Media

Citation:

DeVargas, Maria, and Stefania Donzelli. 2014. “Sub-Saharan Migrants’ Masculinities: An Intersectional Analysis of Media Representations during the Libyan War 2011.” In Migration, Gender and Social Justice, edited by Thanh-Dam Truong, Des Gasper, Jeff Handmaker, and Sylvia I. Bergh, 241–63. New York: Springer.

Authors: Maria DeVargas , Stefania Donzelli

Abstract:

Studies of the role of the media in conflict situations have brought to the fore the significance of representa- tions as an important part of the process of knowledge production about wars and the actors involved. The media can influence interpretations and framing of conflicts, moulding specific understandings of their causes and modalities of intervention. The Libyan war in 2011 is an interesting case to reflect on the United Nations (UN) principle of Responsibility to Protect (RtoP), and how conflict affects those populations who occupy a subordinate position in multiple stratification systems (gender, race, and class), whether they are locked in con- flict zones or are trying to join the flow of people fleeing across borders. In the context of humanitarian inter- vention, specific understandings of the migrants as social subjects become strongly correlated with correspond- ing support mechanisms. This chapter conducts an intersectional analysis to provide a perspective on the politics of the media representation of ‘migrants’ in Libya, discerning the key links between the constructions of their masculinities and the practices of protection for ‘people on the move’. We show how, being situated at the bottom of the social hierarchy in Libya, sub-Saharan black Africans were inappropriately presented in media coverage during the initial phase of the conflict as subjects of adequate protection. Their invisibilization and subordination by the media have been largely framed within international political and economic interests, which have also reinforced the idea of the international community as the legitimate protector of civilians. We argue that these representations reproduce migrants’ vulnerability and, by placing them in a situation of triple jeopardy (structural, political, and representational), undermine the possibility of conceiving and understanding security beyond their ‘naturalized’ victimization and subordination.

Keywords: masculinities, intersectionality, sub-Saharan migrants, Libya, human security, media representations

Topics: Class, Displacement & Migration, Migration, Gender, Masculinity/ies, Gendered Power Relations, Media, Humanitarian Assistance, International Organizations, Political Economies, Race, Security, Human Security Regions: Africa, MENA, North Africa Countries: Libya

Year: 2014

Citation:

Authors: Margaret E. Thompson, María Suárez Toro, Katerina Anfossi Gómez

Abstract:

Mainstream media coverage of war often distorts or ignores women's perspectives and experiences in armed conflict, and also their efforts to build peace. This article focuses on the work of FIRE (Feminist International Radio Endeavour/Radio Internacional Feminista), a women's international Internet radio initiative produced by Latin American and Caribbean women in Costa Rica, which "uses technologies, voices, and actions" to amplify the voices of women worldwide as they recount their experiences and perspectives of armed conflict. In doing so, FIRE helps promote an alternative vision of human existence that is based on social justice and human rights, and which serves to strengthen women's and other social and political movements that are based on these values.

Topics: Armed Conflict, Gender, Women, Femininity/ies, Media, Infrastructure, Information & Communication Technologies, International Organizations, Rights, Human Rights Regions: Americas, Central America Countries: Costa Rica

Year: 2007

Citation:

Hammad, Hanan. 2013. “The Other Extremists: Marxist Feminism in Egypt, 1980-2000.” Journal of International Women’s Studies 12 (3): 217–33.

Author: Hanan Hammad

Abstract:

This article focuses on independent Marxist feminists in Egypt during the last two decades of the twentieth century. I show that despite the Islamist discourses that called for women’s withdrawal from public places simultaneously with the demise of state feminism, the public sphere was far from monolithic. Independent Marxist Feminists attempted to challenge the strictures of gender, and to participate with alternate discourses and activism in and through alternate media and public spaces. My goal is to shift the attention from Cairo-based politics and movements and to shed light on feminist activism in the relatively closed communities in small provincial towns.

Topics: Feminisms, Gender, Women, Media, Religion Regions: Africa, MENA, North Africa, Middle East Countries: Egypt

Year: 2013

Citation:

Zarkov, Dubravka. 2001. “The Body of the Other Man: Sexual Violence and the Construction of Masculinity, Sexuality and Ethnicity in Croatian Media.” In Victims, Perpetrators or Actors? Gender, Armed  Conflict, and Political Violence, edited by Caroline Moser and Fiona Clark, 69–82. London: Zed Books.

Author: Dubravka Zarkov

Abstract:

In this chapter, I examine newspaper articles covering the wars through which former Yugoslavia disintegrated, with the intention of showing how gender, sexuality and ethnicity constitute each other in the media respresentations of sexual violence. I begin from a somewhat unusual point: men as victims of sexual violence, not as perpetrators.

