References Part II - From Marling, R. (2010) to Van Zoonen, L. (1994)

NORA—Nordic Journal of Feminist and Gender Research

ISSN: 0803-8740 (Print) 1502-394X (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/swom20

The Intimidating Other: Feminist Critical Discourse Analysis of the Representation of Feminism in Estonian Print Media Raili Marling (Põldsaar) To cite this article: Raili Marling (Põldsaar) (2010) The Intimidating Other: Feminist Critical Discourse Analysis of the Representation of Feminism in Estonian Print Media, NORA—Nordic Journal of Feminist and Gender Research, 18:1, 7-19, DOI: 10.1080/08038741003626767 To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/08038741003626767

Published online: 17 Mar 2010.

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NORA—Nordic Journal of Feminist and Gender Research, Vol. 18, No. 1, 7–19, March 2010

ORIGINAL ARTICLE

The Intimidating Other: Feminist Critical Discourse Analysis of the Representation of Feminism in Estonian Print Media RAILI MARLING (PÕLDSAAR) Department of English, University of Tartu, Estonia

ABSTRACT The article studies anti-feminist rhetoric in post-socialist Estonian print media, specifically the Postimees, the most widely read quality daily in the country, in a ten-year period (1996– 2005). The textual corpus is analyzed with a method informed by the critical discourse analytical work of Chouliaraki & Fairclough (1999) and Lazar (2005), focusing on lexical framing and social (re-)contextualization of the created frames. The analysis demonstrates that print media, as a social gate-keeper, have contributed to the creation of a localized discursive “feminism”, anti-feminist by nature, as a useful ideological gate-keeping tool: it wards off influences that might potentially threaten the status quo and, at the same time, disciplines Estonian women and men into accepting the tenets of the dominant neo-liberalist ideology as the only common sense in the context of gender and other social issues.

The opening up of Estonian society in the 1990s was accompanied by the influx of new topics into the public discourse of the country, such as free-market ideologies and globalization in economics or post-modernism in the sphere of culture. The new discourses were not blindly accepted, as simplifyingly suggested by many critical commentators of globalization, but screened through a local ideological filter, in a process Swedish anthropologist Ulf Hannerz (1988: 7– 30) has called “creolization” where the local culture creatively interacts with the incoming messages and adapts them to fit the local circumstances and value systems. As a result, the incoming messages are transformed and re-signified in a multilayered fashion. This conceptualization of social change helps to explain an almost uncritical adoption of some discourses and, simultaneously, an equally uncritical rejection of others in 1990s Estonia, a society that was in a process of renegotiating its identity after having

Correspondence Address: Raili Marling, Department of English, University of Tartu, Ulikodi 18, 50090 Tartu, Estonia. Email: Raili.Marling@ut.ee 0803-8740 Print/1502-394X Online/10/010007–19 q 2010 Taylor & Francis DOI: 10.1080/08038741003626767

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started, in the words of Richard Stivers (1994: 174), “to doubt its answer to the question of meaning” in the multiple transitions (economic, political, social) the country was going through. The processes were unified by the desire to leave behind the Soviet era and integrate into the Western family of nations. In this, the country chose to follow Anglo-American individualist neo-liberalist policies rather than the solidarity-based social democratic ideals of its neighbouring Scandinavian countries, possibly because the former were felt to be the best means for fast integration with the globalizing world and the latter seemed too reminiscent of the Soviet past the country was trying to escape.

Owing to this ideological preference, feminism came to be relegated to the category of suspect notions because of a double stigmatization: first, its association with the discredited Soviet rhetoric of gender equality that masked deep-seated gendered inequalities, and, second, the incompatibility of feminism and neo-liberal ideology embraced by the country after re-establishing its sovereignty (Põldsaar 2007: 126).

Although feminism generated agitated responses in a variety of contexts, it was “domesticated” into the local universe of discourse primarily as a near-universally negative trope, as a signifier of something alien, dangerous, and unnecessary. Thus, it can be argued that, paradoxically, Estonia had a back-lash against feminism before it developed a viable feminism. It is suggested here that the dominant discourse created a “spectre of feminism” it battled with and banished, for the sake of the “progress” of the nation, a context where feminism became a scapegoat for various social ills and a means for distracting attention from deep-seated gendered inequalities in the society but, possibly, also other social concerns. The paper thus argues that discourse here becomes a terrain of significant socio-political action.

Although the emergence of anti-feminism in post-socialist countries was recorded already in the 1990s, mostly by Western scholars (e.g. Einhorn 1993; Watson 1997; or more recently Gal & Kligman 2000) (the problems of this have been discussed in Põldsaar 2003), there have been relatively few case studies to analyse the sociohistorical peculiarities of the developments in different countries, especially from the inside (for important and insightful exceptions, see e.g. Havelkova 2000 or Novikova 2006). Internationally, too, relatively little attention has been dedicated to the role of language in the processes of cultural and ideological transformation and the part historically positioned discursive work has played in defining gender relations and attitudes towards feminism in different social contexts. That is to say, some of the covert discursive features of the complex multilayered processes involved in social change have remained under-analyzed. As a result, there is but a limited understanding of the discursive interplay of anti-feminism and other ideologies in different post-socialist nations and the ways in which they converge to help to maintain non-egalitarian social policies.

Aims and Methods of Study The present article seeks to contribute to filling that gap. It attempts to link a linguistic analysis of a textual corpus and a social analysis of large-scale ideological processes, arguing that the linkage between the discursive and the social helps us understand the formation and function of an anti-feminist consensus in Estonian

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society, on the example of print media, a powerful agent in forging the “consensual we” (Fowler 1991:16) of the country. The present analysis will focus on a corpus of texts that spans ten years (1996 –2006) from the Postimees, the most widely read quality paper in Estonia. Although the position of the print media has changed sharply in the past five years, because of the fast development of the Internet as, increasingly, the primary source of news and entertainment,1 the leading quality papers of the country continue to be influential forgers of public opinion and consensus (see, e.g., Vihalemm 2006). The chosen paper, in particular, has been associated with the dominant neo-liberal ideologies of the country’s political elite and is therefore a fitting object of study in the present case.

The article proceeds from a definition of discourse as a social practice that creates certain subject positions and, as a result, helps to call them into being in social reality.

As stated by Norman Fairclough, “discourses not only represent the world as it is (or rather is seen to be), they are projective imaginaries, representing possible worlds which are different from the actual world, and tied in to projects to change the world in particular directions” (Fairclough 2003: 124). It is this bridge or dialectical link between the discursive and the social that is explored in greater detail below in the analysis of the corpus, to argue, as also suggested by Lilie Chouliaraki and Norman Fairclough (1999), that discursive processes are especially relevant in the context of major social change, especially the rise of what they term “new capitalism” and what is referred to as “neo-liberalism” in the present article, a social ideal focusing on laissez-faire economics, anti-statism, and individual responsibility, to the detriment of group rights and social justice (cf. Bourdieu & Wacquant 2001).

The corpus will be analyzed with the help of a method that can be situated under the broad field of critical discourse analysis, blending theoretical approaches suggested by Chouliaraki and Fairclough (1999) and Michelle Lazar (2005).

Chouliaraki and Fairclough (1999: 48) turn their attention to the interplay of structural permanence and personal practices. Importantly for the present article, they point out that despite the great importance of personal agency, we cannot escape the normative frames of a social structure. It is for this reason that the present article studies the norm-maintaining mainstream media discourse, rather than acts of resistance. In order to appreciate the latter, we first need to understand the norm they have to challenge and interact with. Over-privileging resistances can leave the underlying norm understudied and hence also more intact.

The article not only links the analysis of the linguistic and the social, but adds an awareness of gender as “an omni-relevant category in most social practices” (Lazar 2005: 3). Following other practitioners of feminist critical discourse analysis, it attempts to “examine how power and dominance are discursively produced and/or resisted in a variety of ways through textual representations of gendered social practices” (Lazar 2005: 10). Feminism and its discursive location in a culture are seen as an important gendered terrain that intersects with many other ideological axes.

The present article offers a parallel to the analysis of the representation of feminism in another post-socialist country, Hungary, provided by Erzsébet Barát (2005) who analyzes the re-significations of the term “feminism” by differently positioned social actors.

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The primary focus in the present article will be on identifying competing discourses concerning feminism and their dialogue with other discourses, especially those of neo-liberalism, where possible. Since neo-liberalism has been “naturalized” in the Estonian universe of discourse as “common sense”, in the Gramscian meaning, and largely remains invisible, only its traces can be discussed. The analysis hopes to elucidate how the print media as a gate-keeper participate in the creation of a hegemonic social ideal that rejects feminism as a viable social programme and “Others” it by stigmatizing it as simultaneously insignificant, marginalized into the field of fine arts, and dangerous, because of its associations with supposedly radical extremism.

The analysis below will follow three stages. The first stage traces the thematic distribution of texts where the word “feminism” is used within the ten-year period studied. The more significant thematic clusters will be discussed in greater detail.

Although it is recognized that the word “feminism” cannot fully cover feminism as a concept, the representational frames of this iconic word are assumed to be symptomatic of attitudes towards broader manifestations of feminism. The second stage of analysis will tackle the textual frames and discourses into which feminism is placed. This involves the investigation of the collocations in which the word “feminism” appears and the analysis of the context of use at the level of sentence. The third stage will link the textual analysis with the broader socio-political context.

Special attention will be dedicated to the interpellative appeal (Althusser 1971; Butler 1997) of the definitions of feminism to both feminist and non-feminist social actors, that is to say, the ideological positions offered within the mediated dominant discourse. It is speculated that the interpellations derived from the texts will influence the attitudes of social actors and their public (gendered) self-definitions. The analysis will identify strategies used to reframe or contain (cf. Goffman 1974; and, for a clearer methodology, Entman 1993) self-definitions purportedly in disagreement with the reigning social consensus. The second and third stages of analysis are intertwined, to an extent, in order to avoid unnecessary repetitions in the presentation of the findings. By tracing attitudes towards feminism over time the article, among other things, hopes to shed light on the social “evolution” of an emerging society in the context of globalized culture (ex)change. As such, the Estonian case discussed here points to wider global political processes. Although the limited nature of the corpus does not allow the article to make far-reaching generalizations, it is an introductory case study that raises questions to be explored further in subsequent research.

Corpus The corpus was collected by using the digital archive of the Postimees. The search word “feminism” (also feminism in Estonian) was entered into the search engine, and all resulting texts were included in the primary corpus of study. Although the inclusion of other derivations (e.g. feminist as a noun and adjective) may have yielded interesting parallels, they were excluded to maintain a tight focus and ensure a manageable corpus. The resulting number of texts was 134. The texts were distributed unevenly over the ten-year period, with a high frequency of references in 1996 – 1997, a drastic decrease in the early 2000s (from 24 texts in 1996 to 4 in 2001), and yet

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Table 1. Distribution of articles in the Postimees containing the word feminism, 1996– 2005.

Year 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005

Number of articles Culture/arts 24 21 17 5 13 4 6 12 10 19

18 13 9 1 7 3 1 7 6 5

Entertainment

Foreign news

Domestic news

3 5 1 2 0 0 1 0 1 2

1 0 3 1 2 0 1 2 1 7

2 3 4 1 4 1 3 3 2 5

another peak in the last year studied, 2005 (19 texts) (see Table 1 for the exact breakdown). This suggests the appearance of feminism as an intriguing concept in the mid-1990s, followed by the exhaustion of the novelty value and the new arrival of the term, now as a topic relevant in and to local politics.

Thematic Break-Down The thematic break-down of the corpus reflects the peripheral status of feminism in Estonian society (see Table 1). In the majority of the corpus, references to feminism appear in articles dedicated to fine or performative arts (primarily art and literature, but also, to a lesser degree, film and music). Fine arts had considerable social prestige and relevance in the Soviet years as a site of personal freedom and resistance, but they have been marginalized in the post-Soviet society that valorizes entrepreneurship and business. The linking of feminism to the field of entertainment and culture, especially contemporary art, frequently castigated in Estonian public discourse for its distance from the “real people”, relegates it regrettably to the fringes of society and, by doing that, reduces the transformative potential of art to society at large (cf. a similar claim in Barát 2005: 216). However, arts, because of their relative marginality in the social landscape of today’s Estonia, are frequently the arena where “volatile” social concepts are acceptable. Yet this heterogeneous space may also become a sort of ghetto where the potentially dangerous impulses are contained. Treated either as an abstract theoretical notion or a mode of (fashionable) artistic representation, feminism, too, is to an extent emptied of its political or social significance.

Interestingly, in the 2000s the centre of gravity gradually shifts to the social and political arena, either in a foreign or domestic context. If in the earlier section of the corpus, the majority of references to feminism in international news stories refer to the USA and are negatively inflected (e.g. pointing to the need to “protect” white heterosexual men in the atmosphere of “political correctness”), the later texts come closer to home, geographically as well as in social relevance (e.g. the Vatican’s stance on marriage, or Swedish legislation). The spatial distance seems relevant, as the location of feminism in American society indirectly “exoticizes” it and reduces its relevance to Estonia. This process of gradual “domestication” of feminism can also

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be seen in the increasing proportion of domestic news texts where the notion is employed, in connection with issues such as gender equality and the role of women in society. Although in these texts, too, the concept is frequently used as a seemingly transparent signifier to mark what Estonian society does not have and does not need (e.g. Soviet past or radical present), it is important to note that the term has shifted from the terrain of fine art to that of the social. It is somewhat surprising to see how few of the articles, however, make explicit references to the gender equality legislation debates, one of the more divisive political antagonisms in the late 1990s Estonia (for details of the discursive features of the latter, see Põldsaar 2008).

Lexical Framing The second stage of analysis identified the collocational and contextual position of the word “feminism” and analyzed the resulting sentence corpus, with primary focus on the lexis because the word “feminism” tends to appear in isolated noun phrases or sentences with limited or no connection to the main topic of the article. The discussion below gives a summary of the analysis to avoid the difficulties arising from the need to translate sizable portions of text in Estonian. Estonian examples are used as illustrations and supplied with English translations.

The majority of the texts contain the word “feminism” once or twice; only 7 texts of the 134 in the corpus can be described as being dedicated to feminism per se. There is only one instance of a thread of discussion (00-7, 00-8, and 00-9)2 in which the authors debate each other on the question of adequate meaning and application of feminism in Estonia. In the majority of texts, “feminism” appears either within a single noun phrase or in a sentence that is largely disconnected from the broader topic of the article. That is to say, the notion is used as either a floating signifier borrowed from mainstreamed theory for the discussion of cultural phenomena or as a supposedly transparent label for the political positioning of a person (mostly writers and artists but on a few occasions also political figures) or phenomenon talked about. This suggests a discursive framing of feminism either as an abstraction, rather than as a notion relevant for social analysis, or a convenient generic (stigmatizing) classifying label.

The latter tendency is especially evident as most of the single-word references are given a negative hue. That is, the word “feminism” is used in phrases that carry a strongly negative connotation or appear in a context where the negative reading is the preferred one. The most telling proof to this claim is the fact that the most frequent collocation in the corpus is “võitlev feminism”3 (militant feminism) recurring all through the period studied. The phrase appears almost as a fixed collocation used by people who denounce feminism as well as those who take a positive view of it. The association of feminism with militancy, radicalism, and blind ideologizing narrows its meaning, especially in a society that has just emerged from a totalitarian past and social turmoil and therefore yearns for stability. There has been no significant feminist movement in Estonia, and thus the label is not reflective of a local social reality. The radicalization of feminism cannot fully be explained by international borrowing either, as Western feminism of the era studied was marked by anything but unity and radicalism. One possible interpretation that can be suggested is that

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from the neo-liberal perspective prevalent in Estonia in the 1990s – 2000s any social activism that argued for group rights or equality was by definition radical.

In addition to the semi-compulsory link between feminism and aggression, there are also other negatively loaded phrases, for example “räige feminism” (shrill/radical feminism), “rõve feminism” (obscene feminism), “feminismiuss” (worm of feminism), “feminismi vari” (shadow of feminism), “võitleva feminimi lehk” (stench of militant feminism), and “agressiivne feminism” (aggressive feminism). In general, thus, on the phrase level, feminism appears as extreme, confrontational, and irrational. This connotational range also explains other collocational pairs: people are accused of feminism or represented as victims of feminism, suggesting an attribution of (malign) power to it. This negative perception can also be seen in the fact that many articles that seek to praise women authors or artists compliment their subjects for not being linked with feminism, in an attempt to “normalize” them and their work as “real” artists, not social radicals.

What can be concluded from these series of reference patterns is a near-universal acceptance of the negative associations of the term “feminism” in the newspaper studied. The very fact that these negative references are made in passing, in singlenoun phrases, in otherwise relatively neutrally worded texts on topics unrelated to gender, makes the desired impression of the cultural rejection of feminism the more evident. Although the corpus shows that international news are not prominent in the discussion of feminism, feminism is indirectly “foreignized” by ejecting it from the naturalized local universe of discourse.

This, perhaps, explains the many examples that congratulate either Estonia or Estonian women for rejecting feminism. E.g. “Jääb vaid tänada õnne, et feminism pole Eestis juuri ajanud, vaid meenutab parimal juhul kana, kes küll aeg-ajalt kaagutab, kuid nähes, et sellest tulu ei tõuse, otsustab vait jääda. Nii jäägugi.” (We can only thank fate that feminism has not taken root in Estonia but, at best, resembles a hen that cackles time after time but, seeing that there is no point, decides to shut up. Let it stay this way.) (99-3). Or, in a similar vein: “Eesti meestel on seega aeg avaldada Eesti naistele tunnustust, et nad pole feminismiga ühiskonna rahumeelset arengut rööpast välja löönud.” (It is time that Estonian men thank Estonian women that they have not derailed the peaceful development of Estonian society with feminism.) (00-7). In a sense, this almost implies an “Estonian exceptionalism”, a perception of the young society learning from other Western countries and as a result avoiding their “mistakes” of gender radicalism. The texts repeat the widely held belief that feminism is a foreign notion that has been imported to the country (the term “import” actually appears on several occasions) and has no local relevance beyond passing curiosity value.

The negative representation of feminism is associated with its purported triumph internationally, a deeply ironical misperception after the global conservative backlash of the 1980s. This purported feminist dominance has, according to Estonian authors represented in the corpus, resulted in discrimination against (white heterosexual middle-class) men and covert censorship. The latter claim is illustrated with exaggerated examples of (American) “political correctness”. Although these references tend to be limited to the international context, they also appear in phrases regarding Estonia, as a proactive means of protecting the status quo from destabilizing influences (Barát 2005: 214 observes a similar phenomenon, although in

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a different ideological context). Leaving aside the misleading image of the USA as a country in the thrall of feminists, the comparison with the supposed excesses of American “political correctness” campaigns raises an interesting question about the selectivity of cultural transfer. To return to the ideas of Ulf Hannerz cited above, Estonia has adopted American values as far as they concern market liberalism and other neo-liberal tenets, but has selected out other equally important ideals prevalent in the USA (belief in equality of opportunity, tolerance, and social activism). In a way, this re-signification of American values seems to suggest that Estonia is prioritizing the ideas of the American New Right and dismissing those associated with the 1960s – 1970s progressive social movements.

The supposed dominance of feminist ideology, despite the fact that there is practically no widely known feminist activism in Estonia, has also spawned authors (e.g. a senior editor of Postimees whose work is prominent in the corpus) whose texts have over the years been consistently anti-feminist, defined by the authors as the protection of either freedom of speech or warding off a hostile ideological take-over of Estonian society. The corpus at hand, however, also contains several texts in which the almost misogynist stance of these authors is criticized (e.g. 00-6). Even if the critique goes relatively unheeded, it demonstrates at least some dialogicity in Estonian public discourse and suggests that the studied paper’s attempt to present an anti-feminist (near-)unanimity is a desired ideological position rather than a representation of the society’s spectrum of views.

Although plentiful anti-feminist and essentialist tropes appear in the texts, the corpus has scarce social conservative or religious conservative themes. Rather, the ideology that feminism is antagonistic to in the Estonian context is individualist or neo-liberalist. That is to say, what is supposedly threatened by feminism is not so much “family values” discourse but an unregulated, almost social Darwinist, ethos of competition. The possible linkages between feminist, especially liberal feminist, goals and neo-liberalism find almost no acknowledgement. There is but one text in the corpus where a positive link is forged between feminism and the dominant neoliberalist economic thought. It comes from the economic adviser of the then Prime Minister who states that “kiire majanduskasvu saavutamisele võiks aidata kaasa lisadoos feminismi” (fast economic growth could be spurred by an additional dose of feminism) (97-6). This, however, is a single incidence of such a joint appearance, and it does not find wider discussion.

The supposed triumph of feminism paradoxically appears side by side with references to its marginality (e.g. “feminism kuulub moes olevate marginaalsuste hulka” (feminism is one of the fashionable marginalities) (96-17)). The incompatibility of the ideas finds no acknowledgement. Not only is feminism suggested to be a passing fad but also an inherently empty international phenomenon the manifestations of which in the Estonian context are driven by self-interest, not any local need. Feminism is judged to be not only misguided but manipulative. E.g. “‘integratisooni’ impordiartikkel on ka feminism. Mõned nutikamad eesti tüdrukud taipasid 1990. aastatel, et selle najal saab lahedalt rallida mööda rahvusvahelisi konverentse. Imporditi teadjanaisi know-how’ga kuidas ‘vagiina jutustused’ teadusena maha müüa.” (One of the imported articles of ‘integration’ is also feminism. Some clever Estonian girls grasped in the 1990s that it can be used as a reason to travel to

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international conferences. They imported wise-women with know-how on how to sell ‘vagina monologues’ as research.) (05-4).

This type of a stance is accompanied with the claim that feminism is artificially creating problems where they do not exist (e.g. explicitly in the words of a woman commentator “feminism on minu arust proov tekitada midagi, mida ei ole olemas” (in my opinion feminism is an attempt to create something that does not exist) (98-17)).

An extension of the idea can be found in contexts where feminism is referred to as a “fashionable disease” (moehaigus), suggesting both its pathological nature and its lack of real substance. Feminism appears as a social problem, not a potential solution to social ills.

The negative marking of the term “feminism” is also recognized by people who are pro-feminist in their attitudes. For example, activists and officials associated with gender equality initiatives tend to prefer terms like “gender” (sugu), “equality” (võrdõiguslikkus), or “rights of men and women” (meeste ja naiste õigused) in order to avoid the negative connotations associated with feminism. The very few occasions when these essentially pro-feminist texts make references to feminism, they do so in negative grammatical constructions, for example, denying the narrowly feminist intent of gender equality policies. This further cements the public perception of feminism as a word with a negative semantic field and no interpellative appeal beyond the stigmatizing one, and in that offering a less optimistic view of interpellation than that suggested by Judith Butler (1997).

However, it would be misleading to suggest that the paper is completely hostile to feminism. The corpus also includes texts that are informed by feminist intent, for example, several pieces written by Estonia’s leading feminist art historian or prominent gender equality campaigners. Some of the texts are clearly written in response to a blatantly anti-feminist article, in an attempt to correct misrepresentations. However, the more positive references get drowned out in the general off-hand dismissal of the philosophy and practice of feminism. This is especially noticeable because, in refuting the prevalent anti-feminist notions, feminist authors have to repeat them and thus may covertly contribute to the survival of the negative attitudes (e.g. the article heading “Sinisukad ja kombainijuhid” (Blue-stockings and harvester drivers) conjures up a stigmatized image of feminism and also links it to the Soviet era when women were forced into equality with men in the field of low-prestige manual labour, but not in domains of power). Although the analysis here does not focus on the term “feminist” per se, references to it in the collected corpus allow us to state that there are very few particular individuals who identify themselves as feminists. In the context of hostile representational practices feminists and feminism remain a distanced “they” or a faceless Other.

However, there are also texts that seek to discuss the Estonian phobia about feminism critically. E.g. “üks nö. kuumadest teemadest meie massimeedias on feminism, võiks isegi öelda, et kõrvetav, sest ei julge eriti keegi ennast feministiks nimetada või kui, siis lisatakse kõikvõimalikke mööndusi nagu oleks feminismi mõiste iseenesest negatiivse konnotatsiooniga” (one of the hot, one could even say scorching, themes in our mass media is feminism because nobody dares to name oneself a feminist or, if they do, different qualifications are added, as if the concept of feminism itself had a negative connotation) (96-5). Similarly, there are references to the fact that, in the

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Estonian context, feminism is as negative a term as racism, and one observer astutely points out that for Estonians feminism is one of the central taboos (05-1).

There are also self-reflexive attempts to reframe and re-signify “feminism” by, first, making explicit the past negative marking and then filling the space with new content.

E.g. “mina olen feminismi poolt, sest mulle meeldib minu palk, positsioon ja sõnavabadus” (I am for feminism because I like my salary, position, and freedom of speech) (00-2). Or, even more eloquently, associating attitudes towards feminism with broader social attitudes: “Kas Eestil on feminismi vaja, sõltub eelkõige sellest, millises ühiskonnas me elada soovime. Kui me tahame, et see oleks demokraatlik ühiskond, kus inimõigusi respekteeritkse ja kus inimesed ei peaks oma eluvalikuid tehes lähtuma oma soost, on feministlik perspektiiv lausa hädavajalik.” (Whether Estonia needs feminism depends on the kind of society we want to live in. If we want it to be a democratic society which respects human rights and where people do not have to proceed from their gender in making decisions about their life, the feminist perspective is actually vital.) (00-9). These, however, are examples of a practice that appears in the corpus on only five occasions.

Conclusions It can be said that the corpus voices different opinions about and attitudes towards feminism, but not all voices are equal in the chorus heard by the reader. Although a limited corpus was studied and thus far-reaching generalizations cannot be made, the present study suggests that the prevailing representation of feminism in the Postimees is negative, not necessarily because of the explicit anti-feminism of the authors, but because of a habitual attribution of a negative connotation to the concept. This very normalized nature of negative references testifies to the marginalization and foreignization of feminism in the Estonian universe of discourse.

The analysis of the present corpus found no major change in this attitude in the duration of the ten years studied: although feminism was brought closer to the centre of social discussion from the relatively marginalized sphere of arts, its range of usage did not undergo a dramatic change towards the positive. As a result, even feminist authors seek to avoid the word “feminism” and employ less stigmatized synonyms.

Whether this leads to an increased acceptance of feminist attitudes is impossible to predict. The reigning universe of discourse has been hostile to ideologies critical of individualism and market fundamentalism this far, and the prevailing ideology has changed discourse on/of feminism, not vice versa, in this corpus and in society at large. That is to say, the prevalent definition of feminism through a negative prism creates a situation where people labelled with the title may be locked into the interpellative frame of the dominant negative stance, and attempts to refuse this discursive containment may have only limited effects (cf. questions raised by Barát 2005: 206). The anti-feminist status quo is also achieved by the opposite strategy of praising those social actors who reject feminist equality and/or critique. Since satisfying and rewarding non-feminist subject positions are available and socially preferred, people need not turn to the more challenging and socially marginalized feminist ones.

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It has to be added that the findings reflect the conservative views of the dominant ideology which the studied newspaper endorses, rather than Estonian reality as a whole. Although this is not reflected in the corpus studied, Estonia has for ten years had an academic journal on gender studies, gender studies courses are taught in universities, and there have been several successful feminist-identified public awareness campaigns. The Estonian government has passed gender equality legislation and has made progress in attending to gendered problems such as domestic violence. However, examples of feminist agency have not so far managed to mainstream feminism as an ideological position. The studied newspaper’s markedly negative stance suggests a dominant underlying social norm that may have been destabilized slightly by acts of feminist agency, but which has not been seriously weakened. The article does not want to draw up a dichotomy of discourse and praxis, however. As the feedback from readers on the paper’s electronic comments section shows, the majority of responding readers agree with the anti-feminist stance. This is not claimed to be the result of negative media coverage, but rather an example of the dialectical and mutually reinforcing interplay of media discourse and prevalent attitudes that continue to be largely anti-feminist, as also shown by social surveys.

After all, changing legislation is easier than changing prevalent values or the discursive terrain.

The analysis above, despite its limited nature, suggests that the discursively constructed “spectre of feminism” that has stalked Estonian public discourse since the 1990s has become a significant social actor, despite its lack of a material reality.

Discourses hostile to feminism have created a localized discursive “feminism”, antifeminist by nature, as a useful ideological gate-keeping tool: it keeps out undesirable influences that might potentially threaten the conservative and neo-liberalist status quo and at the same time disciplines Estonian women and men into accepting their tenets (e.g. unfettered freedom of markets, individualism, and competition) as the only common sense. On the one hand, feminism’s goals of social equality and its questions about hierarchies of gender—but also class, age, and ethnicity—can be marginalized because of their association with the supposedly alien and hostile ideological agenda of feminism. On the other hand, by loading feminism with a heavy burden of ideology, the dominant discourse, by claiming to stand for the neutral, objective, and common-sense, can hide its own ideological nature (cf. Gramsci 1988 or, from a more linguistic perspective, Van Dijk 2006). Because the neo-liberal agenda has seemed to work, until the present recession, in Estonia, its status as the natural course of development has been rather uncontested. It can be speculated that feminism’s presence as a near-universal scapegoat in media discourse has helped to nurture suspicion of social liberal values (equality of opportunity, human rights, civil liberties) in general which, because of this association, come to bear a similar stigmatizing ideological burden. Thus, by “doing feminism” within a very limited repertoire of discursive choices, the newspaper analysed “does the nation” within an equally rigid frame. The discursive “Othering” of feminism indirectly helps cement the neo-liberal stance of the national polity. (This nexus of anti-feminism and neoliberalism, with its complex web of interconnected ideas (collective rights, freedom, welfare state, subjectivity), as well as the complex interplay of power and resistance in

18

R. Marling

the post-socialist ideological landscape of Estonia, requires lengthier discussion than is possible here and is the topic of a future article.).

However, the discursively constructed, stigmatized and foreignized feminism, and possibly its demonization, has also spurred a back-lash of its own and led to the development of local feminist responses in society at large, even if they have found no coverage in the corpus studied. Dominant discourses speak from and help to cement existing ideological preferences, but because of the instability of hegemonic ideas they cannot be controlled fully and may give rise to resistances. The very prevalence of hostility towards feminism may in a way be a sign of insecurity, a manifestation of desperate attempts to bolster the “common-sense” in the context where is it increasingly coming to be questioned.

Acknowledgements I would like to thank my reviewers for their stimulating comments that not only enabled me to refine my argumentation and analysis, but also offered new critical avenues that I hope to make more fruitful use of in the future than the present article allows. It is a pleasure to be part of such constructive academic dialogue.

Research for this article was partially supported by Estonian Science Foundation Grant 8008.

Notes 1

According to September 2009 statistics from Internet World Stats (available at: www.internetworldstats.com/europa.htm; accessed 16 December 2009), Estonia has 68% Internet penetration, eighth in the EU. 2 The references to the specific locations of the corpus consist of the abbreviation of the year and then the number of the text in the corpus for that year.

3 All the translations of the examples are by the author of the article. References to the corpus are made only in the case of longer examples.

References Althusser, Louis (1971) Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays (New York: Monthly Review).

Barát, Erzsébet (2005) The “terrorist feminist”: strategies of gate-keeping in the Hungarian printed media, in: Michelle M. Lazar (Ed.) Feminist Critical Discourse Analysis. Gender, Power and Ideology in Discourse, pp. 205–228 (Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan).

Bourdieu, Pierre & Wacquant, Louis (2001) New liberal speak: notes on the new planetary vulgate, Radical Philosophy, 105, pp. 2–5.

Butler, Judith (1997) Excitable Speech. A Politics of the Performative (New York and London: Routledge).

Chouliaraki, Lilie & Fairclough, Norman (1999) Discourse in Late Modernity (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press).

Einhorn, Barbara (1993) Cinderella Goes to Market: Citizenship, Gender and Women’s Movements in East Central Europe (New York: Verso).

Entman, Robert M. (1993) Framing: toward clarification of fractured paradigm, Journal of Communication, 43(4), pp. 51–58.

Fairclough, Norman (2003) Analysing Discourse. Textual Analysis for Social Research (London and New York: Routledge).

Fowler, Roger (1991) Language in the News. Discourse and Ideology in the Press (London and New York: Routledge).

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Gal, Susan & Kligman, Gail (2000) The Politics of Gender After Socialism (Princeton: Princeton University Press).

Goffman, Erving (1974) Frame Analysis. An Essay on the Organisation of Experience (Cambridge: Harvard University Press).

Gramsci, Antonio (1988) An Antonio Gramsci Reader. Selected Writings, 1916– 1935 (New York: Schoken Books).

Hannerz, Ulf (1988) American culture, creolized, creolizing, in: Erik Asard (Ed.) American Culture, Creolized, Creolizing, pp. 7 –30 (Uppsala: Swedish Institute for North American Studies).

Havelkova, Hana (2000) Abstract citizenship? Women’s power in the Czech Republic, in: Barbara Hobson (Ed.) Gender and Citizenship in Transition, pp. 118–138 (London and New York: Routledge).

Lazar, Michelle M. (2005) Politicizing gender in discourse: feminist critical discourse analysis as political perspective and praxis, in: Michelle M. Lazar (Ed.) Feminist Critical Discourse Analysis. Gender, Power and Ideology in Discourse, pp. 1–28 (Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan).

Novikova, Irina (2006) Gender equality in Latvia: achievements and challenges, in: Jasmina Lukic, Joanna Regulska & Darja Zavirsek (Eds) Women and Citizenship in Central and Eastern Europe, pp. 101 –120 (Farnham: Ashgate).

Põldsaar, Raili (2003) Uneasy step-sisters: the contradictions of feminism in the globalising world, in: Krista Vogelberg & Ene-Reet Soovik (Eds) Encounters. Linguistic and Cultural-Psychological Aspects of Communicative Processes pp. 123–135 (Tartu: Tartu University Press).

Põldsaar, Raili (2007) Discursive (dis)connections: framing gender equality in American and Estonian public discourse, in: Ari Helo (Ed.) Communities and Connections. Writings in North American Studies, pp. 123–136 (Helsinki: Renvall Institute).

Põldsaar, Raili (2008) Gender equality reframed: Estonian experience and global context, in: Irina Novikova (Ed.) Gender Matters in the Baltics, pp. 13–33 (Riga: LU Akademiskais apgads).

Stivers, Richard (1994) The Culture of Cynicism. American Morality in Decline (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers).

Van Dijk, Teun A. (2006) Ideology and discourse analysis, Journal of Political Ideologies, 11(2), pp. 115–140.

Vihalemm, Peeter (2006) Media use in Estonia: trends and patterns, Nordicom Review, 27(1), pp. 17– 29.

Watson, Peggy (1997) (Anti)feminism after communism, in: Ann Oakley & Judith Mitchell (Eds) Who’s Afraid of Feminism?, pp. 144–161 (London: Penguin).

Raili Marling works as an Associate Professor in American Studies at the University of Tartu, Estonia. Her PhD thesis was dedicated to the critical discourse analysis of antifeminist rhetoric in conservative discourse in the United States. Her interdisciplinary research, which combines discourse analysis, gender studies, and cultural studies, has primarily focused on the comparative analysis of the politics of representation in public discourse and literature, with special focus on gender and power. She has published one monograph, twelve peer-reviewed articles, and seventeen other academic articles on gender studies, discourse analysis, American Studies and comparative literature. Raili Marling is an acting editor of Ariadne Lõng, Estonian journal of gender studies, an editor of Aspasia, International Yearbook of Central, Eastern and Southeastern European Women’s and Gender History, and a board member of the Estonian Women’s Studies and Resource Center.

Computers in Human Behavior 33 (2014) 179–183

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Computers in Human Behavior journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/comphumbeh

Research Report

Can you tell who I am? Neuroticism, extraversion, and online self-presentation among young adults Minas Michikyan a,b,c,⇑, Kaveri Subrahmanyam a,b, Jessica Dennis a,c a

Department of Psychology, California State University, Los Angeles, USA Children’s Digital Media Center @LA, California State University, Los Angeles, USA c Center for Multicultural Research, California State University, Los Angeles, USA b

a r t i c l e

i n f o

Article history: Available online 14 February 2014 Keywords: Self-presentation Personality Neuroticism Extraversion Facebook Social networking sites

a b s t r a c t The present study examined the link between neuroticism, extraversion, as well as presentation of the real, the ideal, and the false self on Facebook. Self-reports were collected from 261 young adults (ages 18–30) about personality, online self-presentation, and Facebook use. Level of extraversion was positively associated with Facebook activity level. A series of regression analyses revealed that young adults high in neuroticism reported presenting their ideal and false self on Facebook to a greater extent whereas those low in extraversion reported engaging in greater online self-exploratory behaviors. Findings suggest that young adults who are experiencing emotional instability may be strategic in their online self-presentation perhaps to seek reassurance, and those who have self-doubt further explore their self online. Ó 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction In recent years, social networking site (SNS) use has soared among 18–29 year olds [2005: 9% vs. 2012: 83%] (Brenner, 2013).

Facebook, the world’s most popular SNS, has over 1.11 billion users worldwide (Smith, 2013), accounting for almost 16% of the world’s population (United States Census Bureau, 2013). Of these Facebook users, 38% are between the ages of 18–29 (Facebook, 2013). Facebook has evolved over the years (Rahman, 2012), offering members more ways to connect with their family and friends (Subrahmanyam, Reich, Waechter, & Espinoza, 2008), and present information about themselves (Strano, 2008) and their whereabouts online (Manago, Taylor, & Greenfield, 2012). Self-presentation features prominently in young people’s use of SNSs (DeAndrea & Walther, 2011; Manago, Graham, Greenfield, & Salimkhan, 2008; Zhao, Grasmuck, & Martin, 2008), such as via profile pictures, status updates, and uploading of images and videos. Recent research suggests that youth present different aspects of their self online such as their real self, ideal self, and their false self (Michikyan, Dennis, & Subrahmanyam, submitted for publication), and it is important to examine how individual factors relate to different kinds of online self-presentation.

⇑ Corresponding author at: Department of Psychology, California State University, Los Angeles, 5151 State University Drive, Los Angeles, CA 90032, USA. Tel.: +1 (323) 343 2250; fax: +1 (323) 343 2281.

E-mail addresses: Minas.Michikyan2@calstatela.edu (M. Michikyan), ksubrah@ calstatela.edu (K. Subrahmanyam), jdennis@calstatela.edu (J. Dennis). http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2014.01.010 0747-5632/Ó 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Research on youth social media use suggests that factors such as psychosocial well-being, self-efficacy, and personality are associated with online self-presentation (Coyne, Padilla-Walker, & Howard, 2013; Gonzales & Hancock, 2011; Michikyan & Subrahmanyam, 2012; Subrahmanyam & Šmahel, 2011; Wilson, Fornasier, & White, 2010; Wilson, Gosling, & Graham, 2012). With regard to the role of personality in online self-presentation, however, research to date has only examined the relation between young people’s personality characteristics and the frequency of their SNS use (e.g., Ong et al., 2011; Ross et al., 2009), and suggests that neuroticism and extraversion may be central to social media use (Amichai-Hamburger & Vinitzky, 2010; Ross et al., 2009; Zywica & Danowski, 2008). Little is known however about the extent to which these personality characteristics may be related to different kinds of online self-presentation. Therefore, the aim of the present study is to examine the relation between neuroticism, extraversion, and presentation of the real self, the ideal self, and the false self on Facebook.

1.1. Differences in online self-presentation Mead (1934) proposed that a self emerges through social interaction, and understanding the self is essential in having a purpose in life (Schlegel, Hicks, King, & Arndt, 2011). In general, the self, or who one is, involves one’s personal, social, cultural as well as emotional experiences (e.g., Markus & Kitayama, 1991; Russell, 1991).

In offline or face-to-face social interactions, individuals carefully

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present, monitor, and manage the self to ensure the smooth flow of the interaction (Schlenker & Wowra, 2003). Brown has defined such self-presentation as the attempt to create, modify, or maintain a certain self-image in the presence of an audience (Brown, 2007). Research suggests that individuals generally observe their own behaviors and others’ reactions to them, and compare their own reactions and attributes to others when interacting socially (Festinger, 1950). In so doing, they engage in various selfpresentations (Elliott, 1982; Schlenker & Wowra, 2003). Selfpresentation is multifaceted (Harter, 1990, 1998; Harter, Bresnick, Bouchey, & Whitesell, 1997; Harter & Monsour, 1992) (e.g., one may present a false sense of the self to gain the approval of others), and it may foster identity construction (Harter, 1998; Subrahmanyam & Greenfield, 2008).

As noted earlier, youth interact with each other online including presenting their self in a variety of ways (Michikyan & Subrahmanyam, 2012). Recent studies have concluded that they use SNSs to present their real personalities (Back et al., 2010; Gosling, Gaddis, & Vazire, 2007). However, drawing on the theory of the self (Harter, 1990, 1998; Harter et al., 1997; Harter & Monsour, 1992), Michikyan and colleagues found that on Facebook, college students not only presented their real self (aspects that are authentic) and ideal self (who one wishes/desires to be), but they also presented their false self (aspects that are not fully truthful). Importantly, identity state and well-being were associated with such online self-presentation: Young adults who were experiencing emotional fluctuations and self-doubt presented their false self on Facebook to a greater extent (Michikyan et al., submitted for publication).

1.2. Personality differences in online behavior Online self-presentation may also be influenced by the presenter’s personality (Krämer & Winter, 2008; Ong et al., 2011; Ross et al., 2009). In general, personality includes one’s motives, thoughts, feelings and behavioral tendencies (McCrae & John, 1992), and can be categorized into broad characteristics (Costa & McCrae, 1992a,b). Each personality characteristic can be summarized by its personality markers – for example, anxious/moody (markers of neuroticism), and outgoing/social (markers of extraversion), and be considered as bipolar (extraversion vs. introversion) (Goldberg, 1992; Gosling, Rentfrow, & Swann, 2003). In general, neurotic individuals are overly emotional and tend to experience difficulties in their offline social interactions (Amichai-Hamburger, Wainapel, & Fox, 2002; McCroskey, Heisel, & Richmond, 2001). In their online interactions, they prefer to use chat rooms (McCroskey et al., 2001), instant messaging (Ehrenberg, Juckes, White, & Walsh, 2008), and SNS features like status updates (Wang, Jackson, Zhang, & Su, 2012) and wall posts (Ross et al., 2009) perhaps to mitigate some of their interaction concerns. Tosun and Lajunen (2010) suggested that neurotic individuals expressed their real self on the Internet, especially in anonymous online contexts (Amichai-Hamburger et al., 2002).

However, other evidence linking neuroticism and SNS use tells a more complex story. For instance, Back et al. (2010) found inconsistencies in accuracy ratings of SNS profiles belonging to neurotic young adults, suggesting that self-presentation is malleable, and that neurotic individuals may be strategic in their SNS self-presentation. However, it yet remains to be seen what aspects of the self are presented by neurotic young adults on SNSs, a less anonymous online venue. Thus, it was expected that young adults high in neuroticism would present their ideal self and their false self (for the purpose of deceiving and impressing others) on Facebook to a greater extent, as such online self-presentation may be intrinsically strategic (Michikyan et al., submitted for publication).

Extraverted individuals, on the other hand, find offline social interactions rewarding (Goby, 2006) and have been found to

express their real self offline (Amichai-Hamburger et al., 2002).

Unlike neurotic individuals, extraverts use social media to strengthen and extend their social networks thereby engaging in greater levels of online activities (Tosun & Lajunen, 2010; Wang et al., 2012). In examining young adults’ SNS profiles, Back et al. found that extraverted young adults presented their real self on the sites, suggesting that extraverts’ online lives are an extension of their offline lives (Back et al., 2010; Tosun & Lajunen, 2010). Stated differently, online self-presentation may be similar to offline self-presentation for extraverted individuals. Therefore, it was expected that there would be a significant relationship between extraversion and online self-presentation of the real self.

1.3. Focus of the present study Although the empirical evidence suggests that differences exist in how neurotic and extraverted individuals use Facebook (Back et al., 2010), the extent to which young adults high in neuroticism and extraversion present the real self, ideal self, and the false self on Facebook remains unclear. Given the popularity of Facebook (Brenner, 2013), and research that young adults present their multifaceted self on Facebook (Michikyan et al., submitted for publication), it is important to examine the likelihood of personality differences in such online self-presentation.

2. Method 2.1. Participants Young adults [N = 261, (66 males, 195 females); M = 21.92, SD = 2.76], were recruited from a large urban university. The ethnic make-up of the sample [18.7% Asian, 4.6% Black, 57.4% Latino/a, 10.3% White, and 9.3% other racial/ethnic groups] reflects the diverse population in Southern California. This data set is part of a larger project (Michikyan, 2011). On average, participants reported spending over two hours and forty minutes per day on Facebook (M = 145.06, SD = 123.89), logging into their Facebook profiles at least six times a day (M = 6.14, SD = 6.58), updating their status more than once per day (M = 1.37, SD = 1.91), and posting at least four wall posts per day on Facebook (M = 4.40, SD = 5.13). Participants completed all self-report measures in the laboratory, on www.surveymonkey.com (a survey hosting site), and received course credit for their participation.

2.2. Measures 2.2.1. Demographic questionnaire Participants’ age, gender, and racial/ethnic identity were collected using a demographic questionnaire.

2.2.2. Facebook use questionnaire This questionnaire comprised of questions about participants’ average daily use of Facebook: (1) Facebook time – the number of minutes spent on Facebook, and (2) Facebook activity level – the number of Facebook logins, status updates, wall posts, and participants’ perceived level of activity on Facebook were transformed to z-scores and summed (Cronbach’s a = .69).

2.2.3. Self-Presentation on Facebook Questionnaire (SPFBQ) The SPFBQ (Michikyan et al., submitted for publication) contains 17 items that assess different aspects of online self-presentation on a 5-point Likert-type scale (1 = strongly disagree to 5 = strongly agree). Sample items include: ‘‘The way I present myself on Facebook is how I am in real life’’ (real self, a = .81), ‘‘I post things on my Facebook to show aspects of who I want to be’’ (ideal self, a = .70), ‘‘I sometimes try to be someone other than my true

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self on Facebook’’ (false self deception, a = .79), ‘‘On Facebook I can try-out many aspects of who I am much more than I can in real life’’ (false self exploration, a = .72), as well as, ‘‘I try to impress others with the photos I post of myself on my Facebook profile,’’ and ‘‘I compare myself to others on Facebook’’ (false self impress/compare, a = .65). The 17 items loaded strongly on the five factors (Michikyan et al., submitted for publication). Higher scores indicated greater presentation of each aspect of the self. The raw scores were obtained and the mean for each self was calculated.

Table 1 Correlations for neuroticism, extraversion, Facebook time, & activity level.

Variables

1

2

3

1.

2.

3.

4.

– .56** .10 .07

– .07 .13*

–

FB time FB activity level Neuroticism Extraversion

4

.14*

–

Notes. FB = Facebook. p < .05. p < .001.

*

**

2.2.4. Personality characteristics An adapted version of the Ten-Item Personality Inventory (TIPI; Gosling et al., 2003) was used, which included additional personality characteristic markers for neuroticism and extraversion. Personality characteristic descriptors have been used to capture markers of the Big-Five dimensions (Goldberg, 1992; Saucier, 1994). For neuroticism, the additional characteristic descriptor included: nervous/moody/emotional (a = .76); for extraversion, the additional personality characteristic descriptors were: outgoing/ sociable/assertive/outspoken (a = .85). Participants indicated their level of agreement on each set of personality characteristic markers on a 5-point Likert-type scale (1 = strongly disagree to 5 = strongly agree). Higher scores indicated greater levels of neuroticism and extraversion. The responses for each personality characteristic marker were computed, the items for neuroticism and extraversion were aggregated, and then the mean was calculated.

2.3. Analyses Correlational analyses were employed to examine the relationship between neuroticism, extraversion, Facebook time, and activity level. Findings on personality characteristics–Facebook activity relationship have been inconsistent (Amichai-Hamburger & Vinitzky, 2010; Ross et al., 2009). Thus, a correlational analysis for neuroticism, extraversion, and each individual Facebook activity item (i.e., number of logins, status updates, wall posts, perceived level of activity) was also conducted. Then, a series of multiple regression analyses were used to determine the associations between neuroticism, extraversion, and online presentation of the real self, the ideal self, and the false self (deception, exploration, compare/impress).

3. Results 3.1. Relationships between neuroticism, extraversion, and Facebook activities The correlational analyses (Table 1) revealed that neuroticism was not significantly associated with reported Facebook time, or activity level. There was no significant correlation between extraversion and reported time spent on Facebook. However, there was a significant positive association between extraversion and Facebook activity level, suggesting that young adults high in extraversion reported engaging in greater Facebook activities.

Next, five, two-step hierarchical regression analyses (Table 2) were conducted to determine the extent to which neuroticism, and extraversion predicted online presentation of the real, the ideal, and the false self. In the first step, age, gender, race/ethnicity, Facebook time, and activity level were entered, and neuroticism, as well as extraversion were entered in the second step.

3.2. Presentation of the real self on Facebook The first analysis predicting online presentation of the real self using neuroticism, extraversion (F(2,237) = .06, p = .944, Adjusted

R2 = .10) was not significant. However, in this model, Facebook activity level (p < .0001) was a positive significant predictor of real self presentation, suggesting that young adults who were active Facebook users reported presenting their real self on the site to a greater extent.

3.3. Presentation of the ideal self on Facebook The second analysis predicting online presentation of the ideal self using neuroticism, extraversion [F(2, 237) = 3.68, p = .027, Adjusted R2 = .05] was significant. In this model, Facebook activity level (p = .005), and neuroticism (p = .024) were positive significant predictors of ideal self presentation on Facebook. Specifically, young adults who were more active Facebook users, and those who were high in neuroticism, reported presenting their ideal self on Facebook to a greater extent.

3.4. Presentation of the false self (deception) on Facebook The third analysis predicting online presentation of the false self (deception) using neuroticism, extraversion [F(2, 237) = 3.25, p = .041, Adjusted R2 = .02] was significant. In this model, neuroticism (p = .015) was a positive significant predictor of false self (deception) presentation on Facebook. Specifically, young adults high in neuroticism reported presenting greater levels of online self-presentation so as to deceive others.

3.5. Presentation of the false self (compare/impress) on Facebook The fourth analysis predicting online presentation of the false self (compare/impress) using neuroticism, extraversion [F(2, 237) = 5.10, p = .007, Adjusted R2 = .02] was significant. In this model, neuroticism (p = .003) was a positive significant predictor of false self (compare/impress) presentation on Facebook. Specifically, young adults high in neuroticism reported greater presentation of the self on Facebook so as to compare to and impress others.

3.6. Presentation of the false self (exploration) on Facebook The fifth analysis predicting online presentation of the false self (exploration) using neuroticism, extraversion [F(2, 237) = 6.18, p = .002, Adjusted R2 = .11] was significant. In this model, Facebook activity level (p = .001) and extraversion (p = .002) were significant predictors of false self (exploration) presentation on Facebook.

Specifically, young adults who were active Facebook users, and low in extraversion (high in introversion), reported engaging in greater self-exploratory behaviors online.

4. Discussion There is a growing body of work on personality and social media use among young adults. However, research concerning personality characteristics and self-presentation on SNSs remains scarce. An important question is whether young adults high in

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Table 2 Summary of hierarchical regression analysis for neuroticism and extraversion predicting self-presentation on Facebook (N = 261).

Real self

Ideal self

B (SE)

b

Variables/steps Step 1 Age Gender Race/ethnicity FB time FB activity level F(3, 239)

.02 .11 .01 .00 .08

.02 .03 .09 .01 .34***

Step 2 Neuroticism Extraversion F(2, 237)

.06 .02

R2

.13

DR 2

B (SE)

b

.02 .15 .01 .00 .11

.01 .03 .02 .01 .21**

.13***

.01 .29 .00

R2

.05 .08 .09

.13

False self (deception)

DR2

B (SE)

b

.02 .10 .01 .00 .07

.03 .12 .02 .04 .05

.05

.15* .07

.02 .05 .06

.08

R2

.03*

False self (compare/ impress)

DR2

B (SE)

b

.02 .14 .01 .00 .10

.03 .01 .03 .06 .04

.02

.16* .02

.01 .07 .08

.04

.03⁄

R2

False self (exploration)

DR2

B (SE)

b

.02 .13 .12 .00 .09

.05 .09 .04 .10 .25

.01

.20** .03

.06 .07 .05

.04**

R2

DR2

.09

.09***

.14

.05**

.06 .20**

Notes. FB = Facebook. Gender: 1 = men, 2 = women. * p < .05. ** p < .01. *** p < .001.

neuroticism and extraversion differ in how they present their real self, ideal self, and false self on Facebook. This paper sought to examine this question. With regard to Facebook use, results showed that neuroticism and extraversion were not associated with reported time spent on Facebook. Perhaps young adults high in neuroticism and extraversion are spending about the same amount of time on Facebook now that mobile access to such sites have become commonplace (Smith, Rainie, & Zickuhr, 2011). Findings did show, however, that Facebook activity level was positively associated with extraversion, suggesting that young adults high in extraversion were more active Facebook users. In terms of self-presentation on Facebook, as expected, a positive association was found between neuroticism and online presentation of the ideal self, and the false self (deception, compare/impress). These findings suggest that young adults high in neuroticism may present the self on Facebook to show who they want to be, to deceive others, and use social comparison to impress others to a greater extent. This may help explain Back et al.’s (2010) finding that there were inconsistencies in accuracy ratings for SNS profiles belonging to neurotic young adults. Interestingly, there was a negative association between extraversion and the online presentation of the false self (exploration); suggesting that young adults low in extraversion (introverts) may engage in self-exploratory online behaviors. Similar findings have been reported in previous research indicating that older adolescents may be more likely than their younger counterparts to engage in online self-exploration (Valkenburg, Schouten, & Peter, 2005). Although young adulthood (ages 18–29) is a distinct developmental period, there exist overlaps with adolescence.

In conclusion, this study demonstrated a link between neuroticism, extraversion and online presentation of the real, the ideal, and the false self. Findings provide empirical evidence that can help explain some of the personality patterns in different aspects of self-presentation on SNSs. Given that 83% of young adults are on SNSs (Brenner, 2013), it was important to understand the role of such sites in their lives, especially for those young adults who might be experiencing greater levels of psychological distress (marker of neuroticism). Perhaps young adults high in neuroticism are more selective in their self-presentation (Ross et al., 2009; Wang et al., 2012), opting to not present their real self on SNSs (less anonymous online contexts), as sharing such aspects of their self (e.g., emotional, anxious, moody) may lead to decreased levels

of perceived social support. Instead, they may present less truthful information about themselves or even lie (false self deception), use social comparison in their online self-presentation to impress others (false self compare/impress), and present aspects of who they want to be (ideal self) to perhaps increase their social connections and their perceived level of social support (Swickert, Hittner, Harris, & Herring, 2002). For young adults high in extraversion, on the other hand, SNS use might be an extension of their offline lives (Wang et al., 2012). However, those young adults who focus more on their internal experiences and have self-doubt (marker of introversion) (Goby, 2006) may engage in online behaviors to further explore the self. Findings also provide further support for Michikyan et al.’s (submitted for publication) contention that young adults who might be experiencing emotional fluctuations and identity transitions during young adulthood (Arnett & Schwab, 2013), may engage in a more strategic and self-exploratory behaviors on SNSs. Moreover, the use of the SPFBQ, which was developed using extant developmental theory of the self, provided a reliable and broader view of young adults’ Facebook use. Furthermore, a unique feature of the study was the use of an ethnically diverse sample; given the increasing diversity of the U.S., such a diverse sample enhances the generalizability of the results. Finally, controlling for the effects of age, gender, and race/ethnicity made it possible to investigate the unique contribution of neuroticism and extraversion to online presentation of the self.

Future studies should examine the relationships between other personality traits such as agreeableness, openness to experience, conscientiousness (Costa & McCrae, 1992a,b) and online presentation of the real, the ideal, and the false self. Research should also explore the relationship between the SPFBQ with other personality inventories (Costa & McCrae, 1992a). Researchers should control against possible social desirability effects in self-reported responses for online self-presentation, as this was not done in this study. In the future, studies should also examine how peer feedback moderates online self-presentation for young adults with different personality characteristics. Furthermore, considering that personality and self-presentation can change across time and across situations (Boyce, Wood, & Powdthavee, 2013; Kelly & Rodriguez, 2006), longitudinal data are needed to capture such changes. Although the study helped to answer some important questions, more research is needed to fully understand the links between other psychological factors and online self-presentation.

M. Michikyan et al. / Computers in Human Behavior 33 (2014) 179–183

Acknowledgements The authors wish to thank the research assistants at the Center for Multicultural Research, CSULA and Children’s Digital Media Center @LA, CSULA/UCLA.

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31 Media and discourse analysis Anne O’Keeffe

What is media discourse?

Media discourse refers to interactions that take place through a broadcast platform, whether spoken or written, in which the discourse is oriented to a non-present reader, listener or viewer. Though the discourse is oriented towards these recipients, they very often cannot make instantaneous responses to the producer(s) of the discourse, though increasingly this is changing with the advent of new media technology, as we shall explore. Crucially, the written or spoken discourse itself is oriented to the readership or listening/viewing audience, respectively. In other words, media discourse is a public, manufactured, on-record, form of interaction. It is not ad hoc or spontaneous (in the same way as casual speaking or writing is); it is neither private nor off the record. Obvious as these basic characteristics may sound, they are crucial to the investigation, description and understanding of media discourse.

Because media discourse is manufactured, we need to consider how this has been done – both in a literal sense of what goes into its making and at an ideological level. One important strand of research into media discourse is preoccupied with taking a critical stance to media discourse, namely critical discourse analysis (CDA). It is important that we continually appraise the messages that we consume from our manufactured mass media. The fact that media discourse is public means that it also falls under the scrutiny of many conversation analysts who are interested in it as a form of institutional talk, which can be compared with other forms of talk, both mundane and institutional. The fact that media discourse is on record makes it attractive for discourse analysts and increasingly so because of the online availability of newspapers, radio stations, television programmes and so on. Advances in technology have greatly offset the ephemerality factor that used to relate to media discourse, especially radio and television (where it used to be the case that, if you wanted to record something, it had to be done in real time).

It is a time of great change in media discourse, and this chapter aims to capture this moment, especially in the final section, where traditional notions of media discourse are challenged, in this time of opening up of the medium through Web 2 technologies.

How have print media been studied?

Linguistic analysis of the newspaper media is very often sceptical, and linguists sometimes see themselves as policing the subtle manipulation of language to distort reality. White (1997), for example, claimed that, by ‘severely’ circumscribing subjective interpersonal features in hard news reports, journalists can, through ‘objective’ language, purport to be neutral, essentially where formal language provides the veneer of neutrality. White suggests that the use of such an 441

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impersonal register is but ‘a rhetorical stratagem to aid the obfuscation of a reporter’s subjectivity’ (p. 130). However, quantitative measuring of media bias has largely been left to other disciplines, such as content analysis.

Of note, Biber et al. (1999) identify the language of newspapers as one of the four major registers in the English language, along with spoken conversation, academic writing and fiction. Much attention is given to ‘genre analysis’ (see Swales, 1990) in the linguistic study of newspapers. That is where the language used in print media is described in terms of what makes it different from other ‘genres’ of language, and in so describing it linguists aim to arrive at a better understanding of individual genre characteristics. For example, Toolan (1988) examines the language of press advertising. Other studies have examined sports reporting in newspapers (Wallace, 1977; Ghadessy, 1988; Bhatia, 1993). Register variation is covered in depth by Biber (1988); (1995) and Biber and Finegan (1994). In-depth treatments of the language of newspapers are relatively few.

The most comprehensive from a linguistic perspective come from Reah (2002, a reprint of 1998 edition) and Bednarek (2006a, b). Reah (2002) comprehensively characterizes what newspapers are, as well as providing a detailed treatment of newspaper headlines and their ‘manufacture’ through what is left in and what is left out and how words are ordered. Reah also takes a detailed look at newspaper audiences and their role and relationship with and for newspapers. Linguistically, Reah looks bottom-up at the impact of both lexical choice and syntax and discourse on the building and manipulation of meaning, using case studies from the press. Bednarek (2006a, b) present a corpusbased study of evaluation in newspapers based on a corpus of 100 newspaper articles comprising a 70,000 word corpus, from both tabloid and broadsheet media. Bednarek’s work is quantitative and she provides detailed explanations and justifications of her framework of evaluation and bias in newspapers. Given the superfluity of newspapers and the daily role they have in meaning-making, it is surprising how few linguistic studies there are, proportionally, of how they use language. The area of critical discourse analysis offers more potential as a framework for the analysis of newspapers and there has been a number of substantial works in this area. When coupled with corpus linguistics, it offers a very powerful tool for the analysis of how newspaper texts frame topics over time. We shall explore this further below. Overall, we can say that the discourse of newspapers has not been studied in any concerted way. We have learnt a lot from different perspectives, but so much more could be done in this respect, and perhaps with the easier availability of texts in electronic form more concerted progress will be made.

How have spoken media been studied?

Conversation analysis (CA) has been the prevailing methodology in the study of spoken media discourse, that is, radio and television. CA is a research tradition that has grown out of ethnomethodology, an area within sociology rather than linguistics. The influential work of Sacks, Schegloff and Jefferson has contributed to and strongly influenced research into spoken media discourse (for example Schegloff, 1968; Sacks et al., 1974; Schegloff et al., 1977; Sacks, 1992).

CA takes a ‘bottom-up’ approach to the study of the social organization of conversation, or ‘talk-in-interaction’, by means of a detailed inspection of recordings and transcriptions (Have, 1986). That is, it focuses in on how conversations are structured and organized locally turn by turn, and from this it makes inductive comments about social organization. As Scannell (1998) notes, the object of study for CA is social interaction rather than language. As McCarthy (1998) points out, this field offers the possibility of fine-grained descriptions of how participants orient themselves towards mutual goals and negotiate their way forward in highly specific situations. This makes it suitable for the study of many social situations, including media interactions. In the area of media discourse quite a substantial amount of CA research has amassed around news interviews, 442

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talk shows and radio phone-ins. By comparing turn sequential order in media interactions with those in mundane talk, much can be revealed. Moving above the level of individual turns or adjacency pairs, conversation analysts are also interested in identifying the ‘canonical’ structure of interactions, that is, the sequential norms of interaction in particular settings. Telephone call openings have received particular attention (Schegloff, 1968; Godard, 1977; Schegloff, 1986; Whalen and Zimmerman, 1987; Hopper, 1989, 1992; Cameron and Hills, 1990; Hopper et al., 1991; Hutchby, 1991, 1996a, 1996b, 1999; Halmari, 1993; Drew and Chilton, 2000 – among others). This has proven a very powerful comparative tool in the analysis of institutional interactions, including media discourse, because ‘baseline’ sequences of interaction from mundane conversation can be compared with interactions in institutional or other settings.

By way of example, Schegloff (1986) characterized the canonical structure for a phone call opening between ‘unmarked forms of relationships’ (that is, among people who are not particularly intimate, but who are not strangers) as having the following structural organization (Figure 31.1): Summons-answer:

0. Phone rings 1. Answerer: Hello

Identification-recognition: 2. Caller:

Hello Jim? 3. Answerer: Yeah 4. Caller: ‘s Bonnie

Greetings:

5. Answerer: Hi 6. Caller: Hi

‘How are you?’ sequences:

7. Caller:

How are yuh 8. Answerer: 9. Caller:

Fine, how’re you Oh, okay I guess

10. Answerer: Oh okay First Topic:

Figure 31.1

11. Caller:

What are you doing New Year’s Eve?

Canonical call opening between ‘unmarked forms of relationships’ (Schegloff 1986).

Hutchby (1991) provides these typical examples of radio phone-in openings: 1) 1.

2.

Presenter: John is calling from Ilford good morning Caller: .h good morning Brian (pause: 0.4) .hh what I’m phoning up is about the cricket.

(Hutchby, 1991: 120–121)

2) 1.

2.

Presenter: Mill Hill is where Gloria calls from good morning Caller: Good morning Brian hh erm re the Sunday opening I’m just phoning from the point of view hh as an assistant who actually does do this…

(Hutchby, 1991: 120–121)

By comparing the canonical turn structure of telephone opening (that is, what typically happens in a normal call between callers who are neither very intimate nor strangers) with a call opening from a radio phone-in we can immediately see how the stages or turn sequential order differs. We can see that the identification and recognition is carried out by the institutional power role holder, the 443

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presenter. We can see that the presenter’s first turn not only performs the function of summons and identification, it also includes the greeting. There is therefore a contracting, or attenuation, of turns as a function of the institutional interaction. However, this attenuation could also be referenced against work by Drew and Chilton (2000) who look at call openings between intimates, drawing on a corpus of calls made between a mother and daughter over a three twomonth period, where they found the attenuation of turns to be a function of the close relationship and regularity of the calls over time.

Most of the calls analysed by Drew and Chilton were for the purpose of ‘keeping in touch’, in other words there is normally no express purpose for calling other than to maintain contact. Mother and daughter call each other once a week, around the same time every week (Figure 31.2).

Summons

0. Phone rings

Answer + Identification-recognition +

1. Answerer: Hello

Greetings (‘How are you?’ also possible) 2. Caller:

Hello

3. Answerer: Oh hello First Topic:

4. Answerer: I’ve been waiting for you

Figure 31.2 Call openings between intimates after Drew and Chilton (2000).

Again, here we see attenuation of call stages. As Drew and Chilton point out, the relationship of the callers allows for the attenuation of the canonical stages because the callers are intimates, and because they are expecting the call. The voice sample provided by hello achieves all Schegloff’s stages of answering, identification/recognition and greeting in this interaction. O’Keeffe (2006) argues that radio-in presenters, in their public personae, build a pseudo-intimate relationship with their audience and, like in the mother–daughter calls, there is there both an intimacy and a regularity about the interaction. The show is on at the same time every day or week, callers ‘know’ the presenter and they call him or her. This pseudo-intimacy and pseudo-familiarity is borne out in the way that presenters talk about themselves as if ordinary friends with ordinary lives, as exemplified in this example from an Irish radio chat show: 3) Presenter: Caller: Presenter: Caller: Presenter: Caller: Presenter:

It’s Wednesday morning Anna good morning to you.

Good morning Gerry how are you?

