Page 172 - Battleground The Media Volume 1 and 2

Global Commun ty Med a | 1 1

broadcast daytime soap operas (ABC, CBS, and NBC) each had a show with a
lesbian or gay character in the 2006–2007 season. In addition, All My Children
is currently launching only the second storyline in daytime history involving
a transgendered/transsexual character (the character is beginning to transition
from male to female). While it is true that what viewers will actually be able to
“see” on daytime soaps remains constrained by the conservative boundaries of
the genre, it is a remarkable transformation in a few short years.

ConCLusion

Media representations of sexual acts, sexual intimacy, and varied sexual iden-
tities will continue to be a controversial issue in the United States for the foresee-
able future. Every culture regulates sexual expression to some extent, and our
own history reveals a growing acceptance of sex for pleasure along with growing
acceptability of same-sex relationships. Given the various barriers to progressive
GLTBQ programming that still exist, however, what viewers are able to see on
their TV screens will continue to be debated in U.S. households and throughout
the industry.
see also Obscenity and Indecency; Media and the Crisis of Values; Pornography;
Ratings; Reality Television; Representations of Masculinity; Representations of
Race; Representations of Women; Shock Jocks; Sensationalism, Fear Mongering,
and Tabloid Media; TiVo.

Further reading: Anger, Dorothy. Other Worlds: Society Seen through Soap Opera. Orchard
Park, CA: Broadview, 1999; Arthurs, Jane. Television and Sexuality: Regulation and the
Politics of Taste. Milton Keynes: Open University Press, 2004; Becker, Ron. Gay TV and
Straight America. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2006; Capsuto, Steven.
Alternate Channels. New York: Ballantine, 2000; Dow, Bonnie J. “Ellen, Television, and
the Politics of Gay and Lesbian Visibility.” Critical Studies in Media Communication 18
(2001): 123–40; Gross, Larry. Up from Invisibility: Lesbians, Gay Men, and the Media
in America. New York: Columbia University Press, 2001; LeVay, Simon, and Sharon M.
Valente. Human Sexuality, 2nd ed. Sunderland, MA: Sinauer, 2006; Montgomery, Kath-
ryn. Target: Prime Time: Advocacy Groups and the Struggle over Entertainment Televi-
sion. New York: Oxford University Press, 1989.
C. Lee Harrington

gloBal CoMMunity Media
Community media—small-scale, grassroots, underfunded—have been an
important dimension of the global media landscape for a very long time. They
have also been a very neglected feature. People have often seen them as tempo-
rary, trivial, poorly designed, and thus basically irrelevant to anyone except the
handful of obsessive folk who produce them. Yet a brief look at their impact past
and present suggests that such dismissiveness is born of a very oversimplified
understanding of how these community media have in fact operated. Examples
are drawn below from the last three centuries to illustrate the argument, and the
importance is underscored of carefully defining our terms.