It may be a surprise to many readers that men were victims of sexual violence during the wars in former Yugoslavia, which became notorious for making the rape of women one if its most effective weapons. In the gruesome reality of war, men are usually seen as rapists and not as raped. Of course, this is not only a perception. In most wars and conflicts, as well as in times of peace, the reality is that men are rapists of women. I do not wish to deny that fact. However, I do wish to show that perceiving men only and always as offenders and never as victims of rape and other forms of sexual violence is a very specific, gendered narrative of war. In that narrative, dominant notions of masculinity merge with norms of heterosexuality and definitions of ethnicity and ultimately designate who can or cannot be named a victim of sexual violence in the press.

Annotation:

The author examines male sexual victimization in the Balkans War. She argues that “perceiving men only and always as offenders and never as victims of rape and other forms of sexual violence is a very specific, gendered narrative of war.” In that narrative, dominant notions of masculinity merge with norms of heterosexuality and definitions of ethnicity and ultimately designate who can or cannot be named a victim of sexual violence in the national press. Zarkov examines how male sexual victimization was presented in Croatian and Serbian mass media, after first passing through the filter of nationalism. In the press the author examined, sexually assaulted men were all but visible. An investigation of the Croatian and Serbian Press from November 1991 to December 1993 found only six articles in the Croatian press, compared to over 100 about other forms of torture experienced by Croat men and over 60 about the rape of women. The Serbian press did not publish a single text about sexual torture of men. In the Croatian press the only visible male victim of rape and castration was a Muslim man, while the Croatian man was never mentioned as either being raped/castrated or raping other men. Serbian men, on the other hand, were mentioned as sodomists who rape (Muslim) men. The author argues that, the need of the newly emerging Croatian state to have its symbolic virility preserved through the preserved virility, power, and heterosexuality of Croatian men was crucial for the representation of the sexual violence against men.

Topics: Armed Conflict, Ethnicity, Gender, Men, Masculinity/ies, Gendered Power Relations, Media, Torture, Sexual Torture, Sexuality, Sexual Violence, Rape, SV against Men Regions: Europe, Balkans, Eastern Europe Countries: Croatia, Serbia

Year: 2001

Citation:

Naaman, Dorit. 2007. "Brides of Palestine/Angels of Death: Media, Gender, and Performance in the Case of the Palestinian Female Suicide Bombers." Signs 32 (4).

Author: Dorit Naaman

Topics: Combatants, Female Combatants, Gender, Women, Media, Military Forces & Armed Groups, Non-State Armed Groups, Terrorism Regions: MENA, Asia, Middle East Countries: Palestine / Occupied Palestinian Territories

Year: 2007

Citation:

Becker, Bettina T. 2000. "Woman, Violence, Nation: Representations of Female Insurgency in Fiction and Public Discourse in the 1970s and 1980s." Women in German Yearbook 16: 207-20.

Author: Bettina T. Becker

Abstract:

Germany in the 1970s was subject to a wave of terrorist activities in which women such as Ulrike Meinhof and Gudrun Ensslin played a significant role. The mass media and public discourse in general struggled with women's participation in these cases of extreme physical violence. In this article, I explore the articulations of the discourses of gender, nation, and violence in the German news magazine Der Spiegel, Ulrike Meinhof's tele vision play Bambule, and Traude Buhrmann's Flage fiber Moabiter Mauern (Flights over Moabit's Walls), in order to illuminate representations of female insurgency. My argument centers around their different uses of deviance and the changing character of social criticism in the 1970s and 1980s.

Topics: Combatants, Female Combatants, Gender, Women, Gender Roles, Media, Military Forces & Armed Groups, Non-State Armed Groups, Nationalism, Terrorism, Sexuality, Violence

Year: 2000

Citation:

Shedd, Juliette. 2006. “Understanding Female Terrorists: An Analysis of Motivation and Media Representation.” Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, Philadelphia, August 31- September 3.

Author: Juliette Shedd

Abstract:

Individual, societal, and group factors contribute to the involvement of women in terrorist activities. The presence of women in terrorist groups is explained here as a result of a combination of individual and societal factors that support a woman’s involvement in political violence and group decisions to include women. From the literature review, it was hypothesized that one advantage of using women in terrorist acts is differences in how male and female terrorists are covered by the media. Newspaper coverage of terrorist activities committed by ETA in Spain, the LTTE in Sri Lanka, and Chechen separatists in Russia were analyzed to determine if gender was related to the amount and type of coverage attacks received. The number of articles written about an attack, the motivations presented in the article, and the order information was presented in was used to measure gender based differences. In two of the three cases, terrorist acts committed by women received almost double the number of written articles about the event as opposed to attacks committed by men; the third case did not have enough data to analyze for this variable. In all three cases, articles about female terrorists were more likely to present individual, group, and societal motivations for the actions than were articles about male terrorists. The differences in media coverage due to gender can be a factor in the group’s decision to use women in terrorist activity. If media coverage is a goal of the group, the use of female terrorists may be a way to achieve that goal.