Oh well [yawning] I’m good a little bit of sunshine this morning.

Oh well that’s good.

It’s had a positive effect on me anyway dunno about every.

Well I think it has on everybody hasn’t it?

It took me feckin well half an hour to put out the bins this morning that was the only thing that depressed me and then do you know do you ever have one of these ones where you know everything is going well Ryan then decides that he is going to put five or six of plastic sacks up on top of one bin that I’m wheeling right?

Caller: Yeah.

Presenter: And then puuff.

Caller: And they all fall.

Presenter: No one of them explodes all over me Caller: Stop. [laughter] That’s horrible.

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Presenter: <$E> laughter <$E> and I know you know that one or two of me neighbours are looking out at going ‘look at the big ejitt I knew that was going to happen to him’.

Caller: Yeah but they’d be looking at you y’see they wouldn’t look at me doing that.

Presenter: Ah well who knows.

Caller: Well I hope they wouldn’t anyway.

Presenter: Okay what do you want to talk to us about? (The Gerry Ryan Show RTÉ 2fm radio) Markers of pseudo-intimacy in extract 3 are:

• • •

• •

First name reciprocation: Anna – Gerry Informal non-verbal behaviour: presenter yawning Chit-chat and badinage: how are you/ I’m good a little bit of sunshine this morning/Oh well that’s good … I’m good a little bit of sunshine this morning, etc; reciprocation and repetition of discourse markers oh well by both presenter and caller; collaborative laughter.

Use of taboo language not normally associated with talk radio discourse: feckin and other nonstandard language: the Irish English for ejitt meaning idiot.

Talk about mundane domestic chores from the private life of the presenter (moving from public to private persona): talking about putting out the rubbish bins and the story of what went wrong.

Using corpus linguistics in tandem with other methodologies The study of turn structure and organization is the main means of looking at spoken media discourse within the framework of CA. Its main limitation is that it only allows for the close analysis of small amounts of interaction, and so it is more difficult to make generalizations about findings. A growing number of studies are using small corpora, however. O’Keeffe (2006) shows how a corpus-based approach can work well with CA as a means of analysing larger amounts of data. Let us take for example openings and closings. If we look at a small corpus of radio phone-ins – 55,000 words, all from the same show, Liveline, an afternoon show broadcast on Irish radio (RTÉ 1) – and we look at all of the closings across the corpus, we can make more general points than by looking closely at one or two alone. In all, there are 21 closings in the data and in 100 per cent of these we find discourse markers and thanks. The discourse markers operate as linguistic brackets to accompany the discourse markers symbiotically in many of the openings. These again are liminal items marking the boundary where the presenter shifts footing from the transient caller back to the relatively stable audience, to bring about the closing of the call in a collaborative manner. The opening patterns are the opposite. We find that the audience is addressed first, then the footing is changed to the caller by use of discourse markers and vocatives. For example: 4) Opening 1. Presenter: And next we head west Colm good afternoon to you.

2. Caller: Am good afternoon Marian.

3. Presenter: Colm McCarthy now you’re involved can you tell me how you got involved in Inis Mór and what you’re doing there?

4. Caller: Well we’re opening up a new heritage centre on on Inis Mór the largest of the Aran Islands am based on the story of the Aran sweater…

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In turn 1, the presenter addresses the audience: And next we head west, giving them a deictic orientation as to the location of the next caller. Also in turn 1, the presenter changes footing to address the caller. The vocative becomes the footing pivot Colm good afternoon to you. The repetition of the vocative in line 3, followed by the discourse marker now, moves into ‘business of the call’ phase. In the closing, we see a reversal of the footing pattern whereby the presenter typically uses discourse markers to signal closing (well in the extract 5) and finally uses a discourse marker plus the vocative to introduce the thanking phase. Notice the use of the pronoun us in turn 1 (extract 5) to signal the change of footing back to the audience. The presenter does not say ‘thank you very much indeed for talking to me’: 5) Closing 1. Presenter: Well well I suppose one way or the other I I I’ve a suspicion that people want certain things to go away but some things just won’t <laughs > am some things have to be faced anyway there you go. Ah listen Bishop Donal Murray thank you very much indeed for talking to us.

2. Caller: Not at all. Thank you very much.

3. Presenter: ⌊Okay all the best cheers bye bye.

In turn 1, the discourse marker well draws a line in the discourse and orients the caller and the audience to the forthcoming closing. The use of ah listen later in the same turn consolidates this process. On closer analysis, we find that in 67 per cent of all closings us is used, and we (presenter + audience) is used in 24 per cent of all closings. Here are some more examples: 6) …Obviously that’s what on your mind anyway Breda we’ll see what advice we can get I imagine people are going to say that you have an excessive prejudice against tattoos but we’ll see we’ll see okay?

2. Caller: …Thank you very much Marian.

3. Presenter: OK all the best Breda thanks a lot cheers thank you bye bye.

4. Caller: OK many thanks bye bye now. CD track 1. Presenter:

7) Presenter:

Right. Okay okay well I can tell you this much you could talk until the cows came home and you would not convince our first caller that it was a good idea however am there you go. Nora Donnelly thank you very much indeed for talking to us and thank you Una. Thank you. All the best. Bye bye.

8) Presenter:

Okay Catherine it’s a cautionary tale and of course it <unintelligible utterance> applies to the pill obviously and applies to other medication I mean to actually know what the side effects could be and to take steps as soon as you do and thank you very very much indeed for talking to us.

In the closings, we also notice another common feature, which collaboratively closes the call and ensures common ground for all the participants, namely the use of a coda, formulation or evaluation of the state of affairs. We find that these occur in 67 per cent of all closings. For example in the above extracts we find: 1)

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we’ll see what advice we can get I imagine people are going to say that you have an excessive prejudice against tattoos but we’ll see we’ll see

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2) 3)

I can tell you this much you could talk until the cows came home and you would not convince our first caller that it was a good idea however am there you go it’s a cautionary tale and of course it <unintelligible utterance> applies to the pill obviously and applies to other medication I mean to actually know what the side effects could be and to take steps as soon as you do.

Table 31.1 provides a summary of the quantitative analysis of presenter–audience address features in closings.

By using a corpus we can also examine the consistency and pragmatic specialization of certain patterns. Such evidence of lexico-grammatical systematicity at routines of openings, transitions and closings gives us a strong sense of a programme and its familiar and repeated structure. The routineness, created, repeated and sustained by the presenter, brings stability and familiarity to this mediated form of communication and thus simulates the kind of pseudo-intimacy that we find in the mother–daughter calls (cf. Drew and Chilton, 2000). One can illustrate this by using a concordance search for the high-frequency pattern of: ‘Right. Okay.’ We find that it clusters within the routine of call closings in the radio phone-in corpus and it is uttered by the presenter very often, being followed by a vocative (see Figure 31.3) to signal that the call is drawing to a close.

Table 31.1 A breakdown of the discourse features of presenter–audience features in closings Feature

Occurrence

Percentage

Discourse marker Thank Us Coda/formulation/evaluation Bye We

21 21 14 13 16 5

100% 100% 67% 62% 62% 24%

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24

<$1> Right. 0kay. Listen thank you very muc <$1> Right. Okay James thank you very much <$1> Right Okay Joe. Okay thanks a million <$1>?Right okay. <$2> <$1> <$E “Laughing”> Right okay. Okay all sorts of spin off <$1> Right. Okay. Okay well that’s a good a <$1> Right okay. <$2> <$1> Okay C <$1> Right okay <$E “chuckles”> <$2> <$1> Right okay. <$2> <$1> Right okay good to hear it nice to tal <$1> Right. Okay Áine Ní Chiarán thank you <$1> Denis? <$2> <$1> Right. Okay thank you very much indeed <$1> Right okay so you’re opperating stricl <$1> Right okay so let people be beware of <$1> Right okay Michael McDowell thank you <$1> Right okay so basically you want to kn and I’d recommend it to anyone. <$1> Right. Okay okay well I can tell you t <$1> Right okay Teresa thank you very much <$1> Right okay eh just before I let you go <$1> Um right right okay David. What are you <$1> Um right right okay David. What are you doing <$1> <$E laughs> Right okay okay </$E > right Emmett tha <$1> <$O2> Okay right okay Noel. All the best </$O2> b <$1>Right okay Thank you very much indeed

Figure 31.3 Presenter’s systematic use of right + okay [vocative] in call closings 447

Anne O’Keeffe

In the brief example about we mentioned the use of a vocative. This brings us into the area of pragmatics. The field of pragmatics also provides a worthwhile complement to corpus linguistics.

O’Keeffe (2006) illustrates in detail how it can play a key role as an analytical framework within the study of spoken media discourse. Issues of power and politeness are fundamental to this institutional context where the power role holder, the presenter on radio or television, is keen to downplay power through hedging and other politeness devices. O’Keeffe (2006) also highlights the importance of looking at deixis (‘pointing’, i.e. words and phrases that we use to point to people, things, time and place). In political interviews, it is always worthwhile exploring the use of pronouns, as exemplified in this extract from an interview, conducted in February 2003 as part of a special BBC Newsnight programme in the lead up to the invasion of Iraq. The interview was between the British prime minister at the time, Tony Blair, and BBC presenter Jeremy Paxman. It was held in front of a live public audience in Gateshead. In the later stages of the programme, the audience asked the prime minister questions. The transcript and video clip are available online.

Notice how the pronoun we is used and re-appropriated. What the audience use of we refers to is ‘the people of Britain who are against an invasion of Iraq’, while the prime minister’s use, to the contrary, refers to ‘we the people of Britain who must invade Iraq’: 9) Male: Tony Blair: Male: Tony Blair:

What are we going to accomplish with war?

Disarmament of Iraq, of the weapons of mass destruction.

And then we move round the world?

No, we don’t move round the world creating war on everyone, but what we do do is we do confront those countries that have this material and if we can do it through partnership and by agreement with them, we have to reduce the threat that they pose. Because otherwise this stuff will carry on proliferating and it will be traded round the world and that causes a threat to us… . (South Africa. 6 February 2003. Full transcript and actual interview available at: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/ hi/programmes/newsnight/2732979.stm)

Another bedfellow of corpus linguistics in the study of media discourse is critical discourse analysis.

One of its main exponents in relation to media discourse is Fairclough (1989, 1995a, b, 2000).

CDA, according to van Dijk (2001: 352), is a type of discourse analytical research that primarily studies the way social power abuse, dominance and inequality are enacted, reproduced and resisted by text and talk in the social and political context. Van Dijk (2009) observes that critical studies of discourse are problem-led rather than discipline or theory oriented. Obvious examples of problems that relate to abuses of power and injustice are in relation to gender, race and class.

Critical scholars, according to van Dijk, are interested in the way ‘discourse (re)produces social domination, that is the power abuse of one group over others, and how dominated groups may discursively resist that abuse’ (van Dijk, 2009: 63). However, the impact of CDA in the study of the discourse of media may have been lessened by the largely qualitative nature of CDA, whereby single texts were often the basis for analysis and hence limited the scope for generalization of findings. CDA studies looked at how single texts framed issues. The wider availability of newspaper texts in electronic form has allowed for the merging of the more quantitative approach from corpus linguistics with CDA to provide a very sharp analytical tool. As O’Halloran (2010: 563) comments: Before corpus linguistics became mainstream, CDA examined such framings in single texts at a particular point in time, or over a very short period. One of the advantages of the abundance of media texts in electronic form … is the ease with which corpora can be assembled for 448

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revealing the following: how media texts might be repeatedly framing issues or events which are reported over a significant period of time.

CL has proved a boon for CDA. As O’Halloran (2010) notes that, increasingly, critical discourse analysts employ corpora in their investigations of media discourse and points out that, by using corpus investigation, critical discourse analysts can now gain insight into the kinds of cultural and ideological meanings being circulated regularly.

Looking to the future: new frameworks Let us return to the definition of media discourse. At the outset, we said that it refers to interactions

Protracted time between writing and reading

that take place through some broadcast platform, whether spoken or written, in which the discourse is oriented to a non-present reader, listener or viewer. We also said that, though the discourse is oriented towards these recipients, they very often cannot make instantaneous responses to the producer(s) of the discourse. However, at the time of writing, we are in the midst of a major change in terms of how and who mediates the discourse. Our traditional paradigms are rapidly becoming outmoded by virtue of their limited view of the limitations of audience participation. The change is driven by new media, their opening up of how to broadcast your thoughts far and wide and how audiences can respond to what they see, hear or read, instantly. This throws up in the air our traditional notions of the institutional participation framework of media discourse, both spoken or written. Let us consider in detail this changing notion of participation frameworks of media discourse.

The phrase ‘participation framework’ comes from Goffman (1981). Essentially, it refers to the communicative environment within which media discourse happens, and core to that context is not only the producer(s) of the discourse but also the consumers – the audience. In the case of written discourse, the participation framework comprises an author or authors (the media persona) who broadcasts through the written medium to a reader or readers. What is produced may be read at any time after it is published (Figure 31.4).

In the case of spoken media discourse, the participation framework is made up of a studio-based media person, often interacting with a guest or another media person, in the studio, on location or on a phone line, and their interaction is broadcast either though an audio channel alone or through an audio-visual channel. It is consumable as soon as it is broadcast, or it may be recorded or downloaded and listened to at a later stage (Figure 31.5).

Up until the advent of Web 2 technologies (internet, social networking, blogs, wikis, videosharing and more) and other advances (mobile phone technologies, advances in hardware), these

Author

text

Audience

Figure 31.4 Basic participation framework for written discourse 449

Consumable instantaneously

Anne O’Keeffe

presenter

guest

text

Audience

Figure 31.5 Basic participation framework for spoken discourse

two basic participation formats would have covered most possible forms of media discourse. Now, however, media discourse is at a new stage, where the participation frameworks have altered in a number of ways. There are greater levels of intertextuality and a blurring of the lines between spoken and written media. Newspapers have web and video links as well as sound clips and opinion polls. Television programmes have text on screen, websites to follow up on, chatrooms and so on. Radio programmes can talk about pictures and visual items and post them on their website for listeners to see; they can have a webcam in their studio so that audiences can ‘see’ them on the radio. The advent of social networking sites means that television and radio programmes can be ‘re-broadcast’ within micro-participation frameworks. The social networking sites themselves have the potential to connect with larger audiences than some television, radio or newspaper articles. Facilities such as twitter allow individuals to generate broadcast thoughts to which others can respond to. In summary, we can say that: 1)

2)

3)

the reader is no longer reading an article in protracted isolation; s/he can comment on it via a website, email it to a friend, post it on a social network for others to discuss it. Journalists and commentators often respond to the comments posted in reaction to their articles, thus creating an extension of the process–product–process–(product–process)…; the audience is no longer a passive recipient or eavesdropper in the case of radio and television; its members can very often text the programme and have that text read out, they can join a chat with each other, they can post a link to the programme on a social network or blog and have others listen/view it and comment. They can take part in audience opinion polls via text message or weblink; the ephemerality of the spoken and written media is lessened by the ripple effect that email, websites and social networks can have; when a consumer reads/listens to/views something that s/he or she wants to react to, s/he can spread it around over time to others, who will then consume it, possibly comment on it at a later date and pass it on further, and so on.

This calls for a new understanding of media participation frameworks. The following figures are proposed as a starting point for new ways of looking at the participation frameworks of new written and spoken media (Figures 31.6 and 31.7).

The opening up of the feedback channel from the audience means that we find new patterns of interaction; for example, we regularly hear presenters say things like ‘A text in from Peter in Warwick says …’ or ‘we have a number of texts suggesting …’. Our news broadcasts can have ticker tapes running with text responses to what viewers are watching in real time. Whereas before we might get a colour piece giving us a random recording of the vox populi in some streetscape on 450

Protracted time between writing, reading and potential ripple

Media and discourse analysis

Author

text

Audience

Consumable overtime and subject to ripple response

Figure 31.6 New participation framework for written discourse

presenter

guest

text

Audience

Figure 31.7 New participation framework for radio and television discourse

some issue of the day (e.g. a vox pop piece within a radio or television programme on what people stopped in the street think of X), this has now become much more spontaneous and instantaneous.

Social networking sites, twitter, discussion boards and blogs are just some of the formats that allow anyone to broadcast from the profound (what’s the meaning of life?) to the practical (anyone know how to fix an ipod?) and even to the minute (I’m off to bed now).

The discourse of social networking sites is an exciting area, waiting to be substantially researched and described. Here are some typical interactions from social networking sites: 10) Post 1 A: Post 2 B: Post 3 C:

Back in Melbourne, Canberra wouldn’t just set my world on fire …

Hey [nickname] were you trying to skype me per change? I am an hour ahead here. I am off today, it’s a bank holiday definately [sic] chat soon x that’s [sic] what you get for going there when everything is happening in Melbourne – see you next week

11) (this post was spread over a 28-hour period) Post 1 A: Post 2 B: Post 3 A: Post 4 C:

[name] is waiting for furniture … it’s still here, sorry!

Hmm. Some of it is here, just not mine … The wireless is work, though! where (and what) did you order?!?!

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Post 5 A: Ha! I didn’t really order anything, [name of C]. My department is moving to a different building on campus and I’m just waiting for my desk, bookcases, crates and filing cabinets to arrive. I like the new space – it’s just a little empty right now…

Post 6 D:

a bit too much space then;) have you tried out the acoustics before all the stuff comes in?

Post 7 A: Ha, yes, the acoustics are good!

All my furniture and crates are here now. Anyone wanna help me unpack??:) Post 8 E: Any time, if you help me get rid of the fridges in my living-room.

Post 9 A: Oh dear… sounds painful but then having a fridge in the living-room may actually be quite convenient. Nobody has to go far from the soda to get refreshments and snacks… I’m done with the crates and will start decorating now!

Post 10 E: I can see the possible bright side – but now the fridges (two) are gone! So little space feels like so much!

These interactions push us into new ground as discourse analysts. On initial perusal, the following are noteworthy in terms of their description:

• • • • • • •

the language use is closer to spoken than written discourse, the language is informal and marked by emoticons and exclamations to create a sense of nonverbal communication and co-presence, however, these interactions, though they appear to simulate face-to-face interaction, do not always happen in real-time. The ten posts in extract 11 happened over 28 hours, posts roughly equate to turns, sequences of posts roughly equate to an exchange, posts are not ephemeral; they remain to be read and responded to at an indefinite time after they have been written. They are therefore much more ‘on record’ than a spoken interaction, conventions of written grammar can be flouted with relative impunity (especially spelling, punctuation and grammar).

In summary, it is an exciting time in the study of media discourse because all of the parameters are changing; all of the modes of communication are opening up to the vox populi. It is the challenge of discourse analysts to come up with new paradigms and appropriate methodologies to encapsulate and describe all of these new frontiers of communication.

Related topics Conversation analysis Critical discourse analysis Creativity in discourse Multimedia analysis Discourse and knowledge

Further reading Durant, A. and Lambrou, M. (2009) Language and Media: A Resource Book for Students. London: Routledge.

This book gives a comprehensive introduction to the study of media genres. It also collates key readings and is accompanied by a supporting website. Of particular use to research students is the section on exploring examples of language data.

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O’Halloran, K. (2010) ‘How to use corpus linguistics in the study of media discourse’, in A. O’Keeffe and M. J. McCarthy (eds.) The Routledge Handbook of Corpus Linguistics. London: Routledge, pp. 563–577.

This article provides a very good insight into the application of corpus linguistics to critical discourse analysis, using a corpus of articles from the UK newspaper The Sun as a case study.

Bednarek, M. (2006) Evaluation in Media Discourse: Analysis of a Newspaper Corpus. London: Continuum.

This is a very thorough corpus-based study of evaluation in newspapers on the basis of a corpus of 100 newspaper articles comprising a 70,000 word corpus, from both tabloid and broadsheet media.

Methodologically, it is a good example of the use of corpus linguistics in the study of newspaper texts.

O’Keeffe, A. (2006) Investigating Media Discourse. London: Routledge.

This volume provides an exploration of spoken media discourse using a combination of approaches including conversation analysis, discourse analysis and pragmatics in the exploration of a corpus of over 200,000 words of spoken media interactions.

Reah, D. (2002) The Language of Newspapers. Second Edition. London: Routledge.

A detailed treatment of newspaper discourse and its wider context, including a detailed look at audiences and their role and relationship with newspapers. It looks at the impact of language and discourse on the building and manipulation of meaning, using case studies from the newspapers.

References Bednarek, M. (2006a) Evaluation in Media Discourse: Analysis of a Newspaper Corpus. London: Continuum.

Bednarek, M. (2006b) ‘Evaluating Europe – parameters of evaluation in the British press’, in C. Leung and J. Jenkins (eds.) Reconfiguring Europe – the Contribution of Applied Linguistics. London: BAAL/Equinox (British Studies in Applied Linguistics), pp. 137–156.

Bhatia, V. K. (1993) Analysing Genre: Language Use in Professional Settings. London: Longman.

Biber, D. (1988) Variation Across Speech and Writing. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Biber, D. (1995) Dimensions of Register Variation: A Cross-Linguistic Comparison. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Biber, D. and Finegan, E. (1994) Sociolinguistic Perspectives on Register. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Biber, D., Johansson, S., Leech, G., Conrad, S., and Finegan, E. (1999) Longman Grammar of Spoken and Written English. Essex: Longman.

Cameron, D. and Hills, D. (1990) ‘ “Listening in”: negotiating relationships between listeners and presenters on radio phone-in programmes’, in G. McGregor and R. White (eds.) Reception and Response: Hearer Creativity and the Analysis of Spoken and Written Texts. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, pp. 53–68.

Drew, P. and Chilton, K. (2000) ‘Calling just to keep in touch: regular and habitual telephone calls as an environment for small talk’, in J. Coupland (ed.) Small Talk. London: Longman, pp. 137–162.

Fairclough, N. (1995a) Media Discourse. London: Arnold.

Fairclough, N. (1995b) Critical Discourse Analysis. London: Longman.

Fairclough, N. (1988) ‘Discourse representation in media discourse’, Sociolinguistics, 17: 125–139.

Fairclough, N. (1989) Language and Power. London: Longman.

Fairclough, N. (2000) New Labour, New Language. London: Routledge.

Ghadessy, M. (1988) ‘The language of written sports commentary: soccer – a description’, in Ghadessy, M. (ed.) Registers of Written English: Situational Factors and Linguistic Features. London and New York: Pinter Publishers Ltd, pp. 17–51.

Godard, D. (1977) ‘Same setting, different norms: phone call beginnings in France and the United States’, Language in Society, 6: 209–219.

Goffman, E. (1981) Forms of Talk. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.

Halmari, H. (1993) ‘Intercultural business telephone conversations: a case of Finns vs. Anglo-Americans’, Applied Linguistics, 14 (4): 408–430.

Hopper, R. (1989) ‘Sequential ambiguity in telephone openings: “what are you doin” ’, Communication Monographs, 56 (3): 240–252.

Hopper, R. (1992) Telephone Conversation. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University.

Hopper, R., Doany, N., Johnson, M., and Drummond, K. (1991) ‘Universals and Particulars in Telephone Openings’, Research on Language and Social Interaction, 2 (4): 369–387.

Hutchby, I. (1991) ‘The organisation of talk on talk radio’, in Scannell, P. (ed.) Broadcast Talk. London: Sage, pp. 119–137.

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Hutchby, I. (1996a) Confrontation Talk – Arguments, Asymmetries, and Power On Talk Radio. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Hutchby, I. (1996b) ‘Power in discourse: the case of arguments on a British talk radio show’. Discourse and Society 7(4), pp. 481–497.

Hutchby, I. (1999) ‘Frame attunement and footing in the organisation of talk radio openings’, Journal of Sociolinguistics, 3: 41–64.

McCarthy, M. J. (1998) Spoken Language and Applied Linguistics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

O’Halloran, K. (2010) ‘How to use corpus linguistics in the study of media discourse’, in A. O’Keeffe and M. J. McCarthy (eds.) The Routledge Handbook of Corpus Linguistics. London: Routledge, pp. 563–577.

O’Keeffe, A. (2006) Investigating Media Discourse. London: Routledge.

Reah, D. (2002) The Language of Newspapers. Second Edition. London: Routledge.

Sacks, H. (1992) Lectures on Conversation. Oxford: Blackwell.

Sacks, H., Schegloff, E. A., and Jefferson, G. (1974) ‘A simplest systematics for the organisation of turn-taking for conversation’, Language, 50 (4): 696–735.

Scannell, P. (1998) ‘Media – language – world’, in A. Bell and Garrett, P. (eds.) Approaches to Media Discourse.

Oxford: Blackwell, pp. 251–267.

Schegloff, E. A. (1968) ‘Sequencing in conversational openings’, American Anthropologist, 70: 1075–1095.

Schegloff, E. A. (1986) ‘The routine as achievement’, Human Studies, 9: 111–152.

Schegloff, E. A., Jefferson, G., and Sacks, H. (1977) ‘The preference for self-correction in the organization of repair in conversation’, Language, 53: 361–382.

Swales, M. (1990) Genre Analysis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ten Have, P. (1986) Issues in Qualitative Data Interpretation, Paper read at the International Sociological Association, XIth World Congress of Sociology, New Delhi, August 1986. Available online at: http://www.paultenhave.nl/mica.htm (accessed 23 October 2010).

Toolan, M. (1988) ‘The Language of Press Advertising’, in Ghadessy, M. (ed.) Registers of Written English.

London: Pinter Publishers, pp. 52–64. van Dijk, T. A. (2001) ‘Critical Discourse Analysis’, in D. Schiffrin, D. Tannen, and H. Hamilton (eds.)

The Handbook of Discourse Analysis. Oxford: Blackwell.

Wallace, W. D. (1977) ‘How registers register: a study in the language of news and sports’, Studies in the Linguistic Sciences, 7 (1): 46–78.

Whalen, M. R. and Zimmerman, D. H. (1987) ‘Sequential and institutional context in calls for help’, Social Psychology Quarterly, 50 (2): 172–185.

White, P. (1997) ‘Death, Disruption and the Moral Order: the Narrative Impulse in Mass-Media “Hard news” Reporting’, in F. Christie, and J. R. Martin (eds.) Genre and Institutions. London: Cassell, pp. 101–133.

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Paolo Orrù, Racist Discourse on social networks: a discourse analysis of Facebook posts in Italy Rhesis UniCa, Paolo Orrù

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Racist Discourse on social networks: a discourse analysis of Facebook posts in Italy Paolo Orrù (Università di Cagliari)

Abstract The paper addresses the way people elaborate and share resentment against immigrants on social networks.

Since its beginning in 2008, the financial crisis established itself as the main topic in Italian media discourse, monopolizing almost the whole public debate. Although anti-immigrant discourse is not a novelty in the European public sphere, the long recession in Italy has strengthened this kind of feeling. At the same time social networks, especially Facebook, grew in popularity and importance, establishing itself as a powerful means of sharing information, objectives and opinions.

The corpus of our analysis is composed by status updates and images posted on four Facebook public pages related to anti-establishment or generic protest topics. Moreover, this kind of material easily circulates on other more general groups and pages and is frequently shared by ordinary users on their personal profiles.

The analysis explores some of the main issues in racist discourse (illegal arrivals, crime, social struggle and denial of racism). In our study we take into account lexical items, rhetorical forms (metaphors, hyperbole) and arguments employed to set immigrants as antagonists of ordinary Italian people. Our aim, therefore, is to understand how new media help to strengthen racist discourse in everyday interaction.

Key words – Racist discourse; social networks; Facebook; discourse analysis; web discourse

1. Introduction Although biological features (such as skin colour and appearance) still play a crucial role in self-representation as a member of a community, the concept of “racism” significantly evolved during the second half of the 20th century, moving away from its biological basis towards new, and more subtle, ways of exploitation, centred mostly on social and cultural elements1. Nonetheless, what van Dijk (2000) called «everyday racism» consists of a wide range of social practices, perpetrated by the elite, that prevent migrants from accessing material and symbolic resources (better jobs and wages, better education, high social positions etc.). The aim of this study is to analyse how people/users process and share resentment against immigrants on the Internet, hence reproducing and constantly reinforcing racist stereotypes that affect intergroup relationships.

1 «Especially in Western Europe, in particular in the countries that have immigrant workers from several Mediterranean countries, the discourse of race and racism has gradually taken a more sophisticated form by focusing primarily on “ethnic” properties of minority groups, and by emphasizing “cultural” differences. Hence, racism needs a more general, socio-cultural correlate, namely, ethnicism (MULLARD 1985), to account for prejudice and discrimination against ethnic minority groups in general» (VAN DIJK 1987: 28).

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These discriminatory social practices are based upon systems of the socially shared ideas of a group, that – if we are to use van Dijk’s terminology – we can call ideologies. Thus, they may be considered cognitive structures that organize shared beliefs regarding certain social groups «such as their identity, their position in society, their interests and aims, their relations to other groups, their reproduction, and their natural environment» (VAN DIJK 2000: 14). Some of these features, especially the definition of ingroup and outgroup identities, are particularly affected by processes of categorizing and stereotyping. Even if it is somewhat commonplace to state the importance and centrality of categorization in the organization of human-encyclopaedic knowledge, it still represents a necessary point of departure for understanding prejudice and racist behaviour.

As a means of mental representation, stereotypes are not necessarily negative per se: they provide the oversimplification and generalization the mind needs to process information and to give order to reality (TAJFEL 1981a; ALLPORT 1954). In addition to this primary cognitive task, stereotypes play a fundamental social function: they are used to mark social distance and difference between ingroup and outgroup. According to Quasthoff: One of the devices which members use to mark social differences, to differentiate “us” from “them” is the use of stereotypical attributions with respect to one’s own group and the respective outgroups (“auto-” and “hetero-stereotypes”). These stereotypical attributions fulfil a double function within the social patterning. Firstly, they are shared by the other members of the ingroup and thus establish or strengthen the ingroup solidarity, define the co-members as “belonging to us”. Secondly, they mark the difference between “us” and “them” by attributing traits to “them” which are different from the way “we are”. (QUASTHOFF 1989: 191)

Therefore, categorization involves both the self and the other. In social identity theory (HOGG and ABRAMS 2006 [1998], TAJFEL 1981a, TAJFEL and TURNER 1985, TURNER 1981) self-categorization – through ‘autostereotypes’ in Quasthoff words – leads individuals to perceive themselves as members of a homogenous group, to have the same biological, cultural and emotional traits of other members of that group and develop «category-congruent behaviour on a scale which is stereotypic (in the broad sense above) of the category» (HOGG, ABRAMS 2006 [1998]: 19). Individuals are, also, led to build their own identity through comparison and contrast with other groups2; hence, differences between groups are systematically emphasized, while there is a major tendency to apply pejorative stereotypes to outgroups and more positive ones to ingroups. But stereotypes, according to Tajfel (1981b), are also involved in the broader interpretation of reality with three key functions: social causality; social justification; social differentiation. The first concerns the interpretation of a social event by considering a social group directly responsible. The second «refers to the formulation of a specific stereotype of a group in order to justify actions committed or planned against that group» (HOGG, ABRAMS 2006 [1998]: 68). The third has to do with the abovementioned general tendency to exaggerate differences between groups. These three social functions help humans to make sense of complex events occurring around them.

2 «Above all, and directly contrary to the form in which they are constantly invoked, identities are constructed through, not outside, difference. This entails the radically disturbing recognition that it is only through the relation to the Other, the relation to what it is not, to precisely what it lacks, to what has been called its constitutive outside that the “positive” meaning of any term – and thus its “identity” – can be constructed. Throughout their careers, identities can function as points of identification and attachment only because of their capacity to exclude, to leave out, to render “outside”, abjected» (HALL 2000: 18).

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Discourse3 is one of the main instruments through which these social representations become «the contemporary version of common sense» (MOSCOVICI 1981: 181). According to this view, we can adopt Fairclough’s definition of discourse as «language as social practice determined by social structures» (FAIRCLOUGH 1989: 17). Hence, language is looked on as in a constant and mutual relationship with social matters, so that it is constantly socially shaped and socially shaping (FAIRCLOUGH 1995: 55); thus, texts (oral, written or multimodal) are partially responsible for forming identities, knowledge, and relationships.

The entire process of meaning-making that emerges from discourse occurs within an increasingly wide and new public sphere, so wide that it has now evolved into a kind of «seconda dimensione di socialità, trasversale ed inclusiva, sempre più despazializzata e virtuale»4 (GROSSI 2004: 126). The evolution of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) is both a product and an agent in the process of (re)shaping social and political change.

Not only does the “network society” – to use Castells’ term – have an extraordinary means of communication5 in the Internet, but also one which is especially powerful in creating new identities and communities or reinforcing old ones: In a world of global flows of wealth, power, and images, the search for identity, collective or individual, ascribed or constructed, becomes the fundamental source of social meaning. This is not a new trend, since identity, and especially religious and ethnic identity, has been at the roots of meaning since the dawn of human society. Yet identity is becoming the main, and sometimes the only, source of meaning in an historical period characterized by widespread destructuring of organizations, delegitimisation of institutions, fading away of major social movements, and ephemeral cultural expressions. (CASTELLS 2000 [1996]: 3)

As a result, these forms of communication are part of the dynamics of a political community. They help form public opinion and exert some influence on politicians, journalists and other social actors.

Former local identities are more and more in crisis in a new and expanding globalised world, where migration is changing the make-up of Western societies. Thus, widespread racism and xenophobia could be seen as people’s reaction to deep processes of institutional and economic change – such as the European integration process or the Great Recession –, which threaten common national identities and the economic status quo, consequently forcing European citizens to feel as if they are constantly struggling with the other for material and symbolic resources (VAN DIJK 1987; COTESTA 1995).

2. The Internet in Italy In 2013, the percentage of households owning a personal computer (62.8%) and having access to the Internet at home (60.7%) in Italy increased as compared to the previous year6.

3 Not only in its main meaning of “language in use”, but also in the foucaldian terminology of sets of propositions

about specific phenomena that «systematically form the objects of which they speak» (FOUCAULT 1972: 49).

4 “a second dimension of sociality, inclusive and cross-cutting, more and more de-spatialised and virtual”.

5 «[g]razie anche ai suoi tratti peculiari, come l’interattività e la velocità, l’orizzontalità e il policentrismo, il pluralismo. È un mezzo che facilita, per i bassi costi, il superamento delle barriere spazio-temporali in ambito informativo e comunicativo. Offre, al tempo stesso, uno spazio sociale e civico di segno nuovo» (CECCARINI and DI PIERDOMENICO 2010: 347). “[t]hanks to its peculiar characteristics, such as interactivity, immediateness and transversality. It is a means which facilitates, thanks to its low costs, the crossing of time and spatial barriers in the field of information and communication. At the same time, it offers a new type of social and civic space”.

6 Figures taken from the Istat (Istituto nazionale di Statistica) surveys available at ‹http://www.istat.it/it/archivio/108009›.

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At the same time, the percentage of people using the web to interact with others through social networks increased by 5 percentage points, totalling 53.2% during 2013.

The highest increase in the use of social networks was seen in adults aged 35-44, +8% and 55-59, + 10%. As regards social networks, Facebook is definitely the most popular.

Out of the 35,800,000 Italian Internet users, Facebook subscribers totalled 23,202,604 at the end of 20127, establishing itself as the most popular social network service in Italy.

In addition, it is interesting to note that about 20.9% of Internet users aged 6 and over use the web to engage in some social or political activity, and 10% use the Internet to take part in consultations or votes8.

However, the country is still affected by the phenomenon of digital divide 9: 65.4% of households in the central and northern regions own a personal computer and 63.3% have access to the Internet, while in the south and in the islands the percentages are 57.2% and 55% respectively. Nevertheless, the use of social networking sites prevails in the latter (59.9 compared to 48.6) and citizens living in southern regions seem more involved in expressing their opinions on social and political issues (24.6 compared to 18.1).

According to Demos&Pi surveys10, over the last 5 years the popularity of the Internet as a means of information has increased constantly. The percentage of people stating that they use the Internet every day to read news increased from 24.8 in 2007 to 46.9 in 2013.

The Internet is also considered to be much freer and more independent than television (39.3 compared to 21.9).

These figures are useful in order to understand the overall perception of the Internet as a reliable source of information and as a channel for voicing social and political demands.

3. Corpus The corpus comprises 120 Facebook posts, and represents only a portion of a wider set of data collected from social media, and thus could be considered as a pilot study for a more vast and ongoing investigation on the issue. They were originally posted on 4 Facebook pages: 1) Questa è l’Italia11 (This is Italy), 140.898 likes, 40 posts; 2) Il popolo non si piega ma si ribella12 (People do not give in, they rebel), 48.814 likes, 40 posts; 3) Piovegovernoladro13 (a typical idiomatic expression to blame politicians and specifically the government) 31,787 likes, 19 posts; 4) Sputtaniamotutti14 (Slanderthemall) 26,624 likes, 21 posts. The first of these pages is definitely the most popular, with around 140,000 likes (i.e. users subscribing to page updates). The other three pages have a smaller number of likes but their posts are often shared by other similar groups and pages (such as politically-oriented groups like those related to supporters of “Movimento 5 stelle”). The timespan for the collection of the data goes from June 2013 to early July 2014.

These kinds of page are interesting for two reasons. Firstly, they are public pages.

This means that page administrators and users are fully aware that the contents are of 7 ‹http://www.internetworldstats.com/europa.htm›.

8 ‹http://www.istat.it/it/archivio/108009›.

9 More precisely, nowadays the concept of digital divide is no longer related only to physical access to the web, but

rather to social factors like age, territorial distribution, gender (see CECCARINI and DI PIERDOMENICO 2010: 352-353).

10 The series of surveys Gli Italiani e l’informazione is available at ‹http://www.demos.it/osservatorio.php›.

11 ‹https://www.facebook.com/pages/Questa-%C3%A8-L-Italia/240152065998077?fref=ts›.

12 ‹https://www.facebook.com/IlPopoloNonSiPiegaMaSiRibella?fref=ts›.

13 ‹https://www.facebook.com/pages/Piovegovernoladro/1403916913185096?fref=ts›.

14 ‹https://www.facebook.com/pages/Sputtaniamotutti/1418365938418307?sk=timeline›.

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public domain. Secondly, the main topic of the pages is not immigration per se, as suggested by the page titles. This could be of interest for observing how racism and antiimmigrant discourse merge in everyday discourse with other key domains, such as the economy, the financial crisis and anti-establishment topics.

The extracts discussed in the study were identified as the most representative of racist discourse strategies. They are reproduced as originally presented on Facebook, including errors in spelling, punctuation and grammar.

4. The Facebook post The posts from the four pages are very similar and share some key stylistic features. They are (almost always) formed of a short written text and an image. The text performs three basic functions: a) it can serve as a caption for the image, also containing hyperlinks to articles from so-called counter-information sources; b) it contains a longer description of the specific issue focused on in the image; c) it contains an emphatic statement about the content of the image expressing the administrator’s point of view. There may also be no caption at all, which is the case of the two smaller pages: Sputtaniamotutti and Piovegovernoladro.

Posts also contain a standard invitation to “follow” (i.e. subscribe to) the page (SEGUICI SULLA NOSTRA PAGINA) in order to keep up to date with “important news in our country” (PER SEGUIRE LE NOVITÀ IMPORTANTI DEL NOSTRO PAESE), to interact by expressing personal opinions about the topic and to be active by actually spreading the news: DITE LA VOSTRA E FATE GIRARE (“have your say and put the word out”); DIFFONDI IN RETE (“spread it on the web”). We can see how the invitations are strongly connoted by modality: use of the imperative mood prevails as regards verbs, communicating the need to act. It could also be linked to the idea that people should take seriously the activity of sharing what they consider to be the (always censored) real information in order to fight the elite.

However, the actual focal point of the whole post is the image. We identified six basic types of visuals: 1) Image only: Unlike in other categories listed below, no written text is attached to the image which, therefore, has only an iconic function. It must grab the attention of users and make the topic of the post instantly clear. For example, the image can be a photograph showing a group of caravans, if the post is about nomads.

Figure 1. Image only

2) Emotional: Based on the highly popular category of motivational posts (whose main intent is to motivate people to feel positive feelings with some optimistic

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motto), we define all those posts aimed at eliciting negative feelings and resentment against immigrants with little or no informative intent as emotional.

This is a very broad category, which includes a variety of sets of images with different configurations of texts and pictures, yet all sharing the same emotional intent. These posts may be similar to traditional motivational posters, or they may show comparisons between Italians and foreigners, ironic/sarcastic cartoons and also some rude and violent statements.

Figure 2. Emotional15

3) Explanatory: A few images are presented with long texts having a sort of explanatory aim, trying to describe or summarize specific facts to readers. For example: what the Ebola virus is (supposedly brought to Italy by immigrants) or the economic impact of immigration on the host country etc.

Figure 3. Explanatory16

15 “WHEN WE RUN OUT OF MONEY TO FEED THEM … THEN IT WILL BE FUNNY”.

16 “Extremely aggressive – mortality rate, from 50 to 89% Contagion by contact with blood and body fluids of

infected subjects, causing an hemorrhagic fever. Biohazard Level 4. Bioterrorist agent category A. 7 to 14 days from the appearance of symptoms to death. There are no specific treatments An effective vaccine does not exist The only precaution is to isolate patients”.

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4) Headline: As for newspaper headlines, the primary goal of what is included in this category of images is to draw attention, summing up information and indicating the topic of the article. They are very often presented with colourful, mostly yellow, lines, while a background photograph helps contextualize the headline.

Figure 4. Headline17

5) Text only and slogans: This is a broad category that includes those pictures with a written text only. They can be either emotional or informative (in their own way). Texts are generally quite short with some important words or phrases highlighted by colour or size, to stress what is the most significant or emotional piece of information.

Figure 5. Text only18

6) Quotes: This category includes polemical statements against blameworthy politicians, mainly due to their pro-immigrant statements. The portrait of the author is surrounded by the quotation in question and by an argumentative, rude or abusive slogan.

17 “Trieste: woman raped by two immigrants, second case in a few hours”.

18 “ABSOLUTE PRIORITY TO EXPEL ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS BEFORE THEY DESTROY US”.

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Figure 6. Quotes19

5. Issues Four issues were identified as the most commonly featured in the corpus: 1) illegal arrivals, expulsions (MONTALI et al. 2013); 2) crime and deviance (TER WAL 2001; TAYLOR 2009); 3) struggle for material resources (VAN DIJK 1991; COTESTA 1995); 4) denial of racism (VAN DIJK 1992; BURKE AND GOODMAN 2012).

5.1. Illegal arrivals and expulsion The migratory process has been a key topic in Italian public debate for years. As Montali (MONTALI et al. 2013) demonstrates, arrivals by sea gained a lot of attention during the 1992-2002 period when Italy progressively became a country of immigration: «In the media discourse, this transition is objectified by the image of thousands of migrants landing on the Italian coast, an image which fuels the notions of threat and fear» (MONTALI et al. 2013: 238), despite the fact that only a small share of migrants arrives by sea each year20.

The use of numbers and statistics is a common persuasive strategy in news discourse (HALL et al. 1978: 9-10). Thanks to their inherent exactness, numbers suggest accuracy and make a source more reliable (VAN DIJK 1988: 87). Some of the posts in the corpus seem to reproduce this tendency, specifying numbers with a headline format and without appropriate sources. The aim is to create a sense of danger and alarm by giving some impressive figures as in example (1), where numbers are followed by the phrase pronti a sbarcare in Italia (“ready to land in Italy”). The use of the adjective pronti (“ready”) stresses the imminence of the arrivals, giving concreteness to the threat. The verb phrase vuole accoglierli (“wants to welcome them all”) serves to blame an institutional 19 “Boldrini says: ROM must be protected, they have the right to housing and we must give it to them – If you are so fond of GYPSIES just start by giving them your house, since you’ve got 5. We must care about those ITALIANS who are EVICTED or IN LONG TERM LETS first ‘CRONE’”.

20 The vast majority of illegal immigrants in Italy belongs to the category of the, so-called, overstayers (i.e. people who entered the country with a valid visa and remained in Italy after the document expired). This category covers alone the vast majority of cases, with percentages between 59% in 2000 and 64% in 2006, with a peak of 75% in 2003 (MINISTERO DELL’INTERNO 2007).

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counterpart and to confirm that the landing of migrants is more than a mere possibility: the use of the verb “to want” (vuole) followed by a verb in the infinitive form (accogliere) conveys in Italian the meaning of a strong motivation to achieve something.

The feeling of an approaching menace is communicated in (2) and (3) by the use of adverbial phrases such as a breve (“soon”) and in arrivo (“arriving”). Example (3) also shows how Italian authorities are blamed for rescuing refugees, in this case by literally “picking them up” (LI VANNO A PRENDERE) from Libya.

(1) 600.000 migranti pronti a sbarcare in italia, Bologna li Vuole accogliere tutti.

(2) 3000 IMMIGRATI AL GIORNO! A BREVE DIVENTEREMO IL PRIMO PAESE AFRICANO D’EUROPA… DICIAMO GRAZIE AI NOSTRI POLITICI (3) TELEFONANO DALLA LIBIA E LI VANNO A PRENDERE: 500 CLANDESTINI IN ARRIVO

Pictures complete the general construction of fear and danger. Hundreds of black people are shown grouped together in figure 7 and 8 in order to give an instant, visual perception of the multitude of illegal-immigrants entering the country.

Figure 7. Ready to land

Figure 8. First African Country

Metaphors play a huge part in the conceptualization of migratory processes in media and political discourse. As reported in other studies (REISIGL and WODAK 2001; GABRIELATOS and BAKER 2008), some sets of metaphors are particularly frequent, like those which describe immigration as a “water-course”, as a “war/military activity” or as a “natural disaster”.

For example, in the corpus, arrivals by sea of African migrants are looked on as an ondata (“wave”) pushing against the – with another metaphor – “body” of the nation, as suggested, in example (4), by the use of the verb soffocare (“to choke”) and the noun spinta (“push”), which implies a physical action. They can be also grouped together in ondate di disperati (“waves of desperate people”), highlighting the continuity of arrivals by sea, as in example (5). Furthermore, immigration is seen as a military activity, an “invasion”, as in (6) con i siciliani,che di questa invasione,non ne possono veramente più (“Sicilians,who have had enough of this invasion”).

In (7), the Nation could also be described as a “house” (“Are we waiting to find them in our house?”), whose “doors” (the borders) must be closed: CHIUDIAMO […] LE FRONTIERE (“close the borders”). As noted by Capdevila and Callaghan (2008: 6) «if we need to take control of our borders, we must surely be under attack!», and war imagery is clearly evoked in (8) through the use of military lexicon in sentences like: CHIUDIAMO IMMEDIATAMENTE LE FRONTIERE (“[we have] to immediately close

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the borders”) and PATTUGLIARE I MARI (“to patrol the sea”). The image portrays an (alleged) soldier with a machine gun. This is how the author thinks Italy should patrol the sea and control illegal immigration.

(4) Questo è diventato il vero problema nazionale. L'Italia,rischia di soffocare,sotto la spinta di quest'ondata assurda ed insensata. Chi ha voluto questo,è un criminale,lui e la sua parte politica!!!

(5) […] togliere ogni ragionevole limite al disastroso fenomeno migratorio in atto, non persegue un fine umanitario, come i compagni ipocritamente dicono, ma quello molto meno nobile di rimpinguare il loro elettorato con ondate di disperati.

(6) Questo succedeva a Porto Palo,l'altro ieri. Ma oggi,si è addirittura arrivati allo scontro fisico vero e proprio,con i siciliani,che di questa invasione,non ne possono veramente più.

(7) Cosa aspettiamo di ritrovarceli in casa?Se già non ci sono....

(8) CHIUDERE IMMEDIATAMENTE LE FRONTIERE, PATTUGLIARE I MARI (VEDI FOTO ACCANTO) RISPEDIRE CLANDESTINI E TUTTI QUELLI CHE LI VOGLIONO IN AFRICA!!! POI RAGIONIAMO…..

Figure 8. Patrol

Not only is migration clearly framed as a problem for the host country, but there is also a strong propensity to dramatize events: the existence of asylum seekers in itself represents an inevitable threat for the country. The sense of fear is made explicit in (9), with the phrase quello che si temeva è accaduto (“what was feared just happened”). The removal of the subject through the use of the impersonal si pronoun makes the statement look collective, as if the author were speaking on behalf of the whole community. “What was feared” is the possibility that the foreign population may exceed the local population. That poses the question of whether there is a chance for migrants to actually integrate and become part of a community in the host country. Even migrants’ children born in Italy are inevitably considered foreigners a priori and are often defined figlio/i di immigrati (“immigrants’ children”), with otherness becoming an ontological quality of the individuals.

In example (10) asylum seekers are directly referred to as an incoming menace to the Italian population: prima che ci distruggano (“before they destroy us”). Thus, the expulsion of all illegal immigrants has to be a priorità assoluta (“absolute priority”).

Expulsion may also be rendered with the verb rispedire (“to send back”), whose primary meaning involves objects and not people (11). Even though the meaning of “send someone somewhere” is now common, we can see how this kind of metaphorical use compares humans to objects and totally discards migrants’ will and mobility rights, imposing ingroup decisions.

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123 (9) Quello che si temeva è accaduto – Baranzate gli stranieri sono più degli ITALIANI – i negozi italiani sono quasi scomparsi (10) PRIORITA’ ASSOLUTA ESPELLERE I CLANDESTINI PRIMA CHE CI DISTRUGGANO (11) CHIUDERE IMMEDIATAMENTE LE FRONTIERE, PATTUGLIARE I MARI ( VEDI FOTO ACCANTO) RISPEDIRE CLANDESTINI E TUTTI QUELLI CHE LI VOGLIONO IN AFRICA!!! POI RAGIONIAMO…..

5.2. Crime and deviance The association between crime and immigrants is, not surprisingly, one of the most widely-investigated in earlier studies of Italian media (BRACALENTI and ROSSI 1998; MANERI 1998; DAL LAGO 2009 [1999]; COTESTA 1995; TER WAL 2001; TAYLOR 2009).

The media play a key role in establishing this relation: «For example, journalists often portray migrants as the agents (but only rarely as the victims) of violent criminal acts.

Secondly, journalists tend to indicate the illegal status and nationality of perpetrators when they report criminal acts committed by migrants» (MONTALI et al. 2013: 219). In this sense, we can see how this general trend in media discourse is reflected in Facebook posts that often try to emulate professional journalism.

Crimes against individuals and violent behaviour usually have an important emotional effect on readers. In example (12), the visual includes two photographs: at the top Nichi Vendola (a famous left-wing politician) is shown with a balloon saying “Immigrants are like brothers to us”, whereas the bottom of the picture shows a boy with a band aid on his face saying: “Brothers my arse… My name is Nicola Comerci, I was at a bar when two immigrants beat me up without a reason. They come here to our homeland and want to rule!”. The intent is to argue with pro-immigration politicians, but also to present readers with a concrete, credible example of migrant violence. The adverbial phrase senza motivo (“without a reason”) serves to stress the irrational, almost innate violent behaviour of migrants.

(12) “Gli immigrati sono nostri fratelli”. Fratelli un cazzo.. Mi chiamo Nicola Comerci, ero al bar quando due immigrati senza motivo mi hanno pestato. Vengono a casa nostra a dettar legge!

Figure 9. Vendola

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The following examples are presented in a newspaper headline-type format. They provide brief, summarized information, often without a source for checking the news and display some of the crimes most commonly attributed to immigrants, such as robbery (“rom steals a security cabinet full of weapons: arrested”) in (13); drug dealing (“Nigerian fake priest, hid 750 gr. of cocaine”) in (14), and sexual violence (“Trieste: woman raped by two immigrants, second case in a few hours”) in (15).

(13) ROM RUBA UN ARMADIO BLINDATO CONTENENTE ARMI: ARRESTATO (14) Nigeriano si finge “prete”, nascondeva 750 gr di coca (15) Trieste: donna stuprata da due Immigrati, secondo caso in poche ore.

A strong anti-gipsy sentiment can also be seen in the corpus. Romani people are often portrayed as the protagonists of robbery and violence. In (16), the headline structure isolates the ethnic nature of the crime by positioning extra information at the end of the text, marked graphically by a colon (“Old woman killed by adopted grandson for 50€: HE’S A ROM”).

The result is what van Dijk (1993:258-259) calls “overcompleteness strategy”: «We say that a passage is overcomplete when it gives information that is relatively irrelevant to the description of the events. Such overcomplete passages may be used to convey a negative picture of a news actor» (VAN DIJK 1993: 258). The detail about ethnicity does not provide the reader with new information; therefore it has the effect of ethnicising crime21.

In addition, it is interesting to note how, in example (17), Romani’s voices are used only to confirm a negative stereotype (“That’s the way we Romani are made”), according to which gipsies are specialised in robbery. There is also a misuse of sources aimed at reinforcing such stereotype. In fact, the original title of the article was altered in order to underscore the Romani’s alleged criminal culture.

Example (18) highlights the sense of oppression and victimization (VAN DIJK 2000) perceived by the ingroup: in fact, Termini station (the main railway station of Rome) is defined through the hyperbolic use of the idiom E’ IN MANO (“in the hands of”), likewise foreigners are emphatically characterised as VIOLENTI E LADRI (“violent and thieving”).

(16) ANZIANA UCCISA DAL NIPOTE ADOTTIVO PER 50€: è UN ROM (17) Sorprende dipendente Rom mentre ruba: “Noi Rom siamo fatti così” (18) ROM A TERMINI – LA STAZIONE TERMINI A ROMA E’ IN MANO A ROM VIOLENTI E LADRI

5.3. Struggle for material resources The struggle for material, socio-economic resources (housing, jobs, welfare and social security) has been a prominent topic in the discourse on immigration since the Nineties.

As noted by ter Wal (2001): «Il discorso politico e della stampa ha creato modelli antagonistici attraverso la definizione della situazione come una “guerra tra poveri”»22 (TER WAL 2001: 71).

The Great Crisis started in 2008, and the austerity measures adopted in the following years, pushed unemployment rates to reach a level not seen for more than 30 years (it has 21 «The most pervasive form of overcompleteness, however, is the very mention of origin, color, race, or ethnicity of

news actors in situations where this information is clearly irrelevant, but which may be used as an implicit explanation of usually negative actions of minority group members, typically so in crime news» (VAN DIJK 1993: 258-259).

22 “Political discourse and the press created antagonist models through the definition of the situation as a “battle of the have-nots”.

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doubled since 2007), and caused cuts to the welfare system in an attempt to manage the public debt crisis. Indeed, this highly problematic situation exasperated resentment and negative attitudes towards migrants, perceived as competitors for scarce socio-economic resources (COTESTA 1995). The issue is consistently represented in the corpus, in 25 out of 120 posts, and frequently overlaps with other discriminatory contents.

The vast majority of posts regarding this topic are constructed through what we called emotional images (see Section 3), the apparent goal of which is to generate negative feelings and resentment against immigrants. We identified several discursive strategies highlighting conflict between groups.

Firstly, opposition towards the outgroup consists in general statements comparing Italians and immigrants, both considered as homogeneous, coherent groups. Polarization between social groups employs collectivisation referential strategies (VAN LEEUWEN 1996; REISIGL and WODAK 2001) opposing “us” to “them”. In (19) the opposition is marked by personal pronouns. For instance, in this specific case, the subject could have easily remained implicit, hence the author decided to put extra emphasis on the opposing social actors.

Using a series of economy-related terms, lexical choices define immigrants as a “financial burden” (VAN DIJK 2000: 63) for the local population: soldi (“money”), manteniamo (“to feed”), spendiamo (“we spend”), 5 miliardi (“5 billions”), povertà (“poverty”), and disoccupato (“unemployed”). The “burden topos” is one of the most common discursive moves in racist discourse, «it implies that we do not refuse immigrants for what they are (their colour, culture or origin), nor out of ill will, or because of other prejudices, but only because we cannot. It is not surprising, therefore, that it is widely used in EU political discourse that opposes immigration, and not only on the right» (VAN DIJK 2000: 64).

In (21), the author presents unemployment of Italian citizens as directly caused by foreigners: Per ogni immigrato che lavora in Italia, c’è un italiano disoccupato (“For every immigrant working in Italy, there’s an unemployed Italian”. Therefore, recalling one of the most overused stereotypes according to which “Foreigners are to blame for high unemployment rates” (REISIGL and WODAK 2001: 55).

The overall contrast is accentuated by the use of emotional sentences such as: ALLORA SI CHE CI SARA’ DA RIDERE !! (“it will be funny”), which, in a sarcastic manner, conveys a sense of fear and insecurity for the future, and NON E’ GIUSTO!. (“it’s not fair”).

All these statements are presented as self-evident facts, with no need for further explanation. Verbs are in the indicative mood and there are no adverbs expressing modality, except for example (20) where the adverb almeno (“at least”) serves to reinforce the truthfulness of the key figure provided in the message, therefore amplifying its effect.

(19) QUANDO NOI NON AVREMO PIU’ SOLDI PER MANTENERE LORO…. ALLORA SI CHE CI SARA’ DA RIDERE !!

(20) SPENDIAMO ALMENO 5 MILIARDI PER I CLANDESTINI CON 12 MILIONI DI ITALIANI RIDOTTI IN POVERTA’ NON E’ GIUSTO! SIETE D’ACCORDO? (21) Per ogni immigrato che lavora in Italia, c’è un italiano disoccupato. Pensaci!

Another issue always present in the discourse about immigration is the accusation that “Foreigners are always privileged in comparison with us” (REISIGL and WODAK 2001: 55).

Especially given the economic crisis, any social help granted to foreigners is looked on as unjust favouritism.

Problems related to housing are the most popular and most often highlighted on Facebook posts. The prevalent discursive strategy is that of constructing parallelism and contrast. In (22) the visual configuration of the pictures clearly emphasises this tactic.

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The image is split in two halves where two men are portrayed: a black man, named Ubuntu, on the left side and an elderly Italian man on the right side. The comparison is carried out on different levels: age, nationality, criminal record, and, above all, social condition. Each level carries its own set of presuppositions. The black man is young, Congolese, a criminal, but lives in public housing, while the Italian man is old, incensurato (“has a clean record”), and is forced to live in a park because the State took away his house. Despite the fact that one is younger (therefore stronger), is a criminal (unsuitable for any social help), and is not even Italian (which makes him less suitable for obtaining social help), the State favours him over the poor, old, Italian man23.

(22) SOLO IN ITALIA Ubuntu 36 anni, congolsese Pregiudicato vive in un bilocale messo a disposizione dal comune in cui risiede Carlo 78 anni, piemontese incensurato da due mesi vive in un parco perché lo Stato gli ha pignorato la casa!!! E’ UNA VERGOGNA!!!

Figure 10. Ubuntu/Carlo

Contrast is among the most popular discursive strategies in racist discourse (VAN DIJK 2000). Examples (23) and (24) share the same structure. Both use parallelism to convey the same sense of injustice towards Italian people. The use of the same syntactic structure with conflicting meanings highlights the cognitive need of positive selfpresentation and negative other-presentation at the base of ideological discourse (VAN DIJK 2000). In (23) the opposition is constructed between two subjects: FAMIGLIA SFRATTATA/I MIGRANTI SBARCANO (“evicted family”/“migrants just arrived”), characterised by their social condition VIVE IN AUTO/IN HOTEL (“lives in the car”/“put up in hotels”). Likewise, in example (24) “earthquake victims” (AI TERREMOTATI) and “illegal immigrants” (AI CLANDESTINI) receive two contrasting forms of social assistance: the former are depicted as living in tents (LE TENDE), while the latter are provided with “house and jobs” (CASA E LAVORO).

(23) FAMIGLIA SFRATTATA VIVE IN AUTO (CON 3 BIMBI) - I MIGRANTI SBARCANO E VANNO SUBITO IN HOTEL (24) AI TERREMOTATI LE TENDE AI CLANDESTINI CASE E LAVORO

23 «Poor whites thus feel that they are victims of inadequate social and urban policies, but instead of blaming the authorities or the politicians, they tend to blame the newcomers who, in their eyes, are so closely related to the changing, i.e. deteriorating, life in the inner city» (VAN DIJK 1992: 99).

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Along with contrast and polarization, there is also another distinctive element which contributes to the formation of prejudiced discourse: the use of examples and illustrations: «More than general ‘truths’ concrete examples have not only the power to be easily imaginable (as episodic event models) and better memorable, but also to suggest impelling forms of empirical proof» (VAN DIJK 2000: 70). Both examples (25) and (26) tell the story of Italian citizens that lost their homes, which is a very sensitive and emotional topic, especially in Italy. These stories are placed in opposition to the condition of foreigners, sharing the same syntactic structure with the use of an adversative proposition: Il comune di TRIESTE non le trova un alloggio, ma ha trovato alloggio per 191 clandestini in questi mesi (“Trieste municipality was not able to find her an accommodation, but they found it for 191 illegal immigrants in these months”); accolgono gli immigrati negli alberghi,ma gli Italiani vivono nei boschi! (“they put immigrants in hotels, but Italians live in the woods!”). The stories are full of personal details that increase their concreteness; above all, there are dramatic details about the protagonists’ social condition that make an impression on the reader: dopo la separazione vive in un’auto da mesi (“she has been living in a car for months after separating from her husband”); una vita di tasse pagate (“he paid taxes for all his life”); senza un aiuto dallo Stato (“without any help from the State”); dopo aver perso casa e lavoro (“after losing his house and his job”). They are contrasted with the privileges granted to immigrants: ha trovato alloggio per 191 clandestini in questi mesi (“they found accommodation for 191 illegal immigrants”); accolgono gli immigrati negli alberghi (“they put immigrants in hotels”).

In example (26) the disproportion between the amount of details regarding Italians and the very general statement about immigrants is overwhelming.

In addition, the intensity is further amplified by photographs portraying the protagonists of the stories.

(25) Questa signora triestina si chiama CORINNA TROCCA, ha 56 anni e dopo la separazione vive da mesi in un’auto. Il comune di TRIESTE non le trova un alloggio, ma ha trovato alloggio per 191 clandestini in questi mesi. L’appello della signora «Hanno trovato 191 sistemazioni per persone venute da fuori e non riescono a trovarne una per me?» - VERGOGNA!!

(26) accolgono gli immigrati negli alberghi,ma gli Italiani vivono nei boschi! “la triste storia di un italiano come noi, dopo una vita di tasse pagate vive nel bosco con la famiglia senza un aiuto dallo Stato.”

“Sfrattato vive nel bosco insieme alla sua famiglia: capanna con moglie e figlio dopo aver perso casa e lavoro.” le famiglie italiane vengono abbandonate, i servizi sociali si muovono solo per togliere i figli agli italiani,vivere in un bosco mentre aiutiamo tanti paesi in via di sviluppo e’ ridicolo.... VERGOGNATEVI!!

Figure 11. Corinna Rhesis. International Journal of Linguistics, Philology, and Literature (ISSN 2037-4569) http://www.diplist.it/rhesis/index.php Linguistics and Philology, 5.1: 113-133, 2014

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5.4. Denial of racism Given that general values in contemporary society reject forms of blatant prejudice and discrimination (BILLIG 1988), individuals are particularly resentful of accusations of racism: «One of the crucial properties of contemporary racism is its denial, typically illustrated in such well-known disclaimers as ‘I have nothing against blacks, but...’»

(VAN DIJK 1992: 87). Hence, a number of discursive devices have emerged in public and everyday discourse to avoid such public blame (VAN DIJK 1992; CAPDEVILA and CALLAGHAN 2008; AUGOUSTINOS and EVERY 2010; GOODMAN and BURKE 2011).

Therefore, people tend to explain their aversion to immigrants with some reasonable motivation, such as cultural or economic factors, in order to appear reasonable.

Example (27) shows two important characteristics of denial. On the one hand, migrants are presented in a very extreme and negative way as rapists, thieves and criminals (loro possono violentare, rubare, ammazzare; “they can rape, steal and kill”), so that the author can disclaim prejudice by ascribing his/her opposition to social/cultural factors, but not to race; this is what Augoustinos and Every (2007) called «discursive deracialization». On the other hand, the taboo involving ethnic prejudice is directly rejected and attacked (IN SILENZIO PERCHÈ APPENA APRI BOCCA SEI ETICHETTATO COME UNO SPORCO RAZZISTA; “silently, because as soon as you open your mouth you’re labelled as a dirty racist”). The use of the hyperbole sporco razzista (“dirty racist”) also reinforces the contentious intent of the post. The final (rude) request “share if you are fed up too” (SE TI SEI ROTTO I COGLIONI ANCHE TU DI QUESTA STORIA CONDIVIDI) invites readers to express similar opinions so as to break the taboo.

In both examples (27) and (28), the statements are made as if the author is speaking on behalf of the whole ingroup by using inclusive formulae such as noi, la nostra terra (“we”, “our land”). In fact, the social, collective dimension frequently emerges in the denial of racism: «Not only do most white speakers individually resent being perceived as racists, also, and even more importantly, such strategies may at the same time aim at defending the ingroup as a whole: ‘We are not racists’, ‘We are not a racist society’» (VAN DIJK 1992: 89). Forms like una volta per tutte, lo voglio dire ad alta voce (“once and for all I want to say it loud and clear”) convey a feeling of oppression, as if people are unable to express themselves freely, and they can only do so by criticising and rejecting the norm against prejudice24.

(27) ITALIA, PAESE DOVE ZINGARI, IMMIGRATI,STRANIERI E TUTTI QUELLI CHE ARRIVANO SONO CONSIDERATI PATRIMONIO DELL’UNESCO,LORO POSSONO VIOLENTARE,RUBARE AMMAZZARE,NOI LI DOBBIAMO SOLO MANTENERE NEL LUSSO E IN SILENZIO PERCHè APPENA APRI BOCCA SEI ETICHETTATO COME UNO SPORCO RAZZISTA. SE TI SEI ROTTO I COGLIONI ANCHE TU DI QUESTA STORIA CONDIVIDI (28) UNA VOLTA PER TUTTE LO VOGLIO DIRE AD ALTA VOCE: NOI ITALIANI NON SIAMO RAZZISTI,DIFENDIAMO SOLO LA NOSTRA TERRA,E CI SIAMO ROTTO I COGLIONI DI TUTTO E DI TUTTI IN MODO PARTICOLARE DI ROM D’IMMIGRATI,DEI FINTI, BUONISTI, E DEI FINTI MORALISTI,CHE SI DEFINISCONO ANTIRAZZISTI,MA A CASA LORO NON LI VOGLIONO. COSA NE PENSATE? CONDIVIDETE

24 «This happens when members of majority groups use the taboo on prejudice to argue that they are being

discriminated against by having their freedom of speech suppressed» (BURKE and GOODMAN 2012: 20).

