Page 110 - Communication Cultural and Media Studies The Key Concepts

GENDER

is possible to consider its relevance elsewhere. Film-studio executives,
television programme-buyers and radio play-list decision-makers
could also be understood to be fulfilling the role traditionally set out
by gatekeeper theory.
Newmedia technologies such as digital broadcasting, pay-per-view
and the Internet are seen as challenging the gatekeeping role. But this
may prove to be a utopian assumption. Certainly with the Internet,
search engines can be understood as digital gatekeepers. Performing
the role of deciding what information is relevant to your query, search
engines may not be bound by personal ideologies, yet they are a
product of the structural and organisational procedures of the provider
who supplies them. They may also be subject to legislation that
requires them to filter information, thereby causing them to perform a
gatekeeping role on behalf of the state.
Further, it is clear that there is economic value in gatekeeping:
people want information checked, evaluated and edited for them by
professionals. Despite the huge amount of freely available information
on the Internet, many of the most popular websites are those that edit,
organise and manage information on behalf of consumers; indeed,
they belong to brand-name media titles such as major newspapers and
TV stations.
See also: Bias, News values

Further reading: Berkowitz (1997)

GENDER

A categorisation that separates men and women on the basis of
assumed behaviours, values, attitudes and beliefs. Gender has come to
be contrasted with sex, which refers to biological differences. Gender
assumptions are based on ideology. Sexual differences are based on
genitalia (biology). While sexual differences may be natural/scientific,
gender differences are cultural.
As with any cultural constructs, gender roles must be learned, not
least through the media. Early feminist approaches sought to question
media representations of women, and ‘sex-role stereotyping’, using the
tools of content analysis, semiotics and structuralism. More recent
work has reconsidered this aim by asking whether it is possible for the
terms ‘man’ or ‘woman’ to denote a common identity. The idea here is
that claiming a gender as a means to deconstruct it inadvertently

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