Media and Gender

Module code: MS3000

Media and Gender is a lively and engaging module which addresses key issues and concerns around how women, men and gender-non conforming individuals are represented, experience and engage with various media forms.

Drawing insights from feminist, queer, post-colonial and intersectional theories, this module engages with current topics such as #MeToo and the rising wave of digital feminist activism, to period poverty, the production of news, to the ways women and men are represented in adverts.

The module encourages learning outside the classroom and includes several field trips and getting a ‘hands on’ approach to learning. Overall, the module aims to give you the critical tools to assess and critique what you see, read and hear through the media in your everyday lives.

Topics covered

• Representation of men and women, masculinity and femininity in popular culture and how this has changed
• The rise of lad culture, as evidenced through the rise and fall of lad magazines, and a ‘porn culture’
• The impact feminism has had on gendered representations in the media
• Ways traditional representations of men and women have been challenged, particularly through new media and the internet
• The gendered nature of journalism
• Gender in the music industry
• How men and women ‘use’ the media
• Online trolling
• Feminist campaigns against rape culture in the media (#Yesallwomen; SlutWalk)
• Gender in an online world