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Another specific form of denial is reversal. In other words, discrimination is denied by reversing accusations of racism, so that ingroup members are seen as the real victims of discrimination. This may be expressed through statements according to which Italian citizens are subject to a form of “reverse racism”, like in (29): “RAZZISTI… SI MA CON GLI ITALIANI!” (“Racist… yeah but with Italians!”). These discursive moves often tend to employ victimization strategies (VAN DIJK 2000: 84). For instance, in example (31), various pro-migrant quotations from left-wing politicians are contrasted with dramatic statements about Italians. It is particularly worthy to note the use of the idiomatic expression per aver dato il sangue per la patria (“for giving their blood to their own country..!!”). Patria is a typical term belonging to nationalist rhetorical tradition. Moreover, the body-related metaphor (“the blood” that stands for “sacrifice”) helps intensify the expression and materializes the alleged state of suffering of the collectivized group (“the Italians”). Also, in example (30), the author makes use of a complex discursive strategy to reject the label of racist. The post opens gloomily, with a description of the violence frequently involved in human trafficking25: LI AMMASSANO COME BESTIE, LI UCCIDONO, LI BUTTANO IN MARE (“they pile them into [the boat], they kill them, they throw them outboard”). Traffickers, who are responsible for these acts, are firstly lexicalised as the “illegal immigrants’ brothers” (despite the fact that traffickers and asylum seekers usually come from completely different countries), thus implying that they should share an emotional bond, based on a common territorial origin. This referential strategy collectivizes migrants and traffickers under the same category, therefore ascribing the same moral characterization to both. The strategy responds to the cognitive need to «positive self-presentation and negative otherpresentation» (VAN DIJK 2000: 44), so that Italians are considered more generous than foreigners, while “they” are cruel with their own “brothers”.

Also, the Italian government is defined as being complice (“accomplice”) of the human trafficking scempio (“slaughter”), because of Operation Mare Nostrum and the aid given to refugees. The post ends with a statement aimed at generating approval and denying accusations of racism at the same time: IO CHE MI BATTO PER EVITARE QUESTA CARNEFICINA ALLA FINE SONO RAZZISTA (“me, the one who fights against this slaughter at the end of the day I am the racist”).

(29) Un bambino italiano appena nasce ha un debito di 30 mila euro verso lo Stato italiano. Un bambino immigrato appena arriva in Italia riceve un sussidio dallo Stato italiano.

RAZZISTI… SI MA CON GLI ITALIANI! (30) IMMIGRATI CLANDESTINI I SUOI FRATELLI (GLI SCAFISTI) LI AMMASSANO COME BESTIE, LI UCCIDONO, LI BUTTANO IN MARE,SE GLI VA MALE FORSE LI ARRESTANO LO STATO ITALIANO, CHE è COMPLICE DI TUTTO QUESTO SCEMPIO,LO FA PER SOLIDARIETÀ IO CHE MI BATTO PER EVITARE QUESTA CARNEFICINA ALLA FINE SONO RAZZISTA IN ITALIA FUNZIONA COSì (31)“Gli immigrati in Italia meritano una vita dignitosa” – “I rom sono un grande popolo,meritano una casa” – “I musulmani meritano le Moschee” - Ma che cazzo nessuno mai dice gli italiani meritano una casa per tutti i sacrifici fatti…per aver dato il sangue alla patria..!! NO per carità se si dovesse dire questo è:RAZZISMOOOO!!

25 Not surprisingly, since descriptions of migrants arrival by sea on the press are often «characterised by a certain

degree of drama» (MONTALI et al. 2013: 235).

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6. Conclusions In this article we attempted to demonstrate the ways in which racist discourse and ideologies are represented in everyday discourse. The starting hypothesis was that Facebook could be considered as a new public and political space where people feel free to interact, express personal opinions and make sense of the reality around them.

The analysis has focused on the use of discursive strategies in order to share resentment towards migrants as part of the broader phenomenon of racist discourse. The four pages were selected mainly because of their general anti-institutional topic. In addition, the names of the pages do not have any explicit reference to immigration or related issues, they are, apparently, unaligned and do not show direct relationships with any specific parties. The choice was made to avoid pages (like fascist and far-right groups) where racism and extreme positions are overt, in favour of those in which racist statements are presented as shared and reasonable opinions.

We tried to develop a typology of Facebook posts which considers the essential multimodal nature of these texts, based both on their visual and textual contents. Images, in fact, have a crucial role in the communicative process. Visuals circulate easily on the social network and are very frequently shared by ordinary users in order to express instantly their opinion and personal beliefs on a wide range of topics. However, a more detailed investigation is needed on this aspect.

Page administrators make use of several strategies in the attempt to position the broad category of Italian citizens as the victims of migratory processes. The analysis of the data has shown that this kind of communication is deeply influenced by mainstream political and media discourse. Some of the identified issues definitely show continuity with the usual representation of key topics, such as arrivals of migrants by sea or the link between migrants and crime (MONTALI et al. 2013; TAYLOR 2009).

The economic crisis that broke out in 2008 appears to be a key point in the process of meaning making for groups and individuals (ANGOURI and WODAK 2014), it exasperated resentment and negative attitudes towards migrants, perceived as competitors for scarce socio-economic resources (COTESTA 1995). Victimisation strategies and comparisons (VAN DIJK 2000) are particularly consistent throughout the corpus, showing that immigrants still play the part of the “scapegoat” in the interpretation of reality in everyday discourse.

The findings suggest that denial of racism and discursive deracialisation (AUGOUSTINOS and EVERY, 2007) play a huge part in Facebook posts, confirming results from other previous research on CMC (BURKE and GOODMAN 2012). The authors systematically try to avoid accusations of racism in order to appear reasonable. This strategy has led to greater normalization of racist claims in public everyday discourse on the Internet.

Finally, the results of this research show that everyday discourse on Facebook is deeply affected by media and political discourse on migration (TER WAL 2001; ORRÙ 2013). Linguistic features and contents deployed in the posts are consistent with other results from previous research on the topic in Italy and in the European context.

A more detailed multimodal analysis on the configuration of the posts, along with an in-depth examination of users’ comments, could be interesting points of departure for further investigation on the complex nexus between the economic crisis, national identity and sense making through social networks in everyday interaction.

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Social Identities Journal for the Study of Race, Nation and Culture

ISSN: 1350-4630 (Print) 1363-0296 (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/csid20

Sharing food photographs on social media: performative Xiaozi lifestyle in Young, middle-class Chinese urbanites’ WeChat ‘Moments’ Yuzhu (altman) Peng To cite this article: Yuzhu (altman) Peng (2019) Sharing food photographs on social media: performative Xiaozi lifestyle in Young, middle-class Chinese urbanites’ WeChat ‘Moments’, Social Identities, 25:2, 269-287, DOI: 10.1080/13504630.2017.1414596 To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/13504630.2017.1414596

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SOCIAL IDENTITIES 2019, VOL. 25, NO. 2, 269–287 https://doi.org/10.1080/13504630.2017.1414596

Sharing food photographs on social media: performative Xiaozi lifestyle in Young, middle-class Chinese urbanites’ WeChat ‘Moments’ Yuzhu (altman) Peng School of Film and TV Arts, Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University, Suzhou, People’s Republic of China ABSTRACT

ARTICLE HISTORY

Sharing food photographs on social media is on the rise. This act has become increasingly popular in younger generation urban Chinese users’ everyday use of WeChat, the popular social media application.

In this article, I argue that self-presentation provides an angle to understand aspects of young, middle-class urbanites’ foodphotograph sharing. This article comprises an eight-month project, conducting netnographic research of 16 young, middleclass Chinese urbanites’ WeChat usage. Through the netnographic research, I discovered that, by displaying geotagged snapshots of food, these young urbanites disclose their everyday consumer experience in particular urban spaces. Aspects of this practice feed into these urbanites’ performance of Xiaozi tastes, facilitating the self-presentation of their class distinction. The outcomes of the research provide a glimpse into the interplay between postreform consumerism, Xiaozi lifestyle, and social media usage in the urban, middle-class Chinese younger generation’s everyday lives.

Received 10 October 2017 Accepted 15 November 2017 KEYWORDS

Food photographs; Xiaozi; middle-class; young urbanites; self-presentation; WeChat

Introduction In urban China, Xiaozi lifestyle has been on the rise (Xin, 2013, p. 37). Xiaozi refers to a particular set of tastes and lifestyle, aspirational to today’s middle-class young urbanites who are keen to define their ‘unique’ character through consumer behaviour (Henningsen, 2012, p. 411). By consuming the ‘correct’ brands/products, these young urbanites have been showing their aspirations to Xiaozi lifestyle in order to emphasize their class distinction (Henningsen, 2012, p. 411). The rise of Xiaozi lifestyle marks the increasingly consumerist nature of contemporary, urban Chinese society (Liu, 2008, p. 208). The existing literature has examined how ‘Xiaozi-ness’ influences middle-class young urbanites’ consumption of particular types of food and beverage (Henningsen, 2012). Yet, little attention has been paid to the convergence of Xiaozi-featured consumer behaviour and mediated self-presentation. The purpose of this article is to address this knowledge gap.

Ever since the emergence of social media, users have been managing their selfimpression on personal profiles (boyd, 2014, p. 49). Interestingly, we have witnessed an emerging popularity of sharing food photographs on social media (McDonnell, 2016, CONTACT Yuzhu (altman) Peng

yuzhu.peng@xjtlu.edu.cn

© 2017 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group

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Y. PENG

p. 241). This food-themed graphic content communicates one’s food-related consumer experience, opening new opportunities to mediated self-presentation (Ibrahim, 2015, p. 9). With the widespread use of locative services, today’s social media applications have further added a new dimension to this self-presentation practice (de Souza e Silva & Frith, 2012, pp. 166–167). Studies (de Souza e Silva & Frith, 2012, pp. 166–167; Schwartz & Halegoua, 2015, p. 1656) have revealed how Western social media users share food photographs with geotags at fancy restaurants/exclusive clubs to ‘show off’. Hjorth and Gu’s (2012) ethnographic research in Shanghai touches upon a similar phenomenon; it uncovers how sharing geotagged food photographs relates to young Chinese urbanites’ identity performance on locative social media. Building upon the above body of research, this article pays primary attention to geotagged, food-themed content shared by young Chinese urbanites on social media. Rather than providing a complete explanation of the motives behind their practice, this article aims to determine the dynamic interplay between mediated self-presentation, Xiaozi lifestyle, and sharing geotagged food photographs in the urban Chinese context.

In this article, I argue that sharing geotagged food photographs comprises aspects of young, middle-class Chinese urbanites’ everyday communication of their Xiaozi tastes and lifestyle. Uploading food photographs on one’s social media profile not only displays the dishes that the user is served, but also presents a specific food consumer experience of him/her (Ibrahim, 2015, p. 9). Sharing these photographs with friends alongside geotags, this consumer experience embodies the user’s judgement of taste, feeding into his/her mediated self-presentation on social media. In post-reform China, we have seen how people’s society increasingly relies on mediated interactions. This socio-technical context provides an interesting field for the analysis of young middle-class Chinese urbanites’ performance of Xiaozi-ness, which sheds light on the post-reform stratification of the Chinese society.

As aspects of a large, continuous research project, the present research gathered data from netnographic research of young Chinese urbanites’ use of WeChat, which comprises both observations of the participants’ user-generated content and follow-up interviews with each of them. WeChat is best described as a cross between WhatsApp and Instagram; it allows users to not only exchange instant messages but also share graphic content, known as ‘Moments’, with friends (Peng, 2017, p. 265). Geotagging services are incorporated in the ‘Moments’. Young Chinese urbanites are, broadly, early adopters and active users of WeChat (Peng, 2017, p. 265). Their regular use of the application makes this social media platform ideal for the present research. Through the present research, I find that many of my participants share food consumer experience in a highly reflexive mode – demonstrated by their selective display of food-themed content in WeChat ‘Moments’. The selectiveness is typically invoked as the participants upload food photographs with geotags at particular locations. This reveals the potential of this content for the self-presentation of young Chinese urbanites’ Xiaozi tastes and lifestyle. This potential is, indeed, confirmed by many participants in the follow-up interviews; it showcases how the consumerist-defined tastes and lifestyles are reflected in their everyday use of social media.

Post-reform China and young middle-class urbanites Contemporary China is currently undergoing rapid socio-cultural changes. These changes have arguably been driven by the launch of the ‘reform and open’ policy in the late 1970s,

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which transformed the socialist Chinese economic system into a market-led one, and opened its once-closed border to foreign businesses, as well as travellers (Long, Kuang, & Buzzanell, 2013, p. 247). The reform has significantly boosted the economic growth of China, although the imbalance of rural/urban development has also been widely covered (Yeoh, 2010, pp. 260–261). Due to the government’s insufficient support for the agricultural sectors, many rural households still live in relative poverty, compared to their city-dwelling contemporaries (Goodman, 2014, pp. 40–41). Urbanites are the beneficiaries of the post-reform era; many of them have become the spine of the emerging middle-class population who sustain the stability of the contemporary China’s socio-economic structure (Goodman, 2014, pp. 92–94).

The characters of middle-class Chinese urbanites have been significantly (re)shaped by the emerging consumerism in post-reform, urban China (Xin, 2013, p. 29). Consumerism is an ideology that stimulates mass consumption by turning people into consumers and changing their consumer behaviours (Swagler, 1997, pp. 172–173). Through large-scale surveys, Bourdieu (1984, p. 56) has revealed how the Western middle class is (re)produced through their everyday consumption of particular types of food, music and art. The formation of Chinese middle-class refers to a similar process (Liu, 2008, p. 193); however, this process is based on the material prosperity of urban China and the global cultural flows coming from overseas. Together, these two factors give the importance to consumerism in middle-class Chinese urbanites’ everyday lives (Liu, 2008, p. 193).

The changing pattern of food consumption provides a good illustration of consumerism in urban Chinese society. Before the reform, all Chinese people’s food consumption was strictly controlled in a planned, socialist economic system (Grunert et al., 2011, p. 357). While many households suffered starvation, having extravagant or luxurious food was considered to be immoral. However, the material prosperity of the postreform era has led to the flourishing of restaurant businesses in urban China (Grunert et al., 2011, p. 359). More and more middle-class urbanites choose to dine out because of the convenient yet exclusive services provided by the restaurants (Grunert et al., 2011, p. 359). In this sense, middle-class Chinese urbanites’ food consumption is not only to satisfy, but is also associated with personal comfort – an essential element of life experience valued by middle-class households (Bourdieu, 1984, p. 56).

The rise of consumerism leads to the changing ethos of post-reform Chinese society (Liu, 2008, p. 193). China was famous for its collectivistic tradition, which considers each individual as an integral component of a coherent socio-organism (Kolstad & Gjesvik, 2014, p. 266). Such a view still functions in the ecosystem of the countryside (Miller et al., 2016, pp. 188–189). However, its importance has been superseded by the individualistic culture in urban China, where the individuality of a person is more respected (Miller et al., 2016, pp. 188–189). Individualism emphasizes the autonomy and diversity of each person (Kolstad & Gjesvik, 2014, p. 266) and its rise in urban China have created a new middle-class morality in which the responsibility of social wellbeing has shifted away from the government onto the individual (Talmacs, 2017, p. 6). It encourages middleclass urbanites to pursue personal comfort ahead of the common good (Kolstad & Gjesvik, 2014, p. 266).

The individualistic culture of post-reform urban China underlines the development of middle-class urbanites’ self-reflexivity (Gao, 2016, p. 1,203). According to Giddens (1991, p. 75), self-reflexivity is a capacity that enables one to see him/herself as autonomous,

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and to recognize the value of his/her own feelings. Contextualizing this within a consumer society, self-reflexivity encourages the middle-class population to consume cultural products in ever-increasing amounts, so as to satisfy their personal pleasure (Giddens, 1991, p. 75). This personal pleasure can be seen as a nexus of consumerism and individualism; it is driven by the middle-class desire that Bourdieu (1984, p. 56) notes: a cultural distinction from the lower, working class.

Middle-class Chinese urbanites are not a homogenized group. In particular, age represents an important predictor that influences the characters that the members of a social group share (KPMG, 2014, p. 1). Having been raised in the post-reform era, young urbanites who were born after the 1980s are the privileged beneficiaries of the postreform economic growth (Liu, 2011, p. 58). The government’s three-decade drive for fertility control, furthermore, made them an only-child generation who are focused-upon in the home (Ong & du Cros, 2012, p. 748). Receiving abundant financial support from their parents, these young urbanites are generally experienced in pursuing personal pleasure through consumer brands/products (Liu, 2011, p. 58). This heightens their individualistic characters and self-reflexive capacity, encouraging them to live a consumeristdefined, middle-class lifestyle (Liu, 2011, p. 58). These young urbanites form the most unique social group of contemporary Chinese society (KPMG, 2014, p. 1).

Towards an understanding of young, middle-class urbanites’ selfpresentation Self-presentation provides an angle to analyse how young, middle-class Chinese urbanites celebrate their unique identity. Self-presentation explains how a person manages their self-impression when engaging in interpersonal communications (Chambers, 2013, p. 62). Through the observation of urban lives in the US, Goffman (1959) found how people present their identities through the communication of deliberate gestures (e.g. manner) and non-verbal signs (e.g. dress style) (Chambers, 2013, p. 70). Building upon Goffman’s (1959) approach, Butler (1988, p. 528) specifically observed the social construction of gendered identity. She argues that one’s gender identity only becomes manifest when performed through adherence to gendered social norms (Butler, 1988, p. 522). Following Butler’s (1988, p. 519) theory, identity is performative; it is self-presented through ‘stylized repetition of acts’. Multiple selves can be constructed through and produced for multiple performances (Chambers, 2013, pp. 69–70).

Being middle-class is of a self-presentative nature; it is practised through the performance of particular tastes, which allows the middle class to identify themselves with a ‘middle-class’ lifestyle (Bourdieu, 1984, p. 56). According to Bourdieu (1984, p. 56), tastes are ‘manifested preferences’, which connote the ‘practical affirmation of an inevitable difference’ (Bourdieu, 1984, p. 56). A person’s tastes are not incidentally given, but culturally shaped by the social class to which he/she belongs (Bourdieu, 1984, p. 56). Middleclass tastes in particular underscore an ‘aesthetic sense’, which is embedded in the middle-class population’s stylized consumption of particular types of food, music and art (Bourdieu, 1984, p. 56). These tastes serve as a ‘distinctive expression of a privileged position’ in society; their performance enables the middle class to distinguish themselves from the lower-class population through an idealistic and aspirational lifestyle (Bourdieu, 1984, p. 56).

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Xiaozi In post-reform China, Xiaozi tastes are commonly embraced by young, middle-class urbanites, representing a unique aspect of their social characters (Liu, 2008, p. 208). The term ‘Xiaozi’ was originally used as the Chinese translation of ‘petite bourgeoisie’ (Xin, 2013, p. 37). The rise of consumerism has, however, redefined the negative Marxist connotation of ‘Xiaozi’ in post-reform, urban China. Nowadays, Xiaozi is associated with young, middleclass Chinese urbanites’ privileged social position in Chinese society (Henningsen, 2012, p. 411). Xiaozi-ness is not meant to be explicitly claimed. Being Xiaozi is fluid and can only be implicitly revealed through aspirations to the aesthetic Xiaozi tastes, which are, in turn, defined by a consumerist-individualist nexus of cultural abilities (Henningsen, 2012, p. 411). In this sense, living a Xiaozi lifestyle is performative, and is invoked by a middle-class desire for self-presentation.

An important aspect of Xiaozi lifestyle refers to the attitude towards foreign consumer brands in the food/beverage industry, which generally originate in developed countries.1 Due to a series of local foodstuffs safety scandals, food/beverage products imported from developed countries are often considered to be ‘of superior quality’ to their domestic counterparts in China (Maguire & Hu, 2013, p. 672). However, rather than a simple guarantee of quality, many foreign-brand restaurants/cafes are popular among young consumers in urban China, because these establishments also provide them with a ‘glocal bridge’ to experience the exotic, ‘more advanced’ cultures (Maguire & Hu, 2013, p. 673).

For instance, Pizza Hut restaurants and Starbucks cafés are widespread across contemporary urban China (Zhou, 2008, p. 174). The brand image of these foreign establishments has been notably glocalized in the urban Chinese context through interactions between these businesses’ strategic branding and local young urbanites’ everyday consumer practice (Maguire & Hu, 2013, p. 673). The food and drink offered by these foreign businesses naturally carry exotic characteristics for Chinese consumers. Through careful planning of the interior design of restaurants and the presentation of dishes and drinks served inhouse, these businesses are also dedicated to creating the material grounding for a ‘posh/sophisticated’ impression of their brands (Maguire & Hu, 2013, p. 675). Alongside the implementation of a deliberate pricing strategy that excludes the majority of the low-income population, one’s consumer experience of these restaurants and cafés has been framed into an aspect of the imagined middle-class lifestyle in urban China (Maguire & Hu, 2013, p. 673). Based on interviews of young Starbucks consumers living in Beijing and Nanjing in 2009, Henningsen (2012) discovered the connections between performative Xiaozi lifestyle and visits to the Western-style café. Her research sheds light on the self-presentation potential of food/beverage consumer experience in urban China. In particular, consumption of Starbucks coffee is understood as a cultural ability (Henningsen, 2012, p. 409). The stylized repetition of this consumer behaviour allows young, middle-class Chinese urbanites to claim class distinction, thus setting themselves apart from the lower class or the elderly generation who are generally less appreciative of foreign cultures (Henningsen, 2012, p. 409).

We have to be aware that the glocalized meanings of a specific foreign brand are relative to ‘local economic development and access to foreign goods’ (Maguire & Hu, 2013, p. 673). Over the past three decades, McDonald’s and KFC have been withdrawn from the list of middle-class-associated foreign brands in China, due to the wealth growth

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(which makes the consumption of these products more affordable) and the lifestyle change (which sees these products as unhealthy) of urban households (Souhu, 2017). Furthermore, Chinese cities are categorized into different ‘Tiers’ according to their population size and economic development (Chiu, Ip, & Silverman, 2012, p. 78). Tier 1 and 2 cities are the largest and most developed cities, where many foreign consumer brands have long been operating their businesses.2 In Tier 1 and 2 cities, many ‘mainstream’ foreign brands have become affordable and possibly turned into ‘ordinary’ consumer choices for the wealthy group of young urbanites, who are familiar with foreign consumerism.

Compared to the rest of their peers, these urban youths and young adults are more likely to pursue more exclusive experiences for the satisfaction of their performative middle-class desires.

Mediated self-presentation Social media applications are technologies allowing users to construct public or semipublic profiles through which they can share user-generated content with friends (boyd, 2014, pp. 11–12). Social media provide users with the opportunity for controlled and imaginative self-presentation (Papacharissi, 2011, p. 307), enabling them to manage the display of user-generated content on their personal profiles and associate this content with their dynamic everyday practice to perform their tastes and lifestyle (boyd, 2014, p. 49).

Social media users’ self-presentation has two technological bases. Firstly, digital cameras have become an essential component of today’s mobile phones (Riviere, 2005, p. 168). These cameras allow young urbanites to archive episodes of their everyday lives anytime and anywhere, providing the user-generated content that they can share on social media. The existing scholarship around mediated self-presentation tends to focus on photographs in which users occupy a dominant position (e.g. selfies) (Bakhshi, Shamma, & Gilbert, 2014; Mehdizadeh, 2010). Yet, increasingly more research notes that many social media users upload snapshots of food to record their exclusive dining-out experience in cities as well (Johnston & Goodman, 2015; Lavis, 2017). A stylized display of the food photographs embodies a user’s consumer tastes, showcasing a class distinction (McDonnell, 2016, p. 241). This act has served as an emerging approach for social media users’ self-presentation (Ibrahim, 2015, p. 9).

Furthermore, increasingly more social media applications are designed for mobile usage (boyd, 2014, p. 6). The GPS equipment on mobile phones also now allows social media users to generate graphic content alongside geotags to indicate the location from where it is generated and uploaded (Hjorth & Gu, 2012, p. 699). The digital camera and the geotagging service together infuse mediated self-presentation with the dynamics between food-themed graphic content and stylized urban life experience. Through the case studies of Instagram, Facebook and Foursquare, Schwartz and Halegoua (2015, p. 1656) have discovered how Western users express their identities by sharing food photographs with geotags at particular restaurants. The interplay between self-presentation and stylized urban life experience is not a Western phenomenon. Through ethnographic research, Hjorth and Gu (2012) noted the popularity of sharing locative-aware, food-themed content among Chinese social media users too. Their research captures how Shanghai young people use geotagged food photographs to share their exclusive

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food consumer experience at posh restaurants with friends on Chinese locative social media, Jiepang3 (2012, p. 707).

Released by giant internet company Tencent, the statistics show that WeChat was used by almost 850 million people in 2017, rendering it the most popular social media platform in China (Peng, 2017, p. 265). Typical Chinese users spend on average 40 minutes per day on WeChat (DMR, 2016, p. n.p.). A survey conducted in Beijing shows that over 85% of young Chinese urbanites have shared food photographs on social media; almost threequarters of these were uploaded via WeChat accounts (Yuan, 2017, pp. 4–5). WeChat is representative of the social media platforms where young Chinese urbanites organize and publicize their everyday social lives (Peng, 2017, p. 265). An in-depth analysis of the geotagged, food-themed content that these urbanites share on WeChat helps us to find out the coherence of young Chinese urbanites’ mediated self-presentation, their class distinction and urban life experiences in post-reform China.

Research methods and data collection This article presents an eight-month netnographic research of 16 young Chinese urbanites’ use of WeChat. Netnography is a form of ethnography which incorporates interactive media (e.g. social media) into fieldwork (Kozinets, 2015, p. 79). It is increasingly used to analyse the cultures emerging among social media users (Kozinets, 2015, p. 5).

The data collection of a netnographic piece of research typically employs participant observations and interviews (Peng, 2017, p. 266).

In the present research, the 16 participants, including 6 men and 10 women, were recruited on a voluntary basis in 2014. As aspects of a continuous research project, the present data collection was conducted between July 2016 and February 2017. The research participants were previously recruited in July 2014 from a chosen Chinese university (male/female ratio: 1/1.15). The university is chosen because it is an independent institute located in a representative Tier 2 city. An independent institute is a private higher education institution affiliated to a reputable public university; its tuition fees are much higher than those of its public counterparts (Zhu & Lou, 2011, p. 82). Students of a typical middle-class background are likely to be found at such a university. The participant recruitment survey was initially distributed to 16,400 undergraduates at the university via email. A total of 140 students replied to the email with their contact details. Sixteen participants4 were chosen as the research participants because of their regular use of WeChat, and their middle-class family background (i.e. their parents are either professionals or operating private businesses). These participants were aged between 22 and 27 in 2017. They either continue studying at university, or now have a professional occupation (e.g. teachers or office workers) in cities (10 live in Tier 1 and 2 cities; the rest are in Tier 3 cities).

During the netnographic research, I observed these participants’ WeChat ‘Moments’.

The food-themed content that they shared in ‘Moments’ was archived and thematically categorized into: (1) food photographs; and (2) photographs of food and people (i.e. where both people and food appear in the photographs). The food photograph type was focused. Visual-abstraction technique5 was used to analyse the interplay between the participants’ food photograph posts and their mediated self-presentation. I also conducted individual interviews with each of the participants and continuously interacted

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with them via instant messages, to compare the results of my visual abstraction to the participants’ own interpretation. Given the privacy of the communication occurring on social media, the participants were notified with the procedure of the present netnographic research with an information sheet, and were requested to sign a consent form before participating in the present research. They are provided with pseudonyms in this article.

The sample size of the present research was relatively small; yet, these participants represented a wide range of characteristics regarding both their personality and their patterns of WeChat usage. Given the exploratory nature of the present research, these participants provide sufficient qualitative data for my analysis. The research findings certainly cannot be overgeneralized to describe the practice of the whole young Chinese population; however, the outcomes of the present research indeed provide a window to the mediated self-presentation and Xiaozi performance practised by these urbanites – a leading edge of young aspirants who lead social media usage in urban China.

Food photographs and self-presentation in practice Resonating with the survey of young urbanites’ social media use conducted in Beijing (Yuan, 2017, pp. 4–5), my netnographic observations noted that food photographs form a notable part of the content that my participants share in WeChat ‘Moments’ – the functional feature of WeChat that allows users to share graphic content with friends. My followup interviews showed that these food photographs were mainly taken by my participants with their own mobile phones.

Photographs are ‘created through movement’; therefore, are ‘part of a world that is always in forward motion’ (Pink, 2011, p. 9). A food photograph seems to be still but represents the dynamic moment when being taken (Schwartz & Halegoua, 2015, p. 1647). In this case, it spontaneously records the dynamic moment of the users’ ephemeral food consumer experience (Ibrahim, 2015, p. 1). In the past, cameras were mainly used to record and celebrate memorable moments in family lives, such as weddings, given the fact that the size of the cameras of that time rendered them unsuitable for mobile usage (Riviere, 2005, p. 168). However, digital cameras have become an integral part of today’s mobile phones, which users always have to hand nowadays (Riviere, 2005, p. 168).

Today’s users take photographs whenever and wherever they wish to. They are able to preserve any fleeting life experience using the camera lens of their mobile phone (Hjorth & Gu, 2012, p. 699). The preservation of ephemeral food consumer experience is not only for one’s own pleasure; sharing also comprises a crucial part of this act.

Wu, 27-year-old, female: WeChat ‘Moments’ is for sharing the interesting episodes in my life.

Having delicious food with friends is an essential part of these episodes […]; it makes me happy […]. Posting food photographs allows me to share these happy moments to other friends.

Food photographs, fitting into the broader category of user-generated content, are shared by young Chinese urbanites to inform social interactions on WeChat, given the fact that social media are mainly used for communication with friends/family (Hjorth & Gu, 2012, p. 702). In particular, in China, dining together has long been a friendly gesture; it is also still popularly used for establishing rapport between business partners (Standifird & Marshall, 2000, p. 22). Contextualizing within this specific cultural context,

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dining out with friends naturally forms a social event in which friendship is tightened between young Chinese urbanites. Sharing photographs that record social events in WeChat ‘Moments’ is an extension of this social networking practice in everyday use of social media.

It emerged from the interviews that, for many participants, the food snapshots they uploaded in ‘Moments’ were taken while having meals with friends/family. However, instead of the friends/family members, the food served was the principal character presented. Figure 1, for instance, shows a typical example. This post describes participant Zhong’s (female, 27-year-old) dining-out experience with friends through snapshots of food rather than of friends; the caption emphasizes that ‘friendship is more important than food served’. In this instance, the ‘true’ principal characters were hidden from other users’ scrutiny. A notion of intimacy was communicated between those who participated in the gathering. As ‘disclosing intimacy acts as a marker that defines authentic friendship’ (Chambers, 2013, p. 47), sharing these food photographs forms an opportunity for exclusive communication of intimacy, feeding into urban Chinese young adults’ everyday management of friendship on WeChat.

However, being shared on social media, the meaning of food photographs goes far beyond the communication of intimacy between those who participated in the meal (Hjorth & Gu, 2012, p. 709). Given its public/semi-public accessibility, the user-generated content made available on one’s social media profile is also revealed to ‘acquaintances’, who might have found it inappropriate or difficult to gather personal information in other ways (Chambers, 2013, p. 90). This accessibility is particularly important for estranged friends, who sometimes want to compare each other’s lives (Lambert, 2016, p. 2,570). As participant Tao (26-year-old, male) noted: ‘[food photographs] show aspects of my life

Figure 1. Food photographs describing dining out with friends.

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status, […] the aspects that I am happy to be known to my friends’. In this sense, the food photographs that these young urbanites share in ‘Moments’ also comprise self-presentation potential.

Unlike sharing selfies, which are an explicit self-portrayal of appearance/body, the potential of sharing food photographs involves a nuanced, implicit, or even non-intentional process; it represents the dynamics between consumerism and visual preservation of mundane life episodes, which celebrate the ‘notion of the exhibit and the spectacle inviting gaze through everyday objects and rituals’ (Ibrahim, 2015, p. 1). By using particular photography and post-processing techniques, food celebrities regularly produce aesthetic snapshots of homemade, mouth-watering food that transform ‘ordinary’ ingredients into ‘extraordinary’ dishes (Johnston & Goodman, 2015, p. 212). The food photographs not only exhibit the authentic food but also turn having food into a spectacularized, gaze-inviting ritual (Ibrahim, 2015, p. 1). This ‘spectacularization’ of everyday rituals things emphasizes both the realness and the attractiveness of food celebrities; it serves their self-branding, as well as the promotion of their food blogs amongst followers (Johnston & Goodman, 2015, p. 212). With the widespread prevalence of professionally made food photographs, many ordinary users have learned to use the same techniques to redefine authentic dining gatherings into an aesthetic consumer experience (Ibrahim, 2015, p. 8). Such a practice was discovered in my netnographic observations, reflecting how young Chinese urbanites use close-up shots to capture the fine detail of food. Figure 2 provides a representative example retrieved from the ‘Moments’ of 25-year-old female participant Wang. The aspirational nature of the food that she was served was clearly emphasized by the vivid colour and attractive appearance of the dishes captured in the photographs.

The way in which young Chinese urbanites make their ‘authentic’ food consumer experience ‘aspirational’ reveals the performativity of food photograph sharing on social media (Ibrahim, 2015, p. 8). This act parallels Bourdieu’s (1984) observation of how the Western middle-class mimic the upper-class emphasis on the originality and exoticness

Figure 2. Food photographs comprise a notable aspect of the participant’s ‘Moments’.

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of the food they consume. As Bourdieu (1984, p. 79) notes, one’s judgements of taste around food are associated with social positioning, ‘an interesting indicator of the mode of self-presentation adopted in showing off a lifestyle’. On a social media profile, one’s display of intentionally made aspirational food consumer experience shows one’s aesthetic tastes around food. This act resonates with Butler’s (1988) theory of performative identity; it forms a mediated expression of the one’s cultural trajectory, shaped by classbased consumer ambition (McDonnell, 2016, pp. 241–242). In the case of young, middle-class Chinese urbanites, performative Xiaozi tastes and lifestyle reflect this consumerist, cultural trajectory.

Performative Xiaozi tastes and lifestyle Xiaozi tastes and lifestyle to a certain extent regulate young, middle-class Chinese urbanites’ navigation of food consumer experience (Xin, 2013, p. 37). In WeChat ‘Moments’, this navigation is embodied through sharing of food photographs. My netnographic observations noted that foreign food and beverage franchises form a popular category of dining-out locations in young Chinese urbanites’ everyday lives. Specifically, food photographs taken at these chains were found in 13 participants’ ‘Moments’ posts. Starbucks is typical of this category. Figure 3 shows an example retrieved from participant Tao’s ‘Moments’. A snapshot of a mug of coffee was displayed in this ‘Moments’ post.

Its caption clarified that the coffee was a particular type of ‘Latte’, a flagship product of Starbucks of that time, that Tao ordered many times. The snapshot, alongside the rhetoric used in the caption, implicitly reveals the 26-year-old man’s aspirational view towards this foreign brand.

Cultural connectedness to the foreign/exotic Starbucks is one of the foreign pioneers which introduced Western food consumer culture (e.g. having coffee and sandwiches for breakfast/brunch) to the urban Chinese population

Figure 3. Consumer experience at Starbucks café reflected in ‘Moments’.

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(Maguire & Hu, 2013, p. 678). Starbucks cafés constitute a symbolic, cultural-spatial knot, where the ‘West’ meets the ‘East’ in post-reform Chinese cities. Chinese anti-globalization activists deem the brand as a carrier of cultural imperialism, which threatens the continuity of the local culture (Maguire & Hu, 2013, p. 672). In 2007, for instance, a high-profile protest forced Starbucks to shut down its café, which had opened inside the Forbidden City – the most symbolic relic of China’s cultural heritage (Maguire & Hu, 2013, p. 670). However, Starbucks has a very different cultural connotation for young, middle-class urbanites, who embrace the Xiaozi lifestyle and are aspiring to the cosmopolitan (Henningsen, 2012, p. 409). Having a mug of coffee at a Starbucks in the centre of urban China is both authentic and aspirational; it is not only an everyday ritual, but also forms an act allowing these young urbanites to escape from rustic, traditional China and to experience the cosmopolitan (Henningsen, 2012, p. 410). This consumer practice embodies an affirmation of these urbanites’ cultural connectedness to the foreign/exotic, rendering them closer to their fantasy of being Xiaozi (Maguire & Hu, 2013, p. 679).

In WeChat ‘Moments’, the cultural connectedness of young Chinese urbanites is visually embodied through the photographs which describe their consumer experience of foreign food and beverage brands. The performativity of this visual embodiment is enhanced when a locative dimension of the consumer behaviour is intentionally highlighted (de Souza e Silva & Frith, 2012, pp. 166–167). Since the emergence of locative services, users are able to specify the location from where they generate content on social media (Schwartz & Halegoua, 2015, p. 1,657). The locative feature of WeChat allows users to easily announce their whereabouts by attaching geotags to a ‘Moments’ post.

These geotags could be either general (a city) or specific (a street, park or coffee shop).

WeChat users have complete control over the display of geotags; this means that the geotags attached to ‘Moments’ posts not only record these users’ discrete footprints in the city, but also illustrate their bodily engagement with the city that they want to share with friends (de Souza e Silva & Frith, 2012, pp. 166–167). The geotagging act invites the gaze of friends, enabling them to perform aspects of themselves on the social media platform (Schwartz & Halegoua, 2015, p. 1657).

Revisiting Tao’s ‘Moments’, I noted that he is an active user of the locative feature; his ‘Moments’ posts were almost always supplemented by geotags (see Figure 4). It becomes apparent that Tao was enthusiastic about revealing his ‘footprints’ at Starbucks cafés: the participant tended to provide ‘Moments’ posts with less-specific geotags unless he was visiting branches of the foreign brand.6 The highlighted ‘footprints’ at Starbucks establishments show that the visits to the chain represent a particular consumer experience that he has been intentionally performing in ‘Moments’.

The locative dimension of consumer behaviour underlines the inextricable link between Xiaozi lifestyle and the spatiality of everyday lives in post-reform, urban China. Urban spaces are constructed upon people’s socially organized encounters with places in the city (Moores, 2012, pp. 27–28). According to de Certeau (1984, p. 117), place relates to the pre-existing architecture and objects that people can see when passing through; it is built upon a specific location (Moores, 2012, p. 28). Space is, then, a ‘practised place’ constructed in relation to people’s subjective engagement with the place (de Certeau, 1984, p. 117). Spaces are ephemeral; they only emerge when dwellers interact with the architecture, the geographic arrangements, the objects and the other people in a specific location.

This place-space dichotomy provides a way to contest the subjectivity of individuals to

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Figure 4. Intentional indication of ‘footprints’ at Starbucks cafés.

creatively derive meaning from the place they reside in. The construction of urban spaces is inherently social; thus, people’s mobility in urban areas provides a glimpse into the dynamics between social class, places and the city (Wilson, 1992, p. 8). By attaching geotags to graphic content, the spatial aspect of social media users’ urban life experience is emphasized (Schwartz & Halegoua, 2015, p. 1650). The discrete archives of geotags allow users to display their unique daily pattern of socio-spatial mobility (de Souza e Silva & Frith, 2012, p. 166). A series of discrete locative archives serves as a window into the users’ stylized spatial experience of the city, feeding into their self-presentation on social media (Schwartz & Halegoua, 2015, p. 1650). In Tao’s case, the intentionally highlighted geotags at Starbucks cafés aligned his bodily engagement with a symbolic urban space and personal recommendation of food consumer experience there (Schwartz & Halegoua,

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2015, p. 1653). The continuous repetition of this socio-spatial nexus stylizes Tao’s consumer behaviour, backing up his tastes of food with concrete spatial evidence. It frames an aspect of his daily routine that is performed in accordance with his Xiaozi characteristics.

The ambivalent attitude towards consumerism All that being said, Xiaozi-ness is not a fixed, but a fluid, life status. Its fluidity and socioeconomic condition determine that Xiaozi tastes around a specific consumer brand are ambivalent because of emphasis on the exclusiveness of consumer experience (Henningsen, 2012, p. 419). This ambivalence provides the contextualized grounding for young, middle-class urbanites’ practice of performative Xiaozi tastes and lifestyle on WeChat.

Taking participant Zhong, for instance, the 27-year-old female white-collar worker said that she also consumes Starbucks on a daily basis. However, the geotagging clues indicating this consumer behaviour of hers were almost never found in her ‘Moments’. Instead, my observations of her food-themed content revealed her emphasis of exclusive food consumption: her dining-out experience often took place at styled restaurants – those which are seen as ‘posh’ and ‘exotic’ but are relatively less known to the masses in urban China.

The character of the restaurants in which she dined was captured by the food photographs (see Figure 5 7), which present the interior design of the establishments, as well as the dishes served.

It is worthwhile mentioning that Zhong obtained her master’s degree in a British university. Having been immersed in the anglicized culture for almost two years, drinking coffee and having Western friends has already become an essential aspect of Zhong’s

Figure 5. Exclusive food consumer experience at posh, foreign restaurants.

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lifestyle. Dining with friends at posh restaurants which entail Britishness facilitates the recollection of her memories of living in the UK, while at the same time – intentionally or not – presenting an aspect of Zhong’s Xiaozi-ness.

Yet, Zhong’s aspiration to specific foreign consumer brands is clearly wobbling. Zhong dislikes revealing her consumer experience at Starbucks cafés, although she visits there regularly as well. This is not only because consumption at Starbucks has turned into a routine ritual in her life which is not worthwhile sharing anymore; more importantly, it relates to the participant’s middle-class self-reflexivity which invokes her desire for the ‘exclusivity’ of her performative Xiaozi tastes and lifestyle. In the interview of Zhong, the participant expressed her scorn of her peers who often share food photographs taken at Starbucks cafés or Pizza Hut restaurants and defined them as the ‘Tier 3 philistines who have no real tastes’. Zhong consumes these brands but this consumer experience is intentionally neglected when she uploads food photographs in ‘Moments’. She is representative of the Xiaozi group who have more consumer power and who seek more exclusive life experiences. Appreciation of this exclusive experience distances this group from the other young urbanites whose behaviour is ‘overwhelmingly’ influenced by mass consumerism.

From the above example, we can see that Xiaozi lifestyle is indeed of a consumerist nature, but it does not completely follow the market (Henningsen, 2012, p. 411). On the contrary, the self-reflexivity and individualism, a pair of key characteristics of Xiaoziness, infuse a level of ‘anti-market’ into young, middle-class urbanites’ performative lifestyle (Gao, 2016, p. 1204). This paradoxically encourages them to oppose the brands which have become obviously ‘mainstream’ (Henningsen, 2012, p. 422). Regarding these foreign consumer brands, such as Starbucks and Pizza Hut, this seemingly antimarket feature of Xiaozi-ness is notably shared by young urbanites living in Tier 1 and 2 cities. In the present research, I noted that participants of this kind often comprise shared characteristics. They either have physically lived or travelled abroad, or have good friends and relatives who have overseas life experience. Tier 1 and 2 cities are generally more developed and more cosmopolitan than those in Tier 3 (Chiu et al., 2012, p. 78).

Living in Tier 1 and 2 cities provides these young urbanites with more opportunities to experience foreign consumerism. With this experience, they no longer consider the ‘mainstream’ consumer brands as aspirational. They have been developing a different set of Xiaozi norms to distance themselves from their ‘rustic’ peers living in Tier 3 cities.

This seemingly anti-consumerism of Xiaozi performance represents a desire for class distinction between young Chinese urbanites, who seem to share much in common. In this sense, Xiaozi tastes and lifestyle have started showing class varieties. The young, middle-class urbanites who hold more consumer power do not passively accept foreign consumerism, but are highly reflexive in practising consumption (Gao, 2016, p. 1203).

This self-reflexivity renders their pursuit of the exclusive accessibility through customized consumer experience (Johnston & Goodman, 2015, p. 213). However, while these wealthy youths and young adults strive to distance themselves from the mainstream Xiaozi tastes, their lifestyle paradoxically returns to the rationale of consumerism. As the ‘only-child’ generation living in urban China, with a high level of material prosperity, these young, middleclass Chinese urbanites value their ‘exclusive’ Xiaozi lifestyle (Gao, 2016, p. 1203). However, this ‘exclusivity’ has to be expressed through their everyday consumer behaviour. It engenders new ostentatious features of Xiaozi lifestyle that are still part of the ubiquitous

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consumer culture of post-reform, urban China (Henningsen, 2012, p. 422). The consumerist essence of these urbanites’ food-photograph sharing in WeChat ‘Moments’ alongside that of their peers underscores the interplay between Xiaozi lifestyle, food consumption and mediated self-presentation in their everyday use of social media.

Conclusion In this article, I have uncovered the interplay between Xiaozi lifestyle, food consumption, and mediated self-presentation through a case study of young, middle-class Chinese urbanites’ use of WeChat. In post-reform, urban China, dining-out defines a notable part of the emerging middle-class lifestyle (Grunert et al., 2011, p. 357). This lifestyle is appreciated in a consumer society – a society in which the middle-class population’s consumer behaviours are sensitive to their judgement of taste. For young, middle-class Chinese urbanites, dining at particular restaurants represents aspects of their tastes and lifestyle. These young urbanites share this dining-out experience through uploading geotagged food photographs in WeChat ‘Moments’ to communicate these tastes. This practice collaterally facilitates these young urbanites’ self-presentation; it emerges from a tangled web of consumerism, lifestyle, and mobile social media usage in post-reform, urban China.

The mediated self-presentation occurring in young, middle-class urbanites’ everyday use of WeChat is associated with their performative Xiaozi tastes and lifestyle. In particular, the Xiaozi tastes shape their ambivalent attitudes towards glocalized foreign brands. While generating geotagged food photographs from the restaurants and cafés of these foreign brands, aspects of these young adults’ class distinction in urban China, which feature aspiring to the cosmopolitan, are performed. This sets them apart from the rest of the Chinese population, serving their middle-class desires for class distinction. However, these young adults’ attitude towards ‘main-streamed’ foreign consumer brands is wobbling, because their self-reflexive capacity continues to encourage them to pursue more and more exclusive consumer experiences. This paradoxical pursuit of accessibility and exclusivity is also embodied in their food-photograph sharing; it exploits and feeds into the in-group class distinction between young, middle-class urbanites, who form a seemingly homogenized group. This in-group variety has marked the consumerist essence of these young urbanites’ mediated self-presentation on social media, which frames an increasingly important aspect of the socio-cultural characters with which they are identified in post-reform, urban Chinese society.

Disclosure statement No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes 1. These countries typically include the Western countries, alongside Japan and South Korea.

2. Tier 1 cities are Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen. The group of Tier 2 cities comprises approximately 40 cities such as Hangzhou, Suzhou and Xiamen (Chiu, Ip, & Silverman, 2012, p. 78).

3. Jiepang is similar to Foursquare.

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4. 19 participants were selected but three withdrew in the data collection phase. Their records were not used for the research.

5. To abstract and visualise the unique/shared patterns of user-generated content collected from netnographic fieldwork (Kozinets, 2015, pp. 201–202).

6. In Figure 4, the geotags are underlined. The top-right geotag is specific, illustrating that the coffee was consumed at a Starbucks cafe.

7. The caption, in Chinese, suggests that Zhong missed the taste of the dish (fish and chips), which is symbolic of the British culture.

ORCID Yuzhu (altman) Peng

http://orcid.org/0000-0002-3440-0761

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Journalism Studies

ISSN: 1461-670X (Print) 1469-9699 (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rjos20

CAN DISCOURSE ANALYSIS SUCCESSFULLY EXPLAIN THE CONTENT OF MEDIA AND JOURNALISTIC PRACTICE? Greg Philo To cite this article: Greg Philo (2007) CAN DISCOURSE ANALYSIS SUCCESSFULLY EXPLAIN THE CONTENT OF MEDIA AND JOURNALISTIC PRACTICE?, Journalism Studies, 8:2, 175-196, DOI: 10.1080/14616700601148804 To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/14616700601148804

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CAN DISCOURSE ANALYSIS SUCCESSFULLY EXPLAIN THE CONTENT OF MEDIA AND JOURNALISTIC PRACTICE? Greg Philo

It is argued here that textual analysis of media accounts requires the study of the social structures from which competing ideological explanations develop. A comparison of the methods of the Glasgow University Media Group with the work of Norman Fairclough and Teun van Dijk shows that discourse analysis which remains text-based has problems in its ability to show: (1) the origins of competing discourses and how they relate to different social interests, (2) the diversity of social accounts compared to what is present (and absent) in a specific text, (3) the impact of external factors such as professional media practice on the manner in which the discourses are represented, and (4) what the text actually means to different parts of the audience. There are other problems with ‘‘text only’’ analyses in relation to (1) the accuracy of representations, (2) the significance of texts to our own audience, and (3) the question of how rhetoric ‘‘belongs to’’ or is used by different social interests. To overcome these problems requires a method which analyses processes of production, content, reception and circulation of social meaning simultaneously.

KEYWORDS critical discourse analysis; Glasgow University Media Group; media content methods; Norman Fairclough; Teun van Dijk

Introduction This article outlines the methods developed by the Glasgow University Media Group and compares them to discourse analysis in the work of two theorists, Norman Fairclough and Teun van Dijk. These authors do not represent the whole of discourse analysis but they are prominent in the area and their studies provide useful points of similarity and difference with the methods which we employ.1 The main issue I will raise is that their textbased studies are limited in the conclusions which can be drawn, since their approach does not include the study of key production factors in journalism or the analysis of audience understanding. Finally, I will show through a case study how it is possible to study simultaneously the three processes of production, content and reception of news messages.

Van Dijk and Fairclough: Discourse and Ideology Teun van Dijk is well known for his work in analysing racism in news accounts. He points to the differences between traditional content studies in this area and between that of his discourse analysis which focuses on a systematic description of semantic and syntactic features of text: Journalism Studies, Vol. 8, No 2, 2007 ISSN 1461-670X print/1469-9699 online/07/020175-22 – 2007 Taylor & Francis DOI: 10.1080/14616700601148804

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GREG PHILO Traditional approaches to the role of the media in the reproduction of racism were largely content analytical: quantitative studies of stereotypical words or images representing minorities . . . Discourse analytical approaches, systematically describe the various structures and strategies of text or talk, and relate these to the social or political context. For instance, they may focus on overall topics, or more local meanings (such as coherence or implications) in a ‘‘semantic’’ analysis. But also the ‘‘syntactic’’ form of sentences, or the overall ‘‘organisation’’ of a news report may be examined in detail.

(2000, p. 35)

There are many different theoretical strands in discourse analysis and the word discourse is used in varying ways. It is used abstractly to mean statements in general or to refer to a particular group or type of statements (as in ‘‘a discourse’’). John Fiske refers to it as a language or system of representation that has developed socially in order to make and circulate a coherent set of meanings, which serve the interests of a section of society (1987, p. 14). The important point here is that for critical discourse analysts such as van Dijk and Fairclough, discourse is linked to power and social interests. From such relationships, there emerge different perspectives on the world. As Fairclough writes: I see discourses as ways of representing aspects of the world * the processes, relations and structures of the material world, the ‘‘mental world’’ of thoughts, feelings, beliefs and so forth and, the social world . . . different discourses are different perspectives on the world, and they are associated with the different relations people have to the world.

(2003, p. 124)

Fairclough and van Dijk are particularly concerned with ideological effects of discourse. As Fairclough notes: One of the causal effects of texts which has been of major concern for critical discourse analysis is ideological effects . . . ideologies are representations of aspects of the world which can be shown to contribute to establishing, maintaining and changing social relations of power, domination and exploitation. (2003, p. 9)

Van Dijk notes that a key function of ideologies is to promote and coordinate the interests of a group and comments that dominated groups also need ideologies as a basis for resistance. That said, he reaches the conclusion that: It is of course true that many ideologies develop precisely in order to sustain, legitimate or manage group conflicts, as well as relationships of power and dominance. (1998, p. 24)

The intellectual origins of many approaches to ideology (and notably Fairclough’s) are in structuralism *in left/Marxist variants such as in Althusser’s work (1969) for whom ideology was ultimately a function of class power in capitalism, to the development of it

by Foucault, who shifted the source of power to language itself. In his work discourse is a social force which has a central role in what is constructed as ‘‘real’’ and therefore what is possible. It determines how the world can be seen and what can be known and done within it. Discourse is thus crucial in explaining how the social subject is positioned and limited. A key question which he highlights is: ‘‘how are we constituted as subjects who exercise or submit to power relations?’’ (1994, p. 318).

What emerges from these theoretical developments is a concern with how language embodies systems of thought which structure what can be understood. For example, in the earliest work of the Media Group we showed how news language was organised

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around very limited ways of understanding economic and political activity. In the 1970s, trade unions and their wage claims were blamed for economic problems such as inflation.

There was alternative evidence to suggest other causes but the government view dominated the news. As we wrote: What there is here is an illusion of balance, whereby reports are included from what appear as different sides. But the reported views have a totally different status, legitimacy and meaning in the text. In a very real way, only one set of statements makes ‘‘sense’’ in that we are systematically given the information necessary to understand the explanations and policies which they represent. (Philo et al., 1977, p. 13)

In our conclusion to More Bad News , we were critical of broadcasters claims to objectivity and impartiality when the news was actually reproducing the assumptions of the powerful about what was necessary and possible in our society: The bland assertion of objectivity and impartiality . . . serves only to obfuscate what is in fact the reproduction of the dominant assumptions about our society * the assumptions of the powerful about what is important, necessary and possible within it. (Glasgow University Media Group, 1980, p. 115)

In his recent work on textual analysis, Fairclough writes on ideology in terms which have some resonance with this: A particular discourse includes assumptions about what there is, what is the case, what is possible, what is necessary, what will be the case, and so forth. In some instances, one might argue that such assumptions, and indeed the discourses they are associated with, are ideological. (2003, p. 58)

In illustrating what is seen to be ‘‘necessary’’, Fairclough takes the example of global economic change. He notes that this may be presented as an inevitable process, without human agency and comments on a text published by the European Union: It is similar to many other contemporary texts in representing global economic change as a process without human agents . . . a process in a general and ill-defined present and without a history (it is just what ‘‘is’’) which is universal (or, precisely, ‘‘global’’) in terms of place, and an inevitable process which must be responded to in particular ways * an ‘‘is’’ which imposes an ‘‘ought’’, or rather a ‘‘must’’. (2003, p. 45)

We offered a similar analysis in our Really Bad News , and noted how the harmful effects of movements in the world economy were likely to be treated on the television news as a form of natural disaster, rather than as the result of human decisions: Recession, inflation and unemployment, if they are not being blamed on wage claims, were in the period of our study most likely to be treated as natural disasters. The world economy is presented as an omnipresent force, and movements in it . . . are the problem, but these movements are rarely explained for what they actually are . . . a multinational firm may be reported as regrettably being forced to close a factory in the north of England because it is uneconomic, but will not usually be spoken of as having made a decision to move its capital somewhere else because it can make more money there.

(Glasgow University Media Group, 1982, p. 130)

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Ideology and the manner in which some perspectives are legitimised and achieve dominance remains a central issue in textual analysis. The methods which are employed are the focus of the next section.

Three Methods in Textual Analysis I will look first at the thematic analysis developed by the Media Group, then at Fairclough’s work on the semantic and grammatical features of texts, and finally at van Dijk’s use of what he terms the ideological square. The Media Group’s work began with studies of television news. We focused on major thematic areas such as industrial struggles or international conflicts and then examined the explanatory frameworks or perspectives which underpinned the descriptions which were given. In any contentious area there will be competing ways of describing events and their history. Ideas are linked to interests and these competing interests will seek to explain the world in ways which justify their own position. So ideology (which we defined as an interest-linked perspective) and the struggle for legitimacy go hand in hand. Much of our work focused on the role of the media in these ideological struggles and how the reporting of events can embody different ways of understanding. We were interested in how language was linked to wider social processes and how individual meanings and communications related to conflict and divisions within the society as a whole. The language and definitions used were at one level the battleground for competing groups. The issue then was not to look simply at the descriptions which were offered of the world in a specific text, but to look at the social relations which underpinned the generation of these descriptions. Thus in our recent work on television and the Israeli Palestinian conflict we gave an extended historical account of the dispute and showed how each phase in it had generated competing histories of what had occurred (Philo and Berry, 2004). When the conflict is reported in media on a daily basis, both sides struggle to assert the validity of their own accounts. This is so for each event in terms of descriptions about what has happened and ‘‘who is to blame’’. But it also relates to the more general frameworks of understanding and interpretation which underpin the public relations of each side. For example, when we analysed news reports of the intifada between 2000 and 2002, we were puzzled as to why the Israelis were not at that time stressing the issue of anti-semitism as part of making their case. There was evidence of anti-semitism in the speeches of some Muslim clerics, so we asked experts in public relations why there had not been a great emphasis on this. Nachman Shai had been chief spokesperson for the IDF (Israeli Army) and he described the decision to focus on the ‘‘war on terror’’ rather than anti-semitism: We selected the first [war on terror] instead of the second [anti-semitism] because we are part of the Western world. We very much played the first argument. It worked better with governments, they gave us more support. It’s like if you’ve run out of arguments, you’re stuck with anti-semitism. The first one is based on common interests. (Interview, in Philo and Berry, 2004, p. 249)

It is also the case that for Israel to present itself as part of the general ‘‘war on terror’’ against those who dislike Western values also has the advantage of drawing attention away from specific actions by Israel which have contributed to the origins and development of the Middle East conflict. The Palestinians would for their part see the

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Israelis as state terrorists and would point to what they see as Israeli violations of international law in imposing a military occupation in the Palestinian territories.

The important theoretical point is that the interests behind an ideology may remain the same, but its immediate content does not. The parties in a conflict deploy different arguments in relation to constantly changing circumstances. To understand this process necessarily involves going beyond the immediate text. Our approach thus began from the assumption that different ways of explaining the world emerged from such conflicts and from other social divisions such as those between classes and subgroups within these, from interests based on gender or from competing institutions. Such an approach necessarily involved us in the detailed analysis of public debate and its origins in political and social conflict. This analysis was undertaken before work could begin on examining specific news texts to show how various perspectives were represented (or not) within them.

So an important first step in our method was to identify the range of arguments which existed on an issue. This showed what was available for journalists to choose from, as well as which arguments ‘‘belonged’’ to different interests and also made it possible to explore the conditions under which they were deployed. In our work on TV news coverage of industry and the economy, we examined the public debate which existed at that time about the failings of the British economy (Glasgow University Media Group, 1980). In the 1970s and 1980s, this was a matter of great concern as Britain was perceived to be falling behind the rest of the world’s economies. In this public controversy the trade unions pointed to management mistakes in the organisation of industry and to low levels of investment which meant that machines often broke down and production was much less efficient than that of competitors in other countries. In contrast, right-wing commentators (including the Conservative Party) preferred to point to the actions of the workforce and blamed strikes for the failings of the economy. This became a favourite theme of the Conservatives in the 1980s, in the early years of Margaret Thatcher’s government (see Philo et al., 1995). We were interested in how the TV news reported such arguments and the potential influence on public belief. We began by noting each of the explanations and ways of understanding which were put forward in public debate and the range of available evidence which could underpin different positions. We identified these from public materials such as books, reports, the press and TV, and any other relevant sources. From these we constructed what was in effect a conceptual map of the different beliefs which were available in the political and economic debate of that time. Using this, we could then analyse how different parts of the debate were featured in the news. A key issue was the absence or presence of explanations and the manner in which some accounts were highlighted or ‘‘preferred’’ in the text. We distinguished between statements that were simply reported by journalists as being from a specific source and those which they directly endorsed. This can be seen in the difference between a reported statement such as ‘‘the government says that strikes are a major problem’’ as compared with a ‘‘direct’’ statement as in this example: It’s the kind of strike that has contributed significantly to the dire economic problems.

(ITV, main news, 4 January 1975, cited in Philo et al., 1982, p. 29)

If Fairclough was analysing these types of statement, he would refer to them as indicating differences in modality in as much as they relate to differences in ‘‘commitments’’, ‘‘stances’’, and therefore ‘‘identification’’ (2003, p. 166). We did not always use the

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categories of formal linguistics and developed our own descriptions of what was occurring.2 But it is clear that there are some parallels between these semantic and syntactical features of text which we examined and the later work developed by Fairclough. For example, he uses the concepts of hyponymy and synonymy to mean a pre-supposed semantic relationship. The first implies an inclusion and the second an identity between words. For example in the case of hyponymy, a neo-liberal might treat ‘‘globalisation’’ and ‘‘economic progress’’ as hyponyms. The point is, that to make such a relationship can favour a particular perspective. In hyponymy one word is strengthened by its suggested closeness with the other. An even stronger relationship is in synonymy, where words are treated as being so close that they are interchangeable. We illustrated such a use of language in our study of strikes in the car industry. We had shown how the lack of investment in new plants meant that machines broke down very often and that much production was lost. This, however, was ignored on the news and when destruction of output occurred it was related very largely to strikes. So when the strike ended, the plant was referred to as returning to ‘‘full’’ production, even though such ‘‘normal’’ periods included a loss of output which was greater than that caused by strikes in the factory. For example, a journalist commented that: With the engine tuners back at work . . . the plant was also back in full production. (ITV, lunch-time news, 7 January 1975)

We noted in our commentary on this that ‘‘normal production and full production are treated as synonymous and are equated with being strike free’’ (Philo et al., 1982, p. 36).

Fairclough also uses the concept of ‘‘collocation’’. This means a regular or habitual pattern of co-occurrence between words. He gives the example of ‘‘poor old’’ (as in ‘‘poor old man’’) as being a more habitual combination than ‘‘poor young’’ (2003, p. 213). We showed this process in our account of the treatment of wage claims in the news in the 1970s. At the time, inflation was high and was routinely linked in reporting to wage ‘‘demands’’ by trade unions. We noted at the time that there were many other causes of inflation, such as speculation on property or increasing oil prices. The point about focusing on wages was that the government believed it could reduce inflation by forcing down wages and controlling wage claims. The view that wages had actually caused inflation was contested in public debate but the TV news nonetheless very extensively featured the government view, as in these examples: [The Chancellor] has warned again of excessive wage increases as the miners start negotiating. (BBC1, main news, 11 February 1975, our italics, cited in Philo et al., 1982, p. 61) [The Chancellor’s] warnings about wage-led inflation and pay rises well in excess of the cost of living. (BBC1, main news, 16 April 1975, our italics, cited in Glasgow University Media Group, 1980, p. 46)

So ‘‘excessive’’ occurs in collocation with ‘‘wage increases’’. The link became routinised as the news monitored each new wage claim and commented on its potential effect on inflation. We developed this conception of how meaning was established by noting that such a relationship could become routinised to the point that journalists might actually dispense with the emotive word ‘‘excessive’’. As we wrote:

DISCOURSE ANALYSIS AND JOURNALISTIC PRACTICE When this economic view is pursued, the logic of who is to blame is inescapable. It seems perfectly natural to monitor wage claims . . . this becomes so routine that journalists could dispense with apparently emotive terms such as ‘‘excessive’’. They have only to say ‘‘and tonight another wage claim’’, for everyone to know what they mean and at whom the finger is being pointed. (Philo et al., 1982, p. 60)

We also developed at this time the concept of the explanatory theme. This is an assumed explanation which gives a pattern or structure to an area of coverage. For example, the explanatory theme that strikes were to blame underpinned whole processes of news reporting. This might include going to a factory, interviewing workers, asking them about strikes and crucially not asking the management about investment policies or their own mistakes and then perhaps listing in the bulletin other strikes which had occurred that week. The crucial point is that the pattern of coverage and the subjects that it highlights can assume the explanation even without it being directly stated. Not all news is as closed as this suggests. There are a range of factors which can influence news output, some of which produce texts which are organised very tightly around such explanatory themes. But other factors can generate a greater diversity of explanation. To analyse these requires an approach which necessarily goes beyond the content of specific news texts and looks more broadly at the processes which underpin their production. I will suggest later that the absence of ‘‘production studies’’ in the work of Fairclough and van Dijk means that the conclusions which they can draw are limited and sometimes problematic.

Part of our work does focus exactly on this link between production and content. We can look briefly at this now and the issues which it raises for the development of appropriate methods.

Production Processes and the Analysis of News Texts The first issue to consider in studying production processes is the professional ideology of journalists and the institutions which they represent. Some news is dominated by specific explanations and ways of understanding but such assumptions are overlaid by other beliefs and practices. They include the need to feature some form of apparent balance between views *if only at the level of interviewing opposing sides. The credibility of television news and the legitimacy which it seeks for itself depends upon its claim to be even-handed and ‘‘fair’’ in controversial areas. Our research suggests that it is skewed in favour of the powerful, but the broadcasting institutions are intensely reluctant to be seen as simply the mouthpiece of the state or other major interests. There is sometimes a real substance to their claims to be featuring a range of views. How ‘‘balanced’’ they can be depends in part on the area of news. On issues where the state is very sensitive, such as in coverage of Northern Ireland in the period of the ‘‘troubles’’, the news could become almost one-dimensional *alternatives were reduced to fragments or disappeared altogether (see Miller, 1994). But even in such a ‘‘closed’’ area, there are still cases where journalists have jeopardised their own careers and become involved in intense controversies in order to release information and produce stories which they thought should be told. This is done from a sense of personal and professional commitment. In 1985, BBC journalists went on strike to protest about the banning of a Real Lives programme featuring elected representatives from Northern Ireland. The government had asked that the programme be not shown and the Board of Governors of the BBC had concurred with this (for other examples from Northern Ireland see Glasgow University

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Media Group, 1982, pp. 140 3). We also encountered instances where journalists had deliberately undermined what they saw as the official ‘‘line’’ of their own news organisation. For example, during the Falklands War, the British military had ordered the bombing of the air field at Port Stanley, the capital of the Falklands, which was occupied and being used by Argentine forces. The British Ministry of Defence (MoD) claimed initially that this attack was successful and that the air field could not be used.

