ABSTRACT
The last decade has witnessed paradigmatic shifts as a consequence of the global war on terror, accelerated human migration, and the birth of Web 2.0. These forces have transformed and reshaped the transdisciplinary terrain of feminist media scholarship. From the rapid rise of female prosumers in highly broadbanded Asian countries to the increasing feminization and lifestyling of Islam in Africa and Australia, feminist media studies has become an internationalised discourse. As “a discursive formation,” feminist media criticism has not only expanded to become “a variety of discursive practices … informed by ‘popular’ feminisms in the broader sphere of culture” (Lynn Spigel 2004, p. 1212), it is also inspired by new locations of possibilities and struggles. Indeed, when the editors of Feminist Media Studies introduced the inaugurate issue in 2001, Lisa McLaughlin and Cynthia Carter (2001, p. 6) pointed out that the most significant contribution to the field was the “taking up—and, in some cases, taking off—of feminist media studies within groups, nations and regions that have often been missing or underrepresented in the mostly white, First World dialogues and debates that have tended to define feminist media studies.” In the last ten years, the journal’s commitment to the globalization of feminist media studies has been unprecedented in Anglophone academic feminist publishing, canvassing topics as diverse as new women’s magazines in India (Srimati Basu 2001), gay radio in South Africa (Tanja Bosch 2007) and televisual representations of domestic maids in China (Wanning Sun 2009). As Annabelle Sreberny (2001, p. 64) iterated,”[a] feminist media studies needs to be global in purview … [It] does need to take the recent inclusion of new swathes of audience into consideration since as more women gain access to modern forms of communication, they are also brought into the national audience and potentially also into the arenas of (trans)national policies.” Nowhere is this more evident than recent developments in the Asian mediasphere.