Topics: Gender, Women, Media, Military Forces & Armed Groups, Non-State Armed Groups, Violence

Year: 2006

Citation:

Ali, Farhana. 2005. “Muslim Female Fighters: An Emerging Trend.” Terrorism Monitor 3 (21): online.

Author: Farhana Ali

Abstract:

Muslim women are increasingly joining the global jihad, some motivated by religious conviction to change the plight of Muslims under occupation, and recruited by al-Qaeda and local terrorist groups strained by increased arrests and deaths of male operatives. Attacks by female fighters, also known as the mujahidaat, are arguably more deadly than those conducted by male jihadists, attributed in part to the perception that women are unlikely to commit such acts of horror, and when they do, the shock or “CNN factor” of their attacks draws far greater media attention than male bombers. Increasing awareness with instant media attention can motivate other women to commit similar attacks.

Topics: Combatants, Female Combatants, Gender, Women, Media, Military Forces & Armed Groups, Non-State Armed Groups, Religion, Violence

Year: 2005

Citation:

Kumar, Deepa. 2004. “War Propaganda and the (Ab)uses of Women: Media Constructions of the Jessica Lynch Story.” Feminist Media Studies 4 (3): 297-313.

Author: Deepa Kumar

Abstract:

The "rescue" of Private Jessica Lynch was one of the most extensively covered events of the 2003 US-led war on Iraq. In the 14 days after her rescue, Lynch drew 919 references in major newspapers. In contrast, General Tommy Franks, who ran the war, got 639 references, and Dick Cheney got 549 (Christopher Hanson 2003). The coverage of the Lynch story continued well into the year and far outstripped that devoted to any other captured or rescued prisoners of war (POWs), making Lynch a household name. This article studies how the Jessica Lynch story was constructed. I examine the conditions under which women in the military become visible and how their stories are told, both by the media and the military. The military, a quintessential patriarchal institution, relies on the construction of a soldier in specifically masculinist terms. While women have always been a part of the military, their presence has been systematically marginalized. Their role has typically been as "camp followers," i.e., service and maintenance workers, rather than those involved in active combat. Lynch stands out as one among a handful of women who have come to symbolize the presence of women in the US army. Yet, this is not a step fonward for women. Instead, the Lynch rescue narrative, I argue, served to forward the aims of war propaganda. The story of the "dramatic" rescue of a young, vulnerable woman, at a time when the war was not going well for the US, acted as the means by which a controversial war could be talked about in emotional rather than rational terms. Furthermore, constructed as hero. Lynch became a symbol of the West's "enlightened" attitude towards women, justifying the argument that the US was "liberating" the people of Iraq. In short, the Lynch story, far from putting forward an image of women's strength and autonomy, reveals yet another mechanism by which they are strategically used to win support for war.

Topics: Armed Conflict, Combatants, Female Combatants, Gender, Women, Gendered Power Relations, Patriarchy, Masculinism, Media, Military Forces & Armed Groups, Militaries Regions: Americas, North America Countries: United States of America

Year: 2004

Citation:

Prividera, Laura C., and John W. Howard III. 2006. "Masculinity, Whiteness, and the Warrior Hero: Perpetuating the Strategic Rhetoric of U.S. Nationalism and the Marginalization of Women." Women and Language 29 (2).

Authors: Laura C. Prividera, John W. Howard III

Abstract:

In this research we employed gender archetypes and critical whiteness studies to examine the interconnectedness of gender, race, and nationalism in U.S. media coverage of the 507th Ordinance Maintenance Company during Operation Iraqi Freedom. Our theoretical frame illustrates how the national ideology sanctions specific constructions of gender and race both in and out of the military. The nationally-preferred archetypal constructions (in particular the "warrior hero" archetype) framed media representations of Jessica Lynch, Lori Piestewa, and Shoshona Johnson. Our feminist rhetorical analysis reveals how the media portrayal of the soldiers of the 507th simultaneously privileges whiteness and marginalizes femininity through its extensive focus on Private Jessica Lynch. In addition, this study demonstrates how the overarching national ideology creates a complex social hierarchy of gender and race relative to the ideal (archetypal) national representative.

Topics: Gender, Women, Masculinity/ies, Femininity/ies, Gendered Power Relations, Gender Hierarchies, Media, Military Forces & Armed Groups, Militaries, Nationalism, Race Regions: Americas, North America Countries: United States of America

Year: 2006