There was, however, evidence that it was still in use, including film of it in operation which was being flown out by the Argentines. But the TV news stayed with the official government view that it was out of action. The MoD was then forced to make a concession, so it issued a statement that the air field could be used by ‘‘light air craft’’. An ITN journalist told us that when he received this, he deliberately went to find pictures of a very large Hercules transport plane going along the run way. He then placed these as the visual background to the MoD statement. We noticed this in our analysis as a contradiction in the text between the images and his report that: The MoD now concede that light aircraft can now use the runway. (ITV, main news, 14 May 1982, cited in Glasgow University Media Group, 1985, p. 86)

The point is that textual analysis alone could not reveal what had occurred and we had no way of understanding this until we spoke with the journalist.

There are other factors which should be considered in the news production process including the use of sources, the organisation and logistics of news gathering and market pressures. The relation to outside sources is crucial and we have studied the manner in which external interests such as governments, corporations, non-governmental organisations and other lobby groups seek to promote their own perspectives. The state has some absolute powers in that it can impose censorship though it rarely acts in such an overt fashion. Perhaps more importantly it is the key supplier of routine information to media institutions in areas such as employment or health or in relation to new policy development. Journalists depend on the access granted to them, and this becomes particularly acute in circumstances such as war or conflict where only a limited number may be allowed in to the key zones for reporting. Politicians in power are in a strong position to insist that their views are featured *especially in the publicly regulated media.

We describe the media in our work as a contested space. Not all of those in the contest are of equal power and journalists are subject to intense pressures which can effect the climate in which they work. In Bad News from Israel , we noted a number of key factors which influenced broadcast output including the political link between Britain and the United States and the strong support in America for Israel, plus well-organised lobbying and public relations, together with the intense criticism of journalists who were seen to be putting out negative reports on Israel. As we concluded: The pressures of organised public relations, lobbying and systematic criticism together with the privileging of Israeli perspectives by political and public figures, can affect the climate within which journalists operate. There is no total control and there are areas of the media where the debate is relatively open. But these factors go some way to explaining why journalists sometimes have difficulty in giving a clear account of the Palestinian perspective, while they can apparently more easily facilitate that of the Israelis. (Philo and Berry, 2004, p. 256)

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Overall, the extent to which media are ‘‘open’’ to alternatives and may feature many contesting views is likely to vary in relation to conjunctions of political, economic and institutional factors *including differences between publicly regulated and privately owned sectors.3 We might expect a more open expression of varied perspectives when there is no clear account emerging from the most powerful groups or when they are divided. The divisions in the Conservative Party over Europe in the 1990s would be an example of this or the controversy in the Labour Party in the latter stages of Tony Blair’s leadership.

The privately owned media have often been used to promote political views, which has a limiting effect on the range of arguments and information which is featured within them. We noted this as a factor in the representation of the Israeli Palestinian conflict (see Philo and Berry, 2004, pp. 252 6). The economic interests of the media have strong effects on their political preferences. Not surprisingly the right-wing press in Britain has normally supported the Conservative Party. But the Murdoch organisation has also a tradition of reaching agreements with various political parties in order to gain commercial advantage.

In Britain, the Murdoch press had for many years supported the Conservatives and Margaret Thatcher, but in 1997 they switched support to New Labour, following a meeting and an unspecified agreement between Tony Blair and Rupert Murdoch. As Michael White commented in The Guardian : In every country in which Mr. Murdoch operates (and minimizes his tax bill) he is a power-broker, speaking power, not truth, unto power through his diverse media outlets.

The Blairites have . . . made a Faustian bargain with Rupert. They think they have a good bargain. (30 January 1998, cited in Philo, 1999, p. xi)

Most of the media in the UK are commercial institutions in their own right, so the need for market share *to gain viewers and readers *is a paramount concern. We have shown how this can override potential links to government or ‘‘public’’ interests. For example, media coverage of mental health in the 1990s went largely against government policies of reducing long-term institutional care in special hospitals. The policy of ‘‘community care’’ was attacked as the media focused on audience-grabbing stories of the dangers posed by the mentally ill *what we referred to as the ‘‘mad axe murderer syndrome’’ (Philo, 1996). In this area, the desire for market share was crucial and ‘‘news values’’ which place a priority on fear, drama or spectacular events become central in the choice of stories and the angle taken.

The key theoretical point is that all these pressures exert major influences on the content of texts. For example, where there is an intense and controversial debate as in the Israeli Palestinian conflict, journalists might simply seek to avoid giving explanations because whatever they might say will draw criticism from one side or the other. There is also a limit to the amount of time that they will spend giving an account of the views of each side. As Lindsey Hilsum from Channel 4 News commented to us: With a conflict like this, nearly every single fact is disputed . . . I think, ‘‘Oh God, the Palestinians say this and the Israelis say that’’ . . . I have to say what both sides think and I think that sometimes stops us from giving the background we should be giving because I think ‘‘Well bloody hell I’ve only 3 minutes to do this piece in it and I’m going to spend a minute going through the arguments.’’ (Philo and Berry, 2004, p. 245)

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The history of the conflict and explanations of its causes are intensely controversial.

We noted how rarely they were referred to in news programmes. It was also the case that when journalists did include references to them, they sometimes spoke in a form of short hand or code which noted an issue but was very inexplicit. Thus an ITV journalist commented ‘‘The basic raw disagreements remain *the future, for example of this city Jerusalem’’ (ITV, early evening news, 16 October 2001, quote cited in Philo and Berry, 2004, p. 110). Some viewers would already have an understanding of the historical events which gives significance to this comment, for example that Jerusalem is sacred to both Muslims and Jews and East Jerusalem has been occupied (illegally, in the eyes of most countries) by Israel since 1967. But as we showed in our audience research, most of the population simply do not have this knowledge. So the journalist’s comment has little meaning, in terms of the potential to understand what the ‘‘disagreement’’ is about. The meaning cannot always simply be assumed using the cultural knowledge of the investigator. It also requires some knowledge of the audience.

The key conclusion which we drew, in terms of methods, was that it was not possible to analyse individual texts in isolation from the study of the wider systems of ideologies which informed them and the production processes which structured their representation. Other theorists in the field of media research drew the same conclusion and there were very significant studies undertaken which examined production and the dynamic contention between media and their sources (Hallin, 1989; Schlesinger, 1978). It was also necessary to simultaneously study processes of audience reception before making judgements about social meaning and the potential impacts of texts on public understanding. This linking of production, content and reception became the basis of our methodological approach. With this in mind I will now go on to consider the methods of text analysis employed by Fairclough and van Dijk.

Fairclough’s Critical Discourse Analysis As we have seen, Fairclough is centrally concerned with issues of power and legitimacy and the ‘‘‘common sense’ assumptions which are implicit in the conventions according to which people interact linguistically’’ (2001, p. 2). He terms his approach critical discourse analysis and he challenges social theorists and researchers to show the effects of language in contemporary social life. As he writes, these effects include ‘‘making the socio-economic transformations of new capitalism and the policies of governments to facilitate them seem inevitable’’ (2003, p. 204). Drawing on Bourdieu and Wacquant, he notes that what is at issue is the process of classification, by which ‘‘naturalised preconstructions’’ generate a particular ‘‘vision’’ of the world (Fairclough, 2003, p. 130; Bourdieu and Wacquant, 2001). Thus he notes that discourses can be differentiated: In terms of semantic relations (synonymy, hyponymy, antonymy) between words * how they classify parts of the world * as well as collocations, assumptions, and various grammatical features. (Fairclough, 2003, p. 133)

I have discussed collocations, synonymy and hyponymy above (antonymy is the opposite of hyponymy).4 My own view is that the master category here has to be ‘‘assumptions’’, since these underlie the deployment of the various textual strategies *as in treating economic progress as a hyponym of globalisation. Put another way, the textual strategies are used to ‘‘frame’’ a description in accordance with the underlying

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assumption. Fairclough also analyses other dimensions of the rhetoric and ‘‘promotional messages’’ of politicians such as Tony Blair. In a close analysis of political speeches, he shows how ‘‘desires’’ are typically represented by Blair as actually ‘‘existing’’. For example, globalisation is spoken of ‘‘as a fact’’ and at the same time as a project or plan (2003, p. 114). He also shows how Blair positions himself with his own audience in terms of what Fairclough refers to as the process of ‘‘conversationalisation’’. Blair presents himself as speaking as an individual, saying for example ‘‘I realise why people protest against globalisation’’ (2003, p. 76). This simulates person-to-person conversation, thus reducing distance and explicit hierarchies (rather than saying for example, ‘‘the government believes that . . . ’’). This is an interesting account of rhetorical strategies but there are difficulties with Fairclough’s approach in as much as it remains text-based. Fairclough does note the limits of textual analysis and the need to ‘‘link the ‘micro’ analysis of texts to the ‘macro’ analysis of how power relations work across networks of practices and structures’’ (2003, p. 16). But my own view is that text analysis cannot be simply bolted on to other work. There are problems in that it is difficult to explain the construction and meaning of a text without simultaneously examining other factors such as production and reception processes.

In essence, I have suggested that discourse analysis which remains text-based encounters a series of problems specifically in its ability to show: (1) the origins of competing discourses and how they relate to different social interests; (2) the diversity of social accounts compared to what is present (and absent) in a specific text; (3) the impact of external factors such as professional ideologies on the manner in which the discourses are represented; and (4) what the text actually means to different parts of the audience.

There are three other problems for what we might call ‘‘text only’’ analyses to which I want to draw attention. The first is the issue of the accuracy of representations and the need to go beyond the text to check these, the second is the question of the significance of the text to our own audience (i.e. the readers of our critical work) and the third is what I will term ‘‘whose rhetoric is it anyway?’’ We can look first at the issue of the accuracy of representations. A key function of texts is to represent other entities *such as ideas, beliefs or actions (Fairclough, 2003, p. 27). A news text often represents these in terms of the reported statements of whoever is being featured. Fairclough seeks to criticise such representations by showing how they are sometimes ‘‘framed’’ to give a favourable view of one side rather than another. We would do the same thing, but we would first examine the external context from which the statements were derived. An example from Fairclough’s work would be his comments on a BBC radio news report of September 1993 on the extradition of two Libyans accused of responsibility for the Lockerbie bombing in 1988. He points to the manner in which the UN Secretary-General is reported as taking a tough line with Libya and is said to be using the word ‘‘demand’’: Part of the framing here is the choice of ‘‘demand’’ as the reporting verb * it is highly improbable that the Secretary-General said ‘‘I demand that . . . ’’, so ‘‘demand’’ rather than, for example, ‘‘ask’’ would seem to be a framing conducive to an interpretation which casts the Libyans in an unfavourable light. (Fairclough, 2003, p. 53)

The question we would put is, did he say it or didn’t he? The research would be stronger without the guess about what the Secretary-General ‘‘probably’’ said. But to find out requires going beyond the immediate text, to examine the original speech and to assess the significance of what it actually included.

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The second issue is, what gives power to critical analysis for our own readers. By this I mean, what makes people sit up and take notice? It might not come as much of a surprise to know that politicians exaggerate, that they use rhetoric, or that they speak of things they want to happen as if they are already happening. A critique is given more force by conveying a sense of what is excluded *of what we are not being told. This is especially so when it is possible to show that the excluded accounts have a strong evidential base. In our work when we indicated that trade unions were blamed on television news for industrial failures, we were able to give more credence to alternative accounts by quoting from figures produced by management in the car industry. These revealed the role of their own mistakes in lost production which had not been featured in television news. We also quoted from other ‘‘authentic’’ sources beyond the immediate news texts. We included this report from the Financial Times which very clearly stated the trade union view: Shop stewards tell hair-raising stories about managerial failings, and point at the moment to constant assembly-track hold-ups caused by non-availability of supplier component parts. (6 January 1975)

Critical discourse analysis would be more powerful if it routinely included a developed account of alternatives.

The final point is what I have called ‘‘whose rhetoric’’ and also relates to the need for an account of the social and political structures which underpin the content of texts.

Fairclough does sometimes go beyond the immediate text in order, for example, to contrast the claims of neo-liberalism with its actual effects. In this, he shows a concern with the gap between rhetoric and reality and between what people say and what they do. In his New Labour, New Language? , he also contrasts Blair’s ‘‘relaxed and inclusive style against evidence of ‘control freakery’’’ (2000, p. 156). But much of Fairclough’s work is textbased in the sense that it focuses on texts to show how dominant perspectives are legitimised through various strategies in the use of language. There is another dimension to the issue of the difference between what politicians say and what they do which can create problems for such textual analysis. The point is that politicians sometimes speak in favour of policies in which they do not actually believe and which they have no interest in pursuing. The rhetorical strategies employed would not therefore be seriously intended to win support for the policy but may exist simply to gain personal support for the speaker.

For example, in September 2002, Tony Blair made a speech about the need to ‘‘continue to redistribute wealth’’: It must be a Britain in which we continue to redistribute power, wealth and opportunity to the many, not the few. (Tony Blair, 17 September 2002)

It was an unusual statement since the government’s own figures on the distribution of wealth show that Britain has one of the most extreme divisions between rich and poor in Europe. Blair and New Labour have rejected any suggestion of increasing income or property taxes to dent the wealth of the super rich. On the TV news, the speech was attributed to the need for Blair to gather support in his own party for the coming war with Iraq. As this journalist comments: He [Tony Blair] has spent the past few weeks preaching a message about war and backing America that makes many Labour members nervous and some positively sick at the soul. So ahead of the party conference [Blair is making] promises more to their taste.

DISCOURSE ANALYSIS AND JOURNALISTIC PRACTICE He even used an old socialist word, one banned from the New Labour lexicon. (BBC1, early evening news, 17 September 2002)

So Blair’s use of the old socialist word ‘‘redistribution’’ might be seen as rhetoric designed simply to increase his support in the Labour Party. This implies the existence of different types of rhetoric. One which we have seen earlier is designed to legitimate and develop a new economic order for the benefit of the powerful, and the other which might be called ‘‘mere rhetoric’’ designed for more limited personal or political advantage. There are gaps between rhetoric and reality in both types *between for example the claims made for the new order and what it actually delivers. But this is a different order of gap from when a politician is merely stealing the clothes of another group and is not seeking to legitimise fundamental changes. It also raises the question of whether there is much point in analysing the textual strategies of a political speech in such a case as if it represents a fundamental commitment to an ideological programme, when by other (external) criteria we would know that it does not. In considering types of rhetoric, another possibility is of course that Tony Blair and New Labour do actually believe some of the progressive comments which they make, for example on the need to abolish child poverty or debt in the developing world. So to distinguish these from ‘‘mere rhetoric’’ and the legitimising of economic power in neo-liberal speech requires a detailed exposition of current political debate, the perspectives within it and their relation to policy and real change. A discourse analysis which focuses on political rhetoric as legitimising a new economic order and analyses texts on this basis would miss such differences in political meaning and potential impact. Crucially, if the analysis remains ‘‘within the text’’ it is not possible to explain the social relationships which underpin the presentation of the descriptions and accounts which appear. If we look, for example at an analysis by Fairclough of another speech by Blair, we can see this more clearly. This speech was about the ‘‘war on terror’’ and globalisation. Fairclough shows how the structure of the speech ‘‘dramatically constructs’’ a dialogue with imagined opponents (as in: ‘‘people say we should do this, we have tried it, it didn’t work, so now we must do our policy’’). The point, which Fairclough’s discourse analysis research reveals, is that in these parts of the speech Blair constructs the supposed opposition in such a way as to affirm the correctness of his own decisions. But in another part of the speech which Fairclough does not discuss, Blair actually endorses the views of his opponents. He states: The demonstrators are right to say there is injustice, poverty, environmental degradation.

(Tony Blair, 13 October 2001, in Fairclough, 2003, pp. 47, 238)

The problem is that when Blair does this, his opinions do not sound much different from those of Fairclough’s. So if we stay ‘‘within the text’’, it is not immediately clear what critical discourse analysis is being critical of. At such a point, it would be helpful to consider the political relationships which led to the use of such rhetoric and also to have a detailed account of the potential gap between it and the reality of what New Labour is actually doing on, for example, the environment.

The key point is that to distinguish between types of rhetoric necessitates an analysis of political structures, purposes and strategies. It requires an account of the social and political system and conflicting interest within it, beyond what can be seen from an immediate text. Without this we cannot comment on the difference between rhetoric and reality in terms of the intentions of the speaker, the validity of representations and the relation between accounts that are featured and alternative versions of truth. Textual

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analysis should extend its methods to include the study of the structures and relationships which shape the content of texts. We will see this again in considering the work of Teun van Dijk.

Van Dijk and the Ideological Square As we have seen, van Dijk is also concerned with questions of ideology and particularly with the issue of the reproduction of racism in discourse. He notes that traditional studies of ideology and language have focused on ‘‘lexical items’’, i.e. individual words which may imply a value judgement (e.g. ‘‘terrorist’’ or ‘‘racist’’). He suggests that a discourse analytical approach should go beyond this. He notes that opinions and the assumptions which they contain may be expressed in many complex ways in text and talk, in for example: Headlines, story structures, arguments, graphical arrangements, syntactic structures, semantic structures of coherence, overall topics and so on. (van Dijk, 1998, p. 31)

Some of his work parallels our analysis of texts. He highlights for example the importance of ‘‘agency, responsibility and blame for actions’’ and ‘‘the perspective from which events are described and evaluated’’ (1998, p. 44). Thus in Bad News from Israel , we showed how the Palestinians were often represented on the news as initiating conflict in the sense that they ‘‘started’’ a problem by attacking the Israelis who then ‘‘retaliated’’ or ‘‘responded’’ *as in this example: Five Palestinians have been killed when the Israeli army launched new attacks on the Gaza strip in retaliation for recent acts of terrorism . (BBC Radio 4, 7.30 a.m., 6 March 2002, our italics)

So the agency and responsibility for initiating the violence is presented as being with the Palestinians. We showed in our reception studies how audience members could infer blame from such accounts. As one young woman commented in a focus group: You always think of the Palestinians as being really aggressive because of the stories you hear on the news. I always put the blame on them in my own head . . . I always think the Israelis are fighting back against the bombings that have been done to them. (In Philo and Berry, 2004, p. 222)

The Palestinians do not see the conflict in this way. From their perspective, its origins lie in the loss of their homes and land when Israel was established, which made them refugees and in their situation as living under Israeli military occupation since 1967.

A senior journalist from the BBC commented to us on the absence of this perspective on the news. What was missing, he said, was the view that this was an uneven war and that: It is a war of national liberation * a periodic guerrilla war, sometimes using violent means, in which a population is trying to throw off an occupying force. (Paul Adams, interview, in Philo and Berry, 2004, p. 260)

We also noted how the Israeli perspective, which as we have seen focused on the ‘‘war on terror’’ was sometimes endorsed by journalists in their commentaries *as in this description of an Israeli action:

DISCOURSE ANALYSIS AND JOURNALISTIC PRACTICE The [Palestinian] attack only reinforced Israeli determination to drive further into the towns and camps where Palestinians live * ripping up roads around Bethlehem as part of the ongoing fight against terror . (ITV, early evening news, 8 March 2002, our italics, cited in Philo and Berry, 2004, pp. 187 8)

Another dimension of method which van Dijk notes is the value of quantitative demonstrations. These are important to establish whether ‘‘overall strategies’’ exist in establishing differential descriptions of social groups. In our study we used quantitative analysis to show the relative prominence of casual linkages explaining action and motive.

For example, we showed in a major sample of news content that Israelis were said to be ‘‘responding’’ or ‘‘retaliating’’ to something that had been done to them about six times as often as the Palestinians (Philo and Berry, 2004, p. 160).

In his own work, van Dijk develops the concept of the ideological square which is intended to highlight key ‘‘functional moves’’ in developing an ideological strategy. For van Dijk, the heart of this strategy is a polarisation between ‘‘us’’ and ‘‘them’’, which involves positive in-group description and negative out-group description (1998, p. 33).

So an ideological account would: 1.

2.

3.

4.

Emphasise our good properties/actions Emphasise their bad properties/actions Mitigate our bad properties/actions Mitigate their good properties/actions. (1998, p. 33)

Using this theoretical model, van Dijk analyses media texts, notably of British tabloids such as The Sun . He concludes that ‘‘various levels of discourse may be involved in the enactment, expression or inculcation of negative beliefs about immigrants or minorities’’ (van Dijk, 2000, p. 42). We certainly found in our work that media coverage could stigmatise out-groups having the effect, as we wrote, of re-enforcing ‘‘our identity and their exclusion’’ (Philo and Beattie, 1999). We did not, however, use a concept such as the ‘‘ideological square’’. The reason is that the four points of a square can easily become four boxes into which language is fitted (especially so in the hands of students who usually make it go in one way or another). My own view is that it is better to avoid such a priori categories when beginning the analysis of a text. Van Dijk is certainly right that there are many elements of media accounts which correspond to his schema. The difficultly is that some do not, so the question is raised, how can we develop a method which can explain contradictions and variations? We can pursue this by looking at the case of The Sun newspaper. This has a differentiated readership and a complex marketing strategy which produces variations in its news coverage, editorials and features. The following editorial is on a woman who has built a ‘‘mud hut’’ in her garden and would fit without difficulty into the ideological square: Mrs. Desiree Ntolo’s 20-ton mud hut is being demolished.

She built it in the back garden of her council house in Dagenham, Essex because she was homesick for Cameroon.

Just a thought: why doesn’t she build the next monstrosity in the African homeland she’s pining for?

The neighbours would no doubt club together to pay her airfare. (The Sun , 26 September 1992)

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In van Dijk’s words, this would ‘‘favour the in-group and derogate or problematize the out-group’’ (2000, p. 42), with the neighbours being the in-group who would pay the airfare for the ‘‘out-group’’ African woman to go. But there are other cases of some news and editorial coverage which clearly contradict the model. How do we account for a commentary which appeared in The Sun criticising ‘‘the abuse hurled by some supporters’’ at black football players? It had the headline ‘‘Racist Morons Ruin the Game’’ (1 September 1990). In another editorial The Sun explicitly attacked the sacking of a black chambermaid: Jennifer Millington’s job as a chambermaid lasted one day.

She was sacked, according to the owners of [a hotel] in Newquay, Cornwall, for one reason.

She was black and some of the guests objected to her.

We hope this disgraceful story has one certain result.

Any decent person going to Newquay will stay in any hotel but [this one]. (The Sun , 2 September 1991)

Here, the out-group are clearly the management and the guests but the story is described as ‘‘disgraceful’’ and there are no mitigating factors given for their behaviour.

The Sun would defend itself against criticisms of being racist by pointing to such stories and also by noting its large number of black readers. This offers some potential insight into these apparent contradictions. The Sun has always been faced with the issue of selling to diverse readerships and with potential variations between its content and the views of those who buy it. It has a history of being a right-wing populist newspaper which sells to a predominantly working-class audience, many of whom vote Labour. When it supported Margaret Thatcher at the beginning of the 1980s, one of its targets was the left-wing head of the Greater London Council, Ken Livingstone. By the end of the 1980s, when the Thatcher government was in serious decline, The Sun actually gave a regular column to Ken Livingstone under the title ‘‘A View from Labour’’. He then used it to attack other columnists in the same paper for being too right-wing. The Sun ’s approach to issues with ‘‘racial’’ overtones shows a similar concern to appeal to a diverse readership and specifically not to offend key minority groups. For example, in 2006 there was a major controversy over the publication by European newspapers of cartoons featuring the Prophet Muhammad. The Sun did not publish these. In an editorial it stated that: The cartoons are intended to insult Muslims, and The Sun can see no justification for causing deliberate offence to our much-valued Muslim readers. (The Sun , 3 February 2006)

We spoke to a Sun journalist who dealt with ‘‘race’’ issues. He expressed the view that his paper had deliberately avoided being in any way anti-Muslim in dealing with stories such as the Abu Hamza case, where a cleric was arrested and tried for inciting violence: I think we handled the Abu Hamza story well * concentrated just on what he was, it didn’t spill over into being anti-Muslim. Being cynical I could say it’s because a lot of Sun readers are from ethnic minorities. (Interview, 21 June 2006)

To explain the apparent contradictions in The Sun ’s coverage really requires a production study and an analysis of the conflicting pressures which affect content. Van Dijk’s method does not include this and when confronted by such variations, he can

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simply pass over them. Consider, for example, his commentary on newspaper coverage of the views of Enoch Powell, a right-wing politician who called for the repatriation of migrants: Despite its formal rejection of Powell’s ideas, the conservative Press seldom misses the opportunity to publicise his racist views, so that millions of readers will know them. The Times even published another recent diatribe of Powell against migrants, thereby legitimating his racist views as part of the public debate, even when it distances itself from such views. A ‘‘reassuring’’ Sun poll shows that the majority of the British people do not support Powell’s ‘‘astonishing ‘blacks go home’ call.’’ That white public opinion (or the methods by which it is assessed) is fickle, is shown a few weeks later, after the Brixton and Tottenham disturbances, when The Mail reports that most white Britons want to stop further immigration and favour repatriation. (van Dijk, 1991, p. 97)

My own view is that when The Sun refers to Powell’s opinion as an ‘‘astonishing ‘blacks go home’’’ call and publicises a study showing that most people disagree with him, then this is a significant variation from the hypothesis that The Sun is explicitly or implicitly racist. It really needs to be explained. But in this case, van Dijk simply passes over it and moves on to comment on the ‘‘fickle’’ character of white public opinion, which is a different issue altogether. To explain the position of The Sun and other media requires a study of production and a method which includes analysing the practices of journalists as well as newspaper marketing strategies. I am also not sure about van Dijk’s claim that for the media to present views while criticising them has a legitimating effect. There is a good deal of media coverage of Osama bin Laden and his video tapes when they are released but this does not legitimise his actions or those associated with him in British public opinion.5 The impact of specific media messages really has to be assessed using audience studies.

In his more recent work, van Dijk analyses The Sun ’s coverage of illegal migrants. He shows how in a report they are presented as ‘‘invading’’ Britain and he indicates the extremely negative quality of much of what is written. The text from The Sun is as follows: Britain is being swamped by a tide of illegal immigrants so desperate for a job that they will work for a pittance in our restaurants, cafés and nightclubs.

Immigration officers are being overwhelmed by work. Last year 2191 ‘‘illegals’’ were nabbed and sent back home. But there are tens of thousands more, slaving behind bars, cleaning hotel rooms, and working in kitchens. (The Sun , cited in van Dijk, 2000, p. 44)

But once again he is confronted by the issue of variations in the coverage, where as he notes, there is ‘‘an element of empathy creeping into the article’’ when the journalists describe the immigrants as ‘‘slaving’’ at their work (2000, p. 45). This relates to the poor conditions and salaries which the immigrant workers receive.

So there is an ambivalence in The Sun report between the implied violence and threat of an ‘‘invasion’’ and the potential sympathy which might be invoked for the ‘‘slave’’ workers. To explain this requires as before, an investigation which goes beyond the text.

When we interviewed television journalists, we found some who were intensely critical of media attacks on asylum seekers and migrants. One very senior editor from ITN told us that he believed some sections of the press should be prosecuted for their role in the promotion of violence against these groups.6 He and others with whom we spoke had attempted to produce news items which went against the dominant flow. One focus of

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these ‘‘alternatives’’ was the exploitation and poverty of migrant workers. We can see this in the following headline from ITN, which is from a special extended report in a news programme: They came in search of a better life * what they find is squalour and slavery. (ITV, late news, 22 May 2006)

In the case of The Sun report, it might be that the newspaper is attempting to appease different audiences as I noted above, or that the journalists are trying to introduce alternative ideas. Van Dijk’s approach is first to acknowledge the contradiction in the report and then to attempt to resolve it by reinterpreting the text. He notes that when the journalists describe the immigrants as slaving: ‘‘This totally converts (and subverts) the earlier characterisation of the immigrants as active and evil, and not as victims’’ (2000, p. 45). He then attempts to find potential meanings which could put the text back into his ideological square. He goes on to say: On the other hand, the use of ‘‘slave’’ presupposes ‘‘slave holders’’, and instead of mere empathy, this may suggest an accusation of restaurant owners who exploit their ‘‘illegal’’ workers. (2000, p. 46)

I do not see how a connotation of ‘‘slave holders’’ could reduce sympathy for the slaves in this context. The difficulty is that because van Dijk’s methods remain text-based, there is no way in which it is possible to explain such contradictions other than by speculating on further potential meanings which can be derived from the text.

Without the analysis of production and reception processes, discourse analysis is limited in the conclusions that it can draw. There is a need to develop methods which can trace the communication of messages from their inception in contested perspectives, through the structures by which they are supplied to and processed by the media, then to their eventual appearance as text and finally to their reception by audiences. There follows a brief example from our own work to show how this might be done.

Production, Content and Reception of a Message This is a practical example based on news coverage of the Israeli Palestinian conflict and specifically on reports about the shooting early in the Intifada of a young Palestinian boy, Mohammed al-Durrah. The images of him and his father crouched against a wall were widely shown and became a potent symbol of the Palestinian intifada. The circumstances of this killing were highly contested and became the focus of an extensive propaganda struggle.

We have seen earlier in this chapter how Israeli public relations focused on the ‘‘war on terror’’ and sought to present Israel as threatened and essentially ‘‘responding’’ to attacks.

This provided an overall framework, but each new event in a conflict requires a specific public relations response. In the case of Mohammed al-Durrah, the Israelis issued a statement saying that the boy’s death was unintentional. This was reported on TV news as follows: Israel says the boy was caught unintentionally in crossfire . (ITV, lunch-time news, 2 October 2000, our italics)

The Palestinians rejected this account and stated that the targeting was deliberate.

This view appears on the news in an interview from hospital with the boy’s father, who is reported as follows:

DISCOURSE ANALYSIS AND JOURNALISTIC PRACTICE Miraculously his father survived but his body is punctured with eight bullet holes. ‘‘They shot at us until they hit us’’, he told me, and ‘‘I saw the man who did it * the Israeli soldier’’. (BBC1, main news, 1 October 2000)

The two accounts of the events are therefore opposed, but it is the Israeli view that became dominant on the news. Most significantly, it is endorsed by journalists as the ‘‘normal’’ account of events. It is referenced not simply as a viewpoint in the sense that ‘‘the Israelis say that he was caught in crossfire’’, but rather as a direct statement, as in ‘‘the boy was caught in the crossfire’’. There are a series of examples of this: Newscaster: Palestinians have been mourning the death of a 12-year-old boy killed in the crossfire .

Journalist: The Palestinian death toll is rising steadily, among them a 12-year-old boy, Mohammed al-Durrah, who with his father got caught in the crossfire . (ITV, early evening news, 1 October 2000, our italics) Journalist: Nearby I met the mother of 12-year-old Mohammed al-Durrah, the Palestinian boy killed on Saturday in the middle of a ferocious gun battle . (BBC1, main news, 3 October 2000, our italics) Journalist: The worst clashes have been in Jerusalem, the Gaza Strip, and the West Bank, where a 12-year-old boy was killed in the crossfire . (ITV, main news, 1 October 2000, our italics)

It is clear that the journalists are sympathetic and do say that it was the Israelis who killed the boy, but it is the Israeli explanation of this event which is most frequently referenced (for a full account see Philo and Berry, 2004, pp. 148 50, 225 31).

In our audience studies, we were then able to show how news accounts of these events had a measurable influence on the understanding and memory of them amongst viewers. For this work we brought together members of the public in focus groups. We also invited journalists to attend these and they took an active part in the research, asking questions about specific responses to coverage in which they had been involved. One dimension of this work was a ‘‘news writing exercise’’, in which we asked the audience group members to imagine that they were journalists and to write their own small news items. They were given 16 photographs which were taken from TV news footage of the conflict and asked to use these as a stimulus. They were not constrained to focus on these pictures but in practice could write anything they wished. As a method this was designed to show what audiences have retained from news programmes. We found that many participants had a remarkable ability to reproduce both the content and structure of news bulletins. One of the pictures in this exercise showed Mohammed al-Durrah with his father, others included the aftermath of a suicide bombing and the body of an Israeli solider being thrown from a window after he had been captured and later killed. There was no prior discussion of these and no attention was drawn to these or any of the pictures.These events were, however, referred to in some of the ‘‘news stories’’ written by the audience group members. In the case of Mohammed al-Durrah, there was no reference made to the Palestinian view that he had been deliberately killed. Some group members did, however, reproduce the language of the original Israeli statement: A young boy was caught in the crossfire as Israeli troops opened fire in the West Bank.

(Middle-class female, London, our italics)

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GREG PHILO Israeli soldiers return fire and a father and son are caught in the crossfire * the boy is fatally wounded. (Middle-class male, Glasgow, our italics) The American flag has been publicly burned by the Palestinians following the death of a young child who had been cornered in the crossfire between the Jewish soldiers and Palestinians in Jerusalem. (Middle-class female, Paisley, our italics)

There was another very significant feature to the stories written by some members of the audience groups. They also reproduced the structure and sequence of accounts as they had most frequently occurred on TV news. This, as I noted above, included the presentation of Palestinian action as initiating a violent event, while the Israelis were then shown as ‘‘responding’’. In the case of Mohammed al-Durrah, this is an unlikely scenario since his death was at the very beginning of the intifada. But in order to retain what became the ‘‘normal’’ sequence of action, some group members took events which had occurred after Mohammed al-Durrah’s death and wrote about them as producing the Israeli ‘‘response’’ in which the child was killed. This historical reversal occurs as in the following examples: An Israeli soldier was taken hostage and thrown to his death by Palestinians on the rampage. The scene was witnessed live on TV by a shocked nation who took to the streets to protest . . . the Israeli people vowed to revenge this act and in the fighting that followed a 10-year-old Palestinian boy was shot dead in his father’s arms. (Female teacher, Paisley) A young boy was killed as his father helplessly tried to shield him from Israeli bullets. The Israeli onslaught came as a direct retaliation to a newly-wed Israeli couple being killed by a Palestinian suicide bomber in the latest Palestinian terrorist attack. (Middle-class female, London)

In this approach we can begin to show how TV news can shape not only the language which we use in ascribing meaning to events, but also the way in which we group and organise our memories.

We developed our methods with the intention of investigating mass communications as a totality in which meanings were circulated through the key dimensions of production, content and reception. The concept of circulation is crucial since it allows for the possibility of interaction between elements of the process and does not imply a single ‘‘one-way flow’’ from the top to the bottom of the system, i.e. from production to reception. Those who supply information to the media certainly intend it to have an impact, but they are still aware of the contexts within which their messages will be received, So what is supplied will itself be shaped by an anticipation of the reception process as well as by an understanding of the likely response of different elements of the media. We have shown how messages can have powerful influences on audience beliefs and understanding but our work also demonstrates how some audience members critique and reject what they see and hear in media accounts. The growth of new technology and the Internet has also to some extent increased the potential of ordinary citizens to develop their own systems of communication and has added to the interactive possibilities of traditional media. In terms of methodology, the key point is that all these elements must be understood and studied as part of a total system *rather than in isolation as with studies which remain focused on texts. Many theorist in the sociology of media now accept the importance of such an approach. To analyse processes of content, production,

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reception and circulation simultaneously is a complex task but it is the way forward if we are to come to terms adequately with the generation and reproduction of social meanings in media accounts.

NOTES 1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

Another reason for using their work is that they stand in a tradition of critical analysis, in which they are concerned to study the consequences of the use of language in its ideological forms * in other words its effect in developing or reproducing social relations of power and exploitation. We share this concern with consequences in the real world of social relations and structures of power. Some other approaches in discourse theory avoid such issues by ‘‘bracketing off’’ what is real or true. Reality is seen as a product of discourse and of representation and is therefore indefinitely negotiable. This produces an inability to comment on the relationships of our society and is a form of intellectual quiescence. For a more extended critique of this, see Philo and Miller (2001). There are also theorists from within discourse analysis who have suggested, as I do, that a focus on linguistics leads to a lack of proper attention to processes of production and consumption. John E. Richardson, for example, has argued that critical discourse analysis should be focused at three levels: ‘‘on texts; on the discursive practices of production and consumption; and on the wider socio-cultural practices which discourse (re)produces’’ (2006, p. 1).

The principal reason for this was that it seemed to us that there were an indefinite number of ways in which characteristics of language in use could be described. Rather than attempt to label all these, we focused on the specific textual features which were the heaviest carriers of meaning * which we could establish through a combination of textual analysis and our work with audience groups. We then analysed how these elements of the text worked to establish explanations * for example through descriptions of sequences of action which implied cause or responsibility and reflected on the legitimacy of different parties (see e.g. Philo and Berry, 2004, pp. 160 5).

For a fuller discussion of this and the impact of the release of the free market on broadcasting in Britain, see Philo (1995).

Where hyponymy implies inclusion in a group of words, antonymy would suggest exclusion from the group. ‘‘Social cohesion’’ and ‘‘organic community’’ would be hyponyms, with antonyms as ‘‘polarisation’’, or ‘‘fragmentation’’.

See, for example, forthcoming research by Sarah Oates and Mike Berry of Glasgow University on public attitudes to terrorism (ESRC New Security Challenges Programme) * The Framing of Terrorist Threat in British Elections, ESRC RES 228- 25-0048.

The interviews were conducted in 2001 2 as part of our study of news coverage of the Israeli Palestinian conflict. Since the issues of migrants and asylum seekers were very prominent at the time, several journalists made additional comments on coverage of these.

REFERENCES (1969) For Marx , London: Penguin. and WACQUANT, LOIC (2001) ‘‘New-liberal Speak: notes on the new planetary vulgate’’, Radical Philosophy 105, pp. 2 5.

ALTHUSSER, LOUIS BOURDIEU, PIERRE

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GREG PHILO (2000) New Labour, New Language? , London: Routledge.

(2001) Language and Power , London: Pearson/Longman.

FAIRCLOUGH, NORMAN (2003) Analyzing Discourse , London: Routledge.

FISKE, JOHN (1987) Television Culture , London: Methuen.

FOUCAULT, MICHEL (1994) ‘‘What Is Enlightenment?’’, in: P. Rabinow (Ed.), Michel Foucault, Essential Works , Vol. 1, Ethics , Harmondsworth: Penguin.

GLASGOW UNIVERSITY MEDIA GROUP (1980) More Bad News , London: Routledge.

GLASGOW UNIVERSITY MEDIA GROUP (1982) Really Bad News , London: Writers and Readers.

GLASGOW UNIVERSITY MEDIA GROUP (1985) War and Peace News , London: Writers and Readers.

HALLIN, DANIEL (1989) The ‘‘Uncensored War’’: the media and Vietnam , Berkeley: University of California Press.

MILLER, DAVID (1994) Don’t Mention the War: Northern Ireland, propaganda and the media , London: Pluto.

PHILO, GREG (1995) ‘‘Television, Politics and the Rise of the New Right’’, in: Greg Philo (Ed.), Glasgow Media Group Reader: industry, economy, war and politics , Vol. 2, London: Routledge.

PHILO, GREG (1996) Media and Mental Distress , London: Longman.

PHILO, GREG (Ed.) (1999) Message Received, Glasgow Media Group Research 1993 1998 , London: Longman.

PHILO, GREG and BEATTIE, LISA (1999) ‘‘Migration in Media’’, in: Greg Philo (Ed.), Message Received, Glasgow Media Group Research 1993 1998 , London: Longman.

PHILO, GREG, BEHARRELL, PETER and HEWITT, JOHN (1977) ‘‘One Dimensional News * television and the control of explanation’’, in: Peter Beharrell and Greg Philo (Eds), Trade Unions and the Media , London: Macmillan.

PHILO, GREG and BERRY, MIKE (2004) Bad News from Israel , London: Pluto.

PHILO, GREG, HEWITT, JOHN and BEHARRELL, PETER (1982) ‘‘Industrial News’’, in: Really Bad News , London: Writers and Readers.

PHILO, GREG, HEWITT, JOHN and BEHARRELL, PETER (1995) ‘‘And Now They’re Out Again: industrial news’’, in: Greg Philo (Ed.), Glasgow Media Group Reader: industry, economy, war and politics , Vol. 2, London: Routledge.

PHILO, GREG and MILLER, DAVID (2001) ‘‘Cultural Compliance’’, in: Greg Philo and David Miller (Eds), Market Killing , London: Pearson/Longman.

RICHARDSON, JOHN E. (2006) ‘‘On Delineating ‘Reasonable’ and ‘Unreasonable’ Criticisms of Muslims’’, Fifth-Estate-Online , August.

SCHLESINGER, PHILIP (1978) Putting Reality Together , London: Constable.

VAN DIJK, TEUN (1991) Racism and the Press , London: Routledge.

VAN DIJK, TEUN (1998) ‘‘Opinions and Ideologies in the Press’’, in: A. Bell and P. Garrett (Eds), Approaches to Media Discourse , Oxford: Blackwell.

VAN DIJK, TEUN (2000) ‘‘New(s) Racism: a discourse analytical approach’’, in: S. Cottle (Ed.), Ethnic Minorities and the Media: changing cultural boundaries , Buckingham: Open University Press.

FAIRCLOUGH NORMAN FAIRCLOUGH NORMAN

Greg Philo, Glasgow University Media Group, University of Glasgow, Adam Smith Building, 40 Bute Gardens, Hillhead, Glasgow G12 8RT, UK. http://www.gla.ac.uk/centres/ media group

Plant, S. (1997) Zeros and ones Digital women and the new technoculture Online Website: https://issuu.com/qy2022/docs/plant_s._1997_zeros_and_ones_digital_women_and_

Qi, W. (1999) ‘State—Society Relations and Women’s Political Participation’ Online Website: https://issuu.com/qy2022/docs/qi_w._1999_state_society_relations_and_women_s

Revista Latina de Comunicación Social # 66 - 2011 Financed Research | DOI: 10.4185/RLCS-66-2011-929-178-209-EN | ISSN 1138-5820 |32 pages

Journalists’ salary structure in Spain during the crisis Sergio Roses, Ph.D. Researcher in the CSO2008-05125 research project, financed by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation, Department of Journalism, University of Malaga, Spain. sergioroses@uma.es Abstract: Media companies are implementing staff cost reduction strategies as a way to confront the current economic crisis. This article describes the salary structure of Spanish Journalists during the 2009 crisis, based on data collected through a phone survey applied to a sample of one thousand Spanish journalists. The description of the data is based on a set of social and occupational variables.

The study is accompanied by a bivariate analysis of the relation between the salary level of the surveyed journalists and the aforementioned variables. The results show that the salary level of Spanish journalists depends on such variables as sex, age, professional experience, the type, size, and geographic location of the employing media company, occupational category, contract type, and seniority in employment. However, journalists‘ income is independent of education level, or the completion of graduate or postgraduate degrees in Journalism, Communication or Media studies. The findings of our study –of interest to scholars and media organisations- will help monitoring in the near future the effects of the media‘s cost-cutting policies on the salaries of Spanish journalists.

Keywords: Journalists; salaries; working conditions; precariousness in employment; journalism; economic crisis.

Summary: 1. Introduction. 1.1. Background. 1.2. Objectives. 2. Methodology. 2.1. Methodological strategies. 2.2. Measurements. 2.3. Data analysis. 3. Results. 3.1. Univariate analysis. 3.2. Bivariate analysis. 4. Discussion and Conclusions. 5. References. 6. Notes.

Translation by Cruz Alberto Martínez-Arcos (University of London) 1. Introduction The global economic crisis has provoked several changes in the media business (Larrañaga, 2009).

Media managers are implementing different strategies to reduce costs and increase their competitiveness in a market that is saturated with supply and subject to hyperactive dynamism. The main source of income of media companies has decreased as a result of the reduction in advertising sales, which is an effect impossible to counteract with the relatively small income from paper copies sales in the case of printed press, or other income sources (Farias and Roses, 2009).

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Revista Latina de Comunicación Social # 66 - 2011 Financed Research | DOI: 10.4185/RLCS-66-2011-929-178-209-EN | ISSN 1138-5820 |32 pages

Among the strategies implemented by media companies –such as merging or collaboration processes, request for public subsidy or private capital investment alien to the sector- the most worrying for this study is the reduction in fixed staff costs. It is hard to prove empirically, but it is easily and rationally understandable that the reduction in professional capital has an ambivalent impact on profits, due to the almost direct correlation between the workforce and the quality of the informative product. While this action allows stabilising the costs-benefits relationship in the short-term; in the long-term the deterioration of the informative product can only produce discontent and mistrust in the citizenconsumer (Roses, 2009), and consequently, a progressive retraction of the social fabric affiliated to the media company, which maintains the advertising investment in the current business model. This human resources policy has therefore created a vicious circle.

Graph 1: Vicious circle of the human resources policy implemented by the media to face the crisis

Cost reduction in Human Resources (1)

Reduction in advertising sales and income (4)

Deterioration of journalistic content: products with no added value (2)

Reduced dissemination: Lost of value for users (3)

Source: Author‘s creation.

In parallel, media companies increasingly demand their journalists to have a better education, versatility and dedication in order to make their staff and informative products profitable through their distribution in the several media outlets that are part of the business group, and by making journalists responsible for the execution of multiplatform tasks that, presumably and according to the case, do not respond to contracts and are not remunerated as they should. Studies by American scholars have already shown that this trend has side effects on the professional independence of journalists. These works show that journalists whose workload was increased and whose companies implemented staff layoffs saw their ability to cover important issues reduced (Weaver, 2009: 396; Beam, Weaver, Brownlee, 2009).

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Revista Latina de Comunicación Social # 66 - 2011 Financed Research | DOI: 10.4185/RLCS-66-2011-929-178-209-EN | ISSN 1138-5820 |32 pages

A study of the salary conditions established in 25 collective agreements signed by Spanish media (Asociación de la Prensa de Madrid / Press Association of Madrid, 2010: 8) describes the salary structure underlying these regulatory texts and suggests that the average pay of journalists covered by these collective agreements is 35,000 Euros per year: ―Leaving aside the workers that are increasingly excluded from the collective agreement, either because they took higher managerial positions or as a mechanism to implement variable remunerations not covered by the regulatory texts, it can be concluded that editors-in-chief are paid an average of 53,200 Euros per year; senior editors 38,500 Euros, and junior editors 26,000 Euros. These average figures mask large differences between media, as well as small abysms within a same editorial room as a result of arbitrary compensation formulas designed to satisfy variable bonuses that are not admitted by the committees‖.

Source: Asociación de la Prensa de Madrid, 2010.

The figures provided by this study should be taken with caution because the calculation to obtain the salary has several biases. First, the collective agreements that were examined included ―bulky quantitative weigh‖ of media located in Madrid. Second, the calculations are ―biased downwards‖ due to the inability to include in the operations the different commissions or bonuses included in each of the texts. Third, the study was not based on empirical data obtained from journalists, but on the figures drawn from documents that are not necessarily adjusted to journalists‘ reality. Fourth, the text does not explain how the calculations were made nor details the design of the sample of texts beyond stating the number of collective agreements taken into consideration. And fifth, the study does not provide data of

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statistical significance. In spite of this, the document is useful insofar as it warns about the large salary differences across media and journalists, and describes how the salary structure ―should be‖ if the normative texts were strictly conformed.

The reality of the crisis suggests that the ―normative portrait‖ of the salary structure may not match the ―empirical portrait‖ based on the media‘s human resources policy. Costs-cuts –which are implemented not only by companies facing difficulties, but also by those that still make profits- are made directly through redundancy dismissal procedures or indirectly through the outsourcing of services, which allows avoiding the collective agreements (Matthew, 2009). In view of this situation, organisations of journalists, including press associations and trade unions of journalists have increased their complaints and demands and have continued to provide legal services for layoffs or labour disputes occurring in 48% of the associations linked to the Federation of Press Associations of Spain (FAPE) (Cortés and Paniagua, 2008).

In 2010, the unions denounced some sectors of media employers for breaches to the collective agreements [1]. Therefore the business and economic contexts of the media justify and legitimise the exploration of the salary structure of journalists in Spain. As we have noticed, precarious employment conditions -the low salaries are an indicator of this- involve a loss of independence from the journalist, and a demotivation that can only provoke negative consequences on the health of the journalistic product. On the other hand, staff costs reduction strategies might include the following: I. Unfair dismissals, early retirement and redundancy dismissal procedures. 16.7% of the journalists surveyed for a recent study claimed that layoffs, unemployment and redundancy dismissal procedures had affected them as a result of the crisis (Farias et al., 2009: 32).

II. Services outsourcing, i.e. subcontracting of services from smaller businesses that do not have to obey collective agreements. Sometimes this outsourcing could be established with small businesses of which the contracting company is a shareholder, in order to evade the tax and work responsibilities. On the same line, services outsourcing can also occur by subcontracting services to freelancers, ―false selfemployed‖, contributors whose remuneration is not regulated, and ―false scholarship holders‖ (Farias et al., 2007).

III. Reduction of remunerations through: a) non-payment or abolition of salary supplements, b) modification of contracts to economically less advantageous arrangements for journalists, c) formalisation of new contracts not adjusted to the occupational category of the employee, according to the relevant collective agreement. Precisely, 29.4% of journalists surveyed in a recent study said the economic crisis was harming their salaries (Farias et al, 2009: 32).

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Revista Latina de Comunicación Social # 66 - 2011 Financed Research | DOI: 10.4185/RLCS-66-2011-929-178-209-EN | ISSN 1138-5820 |32 pages

In most cases, journalists‘ associations and trade unions, and labour inspection organisations have many difficulties to get a comprehensive view of the whole sector to perform sophisticated analyses of the effects of the aforementioned corporate strategies on journalists‘ remuneration. The data provided in this study, added to those that will be obtained in subsequent research studies, will establish whether there are indeed changes in salaries trends and will identify the most disadvantaged groups.

1.1. Background The study of the employment situation of journalists in Spain is not a ground breaking line of research.

The discourse about the precarious nature of the profession has led to different initiatives that in a tangential manner have also studied the salary of journalists.

Caro and Jiménez (2006: 322) found evidence in the CHEERS survey [2] that the salary of graduated journalists is below the average of their group: ―Journalists have average annual incomes of 14,780 Euros against the average yearly salary of Civil Engineers and Architects of 29,660 and 26,190 Euros, respectively. In contrast, journalists are better paid than graduates in Biology and Pedagogy, who are paid an average annual salary of 11,900 and 12,430, respectively. The average salary of graduates in Social Sciences is also of 16,000 Euros‖ (Caro and Jiménez, 2006: 322).

According to Spain‘s 2007 National Salary Structure Survey [3] the average gross annual income per worker in Spain in 2007 was of 20,390.35 Euros. However, the most common salary amounted to 14,503.61 Euros. The professions associated with graduate and postgraduate degrees –in which journalists are located, according to the National Classification of Occupations (CNO-94)- earned in average 34,093.36 Euros. Therefore, in general this is the third best remunerated occupation group, only behind the managers of public institutions or companies of more than ten workers, and managers of companies of less than ten employees.

If we look at the average annual salaries by economic activity type in this national survey, the figures for journalists are worrying. While financial intermediation was the economic activity with the greatest salary (38,870.30 Euros), hotel employees received the lowest salary (14,000.12 Euros). The activities carried out by a large part of journalists (activities in radio and television, and news agencies) are included within the category ―other social activities and services to the community; personal services‖, which is governed by the National Classification of Economic Activities (CNAE-93). In this case, the average salary is the third worst, just beating hotel employees and people engaged in trade; and repair of motor vehicles, motorcycles and mopeds, and personal and domestic appliances (17,618.97). Other activities associated with journalism, like the edition of newspapers and magazines are included in the category ―Manufacturing‖, which in 2007 had and average salary of 22,757.14 Euros gross per year.

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Job insecurity and precarious working conditions are concerns installed in the collective imagination of the journalistic profession, as proved by several studies (Farias et al, 2006, 2007, 2008, and 2009). In fact, the concern and discontent over the salary conditions has been shown in numerous investigations based on quantitative methods, essentially surveys (Farias et al., 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009; Herrera and Maciá, 2009; Cantalapiedra, Coca and Bezunartea, 2000; etc.), or qualitative techniques (Farias et al., 2007; Herrera and Maciá, 2009; Suárez, Romero and Almansa, 2009; among others).

Precisely in a qualitative research, Herrera and Maciá (2009) illustrate the feeling of fragility and lack of independence suffered by journalists as a consequence of the precarious working conditions: ―In practice, both conditions seem be the cause of a progressive deterioration of the quality of the informative product. In particular, the fierce competition, the excessive youth of some professionals, their lack of experience, the absence of further training in their employer company, the low salaries, the intrinsic urgency of the profession, insecurity by layoffs, pressure‖ (Herrera and Maciá, 2009: 7).

In the same line, Suárez, Romero and Almansa (2009) developed a qualitative work in which they examined the perception of Andalusian journalists about precarious working conditions. The interviewed journalists considered that there are serious problems since the basic needs of contract, schedule, and salary are not covered. Likewise, respondents considered that a precarious journalist is more docile, and that among these lower paid journalists many lose their vocation (Suarez, Romero, Almansa, 2009: 163).

Other studies denounced the inexistence of a legal framework to regulate the salary conditions of journalists, and identified the most controversial points of the negotiation about remuneration between employers and trade unions (Labio, 2002).

Cantalapiedra, Coca and Bezunartea (2000) examined the professional and occupational situation of Basque journalists between 1997 and 1999. In addition to identifying the dissatisfaction of journalists regarding their salary, the researchers reported that the average salary of Basque journalists ranged between 150,000 and 200,000 pesetas for those on payroll and less than 100,000 for contributors. Thus, 53% of respondents earned a gross monthly income of less than 200,000 pesetas, i.e. less than 1200 Euros.

Subsequently, another study addressed the salary conditions of journalists working in the Basque Country (Martín and Amurrio, 2007) but this time the focus was on journalists working for audiovisual media. The results of the survey applied to a sample of journalists (n=201) showed that a fifth of respondents earned less than 600 Euros per month (not specified whether gross or net); one third

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gained between 600 and 1200 Euros; a slightly lower percentage of respondents received between 1200 and 1800 Euros, and 12% earned more than 1800 Euros a month.

Canel, Rodriguez and Sánchez (2000) distributed a survey questionnaire among a sample (n=1000) of Spanish journalists. Although the number of actual respondents was finally more reduced (n=292), this study provides an interesting description of the salary profile of participant journalists by offering a distribution of responses according to different variables. In general, the results indicated that 33% of respondents earned between 200,000 and 300,000 pesetas per month (not specified whether net or gross); and only few exceeded 300,000 pesetas. Nearly half of respondents earned less than 200,000 pesetas; 11.9% earned between 80,000 and 120,000 and the payroll of 6.1% was less than 80,000 Euros (Canel, Rodriguez, Sánchez, 2000: 43). The authors of this study found that journalists employed by national media earned more than those in regional or local media; young journalists, less than older ones; journalists working in television were better paid than those in radio and press, and the payment of journalists in public media was greater than the one of those in private media (Canel, Rodríguez, Sánchez, 2000:46).

Also, the University of Salamanca studied the status of journalists in its region (n=100) (ASPE, 2002).

More than half of those surveyed did not earn more than 900 Euros. 80% considered themselves to be poorly paid and 60% had a complementary work.

In the last decade, there have been several studies on the labour situation of digital journalists, a collective that had not been studied specifically in previous investigations. These works suggest that precarious working conditions affect this type of journalists the most (see Hidalgo López and Mellado, 2006).

Del Moral (2005) recently studied the working situations of Basque digital journalists (also, Larrañaga, 2006). In the Basque Country the salary of digital journalists usually ranges between 600 and 1,000 Euros per month. According to Del Moral, digital journalists tend to be younger and therefore have not received more favourable conditions in the collective agreements (Del Moral, 2005: 204).

Garcia, Túñez and López (2005) examined the profile of digital journalists in Galicia in 2002. This study found that 34% of participating journalists earned between 601 and 901 Euros gross per month, which is the same average salary paid to Galician journalists; 58% of respondents earned between 601 and 1202 Euros gross per month; 10% worked for less than 601 Euros and 3% did not even earned 300 Euros per month (García Orosa, Túñez Lopez and Lopez Garcia, 2005: 163).

Calvo (2005) collected the results of the Report on the Labour and Professional Situation of the Digital Journalist in Catalonia, written by the Grup Periodistes Digitals. In his work, he affirms that many digital journalists have no collective agreements within their companies like their colleagues in other

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media with the same occupational categories, functions, salary sections and schedules (Calvo, 2005: 172). Data from a survey conducted in 2003 to a sample (n=66) of Catalan digital journalists revealed that 38% of participating journalists earned less than 900 Euros a month, while the rest exceeded this amount. The study identifies differences depending on the type of company. 25% of journalists employed by exclusively digital media earned between 600 and 900 Euros and 15% less than 300 Euros per month; while in traditional media companies with their digital enterprises, 38% earned between 900 and 1,200 Euros per month and 38% of respondents earned more than 1,200 Euros per month (Calvo, 2005: 178).

The job situation of journalists has also been reviewed from a gender perspective (see Ufarte, 2007; Soriano, Canton, Díez, 2005). The most recent work, and therefore with data more adjusted to the reality of the field, was developed by Gómez Aguilar (2009), who gives details on the salary inequality between male and female journalists [4]. These differences, which were not found in previous studies (Canel, Rodríguez Sánchez, 2000), are described as follows in the study of Gómez Aguilar: ―Another indicator of the inequality in the distribution of positions of responsibility, are the monthly incomes. In this regard we observe how the major differences between men and women are in the salary band ‗2,501-3,000 Euros‘, since this salary is only earned by 7.2% of female journalists, and 12.8% of male journalists; and the ‗over 3,000 Euros‘ band, since this monthly net income is perceived by 20.8% of male journalists, and only 5.3% of female journalists, which is a difference of 15.5% in favour of males. An inverse situation occurs in salary bands ranging from 600 to 1,800 Euros, in which women earn more than men. Thus, 13.3% of female journalists and 5.0% of male journalists get a net monthly income ‗between 901 and 1,200 Euros‘, and moreover 18.1% of female journalists earn ‗between 1,201 and 1,500 Euros‘ while only 10.5% of male journalists earn this figure‖ (Gómez Aguilar, 2009: 6).

As we have seen in the previous lines, the salary structure of journalists in Spain has been inspected with varied and interesting approaches, but so far we only have referred to specific investigations scattered in time aimed at specific populations, except for Canel, Rodriguez and Sánchez (2000), whose study focused on all journalists working in Spain. The work of Farias Batlle, who directed the annual reports of the Journalistic Profession of the Press Association of Madrid since 2006 (Farias Batlle et al, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009) resolves this lack of continuity in the studies on journalists‘ earnings. According to these works, the net monthly incomes of journalists between 2006 and 2008 were distributed follows:

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Table 1: Net monthly income 2006-2008 Net monthly income (relative values-%) Incomes in Euros 2008 2007 Less than 600 1.4 2.7 601-900 4.7 6.3 901-1,200 8.9 13.1 1,201-1,500 14.1 14.0 1,501-1,800 12.9 12.7 1,801-2,200 15.0 15.1 2,201-2,500 10.4 9.3 2,501-3,000 10.1 8.1 More than 3,000 13.4 10.0 N/A 9.1 8.7 Source: Informe Anual de la Profesión Periodística 2009 Profession)

2006 2.9 7.1 10.1 13.3 11.8 15.2 8.6 8.6 8.7 13.7 (2009 Annual Report of the Journalistic

While these data do not indicate what is the average salary, though the publication we can establish that the most common salary band (mode) in the sample is between 1,801 and 2,200 Euros net per month, which remained constant since 2006. These figures demand us to investigate the identity of the journalists who receive these salaries. Or in other words, we need to know in what media do they work, what is the size of their company, what is their role as journalists, what kind of contract do they have, what is their work experience, etc. In short, we need to offer a more detailed description of the salary structure.

1.2. Objectives The main objective of the study is therefore to provide a description of the salary structure among Spain journalists at the height of the crisis (2009), in order to establish a first empirical database to monitor the future changes in this variable. The study aims to enhance the outline offered by previous research studies (Farias et al., 2009) through the presentation and description of results according to a set of labour and social variables.

The second objective of the research is to determine whether there is correlation between the salary of journalists and various independent variables such as gender, age, training level, degrees, professional experience, type of media employer, company‘s size and location, occupational category, contract type, and seniority in the company. As we noted above, previous studies suggested there is certain correlation between variables, but do not provide data of statistical significance.

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There are other derived objectives such as providing researchers specialised in studying journalists‘ situation with a secondary source of analysis, and creating a starting point for the study of trends in the wake of successive approaches to the field in the coming years [5], particularly in the years in which the economic crisis continues to provoke changes in the labour market of journalists. With this we could examine whether media companies effectively implemented a remuneration reduction policy as a strategy to combat the crisis, and identify the most affected professional groups.

2. Methodology 2.1. Methodological strategies Following the tradition in the area, we are approaching the field of work through quantitative methods, in particular by means of a Computer Assisted Telephone Interview (CATI). This survey, which was designed as part of the CSO2008-05125 research project of the Ministry of Science and Innovation, was conducted by the company Demométrica from 8 to 22 September 2009.

The universe under study was composed of active journalists, members of the Federation of Press Associations of Spain (FAPE) and the Association of Journalists of Catalonia (Col·legi de Periodistes de Catalunya), which involved a reference population of approximately 12,412 individuals. The analysed population sample was 1,000 respondents. Thus, the absolute sampling error for the percentage estimates concerning the total sample is of +/-3 per cent, with a confidence level of 95.5%.

The selection of the sample was based on geographical quotas in order to make sure the 50 provinces and the two autonomous cities of Spain were represented in the final sample (the sample was constituted by 51.6% of journalists from Madrid; 11.6% from Barcelona and 36.8%from the rest of Spain). The selection of individuals to meet the quotas was based on a random selection from a phonebook prepared for the research.

2.2. Measurements In what follows we list the controlled variables that we use in our research, from the broad range of variables included in the survey, and explain how each of them was measured.

Salary levels: We asked respondents to indicate in what section of the salary scale was located their net monthly incomes for his journalistic work at the time of the survey. This ordinal variable was coded using the following salary scale in Euros: a) Less than 600

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b) 601-900 c) 901-1200 d) 1,201-1,500 e) 1,501-1,800 f) 1,801-2,200 g) 2,201-2,500 h) 2,501-3,000 i) More than 3,000 j) No answer To facilitate the bivariate analysis with Pearson's Chi square test when there were more than 20% of the cells of the contingency table with less than 5 cases, we created the ‗Salary level B‘ variable, based on the salary band levels of the ‗salary level‘ variable. The new variable categories are the result of dividing the cases in three similar groups [6] in proportion to the sample. The three groups will be used also for the description of the results in the contingency tables in the bivariate analysis section: a) Low salary level (less than 1,500 Euros). b) Intermediate salary level (from 1,501 to 2,200 Euros). c) High salary level (over 2,201 Euros.

Age: Respondents indicated their age in years, and this was measured through a variable type scale.

However, the tables present the data grouped in intervals.

Gender: Respondents indicated whether they were male or female.

Qualifications: Respondents were asked to indicate whether they had received university education and, where appropriate, whether their degree was related to Communication Sciences. Respondents had the following response options: a) Bachelor‘s degree in journalism. b) Bachelor‘s degree in another field of Communication Sciences. c) Another bachelor‘s degree. d) Other non-university training. e) No answer.

Level of studies

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Based on the categories of the ―qualifications‖ variable, we created the ordinal variable ‗level of studies‘ with the following categories: a) Without university education. b) With university education.

Postgraduate studies.

Respondents were asked to indicate whether they had taken and completed postgraduate studies like doctoral or master degrees programmes. They had the following response options: a) Doctorate (courses only). b) Doctorate with Ph.D. title. c) Master‘s degree. d) No postgraduate studies. e) No answer.

Based on these categories the variable was recoded into ordinal: a) Without postgraduate studies. b) With postgraduate studies.

Years of professional experience: Respondents were asked how many years had they devoted to journalism. This was measured using a variable scale. However, the tables present the data grouped in intervals.

Type of media company: Respondents were asked to indicate the type of media in which they mainly worked as journalists. The response options for this nominal variable were: a) Print Press. b) Magazines. c) Radio. d) Television. e) Communication departments. f) News agencies. g) Internet. h) Other. i) No answer.

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Size of the company: Respondents were asked to calculate the number of workers employed by the media company in which they worked as journalists. The response options for this ordinal variable were: a) Very small (less than 6 workers). b) Small (between 7 and 50). c) Medium (between 51 and 250). d) Large (more than 250 employees). e) Did not know or did not answer.

Location of the company: Respondents were asked to indicate the province or autonomous city in which their employing company was located. The responses to this nominal variable were recoded into three categories differentiated by their central or peripheral location: a) Media located in Madrid. b) Media located in Barcelona. c) Media from rest of Spain.

Seniority in the employing company: Respondents were asked to indicate for how many years they had been working in their current employing company. This was measured using a variable scale. However, the tables present the data grouped in intervals.

Contract type: Respondents indicated the type of contract they had signed with the company based on the following response options for this ordinal variable: a) Open-term contract. b) Temporary contract. c) Contract for work and service. d) Freelance / entrepreneur. d) Others not included in the previous answer. e) No answer.

We recoded this variable to turn into ordinal (contract according to job security), depending on the labour stability of the contract: a) Contract for work and service.

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b) Temporary contract. c) Open-term contract.

2.3. Data analysis The database of answers was debugged to remove the cases in which respondents did not answer the question on income level, and other cases that are typically discarded due to erroneous values, for example. Therefore, the final sample size was smaller (n=899).

The univariate analysis involved techniques and resources of descriptive statistics, such as the use of graphics, averages, quartiles, etc.

A bivariate analysis was conducted to examine the relationship between the variables. This analysis was performed using non-parametric statistics given that the sample variables did not exceed the normality tests of Kolmogorov-Smirnov. Contingency and coefficient of contingency tables were used for the analysis of the association between categorical variables. Co-relational analysis of ordinal variables was made based on the Spearman‘s rho statistical test. Data analysis was performed with the help of the software SPSS v.17.

The analysis of data, and their presentation in tables, ignored the cases in which the participants selected ―Do not know‖ or ―No answer‖ to any of the studied variables, and the cases containing values lost by the system. The purpose of this measure was to facilitate the comparison of the different distributions of data across the categories of analysis. In other words, the percentages of the distributions of frequencies were calculated without the responses in which respondents chose ―Do not know‖ or ―No answer‖, which facilitates and clarifies the interpretation of the results.

