Journalism, Gender and Power

Journalism, Gender and Power revisits the key themes explored in the 1998 edited collection News, Gender and Power. It takes stock of progress made to date, and also breaks ground in advancing critical understandings of how and why gender matters for journalism and current democratic cultures.

This new volume develops research insights into issues such as the influence of media ownership and control on sexism, women’s employment, and "macho" news cultures, the gendering of objectivity and impartiality, tensions around the professional identities of journalists, news coverage of violence against women, the sexualization of women in the news, the everyday experience of normative hierarchies and biases in newswork, and the gendering of news audience expectations, amongst other issues.

These issues prompt vital questions for feminist and gender-centred explorations concerned with reimagining journalism in the public interest. Contributors to this volume challenge familiar perspectives, and in so doing, extend current parameters of dialogue and debate in fresh directions relevant to the increasingly digitalized, interactive intersections of journalism with gender and power around the globe.

Journalism, Gender and Power will inspire readers to rethink conventional assumptions around gender in news reporting—conceptual, professional, and strategic—with an eye to forging alternative, progressive ways forward.

Cynthia Carter is Reader in the School of Journalism, Media and Culture, Cardiff University, UK. She has published widely on children, news, and citizenship; feminist news and journalism studies; and media violence. Her recent books include Current Perspectives in Feminist Media Studies (2013) and the Routledge Companion to Media and Gender (2014). She is a founding Co-Editor of Feminist Media Studies and serves on the editorial board of numerous media and communication studies journals.

Linda Steiner is Professor in the College of Journalism, University of Maryland, USA, and Editor of Journalism & Communication Monographs. Recent co-authored or co-edited books include: Key Concepts in Critical-Cultural Studies (2010), Routledge Companion to Media and Gender (2013), The Handbook of Gender and War (2016), and Race, News, and the City: Uncovering Baltimore (2017). She has published over 100 book chapters and refereed journal articles. Steiner leads the campus Keeping Our Faculty program.

Stuart Allan is Professor and Head of the School of Journalism, Media and Culture at Cardiff University, UK. His publications include Citizen Witnessing: Revisioning Journalism in Times of Crisis (2013) and the edited collections, The Routledge Companion to News and Journalism (revised edition, 2012) and Photojournalism and Citizen Journalism: Co-operation, Collaboration and Connectivity (2017). He is currently researching the visual cultures of news imagery in war, conflict, and crisis reporting, amongst other projects.