ABSTRACT
TH I S C H A P T E R A N D the next one provide an overview ofrepresentations of gender in the media. Attempting to talk about such a broad topic, the images of women and men – that’s all people – within such a broad field – ‘the media’ – is a very tall order. Each week a new set of movies is released. Every day, television broadcasters put out dramas, news, current affairs programmes, documentaries, children’s entertainment, game shows, chat shows, lifestyle programmes, films, soap operas, music videos and more. Magazines, newspapers and adverts all contain images of women and men, and even songs on the radio (or played in shops and cafes) might feed into, or challenge, our ideas about gender. The internet and World Wide Web bring even more information and ideas into our lives; the material we see online is more likely to be material we have requested quite specifically, but as online magazines and general entertainment sites become increasingly popular, and these merge with digital television, electronic media becomes yet another source of gender information.