3. Results 3.1. Univariate analysis

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Salary levels Graph:

Net

monthly

incomes

in

bands.

The most common salary band among journalists (mode) was between 1,801 and 2,200 Euros, since 18.46% of respondents claimed their salary was covered by this band. More than half of journalists (58.06%) earned between 1,201 and 2,500 Euros net; while 16.91% earned 1,200 Euros or less, and 25.03% gained at least 2,501 Euros net per month.

Age 29.4% of surveyed journalists were 35 years old or younger; 29.8% were aged between 36 and 45 years; 24% between 46 and 54 years of age, and journalists aged 55 years and over constituted 16.9% of the sample.

Gender 52.2% of surveyed journalists were males, and 47.8% were females.

Level of studies 94.2% of participating journalists had obtained bachelor‘s degrees, and only 5.8% had not.

Area of specialisation

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75% of respondents held a bachelor‘s degree in journalism; 11.1% held a bachelor‘s degree in another specialty within communication sciences. Therefore, 86.1% of the sample held bachelor‘s degrees in one of the three degrees of the branch of Communication Sciences. 8.1% held another degree.

Postgraduate studies 22.9% of surveyed journalists held a postgraduate degree (18.7% held a master degree and 4.2% a doctoral degree). The remaining 77.1% had no postgraduate qualifications.

Years of professional experience 24.5% of respondents had 10 years or less of experience as journalists. 33.8% of the sample had worked as journalists between 11 and 20 years; 27.6% between 21 and 30 years; 11% between 31 to 40 years, and 3.1% had over 41 years of professional experience as a journalist.

Employing media company Most participating journalists work for a newspaper (30.5%); while nearly one fourth of the sample (23.2%) works in television. These groups are followed by journalists employed in communication or press departments (15.7%), radio (11.3%), magazines (9%), news agencies (4.5%), digital media (3.8%), and other media or as freelance (2.1%).

Size of the employing company More than half of participating journalists (57.4%) was employed by a large company, that is a company with more than 250 employees. 16.8% of respondents worked for a medium-sized company (between 51 and 249 workers); 19% for a small company (between 6 and 50 workers), and 6.8% for a company of less than six workers.

Location of the company Over half of the sample of journalists worked in a media company located in Madrid (51.2%), while the employing companies of 11.5% of respondents were located in Barcelona and the remaining 37.3% worked in one of the provinces of Spain.

Seniority in the company More than half of respondents (58.4%) have worked for ten years or less for the company that was employing them at the time of the survey. More than a quarter of the sample (26.9%) had worked between 11 and 20 years for their last employing company. On the other hand, 12% of journalists had worked between 21 and 30 years in the same company, and only 2.7% exceeded the 31 years of seniority.

Type of contract

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The vast majority of participating journalists (69.2%) enjoyed an open-term contract at the time of the survey; 8.6% of the sample had a temporary contract; 11.4%, had contract for work or service, and 10.8% was freelance or entrepreneur.

3.2. Bivariate analysis Salary level and gender The data suggest that the salary level of journalists is associated to their gender. We found a statistically significant, yet moderate, correlation between the variables (chi-square=88.68; p=0.000; C=0.30; p=0.000). Therefore, the data show that male journalists largely earn higher salaries, while female journalists are mostly located in the lower salary levels.

Contingency table: salary levels distributed according to gender Gender

Males Females

Salary level Low

Intermediate High

Total

22.6%

30.1%

47.2%

100.0%

42.1%

36.7%

21.3%

100.0%

We can offer two explanations for these differences: a) The first explanation is that the differences between genders occur because a lower percentage of women get access to the better-paid occupational categories, which explains the salary distribution. In our sample only 32.2% of managerial positions; 31.5% of editorial chief positions, and 29.5% of the section head positions were occupied by women. In the case of department heads, practically, there was equality (48.7% of women), while the writing positions belong mostly to female journalists (60.7%). b) The second explanation is that while men might occupy most of the managerial positions, women are worse remunerated than their male counterparts even when performing the same activity and occupying the same position. This is confirmed by the analysis. If we cross the data of the variables ‗gender‘, ‗salary‘ and ‗position‘ in a contingency table, we see how even when performing the same work, i.e. when they hold the same occupational category, women are paid less than men.

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Contingency table: salary levels of male and female journalists distributed according to their occupational category Salary level Gender

Occupational category

Low

Intermediate High

Total

Male

Editor Editor in chief Department head Section head Staff writer Contributor Editor Editor in chief Department head Section head Staff writer Contributor

3.7% 16.0% 12.8% 4.7% 37.2% 58.8% 12.8% 21.7% 24.3% 16.7% 52.4% 64.0%

15.9% 18.0% 41.0% 41.9% 35.8% 17.6% 30.8% 30.4% 51.4% 55.6% 35.4% 24.0%

100.0% 100.0% 100.0% 100.0% 100.0% 100.0% 100.0% 100.0% 100.0% 100.0% 100.0% 100.0%

Female

80.5% 66.0% 46.2% 53.5% 27.0% 23.5% 56.4% 47.8% 24.3% 27.8% 12.3% 12.0%

Salary level and age The salary level of journalists is correlated to their age. There is a direct correlation between the two variables (Spearman‘s Rho=0.45; p<0.01). We can therefore say that, as expected, the annual earnings of journalists improve as they get older.

Contingency table: Salary levels distributed according to age Salary level Age

Low

Intermediate High

Total

35 & under

58.9%

30.0%

11.0%

100.0%

36-45

25.5%

43.8%

30.7%

100.0%

46-54

15.8%

32.6%

51.6%

100.0%

19.2%

21.2%

59.6%

100.0%

55 & over Salary level and level of studies

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We found that salary level is not associated with the level of studies (Spearman‘s rho=0.002; p=0.94).

Therefore, obtaining a university degree does not guarantee obtaining a higher income.

Salary levels and area of specialization/type of degree The salary level of journalists turned out to be independent of their academic qualifications (Chi square=4.463; p=0.61) since we did not find statistical significance in the association of variables.

Therefore, for our sample, obtaining a university degree in journalism does not guarantee obtaining a higher income.

Salary level and postgraduate qualifications We neither found a significant correlation between the salary level and the possession of a postgraduate degree (M.A. or Ph.D.) (Spearman‘s rho=-0.50; p=0.13). Therefore, journalists who had completed a master‘s or doctoral degree did not earn better salaries than those with no higher education.

Salary levels and professional experience The larger the professional experience of journalists is, the higher their earnings are. We found a direct correlation between these two variables: the effect of work experience was small, but statistically significantly (Spearman‘s rho=0.52; p<0.01).

Contingency table: Salary levels distributed according to years of experience Salary level Years of professional experience

Low

Intermediate High

Total

0-10

64.7%

28.4%

6.9%

100.0%

11-20

26.9%

44.2%

28.9%

100.0%

21-30

15.9%

30.5%

53.7%

100.0%

31-40

13.3%

22.4%

64.3%

100.0%

Over 41

20.0%

200%

60.0%

100.0%

Salary level and employing media company We found a significant relationship between the salary level of journalists and the type of media company where they work (Chi-square=55.165; p=0.000). This suggests that salaries are associated with the type of media where journalists work. However, the value of the coefficient of contingency turned out to be low (C=0.24; p=0.000), and the association between the variables very limited.

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Contingency table: salary levels distributed according to the type of media company employing journalists Salary level Media

Low

Intermediate High

Total

Press

34.6%

29.0%

36.4%

100.0%

Magazines

40.0%

27.5%

32.5%

100.0%

Radio

42.6%

30.7%

26.7%

100.0%

Television

19.3%

36.2%

44.4%

100.0%

Digital media

61.8%

17.6%

20.6%

100.0%

Press department

23.6%

43.6%

32.9%

100.0%

News agency

30.0%

42.5%

27.5%

100.0%

Freelance 52.9% 35.3% 11.8% 100.0% Salary level and company‘s size We found a significant correlation between the salary level of journalists and the size of the company in which they worked, although the intensity of this correlation is very low (Spearman‘s rho=0.27, p<0.01). Therefore, it seems that the bigger the media company is, the higher the remuneration the journalist gets. Nonetheless, the size of the effect demands us to interpret this relationship with caution.

Contingency table: salary levels distributed according to the size of the employing media company Salary levels Size of the media company

Low

Intermediate High

Total

Very Small

45.0%

25.0%

30.0%

100.0%

Small

54.2%

28.0%

17.9%

100.0%

Medium

33.6%

36.2%

30.2%

100.0%

Large

21.9%

35.4%

42.7%

100.0%

Salary level and geographic location of the company We found a statistically significant, yet moderate, association between salary level and the location of the media company (Chi-square=80.90; p=0.000; C=0.29; p=0.000). Therefore, the data shows that the

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media companies located in Madrid and, to a lesser extent, Barcelona give better remunerations to their journalists than the media companies located in the rest of rest of Spain do.

Contingency table: salary levels distributed according to the location of the media companies Salary level Low

Intermediate

High

Total

22.9%

34.2%

42.9%

100.0%

Barcelona

25.2%

36.9%

37.9%

100.0%

Rest of Spain

46.4%

30.8%

22.8%

100.0%

Location Madrid

Salary level and seniority in the media company We found a statistically significant correlation between the salary and the seniority of journalists in the company (Spearman‘s rho=0.43; p<0.01). We can therefore point out that the longer journalists‘ seniority in the media company is, the higher their salaries are.

Contingency table: salary levels distributed according to seniority in the company Salary level Low

Intermediate

High

Total

44.3%

32.4%

23.2%

100.0%

17.9%

37.9%

44.2%

100.0%

21-30

5.6%

29.9%

64.5%

100.0%

31-40

11.1%

16.7%

72.2%

100.0%

Over 41

16.7%

50.0%

33.3%

100.0%

Seniority in 0-10 Years 11-20

Salary level and type of contract We found a statistically significant, yet limited, correlation between the salary level and the type of contract (Chi-square=56.180; p=0.000; C=0.24; p=0.000). Therefore, the data suggest that journalists who enjoy open-term contracts generally earn more money than those who have a temporarily contract or a contract for work or service. Moreover, there is a very marked polarisation in the salary level of freelance journalists.

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Contingency table: salary levels distributed according to the type of employment relationship Salary level Type of contract

Low

Intermediate High

Total

Open-term contract

25.5%

35.3%

39.2%

100.0%

Temporary contract

53.2%

33.8%

13.0%

100.0%

Contract for work

52.9%

25.5%

21.6%

100.0%

Freelance or entrepreneur

34.0%

27.8%

38.1%

100.0%

Salary levels and occupational category As expected, the salary of the sample of journalists was associated with their occupational category [7] (Chi-square=226.97; p=0.000; C=0.45; p=0.000). In fact, the bivariate analysis indicates that salaries depend highly on the occupational category. As a result, the order of the occupational categories according to income, and based on the sample, is as follows: Editor, sub-editor, editor-in-chief, section head, department head, writer, contributor and technicians.

Contingency table: salary levels distributed according to occupational category Salary level Occupational Category

Low

Intermediate High

Total

Editor

6.6%

20.7%

72.7%

100.0%

Editor in chief

17.8%

21.9%

60.3%

100.0%

Department head

18.4%

46.1%

35.5%

100.0%

Section head

8.2%

45.9%

45.9%

100.0%

Staff writer

46.4%

35.5%

18.1%

100.0%

Contributor 61.0% 20.3% 18.6% 100.0% We also examined the distribution of writers‘ salaries (the largest occupational category in the sample) according to the type of the employing media company. The contingency table shows how the lower paid writers are those working for digital media and magazines, while the highest paid work for the newsrooms of TV stations and newspapers.

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Contingency table: Distribution of salary levels among writers according to the type of media company Salary levels Writers Print Press Magazines Radio Television Digital media Press department News agency

Low

Intermediate High

50.9% 63.0% 50.0% 26.3% 82.4% 50.0% 40.0%

31.6% 22.2% 39.6% 44.2% 11.8% 39.3% 46.7%

17.5% 14.8% 10.4% 29.5% 5.9% 10.7% 13.3%

Total 100.0% 100.0% 100.0% 100.0% 100.0% 100.0% 100.0%

4. Discussion and conclusions The data obtained in our study indicate that one-third of journalists (31.92%) is paid less than 1,500 Euros net per month, i.e. less than 21,000 Euros net per year. 58.06% of the sample of journalists earned in 2009 between 16,800 and 35,000 Euros net per year. The most common salary band (stated by 18.46% of respondents) ranged between 25,200 and 30,800 Euros net per year. These figures are below the ones put forward by a study of the salaries agreed in 25 collective agreements signed by Spanish media companies (APM, 2010). If we compare these figures with the ones provided by the 2007 National Survey on Salary Structure, we can see that journalists are worse paid than other professionals with bachelor studies (which in average earned 34,093.36 Euros per year).

Thanks to the bivariate analysis we can conclude that the salary level is determined, at least in part, by the gender and age of journalists; as well as by their professional experience, the type of media in which they work, the geographic location and size of the employing company, the kind of contract signed with the company, the occupational category and the seniority of the journalist in the company.

On the other hand, the salary level of journalists is, currently, independent of the level of studies, the type of degree, and the holding of postgraduate degrees.

The salary gap between male and female journalists is worrying. Male journalists are better paid than their female counterparts (47.2% of male journalists earn over 2,200 Euros net per month, while only 23.1% of female journalists earn this figure). The differences between the two gender groups are due to the fact that men occupy the better-paid positions and because women are paid less even when doing

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the same tasks and occupational the same position (52.4% of female writers earn less than 1,500 Euros net per month, while only 37.2% of the male writers is paid that amount).

There is also a wide gap between younger and older journalists. Statistically, journalists‘ salaries increase as they get older. Journalists under 35 years of age are the worst remunerated, since 58.9% of them earns less than 1,500 Euros net per month. Most journalists between 36 and 45 years of age (43.8% in our study) earn intermediate salaries (between 1,501 and 2,200 Euros per month). And it is not until they are 46 years older when most journalists (55% in our study) begin to earn salaries over 2,200 Euros. The data highlight that the age-salary progression is very slow. A newly graduated in journalism (21 years old) will have to wait about 14 years (until he is 36) in order to go from the low salary band to the intermediate section, which ranges between 1,500 and 2,200 Euros.

Despite efforts to professionalise the profession of journalism through the formalisation of university studies in Journalism and Communication, our survey data confirm that, at the moment, obtaining university degrees does not affect journalists‘ salary level. There are no significant differences among the journalists who have obtained a university degree and those who have not; or among those who studied journalism and those who studied another area with no connection to the field of Communication. Having a master‘s or doctoral degree, which should enhance the value of journalists‘ work, is neither reflected in on the salary level of journalists.

Despite the request made to media companies, government and journalists to consolidate Journalism as a university certified profession, through the creation of associations of graduate and postgraduate journalists (Fernández Areal, 2010), the reality indicates that media companies do not reward financially the specialised university education of their employees. Perhaps this tendency is due to the fact that a large share of journalists in the sample were old journalists (16.9% of the sample were aged 55 years and over) and, therefore, they have benefitted from intermediate and high level salaries.

Precisely this group has the lowest level of university education (42.3% of journalists over 55 years of age in the sample had no university education). Thus, this fact, probably, prevents us from observing a linear association between the variables ―salary level‖ and ―level of studies‖.

Obviously, in the absence of university education, professional experience is crucial to reach a high salary. Our study has demonstrated that as the years of professional experience accumulate, the salary level of journalist gets better. However, the process to achieve a substantial improvement in remuneration is surprisingly slow since the access to a higher salary level (more than 2,200 Euros) usually takes the majority of journalists between 21 and 30 years of professional dedication. The first years in the profession are characterised by precarious salaries, since 64.7% of journalists with less than ten years of experience earn less than 1,500 Euros net per month. Less than half of the journalists with an extra decade of experience (44.2% of those with 11-20 years of experience) earn intermediate salary levels. Finally, 53.7% of journalists with 21-30 years of experience manage to earn more than

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2,200 Euros per month, which is the most common figure among journalists with more than 31 years of experience.

Regarding the differences across media platforms, television is the best payer (44.4% were paid a high salary), followed by the communication and press departments (only 23.6% earned low salaries); news agencies (42.4% were paid intermediate salaries), and the press, although the latter presented a polarized structure (34.6% earned low salaries and 36.4% earned high salaries). The media that gave the lowest salaries to their employees, in our sample, were magazines (42.6% had a low salary); radio (low salaries for 42.6% of employees) and especially the digital media, which remunerates 61.8% of its journalists with salaries under 1,500 Euros.

Regardless of the type of media, the largest the company is, better the salary conditions are. In our sample, small and very small companies paid low salaries to approximately half of their journalists (45% and 54.2%, respectively). However, in medium-sized media companies the distribution is more equal, and the intermediate salaries predominate (36.2%). Companies with more than 250 employees turned out to be the best payers since 42.7% of their journalists earned over 2,200 Euros per month.

Our analysis also confirms that the media located in Madrid and Barcelona predominantly pays intermediate and high salaries (especially in Madrid, where 42.9% of journalists had high salaries). On the other hand, 46.4% of journalists employed by media located in other Spanish provinces received less than 1,500 Euros net per month. We can therefore talk about the existence of marked salary differences between the media-political centres and the media periphery, which is also a salary periphery.

Focusing the analysis on the relationship between journalists and employers, we discovered that there is a direct relationship between loyalty and remuneration, so journalists who manage to stay longer in a company achieve better salaries. Almost half of the journalists with less than ten years of seniority in their last company earned low salaries. The trend reverses among those who have accumulated between 11 and 20 of seniority, which is rewarded in 44.2% of cases with a high salary level. Accordingly, the worse paid journalists are those with the shortest relationship with their employer. In fact, 53.2% of temporary contracts and 52.9% of contracts for work involve a remuneration of under 1,500 Euros a month, which is a figure that only affects a quarter of the open-term contracts.

There is also a great salary gap between journalistic occupational categories. There are large salary differences between managerial and writing positions, but also between writers and the middle positions. In fact, 46.4% of all writers earn a low salary (82.4% of the writers in digital media; 63% of writers in magazines and half of writers in press, radio and press offices). Conversely, 45.9% of their immediately bosses, the section heads, enjoy high salaries (more than 2,200 Euros), like 60.3% of the

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editors-in-chief and 72.7% of editors. In spite of this, contributors are worse remunerated than the writers since 61% of them were paid less than 1,500 Euros a month.

At this point, we are able to describe the typical profile of the journalist with high, intermediate and low salary levels.

The prototype of a journalist with a high salary level would earn more than 2,200 Euros net per month.

It would be a 46 year-old man with approximately 28 years of professional experience, and preferably in the same company. This journalist would be an editor or sub-editor of a news TV programme in a large company, located in Madrid, with which he would maintain an open-term contract.

The prototype of a journalist with an intermediate salary level would win between 1,501 and 2,200 Euros net per month. It would be a woman aged between 36 and 45 years, with 15 years of work experience, preferably tied to the same company. This journalist would occupy a position of intermediate responsibility (department head) in a press office within a medium-sized company located in Barcelona, with which she would maintain an open-term contract.

The prototype of a journalist with a low salary level would receive less than 1,500 Euros a month. It would be a woman under 35 years of age, with less than 10 years of professional experience, newly hired by a digital media company, owned by a small media conglomerate located in any Spanish province apart from Madrid and Barcelona. The journalist would have the professional category of writer and her working relationship with the company would be based on a temporary contract.

The data obtained from the study confirmed that most journalists are poorly remunerated for their work. Now it is appropriate, therefore, to wonder why.

An explanation of the critical perspectives leads us to think that this is a strategy of the forces in power (the media owners and their commercial and political partners) to undermine the independence of journalists and thus weaken the civic power of society. This explanation would link the poor regulation of the profession to the working conditions of communicators, who would be more concerned with paying the bills than with conducting journalistic investigations that might be prejudicial to the interests of the forces in power.

Another completely different explanation can be inferred from the hypothesis proposed by Robert Picard (professor of Media Economics in Jonkoping University of Sweden and editor of the Journal Media Economics for over a decade) at a conference in Oxford University‘s Reuters Institute. Picard explains why journalists earn little and ―must earn little‖:

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―Salaries are a compensation for the creation of value. And journalists, simply, are not creating much recently [...]. Unfortunately, the journalistic work has become standardised. Most journalists share the same set of skills, give the same approach to articles, they go after the same sources, make similar questions and write relatively similar articles. Permutability is one of the reasons why the salary of an ordinary journalist is relatively low and why columnists, cartoonists and specialised journalists (e.g., in economics and financial information) are better paid‖.

According to this expert, the problem is that journalists are not professionals with a set of unique knowledge, as it is the case of professors, for example, since the main economic value of journalism is not derived from journalists‘ own knowledge. Picard warns that technology is subtracting skills from journalists, and threatening the three fundamental functions and their corresponding skills that have generated economic value in journalism so far (access to sources, determining the relevance of information, and effective expression), because it allows anyone to do it: ―[Technology] is giving individuals without the support of a press company the possibility of accessing sources, locating information, determining its relevance and expressing it effectively‖.

According to Picard, this loss of unique and exclusive skills regarding the access to information sources and the immediacy of information access and distribution, justifies the low salaries of journalists.

Acknowledging the arguments of both explanations, we consider they are complementary because while it is true that in recent years the work of journalists has become standardised –thus losing economic value-, perhaps this has occurred due to the conditions imposed by the organisational structure of the media and the legal context surrounding the journalistic activity. Journalism is increasingly understood by companies and, sadly, by the authorities as a ‗sale‘ activity in which journalists are not even the ‗producers‘, but the ‗packers‘ of a low cost product. For this reason, the academia -where we are aware of the social importance of journalists in a democratic society- must continue to monitor the profession, with the objective of diagnosing the ―diseases‖ that are affecting it, and thus avoid the predicted ―death‖ of journalism.

In the near future, therefore, it will be important to replicate the study, taking into account that in the coming years we can expect changes and legislative reforms in the general regulatory framework (reforms to the labour market) and the specific field of journalism and the media (the professional statute of the journalist and the collective agreement of the broadcasting sector) that may modify the salary structure of journalists in Spain.

Likewise, as we briefly mentioned in the introduction, during the economic crisis the media companies begun implementing staff costs-reduction policies that should be assessed once the data from 2010 and 2011 is collected. However, a more ambitious approach should aim to study this subject in a group of democratic countries.

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Moreover, in the next approaches to this object of study it should be important to reconsider some methodological issues based on the ones applied in this research [8].

It would be interesting to select participants based on quotas of media type, age and occupational category to improve the representativeness of certain minority groups.

We would obtain richer information for statistical exploitation had the variable salary level been a scale variable and not ordinal. It would be more advisable not to collect salary bands, but instead absolute data, which would facilitate the descriptive and inferential statistics (we could use the arithmetic mean), and especially, would enrich the analysis of the chronological series that can be produced in the next few years.

It would be convenient to reformulate the question regarding the income and ask for the annual gross income (including bonuses) instead of just monthly net income. This would allow a more convenient comparison of data from other studies and surveys on salary structure.

The survey questionnaire could also include an item requesting participants to explain whether their job contract is governed by a specific or sectorial agreement.

Apart from these issues, it would be progressive if the next investigations on the salary situation of Spanish journalists would aim for the homogenisation of methodological approaches in this area of study to allow comparative analysis between the results of several researchers.

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Martín Sabarís, R. M., Amurrio Vélez, M. (2007). ―Periodistas del medio audiovisual: formación y situación laboral‖ (Journalists of audiovisual media: education and employment situation), 119-213. In: Peñafiel Saiz, C. (ed.). Transformaciones de la radio y la televisión en Europa (Transformations of radio and television in Europe). Bilbao: Universidad del País Vasco, Servicio de Publicaciones.

Martínez Odriozola, L. (2004). ―Disección de la profesión: de cómo y por qué se accede al periodismo, de sus estudios y salidas‖ (Dissection of the journalistic profession: how and why is the profession accessed, its studies and outputs). Revista Latina de Comunicación Social, 57, La Laguna (Tenerife).

Retrieved on 1 January 2010 from: http://www.ull.es/publicaciones/latina/20040857odriozola.htm Mellado, C., Simón, J., Barría, S., Enríquez, J. (2007). ―Investigación de perfiles profesionales en periodismo y comunicación para una actualización curricular permanente‖ (Research on professional profiles in journalism and communication for a permanent curricular update). ZER, 23, pp. 139-164.

Picard, R. (2009). ―Why journalists deserve low pay‖, in: The Christian Science Monitor, 9 May 2009.

Retrieved on 1 January 2010 from: http://www.csmonitor.com/Commentary/Opinion/2009/0519/p09s02-coop.html Rodríguez Andrés, R. (2002-2003). ―Características socio-demográficas y laborales de los periodistas españoles e índice de satisfacción profesional‖ (Socio-demographic and labour Features of Spanish journalists and professional satisfaction index), Ámbitos, pp. 9-10.

Roses, S. (2009). ―¿Crisis de confianza en los medios?‖ (Crisis of confidence in the media?).

Proceedings of the first International Congress of the Sociedad Latina de Comunicación Social (2009).

University of La Laguna (Tenerife) / SLCS. Retrieved on 1 January 2010 from: http://www.revistalatinacs.org/09/Sociedad/actas/63roses.pdf Sánchez Illán, J. C. (2005). ―El perfil profesional del periodista español. Evolución reciente y nuevos desafíos (1990-2005)‖ (The professional profile of the Spanish journalist. Recent evolution and new challenges (1990-2005)). Telos: Cuadernos de Comunicación e Innovación, 63, pp. 85-92.

Soriano, J., Cantón, M. J., Díez, M. (2005). ―La pseudofeminización de la profesión periodística en España‖ (The pseudo-feminisation of the journalistic profession in Spain). ZER, 19, pp. 35-52.

Suarez Villegas, J. C.; Romero Domínguez, L. R., and Almansa Martínez, A. (2009). ―El periodista en el espejo. La profesión analizada por periodistas andaluces‖ (The journalist in the mirror. The profession as analysed by Andalusian journalists). Ámbitos, 18, pp. 157-175.

Ufarte Ruiz, M. J. (2007). ―Las mujeres en el seno de la profesión periodística: de la discriminación a la inserción‖ (Women within the journalistic profession: from discrimination to inclusion). Ámbitos, 16, pp. 409-421.

http://www.revistalatinacs.org/11/art/929_Malaga/08_RosesEN.html

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Revista Latina de Comunicación Social # 66 - 2011 Financed Research | DOI: 10.4185/RLCS-66-2011-929-178-209-EN | ISSN 1138-5820 |32 pages

Weaver, D. H. (2009). ―US Journalism in the 21st Century—What Future?‖ Journalism: Theory, Practice and Criticism, 10, 3, 396-397.

6. Notes [1] The Media Sector of the Federation of Social Services of the Labour Commissions (FSC-CCOO) announced via press release on 11 March, 2010, that it would sue the non-daily press employers association for failing to comply with the commitments made in the salary review. This release was retrieved on 12 March 2010 from: http://www.fsc.ccoo.es/comunes/temp/recursos/17554/376136.pdf [2] The CHEERS (Careers after Higher Education) survey reviewed the labour situation of European graduates four years after finishing their undergraduate during 1994 and 1995.

[3] Instituto Nacional de Estadística / National Institute of Statistics (2007). Encuesta Nacional de Estructura Salarial (National Survey of Salary Structure). Retrieved on 1 January, 2010, from: http://www.ine.es/jaxi/menu.do?type=pcaxis&path=%2Ft22/p133&file=inebase&L=0 [4] The work of Gómez Aguilar uses data collected from the same survey used in this investigation (developed as part of the CSO2008-05125 R&D project, which is directed by Farias Batlle).

[5] The CSO2008-05125 project will review next year the salary structure of journalists in Spain, again by means of a survey applied to a sample of journalists.

[6] Of the sample of journalists, those with a low salary level account for 31.9%; those with an intermediate level account for 33.3%; and those with high level salary 34.8%.

[7] The tables only reflect those positions with a significant number of cases for analysis.

[8] The latest research conducted by Farias et al. (2010) includes the methodological changes I describe below.

* This work is part of the CSO2008-05125 project directed by Pedro Farias Batlle, and funded by the Ministry of Science and Innovation of the Government of Spain. The author is part of the Professor Training Programme, of the Spanish Ministry of Education. The author is grateful to Professor Farias Batlle for his support and academic direction in this paper _____________________________ HOW TO CITE THIS ARTICLE IN BIBLIOGRAHIES / REFERENCES: Roses, S. (2011): "Journalists‘ salary structure in Spain during the crisis", at Revista Latina de Comunicación Social, 66, pages 178 to 209. La Laguna (Tenerife, Canary Islands): La Laguna University, retrieved on ___th of ____ of 2_______, from http://www.revistalatinacs.org/11/art/929_Malaga/08_RosesEN.html DOI: 10.4185/RLCS-66-2011-929-178-209-EN Note: the DOI number is part of the bibliographic references and it must be cited if you cited this article. To send this article to a friend, just click on the little envelope: ______________________________________________________

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The TikTok Self: Music, Signaling, and Identity on Social Media Jeffrey Sachs Department of Sociology Yale University Rahshemah Wise Yale College Yale University Daniel Karell Department of Sociology Yale University

Corresponding author Jeffrey Sachs jeffrey.sachs@yale.edu Yale University Department of Sociology 493 College Street New Haven, Connecticut

ABSTRACT The COVID-19 pandemic has shifted many social worlds from in-person interaction to online activity. As a result, people increasingly have the freedom to choose more agreeable everyday environments. While such freedom has often been associated with negative outcomes – namely, the emergence of “echo-chambers” that corral insensitivity – this data visualization suggests a positive outcome: “flowering-chambers”, where the freedom has enabled expressions of a truer self.

Drawing on an original dataset of TikTok videos, the visualization charts a considerable increase in the number of “coming out” gender identity and sexual orientation videos during the latter three quarters of 2020. These results suggests that many TikTok users have publicly revealed private aspects of their identities, which we attribute to individuals becoming increasingly embedded in agreeable online spaces while quarantining or socially distancing. The visualization additionally introduces a publicly available dataset of 4.8 million TikToks to facilitate future research using data from the platform.

KEY WORDS TikTok; Covid; Gender identity; Sexual orientation; Dramaturgy; Music

DATA VISUALIZATION Among the changes brought about by the Covid pandemic has been a shift in our social relationships. For many people, especially those living under prolonged quarantine or social distancing mandates, the balance of interpersonal connections has shifted from in-person towards online interactions. As a result, some of the societal and institutional expectations usually experienced through face-to-face interaction have likely dissipated and been replaced over the course of 2020. That is, with an increasingly online life, people can avoid or even block disapproving others, thereby mitigating unwanted social expectations and sanctioning while selecting and insulating within more agreeable communities.

The increased opportunities to select into agreeable interactions during quarantine has potentially brought about profound effects on our identities. Under typical circumstances, to use Goffman’s (1959) dramaturgical metaphor, people usually invoke one identity, or performance, in public (the “frontstage”), while adopting another in private (the “backstage”). The terms of the former performance are defined by prevailing expectations and norms, and individuals are policed and shamed when their performance falls short. In the backstage, where individuals are largely unhampered by societal expectations, people tend to flout societal rules, nurture close relationships with similar others, and, in many cases, perform a more honest version of themselves. In short, the distinction between front and back stages – and the distinction between the identities we perform – rests on being exposed to external expectations and the sanctioning behavior of others.

Along this theoretical line, the metaphorical frontstage would be significantly weakened if individuals could freely choose a growing portion of the societal expectations and norms they encountered – as might happen through, say, long-term quarantine and a transition to a primarily online life. With such freedom, backstage life could move to the foreground, resulting in the public expression of individuals’ oft-hidden, more true selves. In some ways, this process would be akin to

entering the frequently derided online “echo chambers” (see Bail et al. 2018), in which individuals can be radicalized by way of being exposed to only one worldview. We, however, conceptualize an alternative, liberating process: individuals become more comfortable expressing versions of themselves previously kept backstage. Indeed, the process could lead to more explicit expressions of suppressed hateful beliefs (Kilvington 2021), but it could also free individuals to express innocuous aspects of themselves as part of their everyday sociallife, such as gender identity and sexual orientation. Thus, we posit that the shift to online social life has created chambers allowing various self-identities to blossom and thrive.

In this data visualization, we offer evidence of backstages coming to the fore due to the quarantine and social distance regulations imposed during the pandemic. The visualization draws on an original dataset of 3,337,925 TikTok posts, sampled from 15,000 randomly chosen public TikTok users.1 TikTok is a video sharing social media platform launched in 2017 with a large and growing user base.2 The platform allows users to create short videos by compiling elements (e.g., videos shot with one’s phone, text, and song clips) and editing the compilation with filters, voice effects, speed modulators, and other tools. Users can then share videos with a group of followers or other users they follow. Importantly, users can also select existing (posted) videos’ music, or sound clips, for their own videos. Because of this feature, the user’s choice of background music often serves as a salient indicator of the video’s content and meaning: song clips become imbued with specific and widely recognized meaning as users pull music from other videos with the same message and incorporate it into their own videos. In this manner, users can draw on collective meaning (while contributing to it) to convey particular ideas (Serrano et al. 2020).

1

See Appendices A and B in the supplementary materials for details of the data collection and dataset.

2 In early 2020, TikTok had 26.5 million active users in the United States. Sixty percent were between the ages of 16 and 24 (Serrano et al. 2020).

Our visualization displays the distribution of three kinds of TikTok videos from January 1, 2020 to March 10, 2021. One set of these videos uses four songs with specific and widely recognized meanings in the world of TikTok. These songs are used to signal gender identity or sexual orientation, and are integral to a “coming out” genre of videos on TikTok.3 The other two kinds of videos feature songs that do not convey a particular meaning within TikTok: these are the top four most popular songs of 2020 or two of the most popularsongs on TikTok in 2020.4 If frontstages have been weakened – and if people have been entering “flowering chambers” due to the replacement of in-person social life with the increasing predominance of online life during the pandemic – we should observe an increase in the usage of the “coming out” songs in the latter three quarters of 2020. In addition, to qualify this observation as independent of systemic trends, we should not see greater usage of the songs from the latter two kinds of videos over the same period.

3

See Appendix A for validation of the interpretation of these songs’ meaning.

The two popular TikTok songs of 2020 are two of thetop 10 ranked songs on TikTok for 2020 that were also released prior to March 2020. The eight songs released during or after March 2020 would necessarily have a growing rate of usage during 2020. See Appendix A in the supplementary materials for further details.

4

Figure 1. The prevalence of different music types on TikTok during 2020. The line plots show the distribution of TikTok posts for each song between January 1st, 2020 and March 10th, 2021.

Observations are binned into two-day spans. The bar plots show the average number of TikTok posts per user featuring one of these songs. The visualization depicts “coming out” songs (n = 854), top general “pop” songs of 2020 (n = 2,688), and top “TikTok pop” songs of 2020 (n = 3,579), identified in a sample of 3,337,925 TikTok videos.

The uppermost plot of Figure 1 shows that, as quarantine wore on, the number of TikTok videos featuring one of the four recognized “coming out” songs increased considerably. In contrast, the middle and bottom plots show that the videos using the generally popular songs or the popular TikTok songs generally decreased or were otherwise stable over the quarantine period. The somewhat stable rates of the latter two groups suggest that the growth in “coming out” songs was not simply a function of TikTok’s growing user base. The bar plots along the right-hand side of

Figure 1 show the mean number of TikTok videos per user across each song choice and support the interpretation of the “coming out” songs. If thesesongs are in fact predominantly used to signal gender identity or sexual orientation, we should typically see these songs used only once by each user – that is, to “come out” – rather than multiple times per user, as would be more common among general fans of the music. The bar plots confirm this logic, showing the average number of TikTok videos per user for the “coming out” songs to be considerably closer to one than for the 2020 popular songs or popular on TikTok songs.

The visualization indicates that numerous people leveraged music to signal their gender identity or sexual orientation on TikTok over the pandemic period. This finding advances our understanding of the broader effects of society’sresponse to Covid. Along with consequences related to health, education, politics, labor and inequality, the pandemic appears to have also transformed many people’s expression of identities. Recognizing that the replacement of in-person social life with online social life can foster freedoms and flexibility with respect to personal identity,5 we should further consider the dynamics underlying “echo chambers”. Namely, “echo chambers” could realize both negative and positive outcomes. In addition, we hope that our visualization encourages more research using TikTok as a fruitful source of data. After all, TikTok serves as a leading channel of expression among young people. To support such research efforts, we make publicly available a version of our dataset that includes additional features not used in this visualization.6

5

Of course, online life could also entail more careful management of one’s backstage life, including the manufacturing of mock “backstages” (see Stuart 2020). We do not see such processes as mutually exclusive to the one we describe; both can occur across a society of community simultaneously.

6 See Appendix C for details.

REFERENCES Bail, Christopher A., Lisa P. Argyle, Taylor W. Brown, John P. Bumpus, Haohan Chen, M. B. Fallin Hunzaker, Jaemin Lee, Marcus Mann, Friedolin Merhout, and Alexander Volfovsky.

2018. “Exposure to Opposing Views on Social Media Can Increase Political Polarization”, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences115(37):9216-9221.

Goffman, Erving. 1959. The Presentation of Self inEveryday Life. New York: Doubleday.

Kilvington, Daniel. 2021. “The Virtual Stages of hate: Using Goffman’s Work to Conceptualize the Motivations for Online Hate”, Media, Culture & Society 43(2): 256-272.

Serrano, Juan Carlos Medina, Orestis Papakyriakopoulos, and Simon Hegelich. 2020. “Dancing to the Partisan Beat: A First Analysis of Political Communication on TikTok”, WebSci ’20 (Southampton, UK). DOI:10.1145/3394231.3397916.

Stuart, Forest. 2020. “Code of the Tweet: Urban Gang Violence in the Social Media Age”, Social Forces 67(2): 191-207.

Supplementary Material for The TikTok Self: Music, Signaling and Identity on Social Media April 2021

Contents Appendix A. Data collection procedures Appendix B. Details of the data Appendix C. Information for future use of the dataset

Appendix A. Data collection procedures Our main data collection procedures helped us approximate a random sample of TikTok posts with which we could measure the prevalence of particular songs (henceforth, “focal songs”). This data gathering was preceded by an initial round of data collection. Specifically, we initially collected musicID codes

from official TikTok pages for each focal song, then used the “Unofficial TikTok

API” to collect metadata on posts that used the songs.7 For each query, we attempted to collect as many posts as we could. However, TikTok limited the amount of metadata that could be collected to about four thousand posts per song request. Little documentation exists on the sampling process for these posts, but our analysis of the metadata revealed that the posts were from public accounts and were ordered with respect to digg_count (the number of likes a video creator has received). Thus, our first round of data collection yielded observations of the four thousand most popular videos using each of the 10 focal songs, conditional on the video being posted to a public account. Analysis on this dataset confirmed the results found in the main visualization (Figure 1 in the main text), which was produced with data gathered in a second round of data collection.

We undertook a second round of data collection because in the initial dataset the aggregate number of TikTok videos featuring each song varied dramatically while the number of observations for each song in our dataset was relatively similar (see Table B1). This indicated that the initial dataset potentially over-represented the prevalence of the songs of primary interest (i.e., the “coming out” songs). To circumvent this problem, we produced the second dataset and measured the prevalence of the focal songs among TikTok posts from users that were sampled randomly from a much larger population of users. To construct the population of users, we gathered a list of 10,000 songs from 2010 to 2019 from Spotify.8 We also added to this list songs from four other playlists on Spotify that related to popular music and popular TikTok music for 2019, 2020, and 2021.9 After removing redundancies, our list comprised 10,251 songs from 2010 to 2021. Importantly, the “coming out” songs of interest were not included in this list of songs. We then used a search

7

https://github.com/davidteather/TikTok-Api https://open.spotify.com/playlist/69VOdzkx8II6pi0sUvcu65 9 https://open.spotify.com/playlist/0UEXxMFJNARHB3XEfUhgEd; https://open.spotify.com/playlist/3lxZEjjwYHtls9aD9zU65A; https://open.spotify.com/playlist/65LdqYCLcsV0lJoxpeQ6fW; https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5AU9HfecQkzlu52erbiyjK 8

algorithm to collect the music_id codes from each song’s official TikTok music page. Altogether, we identified TikTok musicID codes for 5,882 songs.

Next, we collected TikTok post metadata from the official music pages for each of the 10,224 songs using the “TikTok Scraper & Downloader.”10 This collection procedure resulted in 1,558,858 TikTok posts from 1,064,170 unique public users. From the list of unique public users, we then randomly sampled 15,000 users and collected the available metadata on their TikTok posts.

The result was data on 3,337,925 TikTok posts, the number of observations in our main (second) dataset. Collection of data from each user was limited to 2000 posts, so if a user had produced more than 2000 TikTok, we collected data on their 2000 most popular TikToks in terms of diggCount.

This dataset contains 8,168 TikTok videos that featured the focal songs (see Table B1).

The focal songs meet three different criteria. First, some focal songs are those that were widely used on TikTok to announce a gender identification or sexual orientation. These four songs were: “Original Sound” by Lucy, “girls” by girl in red, “Hayloft” by Mother Mother, and “Sweater Weather” by The Neighbourhood. Second, we chose four currently popular “pop” songs to serve as a comparison group. To identify these songs, we used the Official Charts website11 and chose four songs from the top-40 most-streamed songs of 2020 list. In selecting these songs, we identified four songs that did not map saliently onto any particular meaning in TikTok. We also required that the songs were released prior to March 2020 (which we qualified as the beginning of the general United States quarantine period). Ultimately, we selected the top four songs on the top-40 list, as each of these songs satisfied the requirements. The songs were: “Before You Go” by Lewis Capaldi, “Blinding Lights” by the Weeknd, “Roses” by SAINt JHN, and “Dance Monkey” by Tones and I. Third, to serve as another comparison group, we chose two TikTok songs from a list of the top 10 most popular songs on TikTok during 2020.12 As with the “pop” songs, we required that the popular TikTok songs were released prior to the start of the general quarantine period so that the effect of popularity and the potential effect of quarantine could be more easily disentangled and identified in the visualization. The two selected songs, “Lottery” by K Camp and “Relationship” by Young Thug, were the only two on the top-10 list meeting this criterion.

10

https://github.com/drawrowfly/tiktok-scraper https://www.officialcharts.com/chart-news/the-official-top-40-biggest-songs-of-2020__29264/ 12 https://www.popbuzz.com/internet/viral/top-tiktok-songs-2020/ 11

The “coming out” songs were identified based on the expert knowledge of a member of the authorship team. To validate the identification, we conducted word frequency analyses using the desc variable for each video type. Table A1 shows the top 10 most frequent words for each song type. We see in this table that words associated with gender identity and sexual orientation are not only frequent, but also more frequent than in the descriptions of songs in the two control groups.

We additionally validated the interpretation of “coming out” songs by measuring the average number of times a user posted a TikTok featuring the song. The logic was that “coming out” songs would be used considerably closer to one time per user than the popular comparison songs, as “coming out” would often be a single occurrence. The right-hand bar plots of the visualization (Figure 1 in the main text) confirm a considerably lower average per user use for the “coming out” songs than for the songs in the control groups.

Coming Out (n = 854)

N

Pop (n = 2,688)

N

TikTok (n = 3,579)

N

1

シ

63

la

98

renegade

239

2

i’m

35

suite

85

day

81

3

love

32

dans

83

parati

69

4

bi

30

instant

83

charlidamelio

64

5

xyzbca

30

art

81

i’m

64

6

lgbt

28

parati

77

xyzbca

63

7

greenscreen

27

pourtoi

70

de

60

8

gay

25

love

69

fy

52

9

lesbian

24

poutoi

63

lol

50

10

parati

24

de

59

love

47

Table A1. Word frequencies on TikTok posts by song type

Appendix B. Details of the data The dataset used for the visualization contains metadata on 8,186 TikTok videos, narrowed to 7,121 TikToks posted between January 1, 2020 and March 10, 2021. The observations are instances in which one of our songs of interest were used in aTikTok video contained in our sample of 3,337,925 videos shared by 15,000 randomly sampled users.

Table B1 shows the number of observations per song, as well as whether the song is part of the “coming out”, generally popular, or the popular on TikTok set. The table also shows the total number of TikTok videos featuring the song as of March10, 2021.13 The information we collected covers a range of video attributes (see Appendix C), but the visualization makes use only of date (the time a video was uploaded), music_id (the identifier of the song), and type, a classified we assigned based on whether the song is part of the “coming out”, generally popular, or popular on TikTok group. The date variable ranges from January 1, 2020 to March 10, 2021, the day we collected the data.

Song title

Music type

N

Total TikToks

Girls

Coming out

161

119.6K

Hayloft

Coming out

285

222K

Original Sound

Coming out

33

12.6K

Sweater Weather

Coming out

368

457.7K

Before You Go

Generally popular

432

831.1K

Blinding Lights

Generally popular

792

1.3MM

Dance Monkey

Generally popular

424

6.7MM

Roses (Imanbek remix)

Generally popular

1040

2.6MM

Lottery

TikTok popular

2230

28.8MM

Relationship (Young Thug, ft. Future)

TikTok popular

1349

27.6MM

Table B1. Summary of the data

13

The count of total TikToks featuring each song is publicly available and not part of our dataset.

Appendix C. Information on the publicly available dataset The original data structure of our dataset was a JSON object that included 74 variables. We converted this data structure into a “tidy” data frame comprising 23 of the more substantive variables. Some of the variables that could prove to be interesting to researchers are: ● music_id: Unique ID for TikTok song. ● tiktok_id: Unique ID for each post. ● desc: caption for TikTok (often also includes hashtags, which also is a variable). ● user_avatar: A user’s profile avatar (often a cartoon). ● user_verified: Boolean, denoting whether a user profile is verified. ● digg_count: number of likes for the post. ● share_count: number of shares of the post. ● comment_count: number of comments on post. ● play_count: number of plays of post. ● following_user: number of user followers. ● user_hearts: number of hearts accumulated by user. ● user_tiktoks: number of TikToks created by user. ● user_fans: number of fans of user.

Researchers interested in some of the 74 variables not included in the publicly available dataset (but available from public TikToks) should contact the corresponding author. The user_id and s_user_id (secret

user ID) variables have been removed in the publicly available dataset to preserve

some privacy (though the user accounts are all public). Please note that all 74 variables for a TikTok can also be recovered using the unique tiktok_id.

International Journal of Communication 15(2021), 1437–1457

1932–8036/20210005

Communicative Forms on TikTok: Perspectives From Digital Ethnography ANDREAS SCHELLEWALD Goldsmiths, University of London, UK TikTok is an app that allows people to create, share, and consume short-video content.

Although only available internationally since 2017, it has already been downloaded more than 2 billion times and has around 800 million active users. Public interest in the fleeting and seemingly random video clips that TikTok hosts is high. In fact, it has grown steadily since the time of the Twitter-owned short-video app Vine that ended its service in 2016 with only a quarter of TikTok’s current userbase. However, despite this steady growth in popularity, observations and theorizations of short-video apps like TikTok remain lacking.

In this article, I thus seek to address this lack by critically discussing how to study shortvideo communications from the bottom up and by presenting the results of an exploratory investigation into TikTok and its communicative forms. Doing so, this article contributes to opening a space for serious engagement with this burgeoning yet understudied element of digital culture in the future.

Keywords: TikTok, short-video, forms of communication, digital ethnography, digital culture

TikTok is an app that allows people to create, share, and consume short-video content. Available since 2017, it is the international version of its Chinese sister app, Douyin, that has been available since 2016. Despite its newness, TikTok has already been downloaded more than 2 billion times, which makes it one of the most downloaded apps of the last decade (SensorTower, 2020). It is because of this rapid growth and its origins outside of the Silicon Valley that TikTok has become not only a central element of popular culture but also an object of public scrutiny in recent times. This scrutiny, however, has led to only minor advancements in our understanding of short-video communications as the likes TikTok afford them. Public perceptions seldom go beyond reductionist views, seeing TikTok as mere “childish” or “simple” entertainment. TikTok is known for hosting viral dance and singing trends, as well as “silly” video clips only a few seconds in length (Roose, 2018). TikTok and the communication it facilitates is seen as something lacking depth and complexity.

TikTok can easily be (mis)read as yet another symptom of modern life marked by the logics of short-lived consumption, the self-interested drive from one momentary pleasure to the next. Many in the public discourse discuss TikTok and its algorithmic content feed as “digital crack cocaine” (Koetsier, 2020).

They render it a time-wasting machine, distracting people from more meaningful matters (Odell, 2019).

Andreas Schellewald: asche003@gold.ac.uk Date submitted: 2020-09-03 Copyright © 2021 (Andreas Schellewald). Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial No Derivatives (by-nc-nd). Available at http://ijoc.org.

1438 Andreas Schellewald

International Journal of Communication 15(2021)

One is confronted with patronizing voices addressing TikTok either as a “parenting problem” or a “security threat” (Sanger & Barnes, 2020). Such commentaries are appealing. Digital detox initiatives and their calls to reclaim time and autonomy from addictive technology are growing in popularity (Sutton, 2020; Syverten, 2020). However, it is worth noting that others in the debate around TikTok remind us that “the most downloaded app . . . is barely understood by anyone above the age of 25” (Hern, 2019, para. 1). Critical observations of TikTok are made mostly from the top down. They emphasize aspects of the app, such as privacy concerns, whose importance is not always shared to the same degree by those using the app (more generally, see Kennedy, 2016; for TikTok-specific, see Ohlheiser, 2019).

Media scholars have long been critical of such top-down perspectives and patronizing commentaries on social media. Phenomena like the selfie and other practices of online self-documentation are emblematic for that. Public commentary often renders them as narcissistic, mindless, or inconsequential—a position that media scholars have long opposed by emphasizing how seemingly “simple” and “shallow” communicative practices have always come to matter, not in and by themselves, but for their embeddedness in everyday and community life (see Abidin, 2016; Humphreys, 2018; Rettberg, 2014; Tiidenberg, 2018). TikTok is no expectation from that trend. Many assumptions about TikTok that fuel current debates are neither backed by evidence nor enunciated by actors appearing to have a serious interest in understanding the platform.

This article is therefore aimed at addressing this lack of knowledge and serious interest. It does so by providing a detailed description of the form of communication on TikTok to explain what lies both behind and beyond assumptions of the app merely being home to “silly fun” entertainment.

There exists a growing body of academic literature on TikTok already. However, the primary concern of it appears to be understanding the larger political economy of the app (Chen, Kaye, & Zeng, 2020) and discussing communications on the platform through the lens of the public sphere. It focuses, for instance, on topics like U.S. politics (Guinaudeau, Votta, & Munger, 2020; Serrano, Papkyriakopoulos, & Hegelich, 2020), on youth political communication and activism (Abidin, 2020; Literat & KliglerVilenchick, 2019), or on science communication and the spread of (mis)information (Zeng & Schäfer, 2020). While sharing these scholars’ serious interest in TikTok, I take a different approach. Instead of focusing on specific discourses and cultures on TikTok, in this article I present the results of an exploratory investigation aimed at mapping the variety of different ways of expression that come to mark TikTok as a communicative environment.

Put differently, my study set out to understand communication on TikTok as it unfolds mediated through the so-called “For You” page. That is the algorithmic content feed lying at the heart of the app’s design. The “For You” page presents users with an endless stream of TikTok clips selected by the platform’s algorithms attempting to identify those videos that will likely resonate with a user’s interests. TikTok’s algorithms do so by observing and reinforcing a user’s past viewing habits. They look at what videos people watch and which they have scrolled past. They observe how users engage with the videos they see, if they tag them with “like” or “not interested,” if they rewatch them, leave a comment, or read those of others, follow the creator of the video, or look at their profile pages. Taking all these and other signals as input, TikTok’s algorithms recommend content “for you.”

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To confront this “For You” page as the primary setting of communication on TikTok, I will proceed in three steps. First, I argue that it is because of “communicative forms” that the ephemeral video clips appearing on people’s content feeds present themselves not as random and short-lived entertainment but as complex, cultural artifacts. With the term “communicative form,” I will be referring to the platform-specific languages or memes, trends, and aesthetic styles that are specific to TikTok and the meaning-making practices of its users. I then, second, will discuss the methodological challenges that arise when studying short-video contents as cultural artifacts of algorithmic environments like the “For You” page. Lastly, I present the results of a six-month-long investigation that explored predominant communicative forms on TikTok. Doing so, I show not only what constitutes labels of TikTok being “silly fun” but also outline the broader variety of different communicative forms that also come to define the app. Based on this exploratory investigation, I close the article by discussing directions for future research.

Making Sense of Ephemerality Generally, short-video content can be characterized through its ephemeral nature. It primarily comes to matter in the immediate impression it creates and only rarely manages to sustain this meaningful quality beyond its momentary presence. As research on apps like Snapchat has shown, shortvideo content affords to share “small moments” of daily life with trusted peers (Bayer, Ellison, Schoenebeck, & Falk, 2016; Ekman, 2015; Piwek & Joinson, 2016). It facilitates meaningful social interaction through enacting a site of momentary copresence that brokers awareness for the life circumstances of distant others (more generally, see Madianou, 2016). Apps like Snapchat, but also Instagram, underscore this ephemeral nature by limiting the availability of short-video content. On Snapchat, videos are, by default, available to be watched only once. Likewise, so-called “Instagram Stories,” which are used to document and share moments out of one’s daily life, are available for only 24 hours. There is, by design, nothing meant to be expected and extracted from such content beyond its immediate impression. However, while previous research on short-video communications has mainly focused on platforms like Snapchat, I maintain that limited availability of content is only one of many ways in which ephemerality can materialize as communicative affordance.

On platforms like TikTok, videos remain available even after they have been watched. They are, in fact, looping by default. Once they have been watched, they automatically start over again. Yet it still makes sense to speak of such content as ephemeral in relation to other short-video apps. TikTok clips, too, are transient, fleeting, or short-lived phenomena. They are only a few seconds long, often variations of a meme or trend, and distributed through an algorithmic content feed. Embedded within this feed, TikTok clips are, by design, consumed in light of a new video standing ready to replace the current. Users might scroll because the current video did not immediately resonate with them and just appears random and arbitrary or because such an impression or affective response like laughter has worn off. In either case, TikTok’s algorithms always place a new video just one swipe away that according to their models will likely impress a user.

For these reasons—lengths of videos and their ephemeral or fleeting appearances—popular debates often falsely and prematurely frame short videos as mindless or meaningless. In the case of TikTok, content is rendered a mere short-lived entertainment made addictive by algorithmic means (see Koetsier, 2020;

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Odell, 2019). However, such a stance is not exclusive to apps like TikTok. Critics of digital media, like Turkle (2011), have long maintained that online encounters are not only lacking but also withholding people from more meaningful and “real” social interactions. In return, media scholars like Baym (2010) have frequently opposed such reductionist views by emphasizing that the meaningfulness of digital media can only be understood through their contexts. Previous inquiries into short-video communications highlight the importance of this. They have outlined for the case of Snapchat how it is the contexts within which videos are shared that ephemerality presents itself not as an obstacle to but the key quality affording meaningful communication (Bayer et al., 2016).

Recognizing this importance, I, too, adopted a contextualist approach. However, where, for apps like Snapchat, the context appears to be interpersonal in nature, on TikTok the situation is different. This is because on TikTok, short videos are mediated through the “For You” page, connecting users with the broader cultural dynamics unfolding on the platform. This is why in popular debates, TikTok is referred to as a “meme breeding ground,” as a place where new trends continuously emerge (Martin, 2019). More generally speaking, the concept of “meme” can be understood as communally shared “cultural units” that provide people with a set of established contents and formats that they can rely on and adapt online for purposes of self-expression (Shifman, 2014). Early studies on TikTok support the observation of TikTok as a “breeding ground” of such cultural units. They have focused on tracing how different languages take shape that are specific to TikTok and the meaning-making practices of its users (see Literat & Kligler-Vilenchick, 2019; Rettberg, 2017).

The exploratory investigation presented in this article was thus centered around broadly tracing communicative forms on TikTok. Taking shape as specific memes, trends, aesthetic styles, or genres, it is such communicative forms that tie the ephemeral appearance of individual contents to a larger frame of reference. They create a common background against which the expressions of others that people encounter on their “For You” page can be made sense of, however brief they might be. Whatever might be documented or spoken about is done so using TikTok’s distinct languages or communicative forms.

Methodological Challenges To operationalize this contextualist approach, there is a key methodological challenge that needs to be tackled: studying short videos as cultural artifacts. An overinterpretation of individual videos needs to be avoided, and instead, focus should be set on their embeddedness within the broader background of shared trends, memes, or platform-specific languages. The challenging nature of that process rests, on the one side, in the accelerated nature of TikTok. Not just individual TikTok videos but also their context of TikTok trends is ephemeral. Trends often fade away or are replaced by new ones emerging within a short period of time—hence the association of TikTok being a “meme breeding ground” (Martin, 2019).

An ethnographic stance appears best suited to tackle this challenge. Focusing on time spent in the field instead of the number of individual cases and videos analyzed, an ethnographic approach can provide the longitudinal perspective necessary to understand forms of expressions in their constant (re)use and variation on the platform.

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On the other side, TikTok’s size and way of content distribution also adds to the challenge.

Various cultural contexts are represented on TikTok. Accessing these is complicated through TikTok’s “For You” page creating algorithmic “personalization,” a technical term that is misleading when conflated with an everyday understanding of personality. Ultimately, what the “For You” page and other recommender systems do is reinforce past viewing habits. Therefore, a conscious approach and field navigation strategies are necessary to avoid feedback loops that emerge during “personalization.” Such strategies can be pragmatic, like avoiding the “For You” page and accessing content through hashtags. Yet they can also be of thematic nature, following deeper or turning away from certain trends already observed (Burrell, 2009). This is why I propose that processes of data gathering are joined with those of preliminary analysis. If not, one will be unable to become aware of the paths that have already been taken, which is necessary to avoid feedback loops and to explore a broader variety of cultural contexts and their communicative practices on TikTok. Ethnography seems the best approach to provide this kind of contextual awareness and should guide data gathering on short-video platforms.

In return, the investigation presented in this article was conducted in accordance with principles of digital ethnographic practice. Instead of making digital domains fit taken-for-granted methodological frameworks, a creative and adaptive approach was deployed to cope with the complex and dynamic nature of networked communication on TikTok from the bottom up (see Hine, 2015; Markham, 2013; Marres, 2017). This digital ethnographic stance was adopted in the context of an exploratory study that aimed at mapping different forms of communication as one can encounter them on TikTok as a digital field site. Put differently, I present, here, not an ethnography of TikTok or of specific user groups but a detailed description of its communicative forms—perspectives that can function as starting points and guidance for more complete ethnographies of the platform and its cultures to be written.

Fieldwork and Data Gathering Fieldwork started in January 2020 and lasted six months. It took place in the form of a routine of using TikTok, where I would scroll through the app’s “For You” page for around 30 to 60 minutes every other day, closely guided by a spreadsheet document as a field diary. This document was the central form in which data was gathered in an aggregate form. Individual videos were watched and analyzed on the platform; no contents were downloaded and stored; and screenshots were taken only once as needed for illustrative purposes. Given TikTok’s design and public image, it can be assumed that most users are aware of their content potentially reaching large audiences. Nonetheless, it was determined that the ethically responsible way of gathering data was to create an aggregate document that links only to videos on the platform and thus leaves control over the content with the users that have uploaded them. Extra care was taken to explicitly discuss in publication only videos or creators that had already achieved some level of public recognition on the app and beyond.

The spreadsheet field diary was set up and used in the following way: The vertical axis of the table was used to note individual TikTok trends and groups of videos, naming them, and entering a short description of their content and style. Following an inductive process, these trends were continuously (re)grouped with attention focused on identifying common themes and shared formal characteristics like

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videos being plain montages of everyday life or staged skits. The vertical axis was used to sort and link individual clips as significant cases of specific groups of videos.

The routine was structured in observing the content present on the “For You” page alongside this field diary. Gaining contextual awareness through observing the growth of the spreadsheet guaranteed and enabled the exploration of a broad variety of communicative forms on the platform. If the number of trends increased too much, the focus would switch to investigating individual trends more closely. This meant reevaluating cases that had been assigned to them, following the associated hashtags, and surveying videos that used similar formal elements, such as a song or a visual effect. If the table extended horizontally— accumulating lots of individual cases for already identified clusters—navigation switched back to searching for other thematic groups of videos. In that situation, I would keep scrolling until I encountered a video that did not fit any of the already identified clusters—for instance, by using a new bit of audio. I would then search for similar videos following the above procedure of investigating associated hashtags to assess whether it may constitute a new trend or meme.

The first weeks of fieldwork were marked by covering ground within the field and establishing an overview of more generic aesthetic styles and genres like comedy. Especially in the weeks following this initial period, the field diary became an integral tool to navigate through the “For You” page. Other than being stuck within a feedback loop centered around the initial group of videos, the awareness this spreadsheet provided on the type of content already encountered enabled continuous discovery of new content, nuances, and variations of memes and styles within the “For You” page. After six months, the spreadsheet appeared saturated and data gathering was stopped.

Consolidating Patterns in Field Data The result of this fieldwork period was a spreadsheet document referencing a body of 700 videos spread across 96 clusters. With the investigation offering an exploratory account of communication on TikTok, these 700 videos are significant cases identified from within the field and based on the deep, contextual understanding that was gained while scrolling through TikTok for six months. This sample and the initial clusters were then refined and consolidated through further qualitative content analysis. The three memetic dimensions of “content,” “form,” and “stance,” as developed by Shifman (2013), were used as guidance. The dimension of “content” refers to the kinds of ideas, messages, or feelings that are conveyed within a meme. The dimension of “form” confronts the audio, visual, and textual or symbolic means through which a meme takes shape, as well as the genre-related patterning thereof. The last dimension, that of “stance,” finally addresses the position that a creator of memetic content takes toward both the discourses and formats that are more generally associated with a specific meme or trend (Shifman, 2013).

Concerning the dimensions of content and form, a description detailing what is being expressed in the video clip and what specific means, like a song or visual effect, are defining the delivery of that content most centrally was added to each video. In addition to that, the formal structure of videos was coded along five generic variables. The levels of each variable were grounded in the knowledge that was gained during fieldwork as well as sharpened during the initial data overview and the early stages of content analysis (see Table 1 for a detailed description).

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Table 1. Variable Description of Formal Video Aspects.

Variable

Description

Ensemble

Count of people in the video up to five, then as “group.” Relationship between two or more coded as either “partner,” “family,” “friends,” “classmates/colleagues,” or “strangers.” Animals and pets were counted too, yet explicitly named as such.

Stage

A generic descriptive code was entered for the videos’ primary setting and location, such as being filmed in the “bathroom,” “living room,” “office,” or “car.”

Audio

The type of audio used was coded as being either “original sound,” “reused sound,” or “song.” Specific descriptions of sounds and lyrics were added in the content description.

Visual

Each video was added with generic codes for the visual elements, effects, and filters used, such as “text annotation,” “green screen,” or “Zoom and face-track effect.”

Edit

The overall form of the edit and setup of the video/shots was coded as either being “one continuous shot,” “two-scene setup,” “three-scene setup,” or “montage of shots/clips.”

The result of this step was a refined field diary that, for each of the 700 videos, outlined a

descriptive record of the content and formal elements. Then, guided by Shifman’s (2013) dimensions, intragroup comparisons of the videos that had previously been clustered in the field were carried out. The reason for this step was to reevaluate the elements constitutive to each of the 96 memes, trends, styles, or genres. For instance, clusters of videos using the same song or audio bit—that means being stable in form— were often observed having variations on the dimensions of content or stance, meaning people using the same song to express different messages or using that song in a comedic way parodying the way others use it. In this way, using Shifman’s (2013) memetic dimensions to sharpen the field data, the qualitative content analysis allowed to reduce the initial number of 96 clusters to 64 more distinct groups of videos and ultimately inferring six overarching communicative forms: comedic, documentary, communal, interactive, explanatory, and meta.

Communicative Forms on TikTok Comedic Throughout fieldwork and at least within the Western contexts in which it was located, public perceptions of TikTok remained in line with initial connotations of it being “silly fun” (Roose, 2018). Especially at the start of 2020, when the first lockdowns were put in place to tackle the spread of the coronavirus, the entertaining and comedic tone underlying much of TikTok’s content had been discussed as the key reason behind the platform’s sudden rise in popularity (Kale, 2020). However, during that time TikTok also commenced campaigns aimed at diversifying content on its site through investments in informational content and educational partnerships (TikTok, Inc., 2020). Further, especially in the United States, political communications and notions of the public sphere were topics discussed more frequently in relation to TikTok. However, political communication, as previous inquiries into TikTok have shown, often remains comedic in nature (see Abidin, 2020; Literat & Kligler-Vilenchick, 2019).

Among the six communicative forms identified, that of comedy or comedic contents can thus be positioned as good starting points to make sense of TikTok. This is because of its cultural-historical

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significance that, of course, might change in the future. Yet it is also important analytically: The comedic form identified allows us to draw a vital distinction, namely that between content that is “just funny,” marked by an overall atmosphere frequently associated with TikTok, and that which is deliberately concerned with delivering a specific joke or sketch.

Comedic content on TikTok is diverse both in its content and form. Some, for instance, addresses more general topics, such as religion, like a video from TikTok creator @lonnieiiv (2020).1 In it, he stages a sketch in which God and Gabriel talk about the process of God creating Earth. @lonnieiiv, playing the roles of both God and Gabriel, presented the conversation between the two by adding a text label to indicate as whom he is speaking. Other creators, such as Melissa Ong, film themselves in the mirror to perform standup-like routines. For example, in one video, Ong (@chunkysdead, 2020) films herself in the mirror talking about how people think happiness comes from healthy relationships when it, as she argues, does come from drugs. However, forms of political comedy are also present. Max Foster (@maxfostercnn, 2020), for instance, created a video in which he lip-synchs to the audio of “I don’t think you have the facilities for this, big man” to comment on world leaders claiming that they can handle the pandemic. Foster’s clip displays another popular format that combines the elements of a text annotation, setting the scene of the joke, with the audio element being used to deliver a response or punchline (see Figure 1 to get an impression of the visual setup of the three cases).

Figure 1. Screenshots illustrating the discussed TikTok creations of @lonnieivv (2020), Ong (@chunkysdead, 2020), and Foster (@maxfostercnn, 2020).

