biologically Responsible Mothers and Girls Who “Act Like Men” : Shifting discourses of biological sex difference in Swedish newspaper debate on alcohol in 1979 and 1995
- 2011
-
In: Feminist Media Studies. - UK : Informa UK Limited. - 1468-0777 .- 1471-5902. ; 11:2, s. 197-213
-
Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Drawing on a qualitative analysis of Swedish newspaper debates in 1979 and 1995, this article examines how Swedish newspapers refer to biological sex difference as central to drinking practices. The study shows that women are a special category of concern in debate about gender and drinking in both 1979 and 1995. Further, it shows that Swedish newspapers draw upon biology in different ways in the two years. In 1979, debate about drinking during pregnancy and Fetal Alcohol Syndrome (FAS) is central and newspapers link biomedical research on FAS to the moral idea that mothers do anything to avoid harm to children. In 1995, debate about girls' drinking habits is central and newspapers link sex hormones and neurotransmitters to the moral idea that girls shouldn't “drink like men.” These differences are discussed in the context of Swedish media interest in evolutionary psychology and biomedical solutions to alcohol problems during the 1990s.
|
|
8. |
- Calderón-Sandoval, Orianna, et al.
(author)
-
Subverting technologies of gender in male-dominated gender regimes : (self) representations of Spanish and Swedish women filmmakers
- 2023
-
In: Feminist Media Studies. - : Routledge. - 1468-0777 .- 1471-5902. ; 23:7, s. 3599-3614
-
Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- This article analyses (self)representations of women filmmakers active in the Swedish and Spanish film industries, looking at how “technologies of gender,” as theorised by Teresa de Lauretis, work to resist change within the industry’s “gender regimes” (as conceptualised by Raewyn Connell), but are also simultaneously rein-vented by women film workers. Even though the gender regimes of Spain and Sweden are quite different, and despite the diversity of positions adopted by women film workers concerning cinema—as art, commodity, and socio-political technology—there are striking similarities in the obstacles faced by women in a male-dominated industry. We identify these similarities in a series of interviews with women filmmakers from both countries. What emerges as shared across both contexts is the ambivalent negotiation that women film workers have to carry out in their self-representations, when entering an industry built around a male norm. But along with these representations marked by the relation to patriarchal technologies of gender, many women creators also search for bottom-up narra-tives and appropriations of such technologies to construct themselves and their works outside and beyond the androcentric model of the current film industry.
|
|
9. |
- Chidgey, Red, et al.
(author)
-
Rumours from around the bloc : Gossip, rhizomatic media, and the PlotkiFemzine
- 2009
-
In: Feminist Media Studies. - : Informa UK Limited. - 1468-0777 .- 1471-5902. ; 9:4, s. 477-491
-
Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- In the past two decades, an increasing number of young women have taken the tools of media production into their own hands; feminist zines have evolved into a medium for transnational dialogue, community building, and networking. In focusing on the Plotki Femzine (2006, 2007), a Central and Eastern European (CEE) feminist print and online zine project, we use the theoretical framework of ?rhizomatic media? to problematize existing scholarship on feminist zines. Much of this scholarship sees zines as venues that construct a sense of ?authenticity? through the use of the autobiographical voice and an outright rejection of mainstream media practices. Considering the rhizomatic processes of alternative knowledge production in Plotki publication, we draw on post-structuralist gossip theory to examine the Plotki Femzine as a site of feminist discourse. In particular, we show how the Plotki Femzine builds cross-border collaboration and "spreads rumours" of a feminist kind.
|
|
10. |
- Darwish, Maria, Doctoral candidate, 1990-
(author)
-
Fascism, nature and communication : a Discursive-affective analysis of cuteness in ecofascist propaganda
- 2024
-
In: Feminist Media Studies. - : Routledge. - 1468-0777 .- 1471-5902.
-
Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Ecofascism-the union of fascist ideas and ecological notions-is a rising global issue. Ecofascism in the online sphere often encompasses imaginaries of utopia, love and nostalgia in concert with militarism and violence. This article examines cuteness as a strategic tool used to arouse culturally deemed "positive" emotions like joy, love and pleasure. The study draws on findings from an affective-discursive analysis of visual propaganda in the form of ecofascist memes. The analysis shows that cuteness softens fascist ideology and remasculinises and humanises fascism. Cuteness as a rhetorical tool lessens the needs for ideological defence, since cute signifiers condense structures of meaning into binaries of good and evil. Hence, the article argues that cuteness is a powerful affective political communication strategy that serves to reproduce masculine dominance by mobilising gendered and racialised imaginaries of nature, protection, empathy and belonging.
|
|