%0 Thesis %T Gender Analysis of the Online Editions of Printed Media in Serbia %X

Policies of representation of female identities in public and media discourse can be seen as the expression of the relations of power in a certain society and historical period. In that sense, the position of „feminine“ is constructed and labeled as „the other“, the figure reflecting prevailing social relations. Thus, woman is a category and things attributed to this category, i.e. to the feminine principle, are other, secondrated, unwelcome, less worth within the dominant ideologies and media practices typical for them. One of the issues I deal with in this work is the research on whether the new media technologies and new forms of communication and conveying media content, as well as the dynamic relationship between media contents and media audiences, contribute to the change of representing and constructing feminine identities in media discourses, or they just repeat the patriarchal discriminatory patterns in a new media setting. Aim of the research is to show how different identities of women are being constructed in the representation practices of the online editions of the printed media, as well as to determine if these media practices include the strategies of excluding women through certain constructions of reality, ghettoization and stereotyping of women in the media, and if they do, to examine how these strategies work. Methodological framework of the research „Gender Analysis of the Online Editions of Printed Media in Serbia“ includes combination of quantitative and qualitative approaches to the process of proving hypotheses – one general and three specific hypotheses derived from the general one. General Hypothesis Unrelated to the global transformation of media genres and ways of communication, female identity in the contemporary transitional society of Serbia is always represented as „the other“ and through „otherness“, regardless of the position an identity has in the social distribution of power. Hypothesis 1 In the media discourse there is uneven distribution of power and visibility of different female identities (women from the public sphere vs. marginalized women). Hypothesis 2 Media texts recognize the subject of violence against women as the crucial subject of the lives of women, i.e. it is crucial in the media representations of women in the social context – and the majority of women are presented as victims. Hypothesis 3 Women from minority and marginalized groups are invisible in the media discourse of the online editions of printed media. Hypotheses were tested through the research based on monitoring online editions of the printed media (texts and comments of readers): four national – Blic, Politikа, Kurir, Dаnаs, and one local – Dnevnik from Novi Sad. Research cycle covered 5 months (from November 2013 to March 2014). I selected texts about women published at web pages www.blic.rs; www.politika.rs; www.kurir-info.rs; www.danas.rs; www.dnevnik.rs on the following dates: 07.11.2013.; 25.11.2013.; 10.12.2013.; 18.12.2013.; 27.01.2014.; 31.01.2014.; 14.02.2014.; 28.02.2014.; 08.03.2014.; 13.03.2014. Total number of examined texts was 184, while the total number of examined comments was 980. Online content of the printed media produces the identical strategies of excluding and ghettoizing women, both in the texts and in the comments of the new interactive audience that becomes the co-author of the promotion and legitimization of misogyny in the public discourse. This work showed that informationalcommunicational technologies by themselves do not change inequalities, and that it would be necessary to establish new models of use of contemporary technologies, so that women and other marginalized groups could use them for social positioning on the Internet, but also for the education that would imply reshaping of gender roles and practical work (programming, web-design) for the purpose of creating more gendered and equitable cyber space.

%K Identity representation woman gender media printed media new media power discourse discourse strategies %A Višnjić, Jelena %D 2016 %I Author reprint %C Association of Centres for Interdisciplinary and Multidisciplinary Studies and Research