1

Users that decided not to identify their full names on their TikTok profiles were addressed with @username.

All others are addressed with their provided full names.

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These different examples and other comedic videos surveyed could easily be linked to specific discourses, such as those surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic. However, videos did not seem to be organized topically. Writing from within the dynamic reality of scrolling through the “For You” page, it was on the dimension of format that differences were most noticeable. Many contents remained raw in the sense of relying on the creator’s filmed performance. Others, however, used visual elements like an effect that would dramatically zoom in and track the face of the performer to underscore the delivery of his or her punchline. Some videos even organized the entire routine around a song or audio bit that would set the pace and breaking point of the joke, as was the case with the aforementioned video from Foster (@maxfostercnn, 2020). And yet others focused on editing techniques and mixing different video materials, for instance reediting pop-cultural contents from movies and tv shows like The Office, herein often linking to the use of such pop-cultural material in other memes present around the Internet.

All these contents remained comedic in nature in the sense of them creating some tension that is then released, or in parodying situations to a point of funny absurdity. However, these different styles enact the comedic form in different tonalities. Some are clearer and more direct, while others are of a much higher pace and intensity. These different comedic styles materialize different “affective rhythms” (Papacharissi, 2015); they create and sustain specific patterns of how people relate to and become aware of others and the world through comedy and TikTok as a medium.

Documentary The majority of comedic contents analyzed seemed—even if to varying degrees—mostly detached from the personality of the performer. Their focus appeared to rest, first and foremost, not on drawing from the creator’s everyday life or sharing the self as such, but rather by commenting through comedy on more general topics or current affairs. However, within the body of videos surveyed there also was content that did the opposite—that is, videos having a comedic tone but using it to express the self, talk about one’s life circumstances, or document a current event. A lot of comedic videos on TikTok are pieces of anecdotal comedy, like a video of @rachill_1024 (2020) telling the story of how her father was mistaken as a homeless person at the supermarket. Or they are self-deprecating forms of humor, such as a creation by Emma Westfall (@emmaclarewestfall, 2020), that shows her sitting in the car joking about how she can’t love someone back because that person clearly has bad taste.

These videos differentiate themselves from those of comedy in that although they are marked by a comedic tonality, they use that tone to document domains of everyday life. Seen through Shifman’s (2013) memetic dimensions, they differ in content and use formal comedic elements not to let a joke unfold but rather to enable self-expression and document daily life. Although there are many plain and unedited documentations of something funny or absurd happening, adhering to TikTok’s “silly fun” atmosphere, other tonalities are also present. Many videos portray typical everyday situations or stereotypes. A good example is a video from Chloe Walker (@chloegwalkerr, 2020) in which she stages a situation of what happens every time she tries to talk to her guy friends, which results in them shouting and shutting her up. Similar to this setting of the friend group and its gendered dynamics, documentary videos cover a broad range of situations and settings of daily life (such as at school, the office, or the supermarket) or they play with questions of cultural heritage and national identities. However, there are also videos that create an aestheticized context

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in which seemingly arbitrary video clips of people’s rooms, of cityscapes, or nature can be shared in a meaningful way. These videos are either montages put together to fit a specific song, or they are simply a continuous shot documenting a single moment or situation. A video of @itsizzy611, for instance, consists of a single, continuous shot showing her lying on a balcony in the rain while the video caption reads, “It’s an incredible feeling . . . letting the rain fall on you.” (@itsizzy611, 2020).

Documenting and sharing the self and one’s everyday life circumstances is not specific to TikTok; neither is it a novelty of social media as such (see Humphreys, 2018). However, there are two ways in which TikTok differs in comparison to other video-sharing platforms like YouTube. The first has to do with the shortness and ephemeral appearance of TikTok’s contents. Even though creators thematize more specific elements of everyday life, documentary communications do not necessarily center around the person creating the video as a distinct content creator personality. Instead, their key is relatability. They communicate typical, funny, or absurd moments against the common backgrounds of life in school, college, lockdown, and similar settings. The ephemeral appearances of such clips, occupying people’s screens for only seconds, leaves little room to highlight those subtle differences constitutive to the idea of personality.

Instead, documentary communications are embedding works. They create relatability by locating the self as part of common settings and circumstances.

This becomes clearer when looking at the second characteristic difference, namely that of a “memeification” of daily life. On TikTok, there exist myriad formats and trends that allow expressing the self and one’s current mood through already existing formats and scripts. For example, the “door slam” meme combines a script of people angrily entering a room, slamming the door, and jumping on their beds with an audio bit playing the sounds of the door slam followed by loud music. This meme only has specific nuances through people outlining their current and personally specific situations in a text annotation to which they then react in the meme’s format.

Communal The form of communal communications underscores the prominence of such TikTok trends and memes. Yet it also highlights their cultural vitality in them lowering barriers for online expression by presenting memes as ready-to-share ways of self-expression. The communal way of expression is hence strongly linked to the first two formats, which means it mostly documents “silly fun.” However, the foundational element is that videos are created communally, together with partners, family members, friends, classmates, or colleagues. One trend, for instance, combines an audio bit of Simple Plan’s “I’m Just a Kid” with a script that people are supposed to re-create and then cut to a childhood photograph of them, often also featuring parents, siblings, and other family members. As the example from Joe Mele (@mmjoemele, 2020) illustrates, there is a communal element lying within the process of creation: father and son coming together, yet the final product also creates a “silly fun” video clip to which others can relate.

Similarly, the video of @alexvaa (2020) underscores this point by showing her and her parents participating in one of TikTok’s dance trends. Yet often, communal communications are also tied to showcasing friends and family members, especially during lockdown, as the example from @darnbee (2020) shows. Her video is part of the “Dude, we’re getting the band back together” meme, in which the corresponding audio bit

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from a Phineas and Ferb episode is used to present a montage of shots showing siblings back at home during lockdown (see Figure 2 to get a sense for the style and composition of typical communal content).

Figure 2. Screenshots of TikTok videos by Mele (@mmmjoemele, 2020), @alexvaa (2020), and @darnbee (2020) for illustration of communal communications.

As these examples outline, social relationships are prominently featured within TikTok content.

However, enframed through trends, memes, and shared ways of expression, these contents enable a different kind of relationship to form: that in which strangers can relate to one another in meaningful ways.

The significance of the performers as distinct subject positions is overshadowed by that of their participation in a larger cultural event. The communicative form opens grounds for an encounter that is not necessarily concerned with dialogue or debate, but that kind of meaning emerging from sensing the presence of others in what has been theorized as a “contact zone” (Ahmed, 2004)—a surface area enabling the materialization of collective sentiments and sensibilities of the now.

Similar communal experiences through memes—that means on the grounds created by shared ways of expression—have already been observed in other online contexts like student Facebook groups. The mostly text-based and image-based memes present in such groups were observed creating a shared symbolic and semantic space (see Ask & Abidin, 2018). However, because of the audiovisual nature of TikTok memes, the trends I have encountered have a much stronger emphasis on the embodied and performative aspects of communication, meaning the way in which content touches and creates shared sensibility. This form of memetics, creating a collective sensibility, appears thus an interesting area for future research to explore.

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Explanatory Another communicative form linked to that of documentary content can be found in videos that are tutorials and “life hacks.” Such explanatory videos primarily come in the form of montage videos detailing creative processes in areas of arts and crafts, style and clothing, food and recipes, music and dancing tutorials, general tips and tricks for everyday life, and many more. They are, to varying degrees, closely linked to the documentary form in that they focus on sharing knowledge from one’s own professional experience, hobbies, or general ways of going about life.

There are some differences in the style and tonality of such explanatory videos. Some are raw and unnarrated montages, like a video from @lunarstruc showing how to prepare an “easy, fast, and healthy” burrito meal (@lunarstruc, 2020). However, on the other end, tutorials often are aestheticized through songs and through adding elaborations in the form of text annotations or speech. However, key differences that could be observed rested mainly on the dimension of content. Although some explanatory videos appeared unique to TikTok, others—and especially those related to food, cooking, and recipes—seemed as if they also could have been found on other platforms like Instagram. In fact, videos were distributed on both platforms by their creators in many cases. Underscored by TikTok’s initiative to promote and develop more educational content on the platform (TikTok, Inc., 2020), these and other learning-related contents form an important area of future research.

Focused on the formal elements of communication on TikTok, explanatory contents appeared in line with the earlier outlined theme of videos being, to some degree, detached and decontextualized from the personality of the creator. While drawing from that person’s everyday life, the focus of communication seemed mostly set on the more general aspects like preparing a quick meal—explanatory content works, so to speak, without further contextualization or knowledge about the creator as such. What was interesting in that regard was how people reused songs and audio bits for their tutorials that were, at the time, popular on TikTok as part of a dance trend or meme. Other than creating meaningful context through a kind of content creator personality, the more central embedding was that of TikTok and its cultural dynamics. These appropriative practices of reuse in return hinted at the kind of interactions that unfold within the platform environment.

Interactive This element of interaction on the platform can further be observed as two distinct communicative forms. The one way it was encountered was through the myriad TikTok videos that turn trends into challenges and especially made use of the app’s filters and visual effects. They emphasize the way in which TikTok can be transformed into an interactive space, keying the app’s use into something almost playful and gamified. For example, the video of Jessie Shen (@jessie.shen, 2020), illustrated in Figure 3, below, nicely outlines how dancing trends often become transformed into a challenge. Using a piece of audio or detailing a specific set of actions in text annotations marks communication as the act of showcasing one’s skill of completing the said challenge. The “level up” trend in which people showcase their skills—or other’s— of completing increasingly difficult tasks or levels is another good example. The video of @dobyandblue (2020), also shown in Figure 3, below, is a typical case for that challenge. It shows the creator’s dogs jumping over an increasingly high stack of toilet paper. The shared use of the “level up” audio, indexing

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videos in a searchable way, creates in return an almost decentralized setting of competition of people showing off such or similar skills and capabilities of their pets.

Figure 3. Screenshots of exemplary interactive and meta communications by Shen (@jessie.shen, 2020), @dobyandblue (2020), and @discounthannah (2020).

The way in which TikTok’s affordances enable this process of opening up interactive spaces is further emphasized through the app’s duet function. TikTok’s duet function allows users to respond to and incorporate another person’s video into their own new creations. It originates from its predecessor Musical.ly, and, compared with other major platforms, is a relatively unique affordance. Studying the practices and dynamics in which such interactive spaces are enacted on TikTok through its affordances is a very fruitful area for future research. In particular, a better understanding of the nature of these interactions and communal experiences is interesting, given that other platforms like Instagram or Twitter primarily foster text-based or image-based interactions. The audiovisual nature of TikTok videos and their ephemeral appearance adds a different and arguably new kind of complexity to the question of how online interactions can come to constitute meaningful social forms.

Meta Interactive communications are closely related to the sixth and last form, that of meta communication. Being likely one of the most interesting and unique aspects of TikTok, meta communications are contents that address TikTok as such. One of the most common types of such content on TikTok is the “if you see this” video. The creation of @discounthannah (2020), illustrated in Figure 3. above, is a perfect example of this type of content. Videos of this kind will often start by talking about

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how TikTok’s algorithms place content in your feed from users that have similar interests or who are in a similar life situation. They then follow up by revealing that similarity, often through lip-synching an audio bit or through text annotations and borrowing from other forms and genres, such as comedy. In the case of @discounthannah, the reveal of “a state of depression,” (@discounthannah, 2020) referred to her experience with the COVID-19 pandemic, life in lockdown, and all other life events happening on top of that.

A video by @itskingchris (2020) is another example that highlights how meta communications often mix with comedy. His video is one of many meta communicative sketches. Depicting the TikTok algorithm as a king sitting on a throne and handing down “likes” to creators with a big following but not those who create “original content,” @itskingcrhis (2020) critiques and creates awareness for the algorithmic practice of TikTok. What makes meta communications on TikTok unique and interesting in that regard is how thematizing the app while contributing to its “silly fun” atmosphere enables them to become seamlessly integrated into the content feed’s textual fabric. Because on TikTok contents are consumed in a composite environment, the “For You” page, self-referential loops in the form of videos joking about this algorithmic environment can emerge within the very conditions they seek to make fun of. They can do so much easier than on a YouTube video or blog post, opening a perspective on algorithmic recommendation from the outside.

However, there are also other ways in which meta communications intervene. One of the most interesting ways is that of “TikTok checkpoints.” Videos of this kind, like one of @tofu_corgi (2020), often are up to a minute in length and feature a continuous shot and slow music or ambient sounds. They present themselves as “rest areas,” as in the case of the video of @tofu_corgi (2020), which shows a dog lying in bed and the text in annotations inviting people to stay as long as they want to. They oppose a predominant rhythm of comedic and upbeat content, seeking to spark immediate affective responses like laughter or joy.

These checkpoint videos try to break with that rhythm; they create speed bumps. They are expressions that do not mediate knowledge on TikTok in an explicit but rather an implicit way. These “rest area” videos communicate by speaking in a tonality that is noticeably different from those predominant on the platform.

By doing so and creating this noticeable difference, they open up opportunities to become aware of one’s own presence on the platform and within the flow of the “For You” page. They are bottom-up negotiations of TikTok as an algorithmic environment.

There are also more serious and direct videos in which people share thoughts on the TikTok algorithm. They establish what has previously been theorized as “algorithmic gossip” (Bishop, 2019) or “algorithmic imaginaries” (Bucher, 2017), the knowledge of how algorithms work and can be interacted with. The creations of Mady Dewey (@madydewey1, 2020) are exemplary in that context. They often feature her talking directly to the camera and reporting on experiments she conducted or on thoughts she has about the TikTok algorithm. However, such forms of meta communication appear less prevalent.

Instead, it is the more implicit and indirect videos that give TikTok a unique standing. What makes TikTok interesting is how its meta communications are not abstract or an outside discourse on the app but rather speaking from its inside. They afford opportunities of self-awareness and moments to intervene and regulate from the bottom up.

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Conclusion Contrary to predominant critiques, TikTok materializes not as a communicative environment that affords merely simple entertainment made addictive through algorithmic means. Instead, it takes shape as a dynamic structure that is open toward being appropriated and navigated in different ways and in negotiation of potential consequences. Other than being the perfect fit for popular debates trying to render digital technologies wholly corrupt, TikTok strongly resonates with much older debates on audience agency. TikTok adds new, even if not unprecedented means of data gathering onto people’s smartphones. These should be scrutinized.

However, this scrutiny should not overlook the potentiality that rests within TikTok’s formal structure, affording myriad moments of audience activity—for example, by enabling the seamless integration of meta communications into the very experience of scrolling through the app.

As Stuart Hall (1981) prominently argued: “The danger arises because we tend to think of cultural forms as whole and coherent: either wholly corrupt or wholly authentic. Whereas, they are deeply contradictory, they play on contractions” (p. 233). This kind of sensibility, for the contradictory uses and appropriations of platforms like TikTok, seems a quality increasingly missing in debates today. Although it remains for future research to empirically trace how exactly people navigate TikTok’s communicative environment in their search for meaning and meaningful experience, this article has provided resources and perspectives for the process of better understanding TikTok to take the complexity of the app and its content seriously.

In this article, I have conceptualized TikTok as a communicative environment composed of ephemeral video clips. Fleeting and transient short videos, bound together through their underlying communicative forms that were theorized as communally shared ways of expression or platform-specific languages. They were theorized as forming shared cultural contexts. They form a background against which meaningful self-expression and sense-making of others and otherness can take place. TikTok creates, so to speak, a representation of reality as documented through the lens of its specific communicative forms, six of which I have identified and discussed in this article—a representation of reality mediated through the “For You” page, the algorithmic content feed connecting a single user with the broader cultural dynamics unfolding on TikTok. It is this structural condition—the combination of communicative forms and the “For You” page—that comes to define TikTok’s structural complexity. That is the complexity of environmental awareness and the means through which such a sensibility for the life of others and the world around is mediated. Reflecting on TikTok in light of this conceptualization and findings of the exploratory investigation, the following directions of future research appear worthwhile to pursue.

First, although an understanding of TikTok and the complexity of its formal structure is important, meaning continues to be the product of the situations and local settings within which media are used. Thus, studying how the creation and consumption of TikTok content is integrated into everyday life is vital. As communication on TikTok relies on sharing moments and stories from daily life in a way that people located outside one’s social circle can relate to, the senses of publicness and intimacy organizing uses of TikTok thus form a crucial area worthy of further inquiry.

Second, TikTok’s content feed presents a unique and diverse textual structure assembling contents of different genres and styles. Within this textual structure, the presence of meta communications—videos

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addressing the app and its algorithmic system—appears particularly interesting and novel. Studying how knowledge on TikTok and its algorithmic system takes shape from within the app appears to be an important area of future research, especially to better understand from a bottom-up perspective how people can and do manage to interact with algorithms in meaningful ways today.

Lastly, TikTok is increasingly making investments aimed at promoting learning-related content on— and uses of—its app (TikTok, Inc., 2020). Faced with this structural development of the platform, imposed from the top down by TikTok as a company, it is crucial that future research looks at the ways in which users respond to that development. Research should study the ways in which this development of learning-related content unfolds in an environment currently more centered around entertainment and comedic content. Of interest here are both the means of resistance to such a top-down imposed change but also the ways in which it might be appropriated by users to create new forms of learning in the context of the short-video format and algorithmic content feeds like the “For You” page.

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Copyright 1982 by the American Psychological Association, Inc. 0033-2909/82/9203-064 IS00.75

Psychological Bulletin 1982, Vol. 92, No. 3, 641-669

Social Anxiety and Self-Presentation: A Conceptualization and Model Mark R. Leary Denison University

Barry R. Schlenker University of Florida

This article presents a self-presentation approach to the study of social anxiety that proposes that social anxiety arises when people are motivated to make a preferred impression on real or imagined audiences but doubt they will do so, and thus perceive or imagine unsatisfactory evaluative reactions from subjectively important audiences. We presume that specific situational and dispositional antecedents of social anxiety operate by influencing people's motivation to impress others and their expectations of satisfactorily doing so. In contrast to drive models of anxiety but consistent with social learning theory, it is argued that the cognitive state of the individual mediates both affective arousal and behavior. The traditional inverted-U relation between anxiety and performance is reexamined in this light. Implications of the approach for counseling situations are considered, especially the recommendation that treatments be tailored to the specific type of selfpresentational problem encountered by clients, Social anxiety is a prevalent and occasionally debilitating personal problem even in normal populations (e.g., Bruskin. 1973; Bryant & Trower, 1974; Martinson & Zerface, 1970; Zimbardo, 1977). Commensurate with an increased awareness of the phenomenon is a growing literature on its causes and treatments, appearing under such labels as social anxiety, shyness, dating anxiety, heterosexual-social anxiety, stagefright, speech anxiety, communication apprehension, reticence, and embarrassment. Despite the quantity of work and the frequency with which counselors see clients with such interpersonal problems, the topic suffers a lack of conceptual integration.

The present article examines the concept of social anxiety and proffers a self-presentation approach. It addresses the antecedents of the experience, the varieties of social anxiety, the behavioral consequences, and some of the implications for counseling.

The present paper was supported by a Research Scientist Development Award (K02-MH00183) from the National Institute of Mental Health and a faculty grant from the graduate school at the University of Florida from NIH Biomedical Research Support Program funds.

Thanks are extended to Lawrence J. Severy, Marvin E. Shaw, and C. R. Snyder for their helpful comments.

Requests for reprints should be sent to Barry R. Schlenker, Department of Psychology, University of Florida, Gainesville, Florida 32611.

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The Concept of Social Anxiety As a point of departure, it is necessary to ask whether a class of anxieties (a) can be empirically isolated from other anxieties and considered conceptually distinct and (b) has the common property of being social in nature; that is, of being aroused and intensified by other people. Factor analytic studies of fear and anxiety inventories have consistently obtained solutions that include either one (Endler, Hunt, & Rosenstein, 1962; Landy & Gaupp, 1971;Lawlis, 1971; Miller, Barrett, Hampe, & Noble, 1972; Strahan, 1974) or two (Bates, 1971; Bernstein & Allen, 1969; Braun & Reynolds, 1969) factors reflecting socially aroused anxieties. The "social nervousness" factor obtained by Strahan (1974) is representative of those reported in studies finding a single social anxiety factor.

It included items such as being introduced to new people, giving a speech, being interviewed for a job, being in a room full of strangers, and dating someone for the first time. A similar social anxiety factor was obtained in a study of children's fears and was denned by items such as making mistakes, being criticized, making another person angry, and reciting in class (Miller et al., 1972).

In studies that found two social anxiety factors, one reflected concerns about certain ordinary social events (e.g., speaking before

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a group, meeting someone for the first time, being a leader, being with a member of the opposite sex), and the other reflected concerns about social failures and criticism (e.g., looking foolish, being criticized, making mistakes, being misunderstood).

It is not completely clear why some of these studies obtained one and others two social anxiety factors, particularly since most of them used very similar scale item pools and similar factor analytic procedures. It seems that when two factors are obtained they reflect a distinction between (a) being in an evaluative situation where one's behavior is especially scrutinized by others (and might be found lacking) and (b) being in a situation where one's behavior already has been judged as inadequate by others. We will return to this distinction shortly. At any rate, these studies provide evidence that people's ratings of anxiety-producing situations identify an empirically distinguishable class of anxieties that arise in response to social events.

Social anxiety will be defined as anxiety resulting from the prospect or presence of personal evaluation in real or imagined social situations. Anxiety is a cognitive and affective response characterized by apprehension about an impending, potentially negative outcome that one thinks one is unable to avert. The source of the apprehension may be conscious or nonconscious, and the impending threat real or imagined (Lesse, 1970). Anxiety fluctuates over time and situations, but there are individual differences (produced by personal experience and probably biological factors) in the degree to which people experience it.

By social situations we mean situations in which people are or might become the focus of attention of others, as when they are engaged in a conversation, giving a speech, and so on. Such social interactions carry the prospect of interpersonal evaluation: people making judgments of one another. People can experience social anxiety while imagining social situations as well as when actually in them.

The prospect of interpersonal evaluation and all it entails appears to distinguish social anxiety from other forms of anxiety. In social anxiety, people perceive a low likelihood of obtaining satisfactory evaluations from oth-

ers. We propose that a perceived inability to deal successfully with the evaluative events inherent in social interaction precipitates social anxiety. In other types of anxiety, as in potentially harmful situations and situations characterized by disruption and disorder (nonsocial anxiety factors found by Strahan, 1974), concerns about the evaluative actions of others do not precipitate the experience or become its major focus of attention. For example, one might fear walking through a dark city street at night because of the danger of being physically harmed by a mugger.

Although one might loosely speak of a "social" encounter with a mugger, the cause of the concern is physical harm, not the evaluation of oneself by the mugger. One's anxiety might be great, but we would not consider this a case of social anxiety.

Situations can include social and nonsocial components. For instance, in the mugger example, some people may be anxious because of both the physical danger and concerns about evaluation by significant others of their competence in dealing with such situations (e.g., being seen as unable to protect oneself or as stupidly placing oneself in danger).

Approaches to Social Anxiety: Causes and Treatments The existing literature on social anxiety may be roughly categorized into four major approaches (see Leary, 1982). The skills deficit model assumes that anxiety experienced in social situations is due to an inadequate or inappropriate repertoire of social skills (Bellack & Hersen, 1979;Curran, 1977). The resulting mismanagement of social discourse by those with poor social skills produces aversive situations that elicit anxiety, both in the immediate encounter and when future encounters are imagined. Studies have shown that social anxiety is often reduced by helping anxious subjects improve their social skills (e.g., Bander, Steinke, Allen, & Mosher, 1975; Bellack & Hersen, 1979; Cumin, 1977; Curran, Gilbert, & Little, 1976; Twentyman AMcFall, 1975).

Several investigators have noted that few deficits in important social skills have been identified among socially anxious individu-

SOCIAL ANXIETY

als, and the mere acquisition of new skills does not always reduce anxiety (e.g., Bandura, 1969; Clark & Arkowitz, 1975). The cognitive self-evaluation model states that social anxiety results not from an objective skills deficit per se but from the individual's perception of personal inadequacies (Rehm & Marston, 1968). Indeed, research has shown that socially anxious people tend to underestimate their social skills, rate themselves more negatively, expect to perform more poorly socially, and regard others' reactions to them as less positive even when they are not, than do nonanxious people (Cacioppo, Glass, & Merluzzi, 1979; Clark & Arkowitz, 1975; Gilkinson, 1943; Glass, Merluzzi, Biever, & Larsen, 1982; Smith & Sarason, 1975). Procedures designed to reduce clients' negative self-evaluations are often effective in reducing social anxiety (e.g., Clark & Arkowitz, 1975; Kanter & Goldfried, 1979; Meichenbaum, Gilmore, & Fedoravicius, 1971; Rehm & Marston, 1968; Sherman, Mulac, & McCann, 1974), The third approach, a classical conditioning model, assumes that social anxiety is conditioned when neutral stimuli become paired with aversive social consequences (cf. Wolpe, 1973). The strongest evidence in favor of the classical conditioning approach is that systematic desensitization has been shown to be quite effective in reducing social anxiety, both in children and adults (Bander et al., 1975; Fishman & Nawas, 1973; Kondas, 1967; Mitchell & Orr, 1974).

Finally, many researchers have adopted a personality trait approach, investigating individual differences in the affective, cognitive, and behavioral concomitants of social anxiety (e.g., Cacioppo et al., 1979; Clark & Arkowitz, 1975; Crozier, 1979; Leary, in press). Factor analyses of personality trait items often obtain "social anxiety" factors, suggesting that social anxiousness might be regarded as a major trait (e.g., Cattell, 1973; Crozier, 1979; Layman, 1940). There is also evidence that shyness has an inherited component (Cattell, 1973), which suggests that dispositional social anxiousness may have an underpinning in temperament (Buss & Plomin, 1975).

Although it is generally recognized that each of these four models has some explan-

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atory power, their proponents often treat them as rival hypotheses, and little attempt has been made to examine factors that underlie all cases of social anxiety. In short, what is the lowest common denominator of instances in which people experience social anxiety?

Self-Presentation and Social Anxiety Through aspects of their appearance and behavior, people intentionally or unintentionally lay claim to particular self-images that comprise their identities.1 These images are schemas of individuals and have implications for how those individuals are defined and treated by themselves and others (Schlenker, 1980, in press-a, in press-b).

Whenever people are in the presence of others, it is usually in their best interests to convey particular types of impressions (Goffman, 1959; Jones & Pittman, 1982; Jones &Wortman, 1973; Schlenker, 1980,inpressa, in press-b; Tedeschi, 1981). Some projected images will make a desired impression and result in desired reactions from others; other images will make undesired impressions and generate undesired reactions. Maximizing one's reward/cost ratio in social life involves, in large part, control of the self-images that are projected to others.

The Nature of Self-Presentation Self-presentation is the attempt to control images of self before real or imagined audiences (Schlenker, 1980, in press-a, in pressb). It is a goal-directed act designed, at least in part, to generate particular images of self and thereby influence how audiences perceive and treat the actor.

The type of impression an actor would prefer to create must be denned in terms of the actor's other goals and self-beliefs in the particular situation. Usually, people prefer to present themselves in socially desirable 1 Identity is a theory constructed by oneself or others about how one is denned and regarded in social life (Schlenker, 1980, in press-a, in press-b). It can be viewed from the perspective of the actor, in which case it refers to how one thinks one is or should be denned and regarded, or from the perspective of others, in which case it refers to how they define and regard the actor.

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ways, such as by appearing reasonably competent, attractive, honest, and so forth. However, a variety of self-presentations and accompanying audience reactions can best serve people's goals in specific situations (Hogan, in press; Jones & Pittman, 1982; Schlenker, 1980, in press-a). As examples, actors may attempt to present themselves in ways that will achieve self-verification, liking, respect, fear, nurturance, or autonomy. The types of impressions people prefer to create depend on what they are trying to achieve and are affected by both personality and situational factors (Hogan, in press; Schlenker, in press-a).

The perceived, anticipated, or imagined reactions of others to the actor provide feedback about whether the actor has created the desired impression. If others respond in a manner commensurate with the intended impression, the actor has been successful in accomplishing his or her self-presentational goal; if they do not, the actor has been unsuccessful. The importance of the reactions of real or imagined audiences distinguishes self-presentational behavior from other behavior. Although nearly all behavior can reveal information about the actor, not all behavior can be classified as self-presentation (Jones & Pittman, 1982; Schlenker, 1980, in press-a). In self-presentational behavior the actor must have the goal of controlling how audiences perceive the self, which means that the intended reaction of audiences is the criterion for assessing the effectiveness of the behavior.

At the extremes, some behaviors seem to be exclusively self-presentational, and others do not seem to contain any self-presentational component. In the former case, people's only goal is to create a particular impression on others. An example is the employee whose remarks reflect only what he or she thinks the boss wants to hear and not his or her private views. In the latter case, people are unconcerned about projecting particular images of self and the reaction of the audience is irrelevant to their goals. An example is a person who is totally engrossed in performing some intellectual task and oblivious to the presence of others. Between these extremes are cases in which people have several goals, and hence several criteria for deter-

mining how well the goals are being accomplished, and one of the goals is to make a particular impression on others. An example is an employee who is trying to accomplish a job-related task, but in a way that impresses the employer. When several goals exist in a situation, the more important the self-presentational goal is to the actor, the greater the actor's concern with the impression-relevant reactions of audiences (Schlenker, in press-a, in press-b).

Self-presentation does not necessarily involve conscious deception (Schlenker, 1980, in press-a). In many cases, self-presentation involves bringing actual attributes or accomplishments to the attention of others, perhaps by performing meritorious deeds in their presence and presenting veridical information in ways that could generate 'optimal effects. In addition, self-presentation can reflect nonconscious, habitual responses triggered by relevant social cues.

When people indicate they are concerned about how others evaluate them or worry about how well they will perform in social settings, they are indicating that they are aware of the relationship between their identity and the reactions of others and that they want to receive a particular reaction (i.e., they have a self-presentational goal). Their concerns are self-presentational in nature.

Social Anxiety as a Function of SelfPresentational Problems People are interpersonally secure in social settings when (a) they do not have the goal of creating a particular impression on others and hence are not immediately concerned about others' evaluative reactions or (b) they are attempting to create a particular impression and believe they will be successful in doing so. In a large percentage of social settings, however, people do not have such security. Although they may want to create a particular impression, they may (a) be uncertain about how to go about doing so (e.g., it may be a novel situation or they may not know what sort of attributes the others are likely to be impressed with); (b) think they will not be able to project the types of images that will produce preferred reactions from others (e.g., they may want to be seen as com-

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petent but doubt they will be); (c) think they will not project the quantity of the image they seek (e.g., they think they will be seen as slightly competent but want to be seen as extremely competent); or (d) believe that some event will occur that will repudiate their self-presentations, causing them to lose public esteem (e.g., they will fail an upcoming test after having bragged about their ability). In short, despite their desire to create a particular impression, they believe they will not achieve the preferred impression-relevant reaction from others. These conditions should generate social anxiety.

Proposition 1. Social anxiety arises in real or imagined social situations when people are motivated to make a particular impression on others but doubt that they will do so, because they have expectations of unsatisfactory impression-relevant reactions from others.

When people have the goal of creating a particular impression, either as an exclusive goal or in conjunction with other goals, we say they are motivated to make a particular impression on others. The more important the goal is, the greater the motivation will be (see below).

All goal-directed actions imply the existence of standards for evaluating the degree to which the action was successful in achieving the goal. Actions that result in consequences that meet or exceed one's standard will be regarded as satisfactory, whereas those that fail to meet the standard will produce dissatisfaction. Dissatisfaction will increase as the discrepancy between the performance and the actor's standards increases and as the discrepancy is relevant to more important goals or standards. The standards that are relevant to self-presentation reflect the images people would prefer to project. The perceived or imagined impression-relevant reactions'of audiences serve as the feedback pertinent to these standards and determine whether people are satisfied or dissatisfied with their movement toward self-presentational goals.

Individual differences in standards help to explain why people who are, as judged by outside observers, coming across well socially may still feel anxious. Given the same positive reactions from others, people with low , standards may feel quite satisfied, whereas

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those with higher standards might feel dissatisfied and socially anxious. Bandura (1969) notes that "many of the people who seek treatment [for anxiety] are neither incompetent nor anxiously inhibited, but they experience a great deal of personal distress stemming from excessively high standards for self-evaluation, often supported by unfavorable comparisons with models noted for their extraordinary achievements" (p. 37).

People will doubt that they will present themselves in ways that create preferred impressions when they believe there is a low probability of obtaining satisfactory impression-relevant reactions from pertinent audiences. If people perceive or imagine that the pertinent others have formed the preferred impression (that is, their impression-relevant reactions are as they should be), they will have accomplished their goal. We thus assume that people hold outcome expectancies of the likelihood that their self-presentational goals will be accomplished.2 These outcome expectancies will be affected by the nature of the situation, pertinent audience, and the actor's perceived skills, attributes, and resources. The lower people's impression-relevant outcome expectancies are, the greater their doubts about creating a preferred impression will be.

The perceived inability to predict, control, and obtain desired outcomes has been viewed as a major antecedent of anxiety (e.g., Sarason, 1978; Seligman, 1975). Such inability has been hypothesized to generate self-preoccupation, self-derogation, and feelings of helplessness when outcomes are viewed as contingent on behavior (Sarason, 1978; Wortman & Brehm, 1975). In the case of social anxiety, the inability relates to the belief that one is unlikely to achieve a self-presentational goal.

Proposition la. Given the goal of impressing audiences, the amount of social anxiety experienced by people will be inversely related to their outcome expectancies. The less 2 The concepts of outcome expectancies and standards provide a common ground between the present formulation of social anxiety and (a) social learning theory (e.g., Bandura, 1977)and (b) information processing models (e.g., Carver, 1979). These commonalities will be considered in a later section.

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likely people believe they are to receive the preferred reaction from audiences, the more anxiety they will experience.

Proposition Ib. Given the goal of impressing audiences, the amount of social anxiety experienced by people will depend on the perceived discrepancy between the reactions of audiences and the standard. The greater the discrepancy, the greater the anxiety will be.

Proposition Ic. Given a discrepancy, the amount of social anxiety experienced by people will depend on the importance of the goal or standard that is pertinent to the performance. The more important the goal or standard is, the greater the anxiety will be.

Sullivan's Conceptualization of Anxiety Sullivan's (1953) description of the genesis and nature of anxiety is compatible with the present analysis. According to Sullivan, the etiology of anxiety begins with the child's encounters with the disapproval of significant others, such as parents or nurse. The discomfort associated with such encounters is what Sullivan called the early sensory form of anxiety. Once the self-concept has developed, people can evaluate their own behaviors from a social perspective and internally generate the praise or disapproval that would be relevant. Ultimately, anxiety can be produced by any sort of perceived failure or inability to predict and control environmental events, whether social or nonsocial. The interpersonal genesis of the experience perhaps explains why it is marked by self-doubt, feelings of inadequacy, and self-blame: These cognitive responses are the internalized aftermath of the disapproval received from others. Concerns about the real or imagined disapproval of others for one's identity have been mentioned frequently in subsequent analyses of anxiety (e.g., Fischer, 1970).

Social anxiety offers the most direct parallel to the types of experiences Sullivan described as underlying all anxiety. In social anxiety, the salient feature is the threat of unsatisfactory evaluations from audiences.

In other forms of anxiety, as in the case of anxiety from potentially harmful situations, concerns about one's ability to cope with prospective dangers are not seen as interpersonal in origin. The disapproval and feelings

of inadequacy that are generated are perceived as self-evaluations that are divorced from interpersonal evaluations, even though the process of self-evaluation had its genesis in the social interaction process. For further discussion of the relationship between selfevaluations and evaluations by others, see Schlenker (in press-a) and Snyder, Stucky, and Higgins (in press).

Antecedents of Social Anxiety We will now turn to a further delineation of the major antecedents of social anxiety indicated in Proposition 1—the motivation to create a preferred impression and doubts that one will do so—along with an examination of relevant research.

Motivation to Impress Others It is proposed that a necessary but not sufficient condition for social anxiety is that people be motivated to make a particular impression on audiences. People who do not have such a goal in the setting, and hence are unconcerned about prospective evaluations, will not feel socially anxious. Even when people do not begin a social interaction with such a goal, events can occur that make interpersonal evaluation salient, for example, people might notice that others are giving cues suggesting disapproval, or they might commit a faux pas that threatens their identities. Such events can shift attention from other goals to the goal of creating a preferred impression.

The potential for experiencing social anxiety will increase as the motivation to impress others increases. If people also have low impression-relevant outcome expectancies, social anxiety will result. As suggested in Proposition Ic, the motivation to impress others will be a direct function of the importance of the pertinent goal or standard.

Importance will be affected by (a) the subjective worth of the outcomes that are associated with the goal and (b) the centrality of the goal or standard, that is, the degree to which it subsumes or satisfies other important goals or standards. A variety of audience, situational, and personal factors, alone or in interaction, will affect such motivation and

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set the stage for the experience of social anxiety.

Characteristics of others. Characteristics of others that increase the subjective value of the outcomes they might bestow will increase the motivation to impress them; we will call these the strength of the others. People who are powerful, esteemed, attractive, expert, or high in status can mediate a variety of worthwhile outcomes. They can often mediate material gains or losses (e.g., promotions, raises, awards, dismissal, physical harm); their approval, respect, friendship, and assistance are highly valued; and their opinions are viewed as salient in confirming or disconfirming one's purported strengths or weaknesses. The motivation to impress such others is high.

The presence of these characteristics in others can also affect the subjective likelihood of creating a satisfactory impression.

High-strength others usually appear to be more discerning and difficult to please (Tedeschi, Schlenker, & Bonoma, 1973) and may evoke feelings of inadequacy on the part of the actor through the process of social comparison (Morse & Gergen, 1970). Thus, people will be more highly motivated to impress such others and more likely to entertain doubts that they will.

People are more likely to report being tense and nervous when dealing with those who are powerful, competent, high in status, or in positions of authority than with those who are not (Jackson & Latane, 1981; Latane & Harkins, 1976; Zimbardo, 1977). Jones and Russell (Note 1) found that nearly 80% of their subjects reported experiencing shyness when interacting with "authority figures."Jackson and Latane (1981) asked subjects to imagine themselves singing the "Star Spangled Banner" in front of a variety of different audiences and rate how nervous and tense they were. High-strength others produced more nervousness and tension than low-strength others. Similarly, people engage in more "face saving" behavior that appears to be indicative of embarrassment when the audience is composed of competent rather than incompetent others or "evaluators" rather than "nonevaluators" (Brown, 1970; Brown & Garland, 1971; Garland & Brown, 1972).

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Evaluative implications of the performance. Factors that increase the evaluative implications of a social performance should increase the motivation to impress others.

These include such conditions as the importance of the performance, the anonymity of the actor, the number of coperformers present, and the size of the audience.

Some performances are more important than others in terms of their impact on the audience's reactions. First impressions, for example, usually generate a primacy effect that can have a lingering influence on others' perceptions (e.g., Jones & Goethals, 1972).

Thus, a first meeting with one's nance's parents would generate more motivation to impress them than would a casual luncheon several months later. First dates also generate considerable concern for how one will appear and are usually mentioned by respondents as inducing nervousness and shyness (Zimbardo, 1977). As the evaluative overtones surrounding a performance increase, so does the motivation to impress others. Leavy (Note 2) told subjects who believed they were interacting with another individual via an intercom either to "try to get the other subject to like you" or simply to "act as naturally as possible." Subjects who were instructed to make a favorable impression reported feeling significantly more shy than those who were not. McCoy (1965) found that telling children they would be working on a "test" rather than a "game" decreased their verbalizations, and Gynther (1957) found that arousing evaluation apprehension in college students reduced their communication efficiency; these responses are usually associated with anxiety.

When people's behaviors are private and will not come to the attention of others, less social anxiety will be experienced than when the behaviors are public. People may, of course, imagine how significant others would react to their behavior and feel pride or anxiety, but the experience would be somewhat muted as compared with when significant others are actually present (Schlenker, 1980).

Although there has been relatively little research comparing anxiety experienced under public versus private conditions, there are indications that the hypothesized relation holds. Modigliani (1971) found that people

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are less embarrassed and engage in less facesaving behavior under private than public conditions of failure.

The number of coperformers present during an actor's social performance will also affect the motivation to impress audiences.

When people perform in groups, their audience must divide attention among the various performers, each coperformer is somewhat more anonymous, and the actors can diffuse responsibility among themselves for inferior performances (Jackson & Latane, 1981). In support of the idea that there is safety in numbers, Jackson and Latane (1981) found that the number of coperformers decreased nervousness and tension both in a laboratory situation where subjects imagined themselves performing before others and in a field study where people participated in a talent show. Similarly, Barber (1939) found that chronic stutterers exhibited more speech disruptions, which presumably reflect nervousness, when reciting a passage alone than with groups of others; the greater the number of coperformers, the fewer the disruptions.

Each coperformer added to the situation, however, will have a smaller impact than the previous coperformer (Jackson & Latane, 1981). An exception to the tension-reducing effect of coperformers may occur when people believe they will perform well but their coperformers will perform poorly and thereby hide their meritorious contribution and make them look bad.

The size of the audience will increase the motivation to impress them, at least up to some asymptote. The evaluations of many people have the potential for greater impact on the actor than the evaluations of a few.

Thus, people report being more tense and nervous as the size of their audience increases (Jackson & Latane, 1981; Latane & Harkins, 1976). Porter (1939) found that stuttering, presumably a sign of nervousness, increased with audience size. Also, children speak less when completing sentence stems if they speak before a larger than smaller audience (Levin, Baldwin, Gallwey, & Paivo, 1960), which suggests that they experience greater social anxiety with the larger audience. Each additional audience member, however, should have less of an impact than the previous one (Jackson & Latane, 1981).

Image central ity. People will be more motivated to create a preferred impression on others when the interaction focuses on images that are more rather than less central to their identities. Creating a preferred impression will not only allow them to receive the interpersonal benefits (e.g., approval, respect) associated with being viewed in these personally important ways, but will also permit them to receive self-defining feedback that could reduce any uncertainty they might have about whether they really possess these attributes. A woman who, for example, prides herself on being an intellectual but does not care about her athletic ability should be more motivated to impress others when engaged in an intellectual discussion than when talking about her ability at tennis. Social anxiety should result, however, only if she also has doubts about whether she will create the preferred impression.

Self-attention. Self-attention appears to play a crucial role in activating concern about one's identity. Self-attention refers to directing conscious attention inward, toward rather than away from the self (Buss, 1980; Carver, 1979;Duval & Wicklund, 1972; Fenigstein, 1979; Fenigstein, Scheier, & Buss, 1975). Such a state can be situationally induced, and some people are chronically more likely to focus attention on themselves.

When attention is focused inward, it can produce either private or public self-consciousness. Private self-consciousness is an awareness of the internal self, such as one's thoughts and feelings, and public self-consciousness is an awareness of oneself as a social object (Fenigstein, 1979). Those who are publicly self-conscious report that they feel as though they are being observed when in the company of others, have a high awareness of how others regard them, view others' behaviors as having high personal relevance, and demonstrate increased responsiveness to negative interpersonal evaluations (Fenigstein, 1979). In addition, it has been hypothesized that a "major consequence of self-consciousness is an increased concern with the presentation of self and the reactions of others to that presentation" (Fenigstein, 1979, p. 75). Those who are not publicly self-conscious, on the other hand, have little awareness of or interest in how they are coming

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across to others. Since evaluation is more salient when people are publicly self-conscious, they should be more motivated to make a preferred impression on those with whom they interact. Even so, they should not feel socially anxious unless they also doubt they will receive satisfactory impression-relevant reactions from others. Fenigstein et al.

(1975) similarly suggest that public self-consciousness is a necessary but not sufficient precondition for social anxiety.

Chronic public self-consciousness is significantly positively correlated with general measures of social anxiety (Fenigstein et al., 1975; Pilkonis, 1977a; Leavy, Note 2). It has also been found to be positively correlated with general measures of shyness (Cheek & Buss, 1982), social reticence (Jones & Russell, Note 3), interaction anxiousness (Leary, in press), audience anxiousness (Leary, in press), and embarrassment (Froming & Brody, Note 4). In addition, it correlates significantly with self-reports of shyness (Pilkonis, 1977a; Leavy, Note 2) and anxiety (Leavy, Note 2) in specific dyadic encounters.

Levin et al. (1960) found that children who were classified as highly self-conscious spoke for a shorter length of time in front of an unfamiliar audience and made more speech errors seemingly indicative of anxiety than those who were classified as low in self-consciousness. Although these studies are correlational in nature, there are at least some grounds for suggesting that public self-consciousness increases people's potential for becoming socially anxious.3 People who are chronically high in public self-consciousness may also be somewhat more likely to entertain doubts about their self-presentational abilities across a wide variety of situations. Fenigstein (1979) suggested that public self-consciousness increases concerns about receiving negative interpersonal evaluations, and Leavy (Note 2) found public self-consciousness to be negatively related to self-esteem (r = —.29, p < .02).

Self-attention increases the actor's focus on meeting salient standards for performance, leading to a comparison between the self and the standard (Carver, 1979; Duval & Wicklund, 1972). When people adopt selfpresentational goals, the standards for their

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performance reflect their effectiveness in procuring satisfactory impression-relevant reactions from others. If people believe they are meeting or will meet the standards (i.e., they have a favorable outcome expectancy), they experience positive affect. However, the belief that "one cannot alter one's behavior in the direction appropriate to the standard may also lead to negative affect in proportion to the importance of the behavioral dimension or the standard and the perceived magnitude of the discrepancy" (Carver, 1979, p.

1266). In terms of the present approach, selfattention should make extant self-presentational problems more salient and produce the type of negative affect associated with anxiety. Further, self-attention should make people more aware of internal states, including their thoughts and affect, and intensify them (Carver, 1979). This could further heighten the experience of social anxiety.

Other personality variables. Any individual difference factors that heighten the motivation to impress others have the potential for generating social anxiety. These include such variables as high needs for social approval (Crowne & Marlowe, 1964), otherdirectedness (Hogan & Cheek, in press), and high fear of negative evaluation (Watson & Friend, 1969). People who are other-directed or want to gain approval/avoid disapproval should be highly motivated to come across well to others. Further, people who score high in the need for approval seem to lack the "confidence, assertiveness, and skill to make the most of social situations" (Schlenker, 1980, p. 79). Thus, such people should.have both high motivation and be more likely to entertain doubts about their abilities to make desired impressions, generating greater social anxiety.

A high fear of negative evaluation (FNE) also has been associated with a need to obtain approval and avoid disapproval (Friend & Gilbert, 1973; Smith & Campbell, 1973; Watson & Friend, 1969; Leary, 1980). In 3 Public and private self-consciousness are only weakly correlated with one another, and the latter usually has not been found to correlate significantly with measures of anxiety (for an exception, see Jones & Russell, Note 3). It appears that a focus of attention on oneself as a social object is important for the experience of social anxiety.

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addition, Leavy (Note 2) found that subjects tional cues, information about others' prefwho scored high as compared with low in erences, and familiarity with accepted ways FNE reported more doubts about their abil- of responding—are absent, ambiguous, or ities to create a favorable impression on oth- contradictory. People should then become ers, and FNE was negatively correlated with uncertain about how to respond and expeself-esteem (;• = -.55, p < .001). It should be rience doubts about whether they will obtain expected, then, that FNE should generally satisfactory impression-relevant reactions. increase social anxiety. Indeed, Leavy (Note Uncertainty has been proposed as a major 2) found that FNE is significantly correlated antecedent of anxiety. Dibner (1958, p. 165) with self-reports of anxiety (r = .48, p < .001) observed that "anxiety is directly related to and shyness (r = .42, p < .001) during a the degree of ambiguity in the situation to dyadic encounter and with scores on the So- which the individual must make some adcial Anxiety subscale of the Self-Conscious- justive reaction." Pilkonis (1977b) noted that ness Scale (r = .65,;; < .001). Fear of negative "shyness is less of a problem in those contexts evaluation has also been found to correlate where influences such as task demands and positively with social avoidance and distress role requirements remove the ambiguity (Watson & Friend, 1969) and self-reports of present in 'unfocused' interpersonal encouninteraction and audience anxiousness (Leary, ters" (p. 604), and Buss (1980) commented in press). Finally, Nicholls (1974) found that that "the most frequent and important sitthe most common characteristic of hospital- uational cause [of shyness] appears to be novized socially phobic individuals is sensitive- elty" (p. 187). Phillips (1968) suggested that ness to and fearfulness of disapproval. chronic reticence may be caused by actors' "not knowing the rules" in certain social situations.

Low Outcome Expectancies Self-reports of social anxiety (including Given the goal of making a particular shyness) have been found to increase in novel impression on others, people will become and unstructured situations and in encounsocially anxious to the extent that they doubt ters with people about whom the actor knows they will do so. Such doubts will be generated relatively little (Pilkonis, 1977b; Zimbardo, when (a) people are uncertain about how to 1977; Jones & Russell, Note 3; Leary, 1980). do so, or (b) although people believe they Such situations make it difficult for people know how such an impression can be cre- to formulate a plan for behavior and to preated, their perceptions of the situation, au- dict how others will react to them. Condience, and their own attributes, skills, and versely, reports of anxiety or shyness rarely resources lead them to believe they cannot occur in familiar situations, particularly those achieve the goal. People will then perceive involving friends and family (Zimbardo, or imagine a discrepancy between their per- 1977).

Uncertainty is also heightened when unformances and the relevant standards. As proposed in Propositions la and Ib, the expected events occur, as when an embarlower their outcome expectancies and the rassing incident happens or people are intergreater the perceived discrepancy between acting with others who are unpredictable. performance and standard, the more socially Unexpected events disrupt the ongoing inanxious they will feel. teraction and thrust the participants into a Uncertainty. When people are motivated state of uncertainty (Goffman, 1967). Geller, to impress others they access information Goodstein, Silver, and Sternberg (1974) found from memory or seek information regarding that when others violate the implicit rules of the ways the others are likely to respond to social interaction—by ignoring an individparticular self-presentations. They then pre- ual, for example—the situation becomes amsent their self-presentations in a way that cap- biguous and the individual reports feelitalizes (at least somewhat) on the others' ing shy. preferences and the situational contingencies The clearest examples of uncertainty occur that are relevant to their goals (Schlenker, when people lack a coherent script or plan 1980, in press-a). Difficulties arise when for the social setting. Such might be the case guides to self-presentation—such as situa- at one's first school dance, first formal dinner

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party, and so on. There are questions in the mind of the actor: What should I do? What happens next? How will others react to me?

Awkward, tentative interactions are likely to occur that may further heighten the actor's anxiety. There are many occasions when people know how they would like to appear but do not know how to go about doing so.

Their cognitive schemas for the situation do not contain adequate response-specifying information. For instance, people who are unskilled in the rules of etiquette and lacking experience in formal social settings may know that they want to appear sophisticated at a formal cocktail party but have no idea how to go about fostering that image.

In such cases, anxiety would be reduced by instructing people about (a) the sequence of events to be expected, (b) the behaviors that should be employed given certain goals and antecedent conditions, and (c) the likely responses of others to particular behaviors.

Therapy aimed at increasing social skills often provides such instruction, either directly or through modeling. Similarly, self-help courses on how to win friends, be successful in business, be assertive, and so forth usually provide people with lists of simple rules about what to do in various situations. Some such rules are undoubtedly effective in accomplishing their objective of increasing knowledge or skills. Equally or even more important, though, should be the increased confidence experienced by people who learn the rules; they now possess a set of specific instructions. They should believe in their ability to predict and control others' reactions, and social anxiety should decrease. Of course, any initial increment in confidence could later be eliminated if people discovered that their new-found instructions did not really aid them in predicting and controlling social situations.

Individual difference variables can exacerbate the problems encountered in ambiguous situations and heighten social anxiety.

Factors that make people less sensitive to social cues (e.g., low social sensitivity), more dependent on the rules and preferences of others (e.g., other-directedness), or more likely to anticipate that other people will evaluate them negatively (e.g., low self-esteem, fear of negative evaluation) will predispose them to perceive more situations as

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ambiguous or experience lower outcome expectancies when they encounter ambiguous or novel situations.

Low outcome expectancies in the absence of uncertainty. People may perceive what should be done in order to obtain satisfactory reactions from others but still doubt that they will be likely to achieve their self-presentational goals. Low outcome expectancies often arise when people believe they do not possess the attributes, skills, accomplishments, or resources that are required to make a successful claim to the relevant image. All images have requirements, which are the characteristics, achievements, and behaviors that a holder of the image should have or be able to perform in order to claim the image legitimately (Schlenker, 1980). People who fail to live up to the requirements of the images they project are disliked and negatively sanctioned (Goffman, 1959; Schlenker, 1980; Schlenker & Leary, 1982). Because of these constraints, people's public self-presentations are usually consistent with publicly-known information about them (Baumeister & Jones, 1978; Schlenker, 1975). People who think they should claim a particular image in order to impress the audience but believe they cannot live up to such claims are caught in a least-of-evils choice situation. If they try to claim the image, they expect failure, yet if they do not make the claim, they will not create the preferred impression. Social anxiety results.

People may also privately think of themselves as having certain attractive attributes that would impress others but doubt that they can convince others they possess these attributes (Leary & Schlenker, 1981). For example, a scientist who wishes to demonstrate his or her extensive knowledge to colleagues at a convention may feel he or she lacks the verbal fluency to impress them. In such cases, people may think their self-presentations will be ineffective because of deficiences in their expressive skills, even though they might privately believe they possess the characteristics that could impress the audience. Their expectations of unsatisfactory impression-relevant reactions could generate social anxiety.

Being overpraised by others can carry as many negative implications for the recipient as failing to receive sufficient praise. Buss

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(1980, pp. 138-140) notes that being overpraised in public produces discomfort; females who were overpraised by a confederate responded by showing signs of embarrassment, including blushing and nervous giggling. Unlike praise that is merited, excessive praise can raise doubts in the recipient's mind about the motives of the evaluator (e.g., "Is he serious, or is he trying to make a fool of me?"), create uncertainty about how to respond, and thrust an excessively attractive image on the recipient. Recipients might believe they cannot fulfill the extremely high standards for performance implied by the image and may envision considerable discrepancy between their future performances and the standard. A likely reaction is to reject the excessive praise: "That's nice of you to say, but I'm really not that accomplished, nice, or whatever." They thereby escape the obligation of living up to the image and appear less foolish if the evaluator is insincere. Research suggests that people will reject excessive praise when the evaluator's motives are suspect or they believe they cannot live up to the implications of the praise (Jones, 1973; Mettee & Aronson, 1974).

A good deal of research has documented the relation between the belief that one lacks valuable social skills and the experience of social anxiety (Bellack & Hersen, 1979; Leary, 1982). In an early study of public speaking, Gilkinson (1943) found that anxious speech students greatly underestimated their speaking ability and the quality of their speeches as compared with observers' evaluations of them. Efran and Korn (1969) showed that socially "cautious" subjects held lower expectations of success on a variety of social and verbal tasks than socially "bolder" subjects but that the two groups did not differ in their expectations of success on intellectual, artistic, or athletic pursuits. This suggests that the concerns of socially anxious people are specific to relevant social deficiencies. Paivo and Lambert (1959) showed that the susceptibility to audience anxiety in public speaking is negatively related to the frequency of rewarding past experiences in speaking situations. In a comparison of high and low socially anxious subjects, Cacioppo et al. (1979) found that the former rated themselves more negatively, generated more

negative self-statements in a thought-listing task, and rated themselves as less potent and active than less anxious subjects. Similarly, Glass et al. (1982) showed that socially anxious women made significantly more negative and fewer positive self-statements in a dyadic encounter than women low in social . anxiety.

Anxious people's negative evaluations are confined primarily to themselves. Although they underestimate the quality of their social skills (compared with observers' ratings of them and with the self-evaluations of people with low anxiety), high- and low-anxious subjects (along with external observers) have been shown to agree in their appraisals of a confederate's social ability (Clark & Arkowitz, 1975). Thus, the tendency to underestimate social performances is not due to a generalized set to see the social world negatively but appears to result from a real or imagined deficit in personal skills or attributes.

People who consider themselves to be physically unattractive may entertain doubts about their ability to achieve satisfactory reactions from others (Berscheid & Walster, 1974). Although no research has specifically examined the relationship between self-perceived attractiveness and social anxiety, Mathes and Kahn (1975) found that physically attractive women rated themselves as less neurotic, higher in self-esteem, and happier than did less attractive women. In addition to the direct effects of self-perceived attractiveness on social anxiety, truly unattractive individuals (as judged by the standards of those with whom they interact) are likely to be regarded less favorably by others on a number of personality and social dimensions (e.g., Berscheid & Walster, 1974) and thus be afforded fewer opportunities for social interaction. The result is that they may have fewer opportunities to learn and practice interpersonal skills (on dates, for example), opportunities that could otherwise build social confidence and reduce anxiety.

People with low self-esteem, who tend to perceive themselves less favorably than those with high self-esteem on a variety of dimensions and assume others do also, experience social anxiety across a variety of social settings. In support of this hypothesis, Gilkinson (1942) noted that "a somewhat gener-

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alized sense of inferiority is a primary cause of fear experienced before an audience" (p.

81). Zimbardo (1977) reports that self-esteem and shyness are significantly negatively correlated (r = -.48), and Leary (in press) found self-esteem to correlate negatively with both interaction and audience anxiousness.

Self-presentational difficulties are an interpersonal problem, so the context of the situation and the characteristics of the audience should interact with personal characteristics to affect situational reactions. For example, a high school athlete may have high self-esteem and believe his or her athletic skills would favorably impress a peer or younger person, but still doubt his or her ability to impress a college scout or professional athlete. Audiences who are perceived as especially competent, powerful, or critical should generate lower outcome expectancies and evoke higher standards than ones who are easier to impress (Schlenker, in press-a).

Indeed, people report greater tension and nervousness (Jackson & Latane, 1981) and engage in more face-saving behavior indicative of embarrassment (Brown & Garland, 1971; Garland & Brown, 1972) when they perceive themselves to be less rather than more competent at the specific task and when they are performing before competent rather than incompetent others. The amount of supportive feedback one receives during an interaction also affects expectations of success and hence anxiety. As compared with warm, supportive, noncritical audiences, cold, nonsupportive, or critical ones produce shorter interactions and fewer words spoken (Drennen & Wiggins, 1964; Pope & Siegman, 1968; Reece, 1964; Reece & Whitman, 1962).

Subjects who receive negative interpersonal feedback speak less and with longer speech latencies (Cervin, 1956; Miller, 1964; Taylor, Altman, & Sorrentino, 1969) and are less self-disclosing (Taylor et al., 1969).

Even people who have low self-esteem, who have perceived skills deficits, or who tell "lies" about themselves should not feel socially anxious as long as they expect that their self-presentations will produce the desired reactions from others. People might, for example, believe that their audience is especially supportive, gullible, or has no way to check the veracity of their claims. On such

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occasions people should have high expectations of achieving their self-presentational goals.

Self-presentation and alternative approaches. The skills deficit, cognitive evaluation, conditioning, and personality approaches can be reconceptualized as converging on the notion that social anxiety is generated when people are motivated to impress others and hold low impression-relevant outcome expectancies. Despite this similarity, there are several differences between these approaches and the present formulation that are worth noting. First, in contrast to some versions of the conditioning approach, the present formulation adopts a cognitive perspective: Anxiety is mediated by expectations about self-presentational effectiveness. Bandura (1977) and Bolles (1972) present strong cases for the superiority of "conditioning" models that include rather than exclude cognitive variables.

Second, this formulation states that social anxiety is produced by the expectation that one will not accomplish one's self-presentational goal of impressing real or imagined audiences. The multitude of negative selfstatements people might make and that appear in studies that support the cognitive selfevaluation model (e.g., "I'm not a good date/ speaker/dancer/conversationalist/etc.") reflect not only self-evaluations but also concerns about how one might be judged in social settings.

Third, and related to this distinction, real or perceived skills deficits will only affect social anxiety to the extent that they influence the individual's expectations of receiving satisfactory impression-relevant reactions from others in the specific social situation. Similarly, personality variables that are associated with generalized expectations of poor selfpresentational performances (e.g., low selfesteem, high fear of negative evaluation) will be related to social anxiety only to the extent that they affect motivation and expectations in the specific social situation.

In summary, people will experience social anxiety to the degree that they have the goal of creating a preferred impression on others but doubt they will do so. Existing research in the area is consistent with this proposition.

Variables that appear to affect the motivation

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to impress others and the likelihood of doing so affect social anxiety.

Social Anxiety and Interpersonal Behavior A variety of behaviors have been associated with high social anxiety, such as reticence, hesitant words and acts, minimal selfdisclosure, and withdrawal from encounters that precipitate anxiety. After examining some of these behaviors, we will consider the relationships among cognition, social anxiety, and behavior.

Associated Behaviors The behaviors that tend to occur when people feel socially anxious may be loosely grouped into three classes: nervous responses, disaffiliative behaviors, and image protection. When people feel socially anxious, they manifest a variety of nervous responses.

They often fidget, self-manipulate (play with their hair, clothes, etc.), perspire, squirm, stutter as they speak, and generally appear nervous and jittery (Cheek & Buss, 1982; Porter, 1939; Pilkonis, 1977b; Zimbardo, 1977). Speech disturbances (e.g., stuttering, stumbling over words, repeating words, etc.) have been used as indices for assessing anxiety in psychotherapeutic settings (Kasl & Mahl, 1965; Mahl, 1956). High levels of anxiety impair the ability to communicate effectively (Borkovec, Stone, O'Brien, & Kaloupek, 1974; Kasl & Mahl, 1965; Murray, 1971; Pilkonis, 1977b; Swartz, 1976). For example, stammering increases as a function of audience size (Porter, 1939), and when reciting passages alone (where one is the center of attention), rather than with others (Barber, 1939).

Social anxiety is also associated with disaffiliation—behaviors that decrease the actor's social contact with others. When socially anxious, people initiate conversations less frequently, are more reluctant to speak freely, speak for a lower percentage of the time and, in general, participate less fully in conversations (Cheek & Buss, 1982; Borkovec, Fleischmann, & Caputo, 1973; Glasgow & Arkowitz, 1975; Leary, 1980; Zimbardo, 1977). In a review of the literature dealing with the relationship between anxiety and speech, Murray (1971) concluded that anx-

iety and speech productivity (verbal quantity, speech rate, absence of silences) are curvilinearly related as an inverse-U function. Verbal productivity increases with increasing anxiety up to some asymptote and then decreases with increasingly higher levels of anxiety.

This conclusion was reached after an examination of studies that employed situational inducements of social anxiety (e.g., negative evaluations from others, increased evaluation apprehension) and nonsocial anxiety (e.g., threat of electric shock), as well as dispositional measures of social and general anxiety. More recently, Pilkonis (1977b) had subjects who were previously classified as shy or not shy converse in an unstructured, heterosexual interaction and then prepare and deliver structured speeches. During the conversation, shy people showed a longer latency to their first utterance, spoke less frequently and for shorter periods of time, and allowed longer silences to occur and were less willing to break them. Shy subjects also reported greater anxiety during delivery of the structured speeches and were viewed as more anxious by observers.

In addition to reduced verbal interaction, the disaffiliation that often accompanies social anxiety has been shown to take a number of other forms. For example, people tend to avoid situations that produce embarrassment (Brown, 1970; Brown & Garland, 1971) or involve specific ego threats (Teichman, 1978) and prefer not to affiliate with evaluative others under such conditions (Fish, Karabenick, & Heath, 1978; Sarnoff& Zimbardo, 1961; Teichman, 1973, 1978; Watson & Friend, 1969). Also, people tend to avoid situations in which they expect to experience social difficulties and prematurely leave those that elicit social anxiety (Cheek & Buss, 1982; Pilkonis, 1977b;Twentyman&McFall, 1975; Zimbardo, 1977). The tendency to maintain distance from others is also suggested by findings that socially anxious people decrease eye contact with others (Modigliani, 1971; Pilkonis, 1977b; Zimbardo, 1977), disclose less information about themselves to others (Post, Wittmaier, & Radin, 1978), and are generally less sociable (Cheek & Buss, 1982) than nonanxious people. As a result of their tendency to disaffiliate, shy people report a higher incidence of loneliness (Cheek & Busch, 1981;

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Jones & Russell, Note 3). Heterosexually anxious individuals are less likely to date (Twentyman & McFall, 1975) and are less likely to become involved in romantic and sexual encounters (Leary & Dobbins, Note 5).

Finally, social anxiety seems to be accompanied by behaviors that allow people to protect their public images as best they can given the perceived difficulties (Leary, 1982; Leary & Schlenker, 1981). For example, Natale, Entin, and Jaffe (1979) found that social anxiety was negatively correlated with successful verbal interruptions of others and positively correlated with back-channel responses, that is, the brief interjections a listener makes while another is speaking to indicate he or she is listening attentively (e.g., "uh-huh").

Pilkonis (1977b) found that shy females nodded and smiled more during an opposite-sex, unstructured interaction than not-shy females (males, however, did not display such differences). These sorts of behaviors (not interrupting, attentively listening, nodding, smiling) may allow people to show polite but innocuous sociability in situations in which they doubt they can make a truly positive impression on others (Leary, 1982; Leary & Schlenker, 1981).

Cognition, Anxiety, and Behavior

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suggests that people's level and strength of self-efficacy, or the expectation that they can successfully execute the behavior required to produce desired outcomes, determines whether coping will be initiated in a situation, how much effort will be expended, and how long effort will be sustained in the face of obstacles. From our perspective, people who are experiencing social anxiety have low expectations regarding their ability to produce preferred impression-relevant reactions from others. These expectations usually produce an avoidance of relevant social situations and a lack of effective behavior in such situations. Any arousal experienced as a consequence of threats to one's identity can intensify perceptions of low self-efficacy, since such internal states might support or intensify beliefs in one's own deficiencies. Thus, we view the arousal and affect that can accompany social anxiety and the behaviors that are associated with social anxiety as mediated by cognitive activities.

Carver's (1979) cybernetic model of selfattention processes contains several propositions that are directly relevant to our conceptualization of social anxiety. As indicated earlier, Carver proposes that self-attention increases people's concerns about meeting standards for behavior (cf. Duval & Wicklund, 1972). The goal of creating a particular impression on others should often be accompanied by self-attention (Buss, 1980; Fenigstein, 1979). A "matching-to-standard" process, in which the actor attempts to create the sort of impression implied by the goal, should occur. Carver suggests that

Some early conceptualizations took the position that anxiety is a drive or arousal state that energizes particular responses (e.g., Spence, 1960; see Levitt, 1967). Although there are many variations on this theme and differences between specific theories, it was something impedes the matching-to-standard process, generally held that behavior (defensive be- Ifbehavior is interrupted and an assessment process is havior and task performance) is a direct con- evoked. This assessment entails the further processing sequence of the drive condition. Conse- of relevant information yielding an outcome expectancy: quently, some theorists searched for invari- an estimate of the likelihood of being able to more approximate the standard, based on the nature ant relationships between arousal and closely of the situation and on the behaviors available to the behavior (e.g., the inverted-U relation). More person, (p. 1264). recent research challenges that position and Proposition 2. An assessment process is focuses attention on cognitive processes that mediate both arousal and behavior (Ban- triggered when the self-presentational goal is dura, 1977; Carver, 1979). important to the individual or the social perAccording to social learning theory, arousal formance is impeded. As the importance of and behavior are coeffects and are not causally the performance increases, people will belinked: "Being coeffects, there is no fixed re- come more highly motivated to make a prelationship between autonomic arousal and ferred impression on others. To facilitate goal actions" (Bandura, 1977, p. 209). Bandura achievement, they will engage in a more de-

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tailed examination of self, audience, and sit- cial performance is poor not because of the uation than would otherwise occur. Further, absence of social anxiety but because of the if events suggest possible difficulties in reach- cognitive orientation the person brings to the ing their goal (irrespective of an initial as- task. sessment that might have been triggered by Proposition 3. If the assessment leads to goal importance), assessment will -occur or the expectation that one can create the prereoccur. ferred impression on others, the individual The assessment process can be triggered will continue to work toward that objective. in advance, before entering the social setting. In addition, he or she will experience positive Factors that presage self-presentational dif- affect. This proposition paraphrases Carver's ficulties (e.g., a powerful, critical, discerning (1979) Propositions 1 la and 12b, making audience), create uncertainty, or make peo- them pertinent to self-presentation. Social ple conscious of the import of the perfor- anxiety, if it occurred at all under such conmance will produce assessment prior to the ditions, would be limited to the brief period anticipated encounter. Similarly, people who during which the assessment process was takcould be labeled "chronically socially anx- ing place and uncertainty might be present. ious" might have generalized doubts about Once people develop a favorable outcome their self-presentational abilities and engage expectancy, social anxiety will not occur. In in assessment prior to even relatively innoc- addition, people will experience positive afuous interactions. fect and be satisfied with their social perforOne interesting implication of this prop- mances. osition concerns the relation between very One of the interesting implications of this low levels of anxiety and poor social perfor- proposition is that self-attention can, under mance. According to the inverted-U func- some conditions, facilitate the performance tion, very low levels of anxiety should gen- of people who are chronically anxious erate poorer performances than somewhat (Carver, 1979, p. 1266). If such people enhigher levels of anxiety and produce less so- counter a situation that allows them to concial efficiency. Many of the variables that clude they can accomplish their self-presengenerate low social anxiety, however, are also tational goal successfully, self-attention will those that minimize concerns about how one improve rather than impede their social peris appearing to others (e.g., insignificant au- formance. Self-attention makes standards diences, low fear of negative evaluation, easy more salient and produces greater behaviortasks). Such variables will (a) be less likely standard matching than would occur without to evoke self-presentational goals, (b) reduce self-attention. Indeed, research has shown self-attention, causing goal-relevant stan- that self-attention facilitates the perfordards to be less salient, or (c) be less likely mances of people who are described as to trigger assessment either prior to or during chronically anxious but who have favorable the social encounter. The result will be be- outcome expectancies in the specific situahavior that is .not optimally effective in gen- tion (Carver, 1979, p. 1266). This prediction erating desirable impressions. An extreme does not seem to follow from alternative concase is those people who, after 20 years of ceptualizations of anxiety, according to which marriage, are unconcerned about their self-attention should only increase chronispouses' evaluations (Schlenker, in press-a). cally anxious people's self-preoccupation and They take the spouse for granted, are less further debilitate their performances (e.g., sensitive than formerly to social cues indi- Wine, 1971). cating appropriate behaviors, fail to employ Variables that make people more likely to standards for their behaviors that they would adopt self-presentational goals and trigger use when interacting with other people, and assessment have the potential for increasing fail to monitor and control their own actions self-presentational effectiveness, provided in desirable ways (e.g., allowing their physical people do not expect unfavorable impresappearance to decline, not paying attention sion-relevant outcomes. Coincidentally, such to what they or their spouses are saying, not variables are often associated with moderate following normal rules of courtesy, etc.). So- levels of social anxiety, the asymptotic point

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on the inverted-U curve for anxiety and behavior; for example, tests of moderate difficulty or audiences with intermediate status.

Because of the potentially facilitating consequences of self-attention and internal arousal, some people prepare themselves mentally prior to social performances in a fashion analogous to what athletes do prior to a big game. People who believe they can do well should try to evoke self-attention and arousal before important social performances. Once again, social performance would not be facilitated because of the social anxiety, but because of the cognitive orientation that accompanies the sorts of conditions that typically create moderate anxiety.

Proposition 4. If the assessment leads to the expectation that one cannot create the preferred impression on others, the response will be withdrawal Also, the individual will experience negative affect. This proposition paraphrases Carver's (1979) Propositions 11 b and 12a. Social anxiety occurs in such situations, and people will avoid the social situation if doing so is possible or physically withdraw from the situation if an exit can be arranged without incurring excessive social costs.

People appear to avoid, if possible, affiliating with specific others when they are concerned about impressing them and doubt they will receive satisfactory impression-relevant reactions. Social anxiety is associated with avoidance of and premature withdrawal from identity-threatening, anxiety-producing social settings (e.g., Brown, 1970; Brown & Garland, 1971; Buss, 1980; Cheek & Buss, 1982; Fish et al., 1978; Garland & Brown, 1972; Pilkonis, 1977b; Sarnoff & Zimbardo, 1961; Sattler, 1965; Schlenker, 1980; Teichman, 1978; Watson & Friend, 1969; Zimbardo, 1977). The personal consequences of the unwillingness to interact fully with others are considerable, since such unwillingness can preclude the formation of satisfying relationships, hamper the acquisition of interpersonal skills through experience, and result in negative attributions about one's social inadequacies. * People who are socially anxious will seek to affiliate with others whom they believe they can impress or who otherwise pose no threat to their identities. Affiliation with care-

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fully selected, supportive others can provide social comparison information that allows anxious people to assess the appropriateness of their feelings and thoughts. Studies showing that fear and anxiety sometimes increase affiliation (e.g., Schachter, 1959; Teichman, 1978) invariably involve threats that do not directly jeopardize people's social identities, for example, the threat of receiving electric shocks. Jackson and Latane (1981) suggest that chronically anxious people should seek out coperformers because doing so allows them to diffuse responsibility for the potential failure, hide in the crowd, minimize their own participation, and obtain moral support.

Thus, socially anxious people (either dispositionally or situationally) should affiliate with others they expect to impress but avoid those they expect not to impress.

Avoiding or withdrawing from anxietyproducing social situations is not always possible. Coexisting pressures (e.g., job demands, social responsibilities) may make the situation unavoidable, and there may be no way of exiting gracefully (without incurring severe social costs). When this occurs, people will cognitively withdraw, mentally dissociating themselves from the task at hand—that of creating a preferred impression on the audience (cf. Carver, 1979). People may then daydream about more preferred activities or outcomes. Such task-irrelevant cognitive activity should reduce people's sensitivity to and utilization of relevant task cues, and impede self-monitoring and the control of task-relevant actions.

Proposition 5, If withdrawal is not possible, people become trapped in the assessment stage, reexamining themselves and the situation and replaying the problems they confront. This proposition (cf. Carver, 1979, p. 1266) accounts for the self-preoccupation that is often associated with high anxiety.

Anxious people have been described as selffocused: concentrating on their own imperfections and inadequacies in a way that debilitates their task performances (Sarason, 1976, 1978; Wine, 1971). The greater the anxiety, the more self-preoccupation will occur.

The combination of cognitive withdrawal, self-preoccupation, and negative affect/ arousal produces the decline of social per-

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formance that is associated with states of high anxiety. People feel especially nervous, speech output and productivity decline, speech disruptions increase, and people are less sensitive to cues and information regarding appropriate self-presentations (e.g., the cuing functions of others' behavior, the relevant social norms). In addition, the distraction decreases self-monitoring and control over behaviors. Behaviors that otherwise would be suppressed because they would create an undesired impression are more likely to leak through one's weakened guard (e.g., nervous, fidgety responses). Such behaviors are associated with the right-most portion of the inverted-U relationship between anxiety and behavior; as anxiety reaches a high state, performance declines. The high arousal state and the performance decrements are again proposed to be mediated by the person's cognitive state.

Proposition 6. When people are frozen in the assessment phase and unable to withdraw, they will enact alternative self-presentational goals that are less preferred but more viable (i.e., associated with higher outcome expectancies). They might consider innocuous images, such as being quietly pleasant, or engage in self-presentational habits that have been employed frequently in the past.

These activities place fewer demands on their diminished capacities. Such alternatives also involve a lowering of aspirations, since they are unlikely to yield the originally preferred social outcomes. At best, these alternatives permit the individual to avoid the highly unfavorable outcomes that are expected to accompany self-presentational failures. An extremely shy person, for example, might nod and smile at appropriate moments while others are speaking, thereby appearing to be nice, if not incisive or intelligent.

These alternatives would not be expected to replace the original goal. Rather, they will coexist with it. People must do something, even while being obsessed with the difficulties of achieving the original goal, and these alternatives provide the action guides they use. People will vacillate, though, between the original goal and the alternative. They are still trying to reach the original goal and are still anxious, but they are doing something to make the best of a bad situation.

In the case of people who are anxious be-

cause of uncertainty about how to respond, these alternative behaviors serve as stalling tactics that permit them to examine the situation more closely before committing themselves to a more definitive self-presentational stance. People bide their time until they surmise how best to make a satifactory impression. In the case of people who are anxious because of perceived deficits in selfpresentational abilities, these behaviors conceal the more blatant self-presentational failures that are expected to accompany more complete participation. By remaining silent, not interrupting others, smiling, nodding, and withholding information about themselves, they protect themselves and appear nonassertively friendly or sociable. McGovern (1976) notes that "the response of no response may be a learned method of coping with ambiguity and time pressures for [highly socially anxious] individuals" (p. 94).

In addition, Efran and Korn (1969) observed that "when the socially cautious person does participate, the content of his contribution is generally 'safe.' He waits until he has learned what kind of comment his 'audience' will appreciate or restricts his remarks to the patently nonoffensive" (p. 78). The individual might even have his or her actions misinterpreted by others and be seen as mysteriously aloof, or quiet but deep.

The use of disclaimers is another means of keeping one's participation socially safe and noncommitting. Disclaimers are verbal statements that are used in advance to dispel negative impressions that might be conveyed by an actor's intended conduct (Hewitt & Stokes, 1975). For example, socially anxious people might hedge their statements with comments such as "Sometimes I think that . . .""I could be wrong, but. . ." "I haven't given it much thought, but. . . ." They might also ask the audience to suspend evaluative judgment with comments such as, "Don't get me wrong, but. . . ." Through disclaimers, people try out various self-presentations and get feedback from others without incurring the costs that would be associated with a more definitive but disapproved stance. The use of disclaimers should increase when people are experiencing social anxiety and want to present themselves in a safe, noncommitting manner.

Proposition 7. People will avoid attributing

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self-presentational difficulties to important personal dimensions to the extent they can find a viable alternative explanation for the problem. People who anticipate or encounter self-presentational difficulties can usually find a wide range of potential causes. These range from ones in the situation (e.g., "The boss always intimidates everyone;" "Everyone feels nervous while giving a speech"), to personal factors, including debilitating internal conditions (e.g., "I didn't get much sleep last night;" "I have a lot on my mind and just can't concentrate on this now"), lack of relevant experience (e.g., "This was only my first job interview so it's not too surprising that it didn't go well"), lack of effort (e.g., "If only I had planned more for the speech, it would have gone much better"), and lack of relevant attributes or skills (e.g., "I just don't have what it takes to do well at this"), to the combination of self and situation (e.g., "I don't like this kind of party, but I do feel more comfortable at other types").

The explanation people employ not only defines the causal "truth" underlying the event from their perspectives, but also can affect their esteem. Judicious selection from among causal alternatives allows people to avoid lowering their standing on important dimensions. People who, for example, attribute a self-presentational failure to aspects of the situation or a temporary internal state (e.g., having a cold) can maintain belief in their social ability. They thereby maintain self-esteem and, if they can convince others that the difficulty was caused by these less threatening factors, public esteem as well.

Attributional statements can be used to secure and maintain desired identities both to others and oneself. It has been well documented that people who encounter self-presentational difficulties (e.g., public failures on important tests) attempt to account for the performance by proferring self-serving explanations that minimize the impact of the event for important personal dimensions (e.g., Bradley, 1978; Schlenker, 1980, in press-b). In addition, people who anticipate upcoming self-presentational problems offer accounts in advance. For example, nervous people who are concerned about their performance on an upcoming speech might tell associates that they feel a cold coming on and just aren't their usual selves that day. If they

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then perform poorly, the associates might be more likely to attribute the performance to the cold rather than the actors' poor preparation or abilities.

Self-serving explanations are not always viable. A preferred explanation can be contradicted by other facts known about the present situation (e.g., it is clear the actor does not have a cold), other facts known about the actor (e.g., he or she has a reputation for similar failures in the past), or the consensus of opinion of others (e.g., members of the audience believe the actor really has a low standing on the dimension). Conditions that make the situation less ambiguous by eliminating alternative explanations for the problem constrain the attributions people can make, compelling them to attribute the performance to a nonpreferred, selfthreatening cause. To the extent that alternative explanations are viable, however, people will attribute their inferior performances to causes that do not jeopardize their standings on personally important dimensions.

People who are chronically socially anxious are more likely than the average person to perceive constraints on their self-presentations, including their attributional statements. They are more likely to have low impression-relevant outcome expectancies across a wider variety of situations, to have developed reputations for failure, and to have less confidence in their ability to persuade others that a self-flattering explanation is justified. This is not to suggest that chronically socially anxious people will always display self-effacing attributions, since they will attribute their performances to self-flattering causes when they perceive no constraints.

But they will be more sensitive to cues that suggest constraints and display more pronounced self-effacing attributions than the average person across a wider variety of situations. Indeed, Arkin, Appleman, and Burger (1980) found that subjects who scored high but not low in chronic social anxiety became far more self-effacing in their performance attributions, accepting responsibility for failure and rejecting it for success, when a committee of high prestige others was to evaluate their behavior than when such an evaluation was canceled. When the threat of the evaluation did not exist, socially anxious subjects presented themselves in a more flat-

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tering fashion, taking greater responsibility for success than failure. In a second study, Arkin et al. replicated the tendency for socially anxious subjects to take more responsibility for failure than success, and found it was more prominent when subjects' attributions were assessed via the bogus pipeline procedure, in which they believed their "private" reactions to success and failure could be detected by the experimenter. Thus, people who are chronically socially anxious seem especially sensitive to constraints on their self-presentations.

Proposition 8. People are likely to employ self-handicapping tactics when more attractive alternative explanations for self-presentational problems are unavailable, the social performance is pertinent to a personally important dimension, and uncertainty exists about their standing on the dimension. If no self-serving explanations are available that adequately account for self-presentational difficulties that threaten self- and public-esteem, people may employ selfrhandicapping strategies. In an excellent analysis of "psychopathological symptoms" as forms of selfhandicapping, Snyder and Smith (in press) define self-handicapping as a process wherein a person, in response to an anticipated loss of self-esteem resulting from the possibility of inadequate performance in a domain where performance clearly implicates ability or competence, adopts characteristics or behaviors that superficially constitute admission of a problem, weakness or deficit, but assist the individual in (1) controlling attributions (made by oneself or others) concerning performance so as to discount the self-relevant implications of success, (2) avoiding the threatening evaluative situation entirely, or (3) maintaining existing environmental conditions that maximize positive self-relevant feedback and minimize negative self-relevant feedback.

Jones and Berglas (1978; Berglas & Jones, 1978) first suggested and demonstrated that people will exaggerate the influence of impediments and handicaps to the point of "stacking the cards" against themselves to increase the likelihood of failure, thereby discounting the personal implications of poor performance. If, for example, an individual fails in some intellectual or social endeavor while inebriated, the poor performance can be discounted by attributing it to the alcohol and not the individual's task-relevant skills.

If, on the other hand, the inebriated individ-

ual does well, attributions to relevant skills are augmented: The person triumphed despite the debilitating effects of the handicap.

Suffering from anxiety can similarly be used as a self-handicapping tactic (Leary & Schlenker, 1981; Snyder & Smith, in press).

Smith, Snyder, and Handelsman (1982) demonstrated the self-protective function of anxiety. High test anxious females were told that they would be taking a two-part intelligence test. To manipulate their concerns about evaluation, they were told either that the test was widely used and they would be given test feedback after the second part (evaluation condition) or that the test was new and still being developed, so they would not receive performance feedback after the second part (nonevaluation condition). To affect the relevance of anxiety as an esteemprotecting tactic, subjects in the evaluation condition were also either (a) told that anxiety interferes with performance on the test, (b) told that anxiety seems to have no effect on performance on the test, or (c) given no information about anxiety and performance.

After they completed the first pail of the test, subjects were made uncertain about their performance on the second part by providing them with mixed performance-feedback.

Subjects were then asked to report their levels of anxiety prior to beginning the critical second portion of the test.

It was found that subjects in the nonevaluation condition reported the lowest level of anxiety. These subjects should not have been as concerned with the self-relevant implications of their performance, and so they should actually have been less anxious. They also would have had no reason to employ anxiety for self-protective purposes. In the evaluation condition, however, subjects not only reported more anxiety, but said they were most anxious when they had been told either nothing about the relationship between anxiety and performance or that anxiety debilitates performance. Subjects who were told that anxiety was not a viable excuse for poor performance reported reduced effort on the test as an alternative self-protective tactic.

Given the self-report basis of the measures used in this study by Smith et al., it is not clear whether the subjects who reported high

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anxiety were simply doing so as an excuse for a potentially poor performance, were actually experiencing high anxiety in a way that would act as a real handicap to future performance, or both. Anxiety provides a viable excuse of the sort described in Proposition 7 as well as the type of handicap covered by Proposition 8.

In any case, people can employ self-handicapping in situations where they are experiencing or expect to experience self-presentational difficulties. For example, socially anxious people who fear being seen as interpersonally incompetent may avoid encounters that are expected to present social difficulties. Although such behavior precludes the development of friendships, it allows the person to attribute the lack of sociability to choice rather than lack of interpersonal skills.

Similarly, an individual who is experiencing social anxiety at a party might drink more than usual so that interpersonal difficulties may be attributed to the alcohol rather than to personal deficiencies.

Self-handicapping is most likely to occur when people anticipate self-presentational difficulties that are relevant to an important personal dimension, alternative attractive explanations of the poor performance are unavailable, and uncertainty exists about their standing on the dimension. Self-handicapping can involve potential costs to the user's identity, since many handicaps have negative connotations (e.g., being an alcoholic or being anxious). For this reason, people will avoid highlighting handicaps unless they are already known to have the handicap (e.g., the person with the reputation of being socially anxious) or alternative, more attractive explanations for the performance are unavailable. Self-handicapping also will be reserved for performances that are pertinent to more rather than less important personal dimensions (Jones & Berglas, 1978; Snyder & Smith, in press). Unimportant dimensions produce less self-presentational concern and do not justify resorting to handicaps that may themselves carry negative connotations. Finally, self-handicapping is more likely to occur when uncertainty exists about the actor's standing on the pertinent dimension (Jones & Berglas, 1978; Snyder & Smith, in press).

If people (the actor included) are convinced

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that the actor lacks the attributes or skills that are pertinent to the dimension, self-handicapping would serve no purpose. Thus, the person who is known (by himself and others) to lack important social skills may drink to get his mind off his problems, but cannot by doing so deflect an attribution that has already been made. Self-handicapping is only useful when it can deflect attributions from the dimension to the handicap.

Proposition 9. People who conceptualize themselves as socially anxious are more likely to experience social anxiety and display the behaviors associated with anxiety across a wide range of social situations. When people experience social anxiety across a wide range of situations (consistency), believe they experience it more intensely or often than others (distinctiveness), and believe that others view them as socially anxious (consensus), they will eventually come to conceptualize themselves as "socially anxious." The self-construct "socially anxious" (or its forms, e.g., "shy," "embarrassable") can create a self-fulfilling prophecy.

People who have well established self-constructs on a particular dimension are selectively attentive and more responsive to information that is relevant to the dimension (Markus, 1977). Socially anxious people will be sensitized to cues that suggest internal arousal, imply self-presentational difficulties, or focus them on the evaluative reactions of others. Consequently, they are more likely to enter the assessment process described in Proposition 2. Further, they are more likely to interpret ambiguous information in a way that is consistent with their self-constructs, by interpreting (a) any internal arousal they feel as an indication of anxiety or (b) any information that remotely suggests a self-presentational problem as a portent of failure.

The tendency to perceive and remember others' negative evaluations should exacerbate anxiety. Smith and Sarason (1975) found that highly and moderately socially anxious subjects rated negative feedback from others as more negative than nonanxious subjects and were more disturbed by it. O'Banion and Arkowitz (1977) showed that highly socially anxious women remembered negative incidents during an interaction with a male confederate better than women low in social anx-

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iety. Of course, assessment could still generate favorable outcome expectancies, in which case they would not feel socially anxious on that occasion (Proposition 3). The odds are increased, however, that they will emerge from assessment with an unfavorable outcome expectancy. Social anxiety will again be generated and serve as further confirmation for their self-schemas. In short, they should experience social anxiety and display the types of behaviors associated with anxiety across a wider range of situations than people who do not view themselves as socially anxious.

It should be clear that from this perspective, chronic social anxiety represents a cognitive label, a self-construct, that people apply to themselves and that mediates their arousal and behavior in social settings. The self-construct does not cause anxiety but has ramifications for the processing of information that can result in what we view as the internal reactions and overt behaviors associated with anxiety. These self-constructs are susceptible to change through techniques that modify cognitive structures and self-efficacy expectations (Bandura, 1977).

The Forms of Social Anxiety The diverse forms of social anxiety frequently mentioned in the literature—socialevaluative anxiety, dating anxiety, shyness, stagefright, and so forth—often seem to reflect (a) theorists' preferences for a particular word or phrase and (b) the specific type of situation in which the anxiety is manifested (e.g., if a person is on a date, it is dating anxiety; on stage, it is stagefright) rather than any profound difference in the experience itself. Yet, there does seem to be at least one underlying dimension that provides a heuristic classification of different types of social anxiety and has implications for both the antecedents of each and the likely behavioral reactions (Leary, 1982; Leary & Schlenker, 1981).

Social settings differ in the degree to which people's behaviors follow from or are contingent on the responses of others (Jones & Gerard, 1967). In contingent interactions, the responses of a given individual depend largely on the prior responses of others, as in a conversation or behaviors on a date. Although

each participant usually has interaction goals and plans about how to achieve them, immediate actions must be responsive to the behaviors of the others. Hence, people's plans are typically more flexible and contain feedback loops that allow their own actions to be guided by others' responses. Aspects of the plan (sometimes the entire plan) may have to be modified continually depending on what transpires.

In noncontingent interactions, people's responses are guided primarily by internal plans and only minimally, if at all, by other's responses, as in the cases of a performer in a play, a student delivering a speech, and a supervisor who follows a prepared text in instructing new workers about company procedures. The plans that guide behavior are often quite explicit, as in the cases of a script, speech, or musical composition, but nonetheless might contain room for some improvisation, as when a lecturer anticipates and responds to questions that arise from the audience. Actions are usually predetermined by the plan and, unless some unexpected event occurs (e.g., the audience becomes unruly), will be executed with relatively minimal responsiveness to the audience's behaviors. The actions of others serve primarily a cuing function, telling people when to execute a particular behavioral sequence, and do not serve to alter the guiding plan. Examples are a performer who waits for coperformers on stage to finish a line before giving a predetermined response or a salesperson who asks a customer a prepared question from a memorized script, knowing what the answer is likely to be but waiting for it before continuing the sales presentation.

Although the distinction between contingent and noncontingent interactions represents the extreme end-points on a continuum, it is useful in focusing on two broad classes of social anxiety. Shyness, dating anxiety, and heterosexual-social anxiety occur in contingent interactions, in which people must be continually responsive to the actions of others. In contrast, audience anxiety, stagefright, and speech anxiety occur in noncontingent interactions, in which people are performing some preplanned material before others. For the sake of brevity, we shall refer to interaction anxiety when speaking of anxiety in contingent interactions and audience

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anxiety when referring to anxiety in noncontingent ones (Leary, in press; Leary & Schlenker, 1981). Buss (1980) similarly distinguishes between shyness and audience anxiety as two forms of social anxiety but does not employ the interaction contingency as a basis for the distinction.

Since both interaction and audience anxiety are conceptualized as forms of social anxiety, the same sorts of antecedents described earlier will affect both. Also, people who tend to experience one with a high frequency will tend to experience the other. In support of this statement, Buss (1980) and Leary (in press) found that responses to selfreport scales designed to tap interaction and audience anxiety were positively correlated (rs = .48 and .44, respectively).

More intensive examination of these two forms of social anxiety suggests some possible reasons why interaction and audience anxiety, although correlated, are not identical. As compared with contingent interactions, noncontingent ones (a) usually focus the attention of a larger number of people on the actor (e.g., as in a play or a class lecture), (b) are often more important, since they usually occur less frequently and often involve some sort of formal evaluation (e.g., a play will be reviewed, a class speech will be graded), (c) must be planned more thoroughly in advance (e.g., composing the speech or memorizing the lines), (d) provide people with greater structure and less ambiguity during the performance, (e) require somewhat different social skills (e.g., require less "ad lib" ability during the performance), and (f) provide people with different sorts of options for controlling how they participate (e.g., it is usually not practical for a person in a noncontingent interaction to withdraw from the stage, fade into a corner, remain silent, or so on, even though he or she might want to; these options and others exist in contingent interactions). Of course, exceptions to the above exist (e.g., some contingent interactions may be more important than some noncontingent ones), but these features seem to distinguish most examples of the two types of social settings.

Given these features, one might expect certain people to do reasonably well in one type of situation but not in the other. For instance, people who feel comfortable in

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structured, well-planned encounters but who worry about their ability to respond spontaneously might be anxious in contingent settings but relatively at ease in noncontingent ones. Conversely, people who prefer the spontaneity of casual conversations may do well in contingent settings but become anxious when standing as the center of attention in a noncontingent one, especially if they feel inadequately prepared for the performance.

Although other examples could be cited of how the features might differentially affect anxiety, the important point is that the two types of settings place somewhat different pressures on people and require slightly different self-presentational skills. Future work might be directed at assessing the usefulness of this distinction.

Cross-cutting the contingency dimension, one can differentiate between cases where people anticipate that they are likely to have a self-presentational failure and ones where they have already had such a failure in the situation. Some event, such as a faux pas, impropriety, accident, or transgression, may occur that contradicts actors' desired identities up to that point in time and causes them to perceive that they now appear in an unsatisfactory manner. These undesired events create social predicaments and pose an immediate, concrete threat to the actor's identity (Schlenker, 1980, in press-b). The occurrence of undesired events should induce self-attention even in people who, up to that point in time, were unconcerned about others' reactions. Further, it is a rare person who is so confident of his or her self-presentational skills as to not have some doubt about the likelihood of maintaining a preferred impression in the face of the threat. Therefore, an identity-threatening event is likely to generate some social anxiety in almost everyone.

Anxiety that arises from predicaments has been termed embarrassment or shame, depending on the nature of the event. Shame refers to the occurrence of something regrettable, dishonorable, or disgraceful, and to the feelings of guilt, incompetence, indecency, or blameworthiness that are generated. Embarrassment refers to a somewhat less potent experience that is disconcerting or flustering, causing one to feel self-conscious and ill-atease. The difference between them seems to

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rest on the intensity of the experience and the moral connotations. In both cases, the individual's performance has failed to meet standards. In the case of shame, however, the standards are more important to the individual (e.g., involving moral worth or decency as opposed to social or etiquette-related skills), and the failure to live up to them creates a more traumatic event that has greater ramifications for one's identity.4 The distinction between the anticipation of self-presentational difficulties and the occurrence of a predicament has some empirical justification. As noted earlier, factor analyses of fear and anxiety inventories sometimes reveal two social anxiety factors, and the second factor invariably contains items that reflect the occurrence of predicament-creating events such as looking foolish, being criticized, making mistakes, and being misunderstood (Bates, 1971; Bernstein & Allen, 1969; Braun & Reynolds, 1969). Such events can be said to generate anxiety that might later be labeled embarrassment or shame by the actor. At one level, though, all social anxiety can be viewed as representing concerns about predicaments, be they anticipated or actual. Indeed, people who are experiencing social anxiety in the absence of a blatant, identity-threatening event can be said to be fantasizing about potential predicaments and giving anticipatory reactions to them (Jackson & Latane, 1981; Snyder, Note 6).

Unfortunately, there has been relatively little empirical work designed to examine similarities and differences between forms of social anxiety. The research that has been conducted has either (a) examined the properties of one of the forms by itself or (b) examined the correlation between scales that were constructed on an a priori basis to distinguish different forms of social anxiety (e.g., Buss, 1980; Leary, in press). Thus, the forms proposed here must be viewed tentatively until more evidence is accumulated.

Implications for Counseling As noted at the outset of this article, social anxiety constitutes a personal problem for a high percentage of the population, and a large number of people who seek professional

counseling do so because they experience what they perceive to be a high degree of anxiety in certain social situations. Most of the approaches employed by practitioners who deal with socially anxious individuals may be classified into one of three models— social skills training, self-reevaluation techniques, and systematic desensitization—all of which have been demonstrated to be successful in particular cases (see Leary, 1982).

However, the present conceptualization suggests that all cases of chronic social anxiety do not arise for precisely the same reasons for all individuals, although the precipitating factors will always involve concerns with how one is appearing to others. Consequently, careful attention to the specific nature of a client's self-presentational concerns should enhance treatment effectiveness in counseling settings. These concerns may be divided into at least four general problem areas: (a) inadequate social skills, including not knowing the appropriate rules and rituals, (b) misperceptions of social adequacy, (c) unrealistically high standards, and (d) overconcern about interpersonal evaluations.

Social anxiety often arises from an accurately perceived social skills deficit: The individual is unable to interact effectively with others, comes across poorly in social interactions, and knows it. In these cases, skills training (e.g., Bellack & Hersen, 1979; Curran, 1977; Galassi & Galassi, 1979; Twentyman & McFall, 1975) would be the treatment of choice. Treatment might focus on either information acquisition, response acquisition, or response facilitation, depending on the extent of the client's skill deficit (Bandura, 1969; Bellack & Hersen, 1979; Curran, 1977). Successful therapy would consist of allowing the client to acquire (e.g., through observation of models) and practice (e.g., role playing) needed social behaviors and to develop enhanced beliefs in his or her ability to interact effectively.

Curran, Wallander, and Fischetti (1980) showed that socially anxious individuals can be identified on the basis of whether they 4

Buss (1980) distinguished four forms of social anxiety: shyness (comparable to what we have called interaction anxiety), audience anxiety, embarrassment, and shame.

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actually demonstrate clear deficits in social skills that they accurately perceive or show good social skills but underestimate their social abilities. Skills training should be effective only for the former group. Those without demonstrable skill problems but who misperceive their abilities should benefit most from procedures aimed at convincing them they are socially adequate individuals who generally make good impressions on others.

They may have suffered a history of unsatisfactory encounters with hypercritical friends or family, or may have otherwise come to misperceive the skills they possess. Cognitive restructuring (Kanter & Goldfriend, 1979; Malkiewich & Merluzzi, 1980) and procedures designed to modify negative self-statements (Glass, Gottman, & Shmurak, 1976; Rehm & Marston, 1968) have been shown to be effective in reducing social anxiety and enhancing interpersonal effectiveness, but should work best for this group of individuals. A number of existing procedures, including social successes under therapist supervision, vicarious experience through modeling, verbal instruction, and so forth, seem effective in increasing perceptions of self-efficacy (Bandura, 1977).

A related problem occurs when people set unrealistically high personal standards for assessing social performance, so that they seldom feel satisfied with their interpersonal behavior or how they are regarded by others, even when they recognize that they are receiving approval (Bandura, 1969). Here, therapy should be aimed at repudiating the unrealistic standards and substituting more manageable ones.

Other socially anxious individuals may experience problems because they are overconcerned with how they are regarded by others. People who are high in the need for approval or the fear of negative evaluation, for example, may simply be too motivated to make a favorable impression on others.

They may be motivated to impress nearly everyone with whom they interact, including others whose evaluations should (objectively) cause them little concern, or they may be overly motivated to impress particular audiences because they overestimate the effect of their behaviors on others' reactions (e.g., "She'll hate me tonight if I'm not an abso-

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lutely charming date") or the importance of others' reactions for their own lives (e.g., "I'll just die if he doesn't like me").

Ellis and Harper (1975) suggested that the belief that one must obtain love and approval from others is one of the primary irrational ideas that interferes with anxiety-free living.

One aim of rational emotive therapy is to lead the client to relinguish dire needs for social approval and forego the goal of obtaining acceptance for its own sake. Such an approach may be especially effective for socially anxious clients who are overly motivated to make favorable impressions.

In sum, although we propose that all instances of social anxiety arise from self-presentational concerns, a wide variety of situational and dispositional factors may precipitate such concerns for different individuals.

Therapists should carefully examine clients' typical modes of interaction, their sophistication in appreciating the rules of social interaction, their perceptions of how they are regarded, their standards, and the types of situations that typically produce anxiety for them in order to elucidate the nature of the self-presentational problem. Treatment can then be tailored. The hypothesis that treatments for social anxiety should be matched to the locus of the specific self-presentational problem in order to achieve maximal effectiveness warrants future investigation.

Summary We have proposed that social anxiety is a construct applied to describe a constellation of cognitive and affective experiences that result from the prospect of interpersonal evaluation in real or imagined social situations. Associated with it are a variety of reactions, including withdrawal (either physical or cognitive), feelings of inferiority, selfpreoccupation, and reduced self-monitoring and control.

Social anxiety indicates a perceived threat to the identities of those who experience it, since it reflects concerns about how they are regarded in social life. As such, it is a manifestation of a perceived self-presentational problem. Socially anxious individuals do not perceive themselves capable of controlling, in the fashion they desire, the impression-rel-

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evant reactions of others. Their impressionrelevant outcome expectancies are low, and they perceive a discrepancy between their standards and their social performances or outcomes. Social anxiety occurs in real or imagined social situations when people are motivated to make a particular impression on others but doubt they will do so.

Situational, dispositional, and audience factors that affect the motivation to impress others and the likelihood of doing so affect social anxiety. Individual differences in social anxiousness are proposed to arise from personal characteristics of individuals that influence the degree to which they are motivated to impress others and perceive self-presentational difficulties. Further, once people have labeled themselves as "socially anxious" they become more likely to exhibit anxiety across a wide range of social situations.

The self-presentation approach to social anxiety provides an integrative conceptual view of the phenomenon by adopting a social-psychological perspective, one that roots the genesis of the experience in the social interaction process itself. The approach specifies both the antecedents of the experience and the behavioral responses to self-presentational concerns and is consistent with the existing research on anxiety in general and social anxiety in particular. In addition, the approach contains numerous implications for counseling situations, especially the recommendation that treatments be tailored to the specific type of self-presentational problem encountered by people seeking help.

Reference Notes 1. Jones, W. H., & Russell, D. Shyness and mood slates: A trail-situation analysis. Paper presented at the meeting of the Southwestern Psychological Association, Houston, 1981.

2. Leavy, P. Situational and dispositional antecedents of shyness. Unpublished honor's thesis. University of Florida, 1980.

3. Jones, W. H.,& Russell, D. The social reticence scale: An objective instrument to measure shyness. Unpublished manuscript, University of Tulsa, 1981.

4. Framing, W. J., &. Brody, L. R. Public self-consciousness, social anxiety, and audience familiarity. Unpublished manuscript, University of Florida, 1981.

5. Leary, M. R., & Dobbins, S. E. Social anxiety, sexual behavior, and contraceptive use. Unpublished manuscript, Denison University, 1982.

6. Snyder, C. R. Personal communication, 1981.

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Received September 30, 1981 •

GIRLS WILL BE GIRLS: DISCOURSE, POSTSTRUCTURALIST FEMINISM, AND MEDIA PRESENTATIONS OF WOMEN

by Amanda Soza

A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Communication Boise State University

May 2014

© 2014 Amanda Soza ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

BOISE STATE UNIVERSITY GRADUATE COLLEGE

DEFENSE COMMITTEE AND FINAL READING APPROVALS of the thesis submitted by

Amanda Soza

Thesis Title:

Girls will be Girls: Discourse, Poststructuralist Feminism, and Media Presentations of Women

Date of Final Oral Examination:

19 March 2014

The following individuals read and discussed the thesis submitted by student Amanda Soza and they evaluated her presentation and response to questions during the final oral examination.

They found that the student passed the final oral examination.

John McClellan, Ph.D.

Chair, Supervisory Committee

Natalie Nelson-Marsh, Ph.D.

Member, Supervisory Committee

Julie Lane, Ph.D.

Member, Supervisory Committee

The final reading approval of the thesis was granted by John McClellan, Ph.D., Chair of the Supervisory Committee. The thesis was approved for the Graduate College by John R. Pelton, Ph.D., Dean of the Graduate College.

ACKNOWLDGEMENTS

I could have not completed this thesis without the help of my advisor, Dr. John McClellan, who has been a constant source of guidance and direction since my undergraduate coursework. I also acknowledge my thesis committee members, Dr. Natalie Nelson-Marsh and Dr. Julie Lane, for their support and advice throughout this process, as well as Dr. Ed McLuskie, Dr. erin mclellan, Dr. Seth Ashley, Dr. Manda Hicks, and Dr. Heidi Reeder who all made a great impact on how I look at the world and consider communication.

I also want to acknowledge the continued support and friendship of my graduate colleagues who have made my time in this program memorable and extraordinary: Tabitha Simenc, Saša Kampic, Teresa Kunz, Norell Conroy, Kristine Bingham Ellis, Josh Schlaich, Kinzi Poteet, and Jim Wolfe. I would especially like to mention my colleague Jared Kopczynski, who has been a great friend and writing partner throughout graduate school.

This thesis could have not come together without Lena Dunham and Judd Apatow who provide Girls with interesting and provocative content. I would also like to thank my family and my closest friend, Jordan DeChenne, for their encouragement and support throughout this process.

iv

ABSTRACT

This study examines presentations of women in the media through Foucauldian critical discourse analysis in order to explore dominant ideas of gender and femininity embedded within D/discourses that constrain the lived experiences of women.

Specifically, this study explores the television show Girls as a text presenting particular knowledge of femininity. By engaging in an interpretive analysis of the ways femininity is presented in both public and private presentations of gender in Girls, I reveal how women make sense of past and negotiate future public performances of femininity in private. Further, I deconstruct a specific scene of Girls to reveal hidden meanings of femininity and expose how performing docility conforms with normalized expectations of being a woman. This study uses a poststructural feminist lens to critically inspect the suppressed meanings of gender within the text of Girls and offers hope for opening up multiple meanings of femininity within the D/discourses of gender and media.

v

TABLE OF CONTENTS

ACKNOWLDGEMENTS ....................................................................................................... iv ABSTRACT .............................................................................................................................. v INTRODUCTION .................................................................................................................... 1 REVIEW OF LITERATURE ................................................................................................... 3 Discourse: Talk, Texts, and Enduring Systems of Thought ......................................... 4 Critical Discourse: Discourse and Power/Knowledge .................................................. 8 Social and Historical Meanings ........................................................................ 8 Knowledge and Power ...................................................................................... 9 The Discourse of Poststructuralism and Gendered Subjectivities .............................. 13 Gender, Discourse, and the Media .............................................................................. 18 Discourse and Media................................................................................................... 20 The Media as a D/discourse ............................................................................ 21 The Media and Power/Knowledge.................................................................. 22 The Media and Gendered Subjectivities ......................................................... 24 METHODS ............................................................................................................................. 27 Foucauldian Critical Discourse Analysis .................................................................... 29 Interpretation ............................................................................................................... 32 Deconstruction ............................................................................................................ 33 Girls ............................................................................................................................ 35

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Girls as a Text ............................................................................................................. 38 Interpretation of Text .................................................................................................. 38 Deconstruction of Text ............................................................................................... 40 FINDINGS .............................................................................................................................. 42 Interpretive Findings of Femininity ............................................................................ 43 Girls in Public ............................................................................................................. 44 Sexually Confident yet Dependent ................................................................. 45 Silenced Voices ............................................................................................... 54 Girls in Private ............................................................................................................ 58 Questioning Femininity .................................................................................. 59 Voicing Opinions ............................................................................................ 65 Staging the Public in Private ....................................................................................... 78 Deconstructing Girls ................................................................................................... 88 Love Is a Strategic Game ................................................................................ 91 Docile Bodies Win the Game ......................................................................... 94 Real Women Are Docile Objects.................................................................... 96 Resistance to the Docile “Lady”? ................................................................... 98 DISCUSSION ....................................................................................................................... 102 D/discourse and Presentations of Femininity ........................................................... 103 Media as a D/discourse ............................................................................................. 107 Implications and Conclusion..................................................................................... 110 REFERENCES ..................................................................................................................... 117

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1

INTRODUCTION

Women are in a bind. Throughout Western history patriarchy has continued to serve the interests of men and suppress those of women. Many feminist scholars have showed how women are continually suppressed by ways we come to know ourselves in relation to the ways we have organized our world. For instance, Ashcraft and Mumby (2004), Trethewey (1999), Calas and Smircich (1991), Sotirin and Gottfried (1999), and Martin (1990) along with others study the marginalization of women in the workplace.

However, many of these effects fall on interpersonal and organizational level contexts without much concern for the role of media in this problem. Since “The problem of mass communication is its domination as a supplier of knowledge and its pervasiveness as a producer of social realities” (Hardt, 2004, p.133), I argue that the role of the media must be considered as an issue of the marginalization of women. Throughout the short history of mass media, the role of women within media organization and presented through media have been sequestered. Since women were absent in this field, presentations of women and about women were always in relation to men and often “the content of the media distorts women’s status in the social world” (Tuchman, 1979, p. 531). The media, and specifically scripted entertainment television programming, which I will continue to refer as entertainment media, create and (re)produce meanings of gender that can become naturalized and normative. Subjectivities of gender are then constrained. As Weedon (1997) asserts,

2 Gendered subject positions are constituted in various ways: by images of how one is expected to look and behave and by rules of behavior to which one should conform which are reinforced by approval or punishment, through particular definitions of pleasure which are offered as natural and imply ways of being a girl or woman, and by the absence within particular discourses of any possibility of negotiating the nature of femininity and masculinity. (p. 95) By studying the media with a concern for gender, interpretation and deconstruction of media presentations of femininity can be helpful to de-naturalize language and open up room for multiple meanings to be made. In this study, I first present relevant literature on the subjects of discourse, critical discourse, and poststructuralism with a concern for gender issues in society. I then make an argument that the media can be seen as a relevant issue related to the concern of poststructuralist feminist scholars interested in discourse. By defining the media as a realm of discourse, I study how entertainment media simultaneously enables and constrains the identities of women. Specifically, by studying one popular television program, Girls, and employing methods of Foucauldian critical discourse analysis, interpretation, and deconstruction I explore the complexities of discourse, gender, and media to expose the constitution of gendered subjectivities in society.

3

REVIEW OF LITERATURE

Over the past few decades, communication scholars have become increasingly interested in the concept of discourse. Foucault (1972, 1980) investigates discourses by looking at historical regulations of particular discourses such as sexuality and looks into the knowledge and power that is embedded within discourses. Hall (1997) asserts that the world as individuals experience it is created through language. To Hall and Foucault, language orders and organizes the world in particular ways, which produces the objects of knowledge. By understanding language, understandings of the world and experiences in the world can be meaningfully talked and reasoned about. Realities are constructed through language, which Hall, including the ideas of Foucault, describes as a discourse that produces a system of representation. Knowledge of the self and the self in relation to the world emerges in common forms of talk, text, and social practice. Individuals come to know themselves in certain ways based on the available discourses. If a discourse is not available, an individual will not come know him or herself in that particular way (Foucault, 1978, Weedon, 1997). Discourses thus arrange and normalize the social world and social practices (Alvesson & Kärreman, 2000).

While Alvesson and Kärreman (2000) state that the field of discourse is so diverse that what discourse means can change from scholar to scholar, they offer a model of discourse that extends from micro/local contexts to grand/mega Discourses. Fairhurst and Putnam (2004) elaborate on this idea and include three orientations to discourse: object,

4 becoming, and grounded in action. Specifically, the grounded in action orientation attempts to view micro and macro discourses as in conjunction with one another and states that meanings form and emerge in interactions. In other words, micro discourses and macro Discourses are mutually constitutive in the meaning-making process. This perspective of discourse is a useful lens for investigating issues of power and gendered subjectivity and can be extended to examine how the media (re)presents gender in terms of discourses.

In order to study the ways television entertainment media influence (enable and constrain) gendered subjectivities with a strong focus on discourse, I first review discourse as a lens to viewing the world through language and embedded systems of meaning. I then add a critical perspective to discourse as a way to aid in seeing enmeshed power/knowledge relations that are a part of discourse. I follow with a review of poststructuralism to refine discourse in terms subject positions and gender/femininity.

This literature provides a backdrop to re-introduce television media in terms of discourse, power/knowledge relations, and how media presentations are potentially problematic for presentations of women within the realm of entertainment media.

Discourse: Talk, Texts, and Enduring Systems of Thought Discourse is usually understood as talk, texts, and social practices along with the larger meaning systems that guide the way a specific society uses language to make meanings and coordinate collective action. According to Alvesson and Kärreman (2000), there are two ways to understand discourse and the theory that guides it. The first is language and the second is meaning/knowledge. Language and meaning/knowledge are two separate subsets of the same point, both guide each other in a system of meaning

5 making (Alvesson & Kärreman, 2000). Similarly, Fairhurst and Putnam (2004) explain language and meaning as two types of discourse. Everyday talk, texts, and social practices (language) are one type of discourse. The larger ideas and meanings behind our talk and texts (meaning/knowledge) are considered enduring systems of thought and are another type of discourse. Alvesson and Kärreman (2000) label the two branches of discourse, “d” discourse for everyday talk and text, and “D” Discourse for enduring systems of thought that guide and are embedded in everyday talk and texts. I will continue to refer to these two meanings of discourse by using a lowercase discourse for talk and text and a capitalized Discourse for large-scale system of meanings.

Fairhurst and Putnam (2004) expand on Alvesson and Kärreman’s (2000) separation between discourse and Discourse to describe discourse as the talk, texts, and social practices individuals engage in routinely. Talk refers to the active process of conversations, greetings, and interactions. Texts are more concrete than talk is. Letters, books, video, pictures, clothing, and almost anything that can be considered locatable represent texts. Texts can also be seen as the “done” of conversations. Anything that can be referred back to can be considered a text. Taylor, Cooren, Giroux, and Robichaud (1996) explain texts as the “matter” of conversation. Social practices can be considered the everyday, mundane interactions and practices that are part of the social world.

Meeting someone for the first time, buying an item from the market, and saying goodbye are all social practices that can be considered part of a discourse. Again, when being studied, talk and social practices, which are fleeting moments, turn into a text that can be examined multiple times and returned to. Many scholars have studied talk and social practices as texts. For instance, Horan (2011) analyses texts to interpret how women

6 instrumentalize gender to construct identities. Prividera and Howard (2006) examine the interconnectedness of gender and race in representations of women in the military as seen through interviews and reports on news media. Foucault (1978) studies the texts surrounding the discourse of sexuality. Studying texts becomes useful for exploring the power and value that is enmeshed within practices of language use. Language orders the social world, looking at language through texts can expose the larger Discourse and power relations behind discourses. Talk, texts, and social practices make up discourse and are continually being created.

The other aspect of this theory is Discourse, which have been labeled enduring systems of thought or large-scale systems of meaning. Alvesson and Kärreman (2000) label Discourse as “the stuff beyond the text functioning as a powerful ordering force” (p.

1127). As such, gender, capitalism, freedom, and democracy among many other ideas can all be regarded as Discourses. These ideas guide the way in which individuals talk, and in turn, talk is consistently re-creating and transforming the meanings that are part of a Discourse. Discourses order the world in particular ways that become naturalized and normal (Fairhurst & Putnam, 2004; Foucault, 1972). By naturalizing the world, particular Discourses drive individual’s subjectivity, sense of self, feelings, thoughts, and orientations to the world (Alvesson & Kärreman, 2000). In this view of Discourse, the establishment of power/knowledge is made consistent and normalized. Discourses enable individuals to know and act in the world in specific ways, this knowledge can be enabling and at the same time constraining. Discourse structures society and social practices, and it is here that discourse shapes and creates knowledge of the world and how to live in it. To reveal Discourses, scholars look to texts. Privedera and Howard (2006) look at media

7 texts in order to gain insight into the Discourses of gender and nationalism. Wang (2012) looked at texts to see the embedded meanings of motherhood.

Taking a “grounded in action” approach to Discourse/discourse offered by Fairhurst and Putnam (2004) to fully understand how Discourse is enacted, one needs to understand and look to discourse, because each aids in informing the other. This orientation to discourse offers a way to understand the interrelatedness of discourse and Discourse, which declares that Discourse/discourse are mutually constitutive. Discourse shapes the way individuals talk and the social practices they may engage in. In turn, that talk and engagement can continually reshape, reconstruct, and possibly transform the Discourses that institutionalize society. “Through crafting and recrafting… discourse, … [individuals] shape the very institutions that shape them” (p. 17). I propose using the term D/discourse as a way to represent the simultaneity of discourse and Discourse. Alvesson and Kärreman (2000) state that discourse “affects, (frames)” Discourse (p. 1131). Both D/discourses are being represented and used in an all-embracing fashion. D/discourse is everywhere and continually being created, recreated, and changed. D/discourse shapes the order and knowledge individuals have about the world. Understanding D/discourse as mutually constitutive informs how many realms of D/discourse play out in the social world. Taking a grounded in action orientation is useful in understanding the Discourse of gender. Not only is gender enacted through language, practices, and texts but it is also informed by larger ideas on how women should be and how men should be. This mutually constitutive approach is needed for studying D/discourses of gender because it offers a comprehensive vantage point for investigating meanings that emerge from D/discourses.

8 Critical Discourse: Discourse and Power/Knowledge Various scholars studying discourse take a critical perspective with an interest in the relationship between power and discourse. For instance Hall (1997), embracing the ideas of Foucault, states, “discourse is concerned with the production of knowledge and meaning…discourse produces the objects of knowledge and nothing which is meaningful exists outside discourse” (p. 44). Two themes of critical discourse emerge in the literature; the social and historical meanings that individuals inherit from the past, and the relationship of power/knowledge in regards to discourse, and both are related to how meanings become a normative force and are naturalized as a result of power, domination, and hegemony.

Social and Historical Meanings Throughout history, specific discourses had social and historical meanings that were created to serve other purposes and people at the time (Foucault, 1980). Not only do these meanings serve particular interests in history, these meanings endure and individuals are born into pre-existing meanings and inherit them from birth. At the same time meanings can enable certain knowledge, it also suppresses other knowledge from being known. Privileging one meaning over another normalizes knowledge of a subject (Weedon, 1997). For example, Foucault (1978) calls attention to the history of the discourses of sex and sexuality. Foucault asserts that in the Victorian bourgeoisie the discourse of sex and sexuality were open and public. An open discourse stood with the subject of sex, “it was a period when bodies ‘made a display of themselves’” (p. 3). After this, family consumed sexuality and the discourse of sex was one in the same with reproduction. The discourse on sex was naturalized to that of the family and the private

9 bedroom. No longer was it appropriate for sexuality and sex to be discussed publicly.

Discussion of sex in the public sphere was repressed, and Foucault suggests that the repression of sex coincides with that of capitalism. If sex is repressed, it is because it does not occur simultaneously with that of labor. When labor is being highly organized and valued, it is impractical to push a discourse forward that welcomes pursuits of pleasure.

The meanings that were created by repressing sex serve particular interests, capitalism.

By making sex a forbidden subject, and only acceptable in matters of reproduction, it became normal and natural to treat sex in that way. It created a “sameness” in society. It also created a constraining discourse for people who did not abide by the normal discourse. The discourse of sex and sexuality was constraining and at the same time enabling. It enabled a society to focus and value labor, which built structures, created objects to benefit society, and advanced the quality of living. It also constrained an entire population to be suppressed and to treat something that was once thought of as natural as now abnormal, strange, and isolated. The privileging of meanings aids in a naturalization of knowledge. Dominate meanings become invisible, unquestioned, and the normal way in which to act and think. When meanings are not questioned, they become hidden. Prividera and Howard (2006) state that the power of a discourse to naturalize language, knowledge, and meanings resides in invisibility, which connects knowledge with power.

Knowledge and Power Many who embrace critical perspectives follow Foucault’s (1970, 1980) work equating power with knowledge. There are particular ways of coming to know something and each way of knowing is power-laded. It enables and constrains individuals in certain

10 ways and organizes our knowledge about the world. The flaw with an ordered way of knowing is that one does not notice how they are ordered. The order becomes invisible because it becomes naturalized and transformed into a common sense understanding of the world. Foucault (1980) conceptualizes power as a system that is enacted through everyone but not localized in any individual, aiding in the naturalization of meanings.

Foucault (1970) calls for finding out how order and structure came to be the way it did by introducing the four similitudes, or forms of resemblance, that are traditional ways people come to know. Foucault’s four forms of resemblance are: convenientia, aemulatio, analogy, and sympathies. Convenientia, aemulatio, and analogy relate things based in proximity, similarity, or a reflection of likeness. Sympathy has the ability to transform or alter the identity, and create and maintain sameness in things. The four similitudes act as a knowledge structure that creates and maintains sameness within the world. Foucault states that knowledge in the forms of resemblance comes from discovering and interpreting their “signatures” or their sign, symbol, mark, or language (Lindlof & Taylor, 2011). Signatures make things visible whereas resemblance keeps them hidden or invisible. “Resemblance was the invisible form of that, which from the depths of the world, make things visible; but in order that this form may be brought out into the light in its turn there must be a visible figure that will draw it out from its profound invisibility” (Foucault, 1970, p. 26). It is both the resemblance and the signature that form what is known. The ability to know something depends on knowing the words (signature) capable of expressing a certain knowledge. Therefore, we know the world through language. Language creates a break of subject/object; it keeps things together, separate, and creates ways of knowing things as the same and/or different. In this,

11 language equals an ordered knowledge, which also equals a mode of being or doing in the world (Foucault, 1970, 1972; Lindlof & Taylor, 2011). Individuals are born into a society where these knowledge structures exist, and once people come to know themselves in a particular way that has been naturalized by a discourse, they also come to know the world and themselves in relation to that world. Consequently, “Knowledge is always inextricably enmeshed in relations of power because it was always being applied to the regulation of social conduct in practice” (Hall, 1997, p. 47). When language is regarded as the creator of knowledge and knowledge as a carrier of meanings, it also carries the power to enable and constrain human possibilities. This way of understanding can have consequences for how we study relationships between discourse and gender that directs attention toward gendered subjectivities.

Ashcraft and Mumby (2004) assert that discourse constitutes gender. Gender is sometimes overlooked for something individuals have but not something that individuals are actively “doing” together. Providing four frames in which discourse relates to organizing and gender, Ashcraft and Mumby explain that the discourse of gender organizes and (dis)organizes meaning structures that hold power to individuals. “Women and men ‘do gender’ in various settings, ‘crafting selves’ that (re)produce and/or resist gender difference and relations of power through…discourse” (p. 10). The knowledge of one’s gendered self is actively co-constructed through discourse and inherited through D/discourse. Trethewey (1999) states that women learn a feminine mode of being well before they are aware of it. “Not only do women learn to ‘throw like a girl,’ they also learn to sit, stand, walk, tilt their heads… and comport themselves like a girl….women’s bodies are socialized into moving in a feminine…manner” (p. 424). To Trethewey, the

12 Discourse of femininity is to be fragile, immobile, and domesticated. Thus, acting in a free and open fashion reads masculinity and opens a female up to objectification. Sotirin and Gottfried (1999) study the control and resistance of secretaries and state that the D/discourse of a secretary is enmeshed in power relations that position a secretary as a white, heterosexual, middle-class woman (p. 59). Women who identify with the discursive realm of “secretary” are usually identified by the idea of secretary and not the material condition that they are placed. Thus, it is the knowledge of professionalism or of a particular role in society that becomes enabling and constraining.

D/discourse orders the world and the way society functions within that world in particular ways that can become natural and unquestionable. While Foucault (1972) argues that nothing can have meaning without discourse, Wodak and Meyer (2009) explain that through discourse, people create both a social and material reality. The world is filled with many objects and individuals can only have knowledge of these objects if they have meaning attached to them. This meaning arises from the discourse, not the objects themselves (Hall, 1997). When it is realized that D/discourse creates knowledge, and that knowledge is inextricably related to power, it can be more fully understood how discourse and Discourse work together simultaneously to normalize power relations in society. Discourses like gender and sexuality can only be meaningful within the discourse about them. Foucault claims that it is only within a specific discursive formation that Discourses could appear as a meaningful construct. Thus, a critical discursive view on gender is helpful in locating the normative force of D/discourse. A poststructuralist viewpoint can further reveal how D/discourses are marginalizing and constraining for women by attending to issues of identity and subject positions.

13 The Discourse of Poststructuralism and Gendered Subjectivities Poststructuralism is utilized as a way to conceptualize the relationship of discourse, social institutions, subjectivities, and focuses on how power is exercised and the opportunity to open up room for change. The common focus for scholars studying poststructuralism in on language (Weedon, 1997). “Language is the place where actual and possible forms of social organization and their likely social and political consequences are defined and contested. Yet it is also the place where our sense of ourselves, or subjectivity is constructed” (p. 21). Language is part of a D/discourse and subjectivities are a subject position within a discourse. To Foucault (1978, 1980), subjectivities and subject positions are defined when an individual locates him or herself in the position of a particular discourse and thus become ‘subjected’ to that discourse’s meanings, knowledge, and power. Subjectivity is produced within a wide range of available discourses. Individuals will orient themselves in different subject positions within the same discourse. It is within language and discourse that meanings are a constant site of struggle over the power to make a meaning become the dominant meaning. According to Trethewey (1999), poststructuralism asserts subjectivity as site of friction. This friction and conflict is both enabling and constraining, and part of the process of change while upholding the status quo.

The idea of subjectivity is complex. Typically, “Subjectivity is used to refer to the conscious and unconscious thoughts and emotions of the individual, her sense of herself and her ways of understanding her relation to the world” (Weedon, 1997, p. 32).

According to poststructuralism, subjectivity is constantly being negotiated, constituted, and reconstituted in discourse every time an individual thinks or speaks. Martin (1990)

14 studies subject positions of women within stories and claims that multiple meanings and interpretations can be made from a subject position. Again, subject positions refer to a position within a discourse that is both subject to and subjected by the meanings, knowledge, and power of the discourse. However, it is regularly the site of conflicting forms of subjectivity that come from conflicting D/discourses and positions within those D/discourses. D/discourses in this sense are competing ways of giving meaning, organizing society, and offering a range of modes of being within a D/discourse. Since D/discourses are competing for meaning, not all will be regarded as equal. D/discourses will become dominant and hegemonic while others are marginalized and treated as unimportant. These D/discourses have continually being created and (re)created throughout history, from the Victorian age to women’s suffrage, individuals inherited D/discourses through birth. Individuals are born into a society where structure and order already exists. These structures are grounded in experience and create a common sense understanding of the world. Common sense understandings of the world tell people how to act and what is natural, true, or normal for a boy, girl, woman, or man. This leads to a struggle over fixed meanings of gender roles to become naturalized. “In the language of poststrucuralism this can be described as a battle for the signified—a struggle to fix meaning temporarily on behalf of particular power relations and social interests. This fixing of the signifier ‘woman’ or ‘man’ relies on the simultaneous fixing of subjectivity in a particular discourse” (Weedon, 1997, p. 95). “Common sense” tells society what is normal and language distinguishes and gives meaning to what is accepted as normal and what isn’t. The power of common sense comes from its claim to be obvious, unquestionable and therefore true. “It looks to ‘human nature’ to guarantee its version of

15 reality. It is the medium through which already fixed ‘truths’ about the world, society, and individuals are expressed” (p. 74). These truths are expressed through realms of discourse such as the education system and the media, where young girls become discussed as compliant and docile, while young boys are known to be rowdy and adventurous. Not only does this discourse carry on through childhood, but it also sets up future social dynamics within patriarchal societies. The concern with fitting in to a socially defined and accepted “normal” guides society to accept dominate meaning formations, such as current views on gender and femininity.

According to Weedon (1997), women often find themselves subject to dominant definitions of femininity that do not align with the ways in which they define their interests as women. When meanings become fixed in society, it creates a natural way of being female within a D/discourse, however it is also possible for more than one subject position to be offered from a D/discourse. There can be no control without resistance.

Foucault (1978) states that while there may be a dominant subject position within a D/discourse, there will always be other subject positions implied and the possibility of reversal. Reverse discourse aims to speak on its own behalf and for the subjectivities, which it gives meaning to. It also demands that to be recognized as natural it often redefines and represents the subject position in the ways in which it was marginalized in the first place. (p. 101). Foucault (1978) calls competing discourses “tactical elements or blocks operating in the field of force relations” (p. 107). Force relations are relations of power that are embedded and organized in certain forms in society through class, gender, race, and age. Social institutions such as the media allow for certain subject positions to be privileged over others. However, D/discourses allow for alternative subject positions

16 to exist and resist the dominant subject positions. For D/discourses to allow for an area of resistance, it has to at least be in transmission. For resistance to occur, the discourse has to be available and knowable. Without an alternative discourse, individuals could not know alternative meanings or be able to resist dominant meaning systems, even if the discourse is marginalized and in conflict with dominant meanings of gender and femininity. “Discourse transmits and produces power; it reinforces it but it also undermines and exposes it, renders it fragile and makes it possible to thwart it” (Foucault, 1978, p. 101).

Although language and subjectivity have historically been acknowledged through common sense understandings of the world, these understandings are far from homogenous. If language transmits knowledge of the world and how individuals fit into the world, the problem is that it consistently appeals to experience. The typical ways one comes to understand him/herself is the problem. There is a need to reconsider how individuals came to know themselves in the first place. What is meaningful to an individual depends on the D/discourses available and how those D/discourses assist in interpreting the world for that individual. “The plurality of ways of interpreting experience ensures that interest groups put a great deal of energy, time and money into promoting certain views of the world. Masculinity and femininity are cases in point” (Weedon, 1997, p. 76). To maintain a dominant D/discourse, other D/discourses that give meaning and understanding are marginalized and treated as unnatural or unimportant.

Language does not reflect common sense and experience; experience and common sense are constituted in language. Since there are many ways to interpret meaning, there cannot be one fixed meaning that constitutes truth. At best, any interpretation made is temporary,

17 comes from the D/discourses that produce it, and open to opposition. When women oppose a particular subjectivity within the D/discourse of gender, it is done from another subject position within the D/discourse of gender. As Weedon explains, “Everything we do signifies compliance or resistance to dominant norms of what it is to be a woman” (p.

83). The types of subjectivity open to individuals privilege certain power structures in society such as science, common sense, religion, and rationality. All of these benefit “truth” and a patriarchal society. If language is a site where meaning is created, then it is also the site where alternate meanings can be made and possibilities for change can occur.

Foucault (1978) asserts that when one speaks he/she assumes a subject position within a D/discourse and becomes subjected to the power of that D/discourse. He contends that the confessional operates through a speaking subject comes to know him or herself through reflection of the D/discourse. The confessional mode is the form in which subjectification and power takes place (Weedon, 1997). When individuals confess and consent to a subject position, they are enabling/constraining themselves to a particular mode of being. Nadesan (1997) declares that dominant D/discourses are put into place and confession is a practice individuals use to relate, fit in, and become realized within society. Normalized views of gender and subjectivity address “individuals’ heightened insecurities about their identities and their abilities to meet the standards of institutional judgment” (p. 208); thus, when confessing, the individual becomes a subject of a normalized D/discourse. For feminist scholars, this is often seen as a discourse of patriarchy embedded in ways we come to know society and the self as a woman within

18 society. The media plays a significant role in helping to constitute the ways individuals come to know gender.

Gender, Discourse, and the Media Feminist scholars are often interested in the discourse of patriarchy, which is embedded in the ways individuals come to know society, the world, and the self as gendered in relation to society. In regards to discourse, many scholars study how gender and discourse are related. For instance, gender identities constructed in organizations have been studied by numerous scholars including Trethewey (1999), Nadesan (1997), Collinson (1988), and Dougherty (2006). While these studies reveal the relation between gender and discourse, the media is rarely a focus of interest. In the same regards, many scholars have studied the relationship of gender and media.

Tuchman (1979) studied the representation of women in the media and sexism that is prevalent in the media. Tuchman (1978, 1979) suggested that television neglects to focus on woman’s experiences and focus women as a man’s silent and docile counterpart.

In the early days of television women were shown in very particular ways: “Ads continue to portray women in the home and men outside it” (Tuchman, 1979, p. 532). The sequestered images of women presented on mass media were reflected in the limited positions of power women could hold in various media organizations. Men dominated roles such as producers, executives, writers, directors, and creators. Men’s voices were being heard and produced in the media, which left little room to present femininity in various ways (Tuchman, 1979). McCraken (1993) studied women’s magazines and how young women are taught to be both childish and sexually alluring though messages and meanings created in magazines, again this presentation of femininity focuses on women’s

19 relationships to men and does not focus on women’s lived experiences. Other media scholars have studied the portrayal of femininity as well, such as Bogt, Engels, Bogers, and Kloosterman (2010), as well as Behm-Morawitz and Mastro (2008) who study adolescent gender stereotypes in the media. Similarly, Zeiger (1996) reviewed media images of motherhood during times of war and the construction of gender identity.

Although there is a breadth of media studies focused on gender and the presentation of women, D/discourse is rarely focused on or used as a method to examine both the language and texts presented through media, and the power-laden assumptions that are embedded within the texts. In this study, I aim to bring a D/discourse perspective to extend the study of issues related to gender and television media further by investigating presentations of femininity.

This study specifically focuses on how D/discourse and television entertainment media co-construct meanings of gender and subjectivities. This study thus focuses on gender in the form of femininity from a poststructuralist viewpoint in a way that interconnects media and D/discourse. Specifically, this study embraces a grounded in action orientation to D/discourse that views discourse and Discourse as mutually constitutive, a critical discourse perspective to recognize how meanings are enmeshed in power/knowledge relations that become normalized and natural and contribute to reality production, and finally a poststructuralist view of gendered subjectivities. I reconsider entertainment media as a D/discourse and argue that discursive approaches to entertainment can reveal complex ways the media contributes to gendered subjectivities.

Specifically, I study scripted television to other forms of entertainment media due the ways in which television presents ideas, images, and information about femininity.

20 Television is a unique form of media to explore these issues. A television show is reoccurring and presents ideas that have the ability to become maintained and normalized. When one character is presented the same way every week, knowledge of that character and how it relates to how media viewers know the world and the self in relation to the world. Television also has multiple ways it presents gender. First, when the characters talk and interact with each other, viewers see everyday interactions and may internalize them. This sets television apart from magazines since television is constantly in motion. Television is also much more than the characters on screen. Everything that fits within the frame of a television screen has been planned out and anticipated. The wardrobe, set location, lighting, camera angles, and props are all mediums of how gender is presented and further sets television apart from other entertainment mediums. As such, scripted entertainment television, which I will refer to as entertainment media, has many discursive elements that need to be considered when exploring media and gender.

Discourse and Media D/discourse is useful in understanding how meanings are created and maintained.

By studying D/discourse, one can understand power, knowledge, gendered subjectivities, and identity. I expand the study of discourse to the realm of media and reinterpret media as D/discourse. Weedon (1997) asserts that the media is a realm of discourse. The media pushes certain discourses and suppresses other discourses. This enables certain meanings to be made while suppressing others. Media also draws on large-scale systems of thought to aid in meaning making for their viewers. Examining how the media is both a discourse and Discourse will aid in understanding how the media creates knowledge of the world that carries power over gendered identities.

21 The Media as a D/discourse Media and particularly entertainment can be considered a discourse as well as a Discourse. First, entertainment media fits into a discourse by the qualities in which it tells stories to an audience. As the media acts as a storytelling agent, the stories and discourses that unfold in the media are forms of social texts and talk (Fairhurst & Putnam, 2004).

The set, costumes, cinematography, and scripts that actors follow are all examples of social texts that constitute media as a discourse. The words that actors say on screen from scripts and improvisation is talk that takes place in the media. As actors portray conversations or interactions, they are portraying talk that takes place within a discourse.

Secondly, Discourse is also portrayed and enacted through the media. Enduring systems of thought or large-scale meanings are constructed within a system of language.

Yang (2008) suggests that there lays a discursive layer to the media that provides cultural support for the production of meaning. Discourses are meaning formations that are simultaneously created and recreated through talk and text but also guide talk and text.

By making media a discourse and using the grounded in action orientation, the media also becomes a Discourse that perpetuates large-scale ideas such as gender, sexuality, and femininity through talk and text. Media that extends certain Discourses will have a specific language and text that is enacted to deliver and organize meaning. Since individuals are born into a world where particular D/discourses already exist, these meanings give them knowledge of the world and how to communicate within the world (Weedon, 1997). Embracing a mutually constitutive understanding of D/discourse and how both are simultaneously created through language, it can be seen how it affects beliefs, definitions, ideologies, and many taken for granted issues, especially when

22 presented through the media in two ways, by focusing on power/knowledge and gendered subjectivities.

The Media and Power/Knowledge The relationship between discourse, knowledge, and power is attached to simple everyday encounters. Since language orders what is known and creates a split of same and other (in terms of knowledge structures that are naturalized in society and other knowledge structures that are marginalized and treated as unimportant), it creates and maintains a distinction between knowing the self as a subject position within a normalized D/discourse, and knowing the other as different or not in the same or similar D/discourse. When entertainment media co-creates individual’s knowledge about the world through D/discourse, it is taking a meaning about something (such as gendered identities/subjectivities) and transforming it to the meaning. Hall (1977) suggests that, “language, the medium through which human culture...is transmitted also becomes the instrument through which it is ‘distorted’” (pg. 320). Entertainment media creates a dominant meaning formations through the ways in which it uses discourses, such as language and texts that distort, hide, and marginalize other modes of being. When entertainment media presents gender in one way it is suppressing all other ways of knowing gender. By suppressing all other meanings of gender, it is privileging a gendered subjectivity and suppressing conflicts of gender (Martin, 1990). Due to modes of production that keep structures in place certain presentations within the media remain fixed. Hall (1977) asserts that ratings, messages, and popular culture that are monetarily led lend to ideas that control social phenomena. As such, the “ruling class” creates and maintains ideas and this can be seen through the media. Similarly, Marx states, “The

23 class which is the ruling material force is at the same time its ruling intellectual force… has control over the means of mental production so that...the ideas of those who lack the means of mental production are subject to it” (Marx, 1965, p. 60). Thus, meanings produced by those in positions of power, which within media organizations have historically been men (Tuchman, 1978, 1979), create and maintain the dominant ideas presented in the media. Thus, women are subjected to the D/discourses of femininity and gender expectations in entertainment media. In other words, the subject position of gender is realized in relation to entertainment media’s D/discourse. D/discourses, as presented by entertainment media, create normalized/naturalized meaning formations that are maintained through the suppression of competing meanings. Individuals can only be or do in a way that the language (signature) expresses. If it is outside the realm of language, then individuals will not even conceive of thinking, talking, or knowing in other ways. As McQuail (1977) states: There is a provision of a consistent picture of the social world which may lead the audience to adopt this version of reality, a reality of ‘facts’ and norms values and expectations…We learn what our social environment is and respond to the knowledge that we acquire. In more detail, we can expect the mass media to tell us about different kinds of social role and the accompanying expectations. (p. 81) Media scholars studying television explain how it carries ideologies by presenting appropriate social roles and expectations. In this study, bringing a D/discourse perspective further brings insight into the ways entertainment media co-creates knowledge of the world and the self in relation to the world. This perspective shows how individuals cannot conceive of acting in a way that the media precludes from the D/discourse.

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The Media and Gendered Subjectivities The media supports particular D/discourses and modes of being that concern femininity. These D/discourses determine and constitute suitable modes of being and subjectivities feeding on media subscribers’ interests, regarding them as a gendered subject with a set of accepted expectations on the nature of gender. “No representations in the written and visual media are gender-neutral. They either confirm or challenge the status quo through the ways they construct or fail to construct images of femininity and masculinity” (Weedon, 1997, p. 97). The media has a fixation with presenting stories that are sensational and deviant (Schudson, 2011; Shoemaker & Vos, 2009). When the media presents society with a story that is aimed to be unnatural, deviant, and isolated, it is at the same time making a statement on what is and should be considered natural, normal, and common. The media also deems what is labeled as a ‘public interest,’ which holds what is natural and normal in a discursive struggle over meaning. Entertainment media serves women a D/discourse of what is ‘real,’ airing television programming that portrays reality, a true nature, and real-life circumstances people face within society. This documentary style of programming assumes that this is the truest form of reality, and the camera is simply capturing what happens without any prior directions and instructions from those on camera. Entertainment media serves another D/discourse to women that include a pre-written, fiction-based portrayal of women in society that is still based in realism. Entertainment media of multiple genres offer a “slice of life” aspect of realism that offer what life is supposed to look like for all who tune in. As media subscribers, individuals are invited to accept what is presented as authentic and placed in a position where D/discourses are acted out as part of everyday life. Actors portray experiences that

25 are constituted in language and create a way of knowing the world and the self in relation to that world. However real a television show, ad, or movie may seem, in actuality it is only one presentation of a D/discourse. Entertainment media constructs “realism” and “reality” through “conscious and unconscious choices about what is presented as normal or deviant, and a range of technical devices help to realize a hierarchy of values within the narrative” (Weedon, 1997, p. 99). Entertainment media offer understandings of how typical people think, react, and behave, which become maintained and reproduced. This preserves assumptions of gender and femininity and what is considered natural in society.

Gender as seen on entertainment media can have implications for how individuals view gender in their own lives. People organize and identify their view of “self” within the realm of D/discourse. So when an ad or a media portrayal of gender is seen, it changes from becoming a way of seeing and doing gender to the way of seeing and doing gender if individuals internalize the discourse of the ad and identify with it (Butler, 2004). This can be potentially problematic for gender roles by suppressing alternative ways of presenting gender. By viewing gender as a Discourse and making the channels (television) gender is performed through a discursive practice, gender and performances of gender become communicative. This viewpoint adjusts attention on language and how language creates gender and how people become subject to certain gender roles. Many scholars have studied how women are in a bind, either through D/discourse or the media, but rarely both. Television programming broadcasts to millions of people on a weekly basis. When a program is aired and viewed, a D/discourse is also presented and subject positions are created and embedded in power relations. Therefore, I argue that the role of the media must be considered if we are to understand how subject positions are created.

26 By embracing D/discourse and media (and media as a D/discourse) with a poststructuralist view on power/knowledge and subjectivities, I study how entertainment media (as a D/discourse) co-constructs women’s subject positions and simultaneously enable and constrain the ways in which women can come to know themselves. As a poststructural feminist scholar interested in discourse, I am interested in the discursive practice of gender and how those practices are embedded in our culture (and language).

Consequently, in this study, I explore the popular television program Girls to gain insight into presentations of women. Below I explain the methods I used in order to pursue this study.

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METHODS

Engaging in this study requires a method that embraces the ways language and D/discourse not only reflects but also creates knowledge and meanings (Ashcraft & Mumby, 2004). Scholars have gained insights into social and organizational phenomena by examining and interrogating social texts and practices. A study of D/discourse often involves a critical focus on talk, texts, and social practices that recognize how the meanings of discourse are always inherited from socio/historical/political meanings entangled into everyday life. To gain insights into the political struggle over meaning, many scholars have studied how individuals constitute subject positions and knowledge of selves within D/discourse. For example, LaFountain (1989) studied how subjectivities are constituted and maintained through the discourse of sex therapy.

However, the study of discourse also requires embracing a concern for material manifestation of power through language use. Wodak and Meyer (2009) explain that without discourses, social realities would not exist and extend the idea that D/discourse constitutes material reality. As they explain, “Discourse theory deals with material realities, not with ‘mere’ ideas. Discourses may be conceptualized as societal means of production. Discourses are not ‘mere ideology’; they produce subjects and reality” (p.

37). Consequently, when this view of discourse is adopted, gaining insights into material realities and ideologies involves studying the ways individuals come to know their world and sense of self through D/discourse. Further, this approach predisposes that

28 D/discourses are not value free, but rather that every discursive act is enmeshed in power relations. According to Link (1982), discourses can be defined as “an institutionalized way of talking that regulates and reinforces action and thereby exerts power” (p. 60).

Since individuals are born into a world where D/discourses already exist that co-produce common sense knowledge of the world, it becomes natural that knowledge legitimizes certain meanings at the expense of other meanings. Consequently, studying D/discourse requires being critically sensitive to the relations of power institutionalized through language use. Furthermore, when entertainment media is understood as a D/discourse that perpetuates certain modes of being ‘female’ at the cost of others, it makes a claim to truth about gender and sexuality. Lindlof and Taylor (2011) argue that the meaning assigned to anything is determined through a discursive process that “constrain its ‘polysemic’ potential for competing or subversive meanings” (p. 57). Thus, to understand how power/knowledge is created through media as D/discourse and reveal its potential implications for women in contemporary society, it is necessary to engage in critical discourse analysis blended with interpretation and deconstruction.

As such, in this section I review specific critical discourse analysis methods as a useful approach for studying the media as a D/discourse. I then review my approach for data gathering by offering an interpretive approach to identifying and understanding the possible D/discourses embedded in media. I then explain deconstruction as a useful way to critique the interpretations of D/discourses and expose taken-for-granted and arbitrary meanings and reveal the multiple ways a text can be interpreted. I then review Girls as the particular media program I focus these methods of inquiry on to gain insights and critically analyze the D/discourses of gender as presented in the media.

29 Foucauldian Critical Discourse Analysis Critical discourse analysis (CDA) requires interest in “naturally occurring” language that happens in a larger context such as conversations and speech acts (Lindlof & Taylor, 2011). Scholars embracing CDA often focus on the interaction of language instead of grammar and sentence structure because it is interaction that constructs meanings. Many who utilize the methodology of CDA tend to study “real” interactions between people that are locally occurring and emerging (Wodak & Meyer, 2009). As such, the main focus of CDA is to analyze the meanings within the interaction of language.

Although many scholars utilizing CDA tend to study local, emerging interactions among people, I suggest that CDA can be extended to the realm of media. When entertainment media is viewed as a D/discourse as argued above, CDA can be used with the same intentions as scholars studying texts. By studying entertainment media texts, I align myself with many of the same interests CDA entails. When television presents to viewers a “slice of life” reality in the form of episodes, it creates something that viewers can relate to. By viewing television as a presentation of something that could be real, the interactions within television episodes have the potential to actually happen in the material world. Although I am aware of the scripted nature of television, I have an interest in the “naturally occurring” language that television can provide as well as the interaction that happens between characters within a television show. Since characters are mostly a permanent fixture on television shows, and episodes are reoccurring and follow a story line, the interactions and conversations they have fall within a larger realm that is continuing, instead of a one-time situation. It is something that can be followed and

30 makes sense. The non-verbal behaviors within television shows (that are also read as texts) are present as an area of study as well. Television brings information that is verbal as well as visual. The cinematography as well as the wardrobe choices, lighting colors and positions, camera movement, and character blocking are all non-verbal cues that are part of the interactions between the characters on the screen. When viewing television as a discourse that is comprised of a text, the methods of CDA become useful to analyze the text presented. Specifically, embracing a Foucauldian approach to CDA can be particularly useful when investigating what is presented on television through methods of CDA. A Foucauldian approach to CDA is a specific form of analysis that aligns with the aim of CDA questioning and critiquing discourses. Foucauldian critical discourse analysis (FCDA) does this in two ways. First, it reveals the “contradictions within and between discourses, the limits of what can be said and done, and the means by which discourse makes particular statements seem rational and beyond doubt, even though they are only valid at a certain time and place” (Wodak & Meyer, 2009, p. 36). This happens though descriptive interpretations of the text (Lindlof & Taylor, 2011). Secondly, the analyst needs to be aware that critiques that are made about a D/discourse are also made within its own D/discourse. Every D/discourse is political and power laden and every critique that I make can be critiqued from another point of view. I am a woman interested in media portrayals of womaness, and when conducting research my interest in femininity and the fact that I am a woman play a part in the interpretations I make. When analyzing the media to find D/discourses that constrain gendered subjectivities, I am not

31 doing so without putting my own beliefs and values, which are power-laden, into my critiques.

The ideas and schools of thought that I align myself with are also products of a discourse and I fully recognize that while investigating gender in the media, I am doing so with a bias toward the D/discourses of gender, power, knowledge, and oppression.

FCDA asserts that the “power of discourse” lies within the range of subject positions that are known, which means that there is simultaneously a range of subject positions that are not known. “As flows of knowledge through time, discourses and (subject positions) determine the way in which society interprets reality and organizes further discursive and non-discursive practices” (p. 37). D/discourses determine the modes of being one can take and not take. Another focus of FCDA concludes that while FCDA contests the full agency of a subject, it does not mean that the subject does not exist. The gendered subject position just has limited agency that presents itself through the power that enables or constrains within a given D/discourse. I argue that the media presents D/discourses and modes of being that become realized for the viewers that watch them. These mediated D/discourses enable women to act in certain ways and constrain them from acting in other ways. D/discourses from the media constitute individual and collective subject positions that determine a limited set of action for all subject positions subscribing to that particular D/discourse (Wodak & Meyer, 2009). From this perspective, it is not the subject that creates the D/discourse but the D/discourse that constitutes the subject (Wodak & Meyer, 2009; Lindlof & Taylor, 2011).

When studying a piece of media D/discourse from a poststructuralist feminist lens, I interpret the mediated text using methods of FCDA, then deconstruct the language

32 and D/discourse to gain an understanding on how gendered subjects are developed through the media, and expose the multiplicity of meanings that can be made. Taking on a poststructuralist feminist approach, I reject objectivity and universal ‘truth.’ Instead I promote the notion of fragmented identities that are subjective, fluid, and have the ability to change given the placement in history and D/discourse (Lindlof & Taylor, 2011). For media producing D/discourses that co-construct identities, this means that individuals may have many identities and modes of being in different points in time. It also becomes important here to embrace my own subject position and realize that when studying media I am doing so from a perspective that embraces femininity and multiple ways of being.

This causes me to have a critical edge when exploring texts that present gendered subject positions.

Engaging in FCDA requires identifying discourses as embedded within the text and then critiquing the discourse to reveal the hidden and masked meanings presented and potentially materialized through the text. The following sections review my interpretive approach to identifying and understanding D/discourse within texts and then deconstruction as a critical technique for revealing and exposing meanings within these D/discourses.

Interpretation Before critiquing or questioning the D/discourses embedded in media presentations begins, the first step is to identify D/discourse through interpretation.

Interpretation begins with thoroughly understanding the discourse (text) that is presented (Lindlof & Taylor, 2011). Through interpretation, texts are usually explored and categorized in themes using repetition of D/discourses that appear in the texts regularly.

33 Along with categorization, interpretation proceeds by recognizing patterns. Spiggle (1994) explains that interpretation “occurs as a gestalt shift and represents a synthetic, holistic, and illuminating grasp of meaning, as in deciphering a code” (p. 497). However, because interpretation does not merely happen when researchers look at a phenomenon, theory has a large role in how interpretations are shaped. Theory is used as a lens to guide what researchers focus on and what becomes important (Deetz, 1992). Lindlof and Taylor (2011) suggest that when researchers leave their site, theory needs to be brought back into the process. Taking on gender subjectivities in interpretations of entertainment texts, I do not leave my theory behind when reviewing media. The interpretations I make are made with an interest in femininity, poststructuralism, and D/discourse. Alasuutari (1996) states that “being theoretically informed means that one is reflexive toward the deceivingly self-evident reality one faces in and through the data, able to toy with different perspective to it, and that one is open to new insights about everyday life and society” (p. 375). By using methods of interpretation to conduct FCDA and find repeating, patterned meanings of texts that become normalized, insights can be made into discursive texts that then can be critiqued using deconstruction to reveal the arbitrariness of these presentations and reveal the possibility for multiple meanings.

Deconstruction By using deconstruction as a technique to critique interpretations, deconstruction (and reconstruction) can highlight suppressed meanings, and potentially show how discursive texts can reify inequalities. According to Martin (1990), Deconstruction can be defined as an analytic strategy that exposes, in a systematic way, multiple ways a text can be interpreted. Deconstruction is able to reveal

34 ideological assumptions in a way that is particularly sensitive to the suppressed interest of members of disempowered, marginalized groups. (p. 340) Using deconstruction exposes meanings that have been suppressed and makes the “other” visible. As reviewed above, meanings become normalized and unquestioned through D/discourse, deconstruction is a practice that can help show these normalized meanings as strange and brings them to the forefront for critique and question. Calas and Smircich (1991) state that deconstruction helps to understand dominant assumptions that hide “the play of textual signification where words are meaningful…because of the existence of an oppositional term over which each apparently ‘self-standing term’ stands to differentiate itself from the other, and become meaningful” (p. 569). In line with the poststructuralist view on fragmented identities and multiple meanings of texts, deconstruction focuses on multiple interpretations that can be made from a text and undermines objectivity and “truth.”

Deconstruction and researchers using methods of deconstruction support the multiplicity of meanings that can be made from a text but never state that one interpretation is necessarily better than the next (Martin, 1990). When engaging in the process of deconstruction, reflexivity and subjectivity are needed and shown in the writing of the research. By taking this stand with deconstruction, it reveals the “I/eye/ideology of the deconstructor as well as the deconstructed” (p. 341). Thus, a more personal voice is often used with deconstruction methods as opposed to traditional scientific writing to acknowledge the limitations and biases in a researcher’s perspective.

Deconstruction can be an extremely useful approach when examining gender and subject positions that are constrained. Patriarchy in society often serves the interests of

35 men leaving women’s interests marginalized, contradictory, and silenced all signs of suppression. Although feminism makes a truth claim that women’s interests have been hidden to favor the interests of men, deconstruction does not make or support any truth claims (Martin, 1990). Thus, it is important to recognize that while conducting deconstruction with gender and feminism in mind, deconstruction can also be turned in on itself from an opposing perspective. The point of using deconstruction is to reveal suppression and open up the opportunity for multiple interpretations to be made that all hold equal amounts of legitimacy. I take a particular text presented in the media, and pull it apart to explore the hidden meanings and tensions that are present within the text but never explicitly stated. These methods of FCDA through interpretations and deconstruction are directed toward the particularly popular entertainment program, Girls.

Girls I have studied the first season of HBO’s series Girls to gain insight into the ways entertainment media create and (re)produce meanings of gender that can become naturalized and normative. I have chosen Girls because it is a popular show that, as the titles implies, predominantly displays the lives of young women. Numerous awards including a Golden Globe for best television series, an Emmy for outstanding casting, and a Peabody award mark Girls’ popularity. Girls was also one of the highest-rated debut shows in 2012. Girls portrays many situations that normally are not talked about on cable or network television; this may be due to the fact that Girls airs on HBO where there are less restrictions for what can be shown and said. For instance, nudity, sex, abortion, drug use, abandonment, and heavy partying are all covered within the first season. As such, this show provides a greater area of study concerning femininity than

36 many other shows on cable or network television. The show, first airing in 2012, is about four young twenty-something women who live in the Brooklyn, New York area. The show focuses on Hannah, an aspiring writer who has just finished college and is navigating her way through the “real world.” She is suddenly blindsided when her parents cut her off financially and she is truly on her own. Hannah’s three friends, Marnie, Shoshanna, and Jessa are all negotiating living through their twenties as well. Marnie, Hannah’s best friend, and an art gallery assistant wants to have her own gallery someday and is portrayed as the rational, logical girl with a type-A personality who knows what she wants in life. Shoshanna, who is obsessed with Sex and the City, is still in college and hasn’t experienced some “big things” in her life. One of these things is losing her virginity and Shoshanna fears that no man will want to be with her because she has waited too long and men won’t “want that responsibility.” Jessa, a bohemian British girl, and Shoshanna’s cousin, is a world traveler and is the free spirit of the group who doesn’t abide by the “supposed to” nature of womanhood. Together these four characters are the heart of the show. Girls is primarily about navigating life as a female in her twenties and handling the bumpy, confusing, and taxing transition of being a girl and transforming into an independent woman.

Only the first season of Girls was chosen to study due to the limited amount of time it has been on the air. Girls started airing in 2012 and has only completed one season in the time of this study. I have downloaded the first season in its entirety to gain access to the material. By having the text downloaded, I have access to view each episode as well as repeat individual episodes. The first season of Girls contains 10 episodes that are

37 approximately 30 minutes long with no commercial interruptions. This provides about five hours of content that have been studied.

Girls provides an interesting text to study because this show is created/written/directed by and stars Lena Dunham, who is, a twenty-something “girl.”

The show presents young women navigating their way through life and is geared toward an audience of girls/women navigating their way through life as well. Girls is different than other programming that would be categorized in the same genre due to the content it presents. First off, Girls is aired on HBO, which allows Dunham to present her characters in more precarious situations than on network or cable television. Secondly, Dunham takes that opportunity and creates rawness to the show and tells “real” stories that include sex, nudity, cursing, and drug use. Presented as a “slice of life” reality to its viewers, the material on Girls covers “real life” situations that many twenty-something women continually find themselves in. The “reality” that Girls provides is useful in examining gendered subjectivities of women. The scripted nature of any television show, but especially Girls, already has an existing understanding of what viewers are meant to see.

Television shows are a fruitful area for studying D/discourses because media has the power to dictate what is visible and what is hidden. In other words, countless time and money has gone into the messages and meanings that are presented, which means that Dunham and her producers want us to see what is presented and not something else.

Studying entertainment media, I am concerned about entertainment media presenting D/discourse that privileges one way of being female and suppresses other ways. By studying Girls, I have engaged in FCDA, combined with interpretation and deconstruction.

38 Girls as a Text Girls becomes a text when it is scripted, recorded, and aired on television.

Following a theoretical background in D/discourse, a text is the “done” of talk. Since Girls is a scripted, recorded, and aired television program it can also be considered the “done” and completed version of talk, text, and social practice. Every line, wardrobe choice, character interaction, and gesture was not only preconceived and written before shooting, but also directed and edited to make a complete text. Although many scholars employing methods of FCDA study conversations and interactions between people, I use FCDA to study entertainment media texts. FCDA has an interest to de-mystify ideologies and power through studying D/discourses (which in large, are texts) (Wodak & Meyer, 2009), and invites media texts to be studied to examine the power that lies within the D/discourse. “Discourses exert power because they transport knowledge on which collective and individual consciousness feeds. This knowledge is the basis for individual and collective, discursive and non-discursive action, which in turn shapes reality” (Wodak & Meyer, 2009, p. 39). When individuals watch Girls, the knowledge of what a girl is transports to the viewer and, in turn, shapes reality. Although I am not concerned with viewer interpretations of Girls, I am concerned with dominant D/discourses that are perpetuated in entertainment media that have the ability to constrain presentations of women. It is the D/discourses that are repeated within entertainment media that I am concerned with. To further examine how portrayals of women can be constraining, interpretation of Girls as a text is needed.

Interpretation of Text

39 Interpretation calls for an in depth understanding of what is being studied (Lindlof & Taylor, 2011). Conducting FDCA provides for an interpretation of the text that is presented in Girls. I interpreted the text of each episode with a lens that interprets the text through ideas of gender, power, and poststructuralism. Two sets of data were studied during and after the process of interpretation, the actual show and content of Girls, and my fieldnotes. Lindlof and Taylor (2011) claim that fieldnotes follow two concerns. First fieldnotes are concerned with “describing and interpreting the symbolic (i.e. textual) qualities of communication” (p. 155). Secondly when writing fieldnotes, researchers are also producing fieldnotes that will be interpreted by other researchers. Thus, reflexivity becomes important not only with methods of FCDA but also with taking fieldnotes about texts. Fieldnotes also provide a place to write down thoughts and interpretations as they occur and to keep them “fresh” in memory so they may be used as a source of evidence and data for final claims (Lindlof & Taylor, 2011). To interpret the text of Girls, I watched each episode in order of their original airdate five times through and took fieldnotes during each episode. I interpreted not only the words the actors were saying but the entirety of the text as well. This included the camera angle, the wardrobe, and the set design. After fieldnotes were taken for each episode, I studied my fieldnotes alongside the scenes they were about in Girls. This brought me to specific episodes and scenes that were re-watched along with more fieldnotes taken. After a thorough examination of the text and fieldnotes, I examined prominent normalized D/discourses of gender that are presented in Girls and provided an analysis to try to determine how Girls defines womaness. I then critiqued my interpretations of the text by engaging in methods of deconstruction.

40 Deconstruction of Text Once I interpreted the patterned meanings in the text of Girls through methods of FCDA, I then critiqued interpretations of gendered D/discourses using deconstruction from a poststructuralist feminist viewpoint. Deconstruction is used as a technique to critique D/discourses to reveal hidden, power-laden meanings. This part of the analysis serves to show the suppressed nature that women face when presented through entertainment media. Even though well-intentioned mediated content is created, it can still reify inequalities for women who are presented within the mediated sphere. Martin (1990) states that the conflict between womenness and maness is often “hidden ‘between the lines’ of what people say and do” (p. 340). Deconstruction will expose alternative ways a text can be interpreted. “Deconstruction is able to reveal ideological assumptions in a way that is particularly sensitive to the suppressed interests of members of disempowered, marginalized groups” (p. 340). Deconstruction offers the ability to analyze a power system that is enacted through societal means but cannot be located in one particular individual (Foucault, 1980). When subjectivities are produced by D/discourses, their center of power is usually invisible and unchallenged; by employing deconstruction, subjectivities can be exposed, as well as the power and knowledge that keeps them in place. Deconstruction rejects all claims to objective “truth” and even undermines objectivity by creating an emphasis on suppressed conflicts and allowing for a multitude of interpretations of a text to open up multiple meanings and modes of being, which are in line with a poststructuralist approach.

Taking a poststructuralist feminist viewpoint on gender allows one to see how gendered subject positions are constrained by D/discourses. Applying what D/discourse

41 is to the realm of entertainment media is needed to see how women are represented and how meanings of womaness come to be enabled and constrained. By using a Foucauldian sense of critical discourse analysis. which includes interpretation and then using deconstruction, a media text can be interpreted and then taken apart to reveal hidden and suppressed meanings and open up room for multiple meanings to be made. Feminists as well as media scholars can be interested in this study because it aims to provide an understanding of the relationship of media and gender that is unique to both fields. Many feminist scholars have discussed how women are constrained and marginalized, I suggest the consideration of entertainment media be examined with interests of gender and D/discourse. By examining entertainment media and specifically Girls, I hope this study will open up and promote multiple, fragmented modes of being for women, as well as help reveal media as discursive constructions of gendered subjectivities.

42

FINDINGS

This study explores the complex ways of knowing femininity to reveal powerladen meanings within the D/discourses presented in Girls. Using a poststructural lens to examine presentations of femininity through the D/discourses of gender and media provided findings in two main areas. First, through Foucauldian critical discourse analysis, I explored the construction of gendered subject positions through D/discourses of gender and femininity presented in Girls. Specifically, I watched the first season of Girls and took fieldnotes during each episode to interpret not only the texts that were presented within the show but also the texts of my fieldnotes as a way to gain insights to the ways femininity was presented. I also further examined the meanings of texts by deconstructing the D/discourses being presented to reveal hidden meanings embedded in the texts.

I will present these findings in two sections. First, I will present my interpretations of presentations of femininity that were revealed through the text.

Interpretations of the texts were used to consider how femininity and gender is presented, constructed, maintained, resisted, and possibly constraining for the lived experiences of women. Interpretation analysis of Girls revealed that femininity is presented in different ways when the women in Girls are in public and private situations. Second, I offer a deconstruction of one specific text from Girls to critique interpretations and highlight suppressed meanings within the text. Specifically, I deconstruct one particular text

43 labeled “the ladies” that stuck with me as I was writing fieldnotes. At first, the text just seemed like a casual conversation with close friends, but upon further interrogation this text implicitly was about the ways women should be and why, which puts the experiences of women within a limiting D/discourse about them. Through deconstruction, the text is taken apart to show how discursive texts can reify inequalities for women and possibly open up multiple ways a text can be interpreted. Within the next sections, I review the interpretive findings from the first season of the show, followed by a presentation of my deconstruction of one scene from Girls.

Interpretive Findings of Femininity Through a critical discursive analysis of the scripted lives of four twentysomething girls living in New York City (as presented in Girls), femininity is presented in many ways. Femininity is most saliently presented when the girls are interacting in public with others, and in private moments among themselves. As such, femininity emerges in relation and through the scripted talk and interaction that takes place. The onscreen texts of wardrobe, camera angels, and cinematography also present femininity in specific ways. Through Foucauldian critical discourse analysis of the first season of Girls, three main findings about the presentation of femininity emerged that when combined provide insights to the public/private expectations of femininity in society. The first finding emerges from exploring the ways women perform femininity and how presentations of “womaness” are presented in public, in women’s relationships with men, co-workers, acquaintances, and strangers. The second finding emerges from exploring the ways the women of Girls perform femininity in private, either alone, with each other, or with family members. The third finding emerges when the public and private

44 presentations of femininity are placed into conversation, revealing how they are interconnected through normalized ways of understanding femininity and being feminine.

Combined, these findings reveal a relationship between public and private performances of femininity and a public/private dichotomy recreating a power-laden patriarchal D/discourse that simultaneously subjects women to the knowledge of “womaness” in public and enables women to maintain, question, and possibly resist this D/discourse in private. When presenting these findings below, I will first give a thorough introduction to the text that is interpreted by giving background information that is needed to understand the plot of the scene. I will next present the text (language or talk) as it appeared within Girls with necessary fieldnotes and on-screen camera angles and character movement.

Next, I will discuss the visual texts that go along with each example such as wardrobe, camera angles, lighting, and overall cinematography. Finally, I will review the ways women are presented and provide my interpretation of each text.

Girls in Public My aim when embracing Foucauldian critical discourse analysis was to reveal oppositions within D/discourses, limits of action and speech within D/discourses, and how discourses become unquestionable (Wodak & Meyer, 2009). Through interpretations of power-laden texts, and reflexivity of my own beliefs (informed by my own subjectivity), I interpreted the texts of Girls through a feminist poststructural lens to reveal portrayals of femininity that are heavily political. In Girls, the four main characters find themselves enabled and constrained through the D/discourse of gender.

This emerges strongly through interactions in public. Within these findings, the idea of being in “public” is discussed in terms of whom the women are with during interactions

45 and how femininity is presented during interaction. Thus, being in “public” becomes less about where these interactions may take place. For instance, interactions with men take place in private apartments but are still considered public due to the ways in which femininity is presented and the people they take place with. Through Foucauldian critical discourse analysis of Girls, two main presentations of femininity in public emerged. First, women are presented as sexually confident individuals who become passive and dependent in the presence of men. The second way femininity is presented in public is when women’s voices become silenced and discursively closed in the presence of men or high-status individuals.

Sexually Confident yet Dependent Presentations of femininity in public are presented in Girls when women simultaneously express confidence with their sexuality, while being incapable of being completely feminine without a man. Within the episodes of Girls, the main characters are presented as sexually confident in the sense that they are open about their sexual bodies and experiences. However, the sexual confidence presented on-screen is often juxtaposed and contradicted with needing a man to be a legitimate woman. In other words, women’s legitimacy in the world is in relation to men. In the episode, Vagina Panic, Jessa is scheduled to have an abortion and all four women plan to accompany her to the appointment. The scene that follows is about Hannah’s sexual confidence and need to be validated by Adam, the man she is currently sleeping with, but not dating. After a discussion with Adam, Hannah decides that while at Jessa’s abortion appointment she will get herself tested to maintain her sexual health. The following conversation with Adam reveals this contradiction by showing Hannah performing femininity in a way that

46 maintains confidence in her sexuality while also seeking approval from a man she is not monogamous with.

Adam: Where are you headed?

Hannah: I, um—I’m just going home to get my cell phone charger, and then I’m going to a job interview, and then um…I’m actually accompanying a friend to her abortion. So that’s what I’m doing.

Adam: Shit. That’s kind of a heavy fucking situation.

Hannah: Is it really? I feel like people say it’s a huge deal, but how big a deal are these things actually. I don’t know.

Adam: Right. Yeah, it’s just an abortion. That’s silly.

Hannah: No, I’m not saying that. I just mean, what was she going to do, like have a baby and take it to her babysitting job? It’s not realistic.

Adam: Oh shit, fucker. I never thought of it that way, but that’s a good point.

Hannah: I mean, I guess I don’t really know, because this is the first abortion I’ve ever been to, so.

Adam: No, you don’t say.

Hannah: I really hope you didn’t find that flippant, because I did not mean that abortions aren’t a big deal. I just mean that I have very little sympathy for people who do not use condoms, because that is how you get pregnant and that is how you get diseases.

Adam: Well, I don’t know what it is about me, but girls never ask me to use condoms.

Hannah: Girls never asked you to use condoms?

Adam: No. Hannah: What do you do?

Adam: I do what I’m told.

Hannah: We always use condoms.

Adam: Do we?

Hannah: Yeah, we used one last night.

47 Adam: Oh, yah, I guess we do.

Hannah: Hey, Adam: Oh, you’re totally freaking out right now. You have total freak-out face.

Hannah: I’m not freaking out right now.

Adam: Yes, you are.

Hannah: How would you even know what I look like freaking out? You’ve never seen me freak out.

Adam: It’s okay. I’m totally fine, okay? And you’re totally pretty.

Hannah: Okay.

Visually, this scene shows Hannah in the hallway and Adam in his room. Hannah is fully dressed getting ready to leave and Adam is shown lying in his bed, only dressed in underwear. Having a discussion about sexuality puts Hannah in a compliant position and Adam in a position of power, mostly because Hannah is more emotionally invested in Adam and the feelings have not been reciprocated. This conversation is taking place in Adam’s apartment, which is furnished with wood, saws, hammers, and nails, all of which Adam is shown continually working with. His apartment is in a state of disarray with items placed haphazardly. The lighting in Adam’s apartment is darker, with curtains filtering the natural sunlight and replacing it with a darker, dull light that makes it hard to see a lot of detail with clarity. The factors of Adam’s apartment work together to show that Hannah is in a foreign space, one in which a woman looks out of place. Hannah is also shown in a dress, which clashes with the saws, hammers, and pieces of wood shown behind her. Hannah’s femininity is thus highlighted inside Adam’s apartment.

The presentation of Hannah’s femininity seems strong, yet very compliant.

Hannah’s confidence and willingness to speak about sex seems to be in opposition with

48 wanting a man’s approval. In this scene, Hannah is very vocal about the way she views Jessa’s abortion and her stance on condom use. However, when Adam notices that she is worried about her sexual health since both know he doesn’t wear condoms with other women, Hannah absorbs her feelings and closes off the conversation. By saying, “How would you even know what I look like freaking out? You’ve never seen me freak out.”

Hannah is adjusting the way she presents her femininity to be more compliant with what Adam may expect, or to seem like she is “okay” with the information Adam just disclosed to her. Further, when Adam tells Hannah that she is “totally pretty,” Hannah silences her worries and “freak-out” about this situation and just replies with an “okay,” showing that Hannah’s femininity is entangled in relations of power with not only Adam but the idea of male approval and acceptance, something Hannah needs to feel legitimized.

The tensions between being sexually confident and the needed validation from men is continued when the story line is picked up in the next episode, All Adventurous Women Do, when Hannah discovers that after a visit to the gynecologist she has tested positive for H.P.V. She receives the phone call while in the presence of Adam at his apartment. After getting off the phone, she has no time to privately process this information when Adam asks her about the phone call.

Adam: Who was that?

Hannah: That was my gynecologist.

Adam: What did she say?

Hannah: She was calling with some news about my vagina.

Adam: Was it good news?

49 Hannah: I have an S.T.D. I have H.P.V. I have H.P.V. Adam: What does that do?

Hannah: I don’t really know. It can cause warts, and you don’t have to worry. I don’t have those, but it can also cause cervical cancer, so that’s why I have to get my cervix scraped out next week.

Adam: Fuck, I’m so sorry. (Gives Hannah a hug.)

Hannah: Are you sorry because you gave it to me?

Adam: What? (Backs away out of the hug.)

Hannah: I’m pretty sure you gave it to me. You’re the only person I’ve been having sex with. It is not prevented by condoms.

Adam: Hold your roll. I didn’t give it to you.

Hannah: Well, how do you know?

Adam: Because I got tested and I don’t have that.

Hannah: You got tested? When did you get tested?

Adam: Last week. My best dyke friend works for a dick doctor and I don’t have that shit.

Hannah: Are you sure?

Adam: Yeah, I’m sure. So now you owe me an apology.

Hannah: Okay, I’m sorry. I mean, you have to know that seemed like a natural assumption, and I was freaked out, and—are you angry with me now?

Adam: Just annoyed, yeah.

Hannah: Will you still have sex with me?

Adam: When it’s appropriate, sure.

The text presents Hannah being faced with a difficult situation in the presence of Adam. In my fieldnotes regarding this scene, I wrote that this scene might be presented very differently if Adam was Hannah’s boyfriend. The casualness that Adam and Hannah have makes this scene seem very cold and stiff. There is a sense of vulnerability in

50 Hannah’s presentation of femininity because Hannah is not in a relationship with Adam and has not yet initiated another intimate relationship, further echoing the need of male approval that Hannah seeks. By looking at the visual texts within this scene, we see that while Hannah is talking to Adam she is wearing no pants, and has make-up smeared on her face from sleeping. Keeping poised while in underwear and smeared mascara, Hannah struggles to present a certain type of adult womaness while having to have a serious talk with her sexual partner. Again, femininity is presented as being sexually confident in this scene, yet is simultaneously dependent upon men. Specifically, although Hannah was just told she has H.P.V., she is very open with this information and willingly discloses information about her sexual health to Adam. However, she is simultaneously searching for acceptance and to not be alone in having an S.T.D. When Hannah asks Adam, “Are you sorry because you gave it to me?” her femininity is still being presented as confident but also in tension with the acceptance from a male. When Adam very strongly opposes Hannah’s suggestion, Hannah immediately apologizes and seeks out additional approval from Adam by asking, “Will you still have sex with me?” presenting that femininity and even sexual confidence is always in relation to approval from a male counterpart.

Another moment where femininity is presented as sexually confident yet in need of male acceptance emerged in the episode She Did where Jessa gets married to ThomasJohn, a man she has only known for a couple weeks. In a previous, episode Jessa takes Marnie to a swanky bar to comfort her and Thomas-John sends them drinks. They all start talking and later go to his apartment for an almost three-way. Jessa seems very disinterested in Thomas-John and leaves with Marnie. After disappearing from her

51 apartment that she shares with Shoshanna for a week and only staying in contact via text, Jessa’s story-line picks up in She Did when she sends a text to her friends stating, “Please come to the most important party of my life. 7:00 p.m. Sharp. Dress real nice and come.”

After much speculation from Hannah, Marnie, and Shoshanna, everyone shows up to an empty venue that looks like a place that holds events regularly. A man named Thadd gets up on the stage and the following takes place.

Thadd: I’m sure you’re all wondering what you’re doing here, or who you’re going to be doing it with. (Laughs.) Boys and girls this is a mystery party. And I think we can all agree that the greatest mystery in this life is love.

(Music starts and Thomas-John appears on stage and Jessa walks to the stage from the back of the room.)

Thomas-John: As some of you may have already guessed, we’re getting married.

Jessa: We are.

Thomas-John: Jessa, the first night we met, truthfully, I thought that we were gonna have a threesome with your friend Marnie. (Addressing Marnie.) What’s up Marnie? But we didn’t do that. When you left my house that night, I felt more energized than I had for years. I thought to myself, that if I ever saw that crazy bitch again, I would make her my fuckin’ wife.

Jessa: Thomas-John, when you came to my house with flowers, I was prepared to call the special victims unit. Not only did I find you very creepy, but I found you also really boring. But for some reason, I agreed to have dinner with you. And you asked to move tables twice and I was even more revolted. Then you started talking about what you did, about travel and finance, and I thought, “this man’s brilliant in a way that I have never known.”

Thomas-John: Thank you.

Jessa: I appreciate your adventurous spirit, your desire to learn, and everything you don’t know about.

Thomas-John: It’s a positive. Shit.

Jessa: Yeah, I love you.

Thadd: And now with the power vested in me by a website that I found on the Internet…I now pronounce you man and wife.

52 Jessa: Ahh! Thadd: You may kiss the bride.

Thomas-John: (Lifting Jessa’s veil.) Free the bird.

They kiss and the guests cheer Jessa: Is it garter time?

Thomas-John: No. No. Jessa: Oh come on, please!

Thomas-John: Oh, fuck it.

Jessa: (While taking off her own garter and tossing it into the crowd.) Your dreams are not what you thought they’d be. (The garter then lands on Shoshanna, who has a look of surprise on her face, then the garter falls to the ground.)

The visual text of this scene shows Thomas-John and Thadd in a suit standing under a flowery archway on the stage. When Jessa walks out and navigates her way through the crowd (there is no aisle), she is in a short, thigh-length, white, bohemian style dress with blue heels, hair down, and a flower headband with a veil. Traditionally, she can pass as a bride, but by the normalized D/discourse of what women wear at their weddings, she is barely following the stereotype with the short summer dress she wears.

As the guests enjoy the reception, we find Hannah and Jessa in the bathroom together.

Hannah asks Jessa, “Like, you feel like a real adult now?” and Jessa replies with a long pause and says, “Mmm…yeah…kinda.” In my fieldnotes, I contemplated this statement.

At first, I felt that this statement was equating marriage to adulthood. However, when Jessa replies with “kinda,” she is not fully agreeing with this idea of marriage and adulthood. What I felt Jessa was really saying was that although marriage is what many women are told to aspire to, in reality the lived experience of marriage is much different.

53 Getting married is seen as almost a rite of passage for becoming an adult for young women, and marriage acts a D/discourse into how to view womanhood. By getting married, and following the normalized D/discourse of marriage, Jessa transforms her knowledge of self into a wife and sees herself as growing into womanhood. When Thomas-John pulls Jessa’s veil back and says “Free the bird,” it’s almost as if he is making a bigger statement about women’s identity in relation to men by saying women aren’t free, legitimate, or whole until they are married or at least know their identity as being in relation to a male-counterpart. This scene reveals how women are frequently taught to aspire to marriage and to know themselves in relation to others. Being the center of attention at her wedding, Jessa performs femininity in relation to her husband ThomasJohn. No longer is she known as a girl or a woman, but now she is known as a wife. As such, this new label identifies her as in relation to a man, which carries power-laden assumptions of identity that relate to gender and sex. Throughout Girls, Jessa is known as the woman who does not need a man, and has even said, “I wanna have children with many different men of many different races” (Vagina Panic). Even when she met Thomas-John she found him “boring” and “creepy,” however, she still gets married to him. Thus, femininity is presented as existing in the tensions between adulthood and confidence and being legitimized by a man by coming to know the self in relation to a man.

The women in Girls present femininity in a way that suggests women are sexually confident while simultaneously dependent upon a man. The main characters do this in a way that presents “sexiness” and confidence to attract males to later get their approval.

Marriage as presented on Girls suggests that women need men in order to be legitimized

54 as women. Women are presented as sexually confident, yet always striving for approval from men, revealing femininity as known always in relation to men, and eventually women come to know themselves as a sexual gift, wife, or mother. The next presentation of femininity in public also carries on the pattern of males being present when women perform femininity in public and how women’s bodies are taken advantage of and used for male pleasure in the public world.

Silenced Voices The second theme of femininity performed in public that emerged in the text was that the women’s voices are silenced, their opinions hidden, and their bodies exploited, when in public and especially among men. One example of silenced voices is captured within the episode Hannah’s Diary when Hannah’s boss massages her neck and touches her breasts. The scene opens up with Hannah sitting quietly in her office and her boss, Rich, coming into her office. Hannah has just started a new job working in an office and isn’t catching on to much of the daily work that needs to be done. Rich walks into the office, presumably to talk to Hannah about work related manners but quickly the conversation turns to small talk, and acts of sexually harassment.

Rich: Hannah. What are we going to do with you?

Hannah: I really apologize, I thought I had a better handle on Windows, and I am more of a Mac girl, but if you give me an hour with the manual.

Rich: I’m just giving you a hard time. I know you’ll get there.

Hannah: Thank you so much. (Hannah goes back to studying the manual while her boss walks around her desk and behind her chair.)

Rich: You look tense.

Hannah: Oh, no, I’m good. I’m just a hunchy person naturally.

55 (Rich puts his hands on Hannah’s shoulders and starts to massage her shoulders and neck. The camera shows Hannah in a medium shot with Hannah’s face and the boss’s hands on her shoulders. Hannah’s face displays a look of surprise, nervousness and anger. Although the focus is on Hannah, this unwarranted and socially unacceptable advance silences her.)

Boss: mm.

Hannah: Thank you Boss: (Sigh.) Okay, now, just lean into the pain. (Starts to put more pressure on Hannah’s neck and Hannah’s face grimaces with pain.) My wife and I took a Reiki healing course and Club Med. Fascinating stuff. Okay. You need to sit up a bit straighter. (Rich puts a hand on her forehead and eyes while keeping one hand on her back.)

Hannah: Yeah, my mom tells me that all the time.

Rich: And open up the solar plexus. And just breathe. You feel that?

(Rich moves his hand from Hannah’s face to Hannah’s chest and starts to move his hand in a circular motion, touching Hannah’s breasts. The camera is still in a medium shot with Hannah’s face showing shock and disbelief that he is touching her.)

Hannah: I do.

(At this point the camera is looking out of Hannah’s office to find a female coworker walking by, stopping to see what is going on in Hannah’s office, and realizing that Rich has his hand on Hannah’s breasts. She rolls her eyes and keeps walking.)

Rich: Oh, much better. Much better. That’s really much better.

Visually, Hannah is seated the entire time and the boss is standing and walking around her. In my fieldnotes I wrote that this made me incredibly disturbed, nervous, and upset when watching this scene and I felt that Hannah was trapped and vulnerable. Being seated makes Hannah immobile. Rich is blocking the door with his body and when he walks around Hannah’s desk to stand behind her he puts Hannah in a position of vulnerability, which suggests that Hannah is in a submissive position while Rich is in an authoritative position. The camera angels show a close-up of Hannah’s face with Rich’s

56 hands on her shoulders and then on her breasts. With the camera focused on Hannah’s face, the episode is giving her a chance to say something and to stop the interaction.

However, Hannah is silent. The way the two are positioned already puts Hannah in a constrained subject position of what she can say and do. Further, the blocking position of the scene plays on the power relations of employee and employer as well as woman and man with Hannah being in a lower (seated) position and Rich being in a higher position.

This scene shows Hannah being dominated in the interaction with her boss. Not only is her voice silenced but her body is also being acted upon, making Hannah a passive object. When Hannah remains silent after the camera gives her an opportunity to speak, femininity is presented as still and hushed. This text presents women as silenced, powerless, and docile in public. I remember thinking and writing in my notes that Hannah almost seemed afraid to speak up. What keeps women from talking, sharing, and speaking up in public? This scene presents a relation of power between men and women (and employer and employee) that situates women in a bind and often leads to complacency. Women have a lot to lose when speaking up, and for Hannah she could lose her job, which could lead to her losing her apartment, and the life she wants in New York. Later in this episode, after the workday is over, Hannah confronts two female coworkers in the restroom about the incident with Rich.

Hannah: Hey Lesley.

Lesley: Hey Hannah. How’s your first week of work going?

Hannah: It’s good. It’s been good. Listen, I’m just wondering if there was anything specific you thought I should know about Rich.

Lesley: Mm. He touch you?

Hannah: Yeah, like my breasts a little bit.

57 Lesley: I know. Rich massaged Hannah.

Chastity: Oh, yeah? You’ll get used to it.

Hannah: What?

Lesley: Look, I know it’s gross, but he’s really nice, and he got Tommy health insurance.

Chastity: He doesn’t complain if I come in or if I don’t and stuff. And he paid for my sister to go to camp.

Lesley: Oh, and he got me an iPod for my birthday.

Chastity: That was very nice of him.

Lesley: I know. It’s a Nano.

Hannah: So you’ve never said anything about it?

Lesley: No, never.

Chastity: Why? Hannah: Wow! Okay.

The interaction with Hannah’s co-workers presents women as compliant and expected to keep their true emotions and opinions hidden from public view. By asking two women that have worked with Rich longer than Hannah, Hannah seeks guidance on how to perform not only her job but also her femininity. This scene especially shows the enabling/constraining position of women. Although Hannah was sexually harassed and constrained as a woman by being unwantedly touched by a man that is in a relational position of power with Hannah, she is also enabled to now be late for work, ask for favors, and maybe get a nice birthday present. By “getting used to it,” Hannah can exploit her body for her benefit. The cost of that exploitment is that Hannah’s body is being taken advantage of and her thoughts on her boss, as well as her lived experiences, are

58 hidden, ignored, and marginalized as she and her co-workers choose to remain silenced by not talking about this with other men and Rich.

This scene shows a complicated public presentation of femininity that transforms femininity into docility in front of men who represent relationships of power. Women are performing femininity while enmeshed in relations of power to presentations of masculinity. Thus, women are presented as sexually docile objects that serve the interests and needs of men, and rewarded for the silence offered about these unwanted relationships. Women therefore come to know themselves as one way in public, the way they should act in accordance with social structures in place that regulate women’s bodies, behaviors, and speech. However, in private, women possibly resist the normalized D/discourse of gender and sex.

Girls in Private By embracing Foucauldian critical discourse analysis, my aim is to question and critique D/discourses by revealing contradictions within and between D/discourses. As such, the public and private presentations of femininity as presented in Girls shows women performing femininity in similar and different ways in private than was presented in public. I considered private presentations of femininity as being those performed alone or among other women, specifically close friends and family. As such, private interactions are typically defined as moments when the four main women are together, completely alone, or with family members, and how they interact in those moments.

Importance is then on whom the women are with, rather than being defined by where interactions take place. Thus, private interactions may take place at a public park when Jessa, Shoshanna, and Hannah are together. In private, the pressure of conforming to

59 normalized D/discourses of gender and sex slightly fade away and although many normalized D/discourses become maintained, at times these D/discourses become questioned and resisted. Although women are still subjected to multiple D/discourses when speaking, they are more enabled to question existing orders of power in private.

Further, women’s voices are no longer silenced by the presence of men in private and opinions can be more fully voiced and realized. Through the text of Girls, women are presented as negotiating what it means to be a woman by maintaining and resisting normalized D/discourses of femininity, gender, and sex. Private presentations of femininity are presented as either questioning seemingly fixed meanings of the nature of femininity or actively voicing what it means to be a woman. Questioning what it means to be a woman and act female emerges through many of the episodes of Girls. The four main characters often question how to act, feel, and be as a woman in a world that is messy, especially for single, twenty-something women living on their own. Girls also presents femininity in private as women questioning themselves and the other women.

Many times this leads to voicing opinions about others and especially men to gain advice from close female friends or simply to be heard. The acceptance and approval of each other as well as men carries over from public to private and is discussed as a major concern for the women when in private.

Questioning Femininity Throughout Girls, private situations explicitly lay out how to be female for the four women. Whether that is equating marriage to adulthood and womaness or how women should act in certain situations, social scripts that are part of dominant D/discourses prescribe how to know the world and the self as gendered. In Vagina Panic,

60 Jessa, Hannah, and Shoshanna meet up for frozen yogurt in a park before Jessa’s abortion appointment. While all sitting together, Jessa asks Hannah a question about her relationship with Adam and the following conversation about what it means to be female in the dating world happens.

Jessa: So this guy is making you bananas? (Talking about Adam.)

Hannah: I’ve never experienced anything like it. The thing is I have absolutely no sense of how he really feels about me because when we’re together, he’s so there and he’s so present. And then he disappears for two weeks and doesn’t answer any text messages, and I feel as though I invented him.

Shoshanna: Did you invent him?

Hannah: If I’d invented him, then I wouldn’t have a giant bruise on my ass.

Shoshanna: Pause. I have something to contribute here. (Shoshanna holds up a book.)

Jessa: “Listen ladies: A tough love approach to the tough game of love.”

Hannah: Okay. I’m going to admit that I have hate-read that book.

Shoshanna: Oh, my god! It, like, totally changes your perspective, right? Okay, “If a man doesn’t take you on a date, he’s not interested, point-blank. ‘Let’s meet up with friends’ is not a date, it’s a date for him to decide whether you’re truly good enough to date, and that’s unacceptable ladies.”

Hannah: There has to be exceptions to that rule.

Shoshanna: “Sex from behind is degrading, point-blank. You deserve someone who wants to look in your beautiful face, ladies.”

Jessa: What if I want to focus on something else? What if I want to feel like I have udders? This woman doesn’t care what I want.

Hannah: But here’s my question, who are “the ladies”?

Shoshanna: Obvi—we’re the ladies.

Jessa: I’m not the ladies.

Shoshanna: Yeah, you’re the ladies.

61 Jessa: I’m not the ladies.

Shoshanna: Yes, you are. You’re the ladies.

Jessa: You’re being unfair. You can’t force me to be a lady.

Shoshanna: I’m not forcing you to be a lady. You’re just—okay. I’m a lady, she’s a lady, you’re a lady, we’re the ladies.

(The camera cuts to Jessa and Hannah walking.)

Jessa: Fuck that silly little fucking book.

Hannah: I told you, I just read it in a weird moment of desperation at the Detroit airport.

Jessa: How could you even finish a book like that? That book is so idiotic; I couldn’t even read it on a toilet.

Hannah: It might be pink and cheesy, but there’s actually some very real wisdom in there, about how to deal with men and— Jessa: That woman is a horrible lady.

Hannah: Why is this bothering you so much?

Jessa: I’m offended by all the “supposed tos.” I don’t like women telling other women what to do, or how to do it, or when to do it. Every time I have sex, it’s my choice.

Jessa, Hannah, and Shoshanna are all shown on a park bench sitting side-by-side.

Visually they all look like equals. No one is shown higher than anybody else, they sit on the same bench, and they are all eating frozen yogurt. Within the show, all three of these characters are also currently single. Although Hannah is seeing Adam, it is not monogamous and there is no “label” on what their relationship is or might be in the future. Marnie, on the other hand, is in a relationship at this point and she is not present for this meeting. All three of these women also do not currently hold employment, which is why they can meet up in the middle of the day, and another reason Marnie is absent.

This reveals that Marnie is not equal with the three other women and Jessa, Hannah, and

62 Shoshanna are presented in a different context within the scene. They are talking about being single and expressing their opinions about men and relationships, opinions Marnie might have but are different since she is in a committed relationship at the time and the other women are not. The fact that Jessa is getting an abortion later in the day doesn’t seem to startle any of the girls visually, although the conversation does reflect that Jessa isn’t the common idea of a “lady” and she is negotiating who she might be based on common understandings of femininity.

This texts also revels resistance by Jessa on how to be a lady, what a lady is, and who is and isn’t a lady. Jessa seems to not identify with common sense understandings of what femininity and being a “lady” might be. Jessa isn’t American and has different ideas of D/discourses such as femininity, sexuality, and gender but she also questions understandings of what it might look like to be the “lady” that Shoshanna is talking about. Jessa is also getting an abortion later in the day, which has made her stop and reflect on who she is and where she might be headed as a woman. Resisting definitions of what is and isn’t okay for men and women to do together by saying, “What if I want to focus on something else? What if I want to feel like I have udders? This woman doesn’t care what I want” reflects Jessa’s questioning of femininity and possibly opens up new meanings for what femininity might be and mean for women. Jessa also questions Shoshanna’s common sense understanding of what ‘the ladies’ are by saying “You’re being unfair. You can’t force me to be a lady.” By questioning this understanding of femininity, Jessa also puts Shoshanna in a position to be reflexive about her own perceptions of femininity and further opens up reflexivity to possible viewers of Girls.

Questioning and resisting common sense understandings of sexuality, gender, and

63 femininity in private presents femininity as something that isn’t stable and is not a “supposed to.” This presentation of femininity leaves open the possibility that femininity can mean more than one understanding or way of knowing what a woman is or can be.

Another example of questioning femininity is shown again with Jessa. In the episode Hard Being Easy, Jessa receives a message from an old boyfriend who is in town and decides to meet him in the park. After talking about his new girlfriend, Gillian, for a while Jessa states, “You’re so keen on Gillian and yet you’re calling me.” Her exboyfriend replies with, “I’m really happy with my girlfriend,” to which Jessa asks, “Really?” In the next scene, we see Jessa and her ex-boyfriend bust into Shoshanna’s apartment (where Jessa is staying) where they have sex. Shoshanna is in the apartment but neither Jessa nor her ex seem to notice her and Shoshanna hides behind the curtain of her closet to let them have privacy. After they have finished, the man tries to kiss Jessa but she pulls away and says, “What about Gillian?” to which the man leaves the apartment. After he leaves, Shoshanna laughs and reveals herself and Jessa looks very surprised and says the following.

Jessa: Oh, my God, Shoshanna. You’re a batshit little perv. I knew you were crazy, but fucking perv?! Oh, my God! Okay, so just so you know what you just saw, that was me showing that I cannot be smoted. I am unsmotable. You should probably write that down by the way.

Shoshanna: (Whimpers and looks completely shocked.)

Again Jessa is presented as a woman resisting the normalized D/discourse of femininity. In this scene, Jessa is shown as an active participant in her womanhood. As a woman, she has just made a discursive statement about her sexuality. She enjoys sexual encounters and chooses when, with who, and where to have sex and does not simply wait

64 for men, but actively seeks them out. This text also shows the difference in presentations of femininity by having Shoshanna present as well. Shoshanna is a virgin and Jessa is having sex with an ex-boyfriend. I wrote in my fieldnotes that this scene shows a more “normalized” (re)presentation of femininity in Shoshanna and a critique to the normalized presentation in Jessa. Jessa goes against the status-quo of normal ways to be a woman. Shoshanna’s shock shows that she wouldn’t act the way Jessa has. Further, Jessa’s actions show that she isn’t the same type of woman as Shoshanna. Telling Shoshanna that she is “unsmotable” tells her that Jessa can get the man she wants, when she wants, and send them packing when she’s done. In my fieldnotes I wrote that Jessa’s behavior seemed more like that of a man in this particular scene. Following the D/discourse of masculinity and femininity, it has become normalized for men to be subjects and women to be objects. Within this scene, Jessa is presented as a woman who acts upon a man, which turns that D/discourse around and presents both femininity and masculinity in different ways. Jessa is presented more actively because she is not emotionally tied to this man and just wanted to use him for sex. This presentation of femininity further makes a statement of how women’s needs are thus relegated to the private and hidden in the public. This texts presents femininity as women fulfilling their sexual needs, not being emotionally connected to men, and not feeling bad for it.

Femininity as presented in private by Jessa resists dominant understandings of gender, sex, and the way women should act. Resistance is shown in private through interactions with other women on who is a “lady,” how women should act, and what they might be.

Explaining she is “unsmotable” in the presence of the virgin, Shoshanna, marks an attempt to resist the fixed meanings of femininity. Along these same lines Girls presents

65 femininity in private as not being silent but rather voicing opinions to their selves and to the other women.

Voicing Opinions Private presentations of femininity as shown in Girls presents woman contemplating their femininity, relationships with men, employment, their selves, and their relationships with other women. In private the four main characters express their opinions and thoughts verbally. Women are shown verbally negotiating what it means to be a woman, friend, girlfriend, and employee when in private. After going to a book release party in the episode Leave Me Alone, for Hannah’s college acquaintance and rival, Tally Schifrin, Hannah seems to feel a little unaccomplished since she has not been published yet. Thinking that Tally is a horrible writer, she contemplates why success has come to Tally and not herself. Changing her usual writing style and content, she goes to a reading and completely misses the mark with her new style. Feeling a little lost and left behind as a writer she returns to the apartment she shares with Marnie and finds Tally’s book on the kitchen table. She confronts Marnie about the book and their friendship, and both women voice their opinion on friendship and each other.

Hannah: (Hannah enters the apartment and finds the book on the dining table; she walks to Marnie’s room and stands in the doorway.) Wait, so you actually bought Tally Schifrin’s book?

Marnie: It was a book party, so I bought the book.

Hannah: Well, you don’t like it, do you?

Marnie: She is a really good writer. You know? She captures something really true about the uncertainty of being our age. I cried twice.

Hannah: Well, are you getting your period?

Marnie: You know, I’m not. So…

66 Hannah: What are you doing?

Marnie: Just uh throwing out some old clothing I’ve been wanting to get rid of for a long time.

Hannah: Maybe you should give it to charity, or…

Marnie: I don’t think poor people need to wear my shitty old stuff on top of everything else.

Hannah: Well, I love that dress.

Marnie: This one?

Hannah: Yeah, I love it.

Marnie: Really?

Hannah: Don’t throw it away. It’s great.

Marnie: You can have it. (Throws dress at Hannah.) I don’t know what size it is though. Might be tight. (Leaves room and walks to the front door.)

Hannah: Okay…Marnie, I did the stupidest thing at that reading.

Marnie: I’m kind of doing this right now. Could we talk about it later?

Hannah: All right, yeah. Are you mad at me?

Marnie: No Hannah. Not at all. (Leaves apartment to go to trash shoot in the hallway.)

Hannah: (Follows Marnie to the hallway.) Cause you kind of seem mad at me.

Marnie: I pay all the bills in this apartment. Does that not give me, like, one night off from talking about all of your problems?

Hannah: Okay. Wow. Marnie: As it happens, I’m not always in the mood to talk about you.

Hannah: Okay. Wow. (Both walk back inside the apartment.)

Marnie: You know, I didn’t even want to go into this, but you pushed me like you push everyone about everything!

67 Hannah: I push everyone?

Marnie: (Opens refrigerator.) Why do you always eat my yogurt? Don’t look at me like I just said something awful because I really didn’t. Oh, my God. (Marnie walks back to her room.)

Hannah: (Hannah follows Marnie, stands in her doorway). You think we only talk about my problems? Like why do you think that? (Marnie rolls eyes at Hannah and looks completely annoyed).

Marnie: Because we do.

Hannah: That’s not true Marnie, we only talk about your problems. It has always been that way. Seriously. We talk about what’s right with Charlie, then what’s wrong with Charlie. Now we talk about how you’re never gonna meet someone.

‘Cause it’s like you think meeting a guy is the main point of life, so we have, like, a summit everyday to make a game plan.

Marnie: Okay, you just flipped this around in a really crazy way. I am the one that has the right to be mad here, okay? I’m taking a very brave chance discussing my feelings.

Hannah: Well, you should maybe bring things up while they’re actually happening and then we could avoid these overwrought conversations.

Marnie: Okay, then I don’t want to talk about it anymore.

Hannah: Well I do.

Marnie: Well, now I don’t.

Hannah: Well, now I need closure, okay?

Marnie: You are so selfish. This is why you have no friends from preschool.

Hannah: Uh, I have a lot of friends from preschool. I’m just not speaking to them right now.

Marnie: No but you judge everyone and yet you ask them not to judge you.

Hannah: That is because no one could ever hate me as much as I hate myself, okay? So any mean thing someone’s gonna think of to say about me, I’ve already said it to me, about me, probably in the last half hour!

Marnie: That is bullshit, because I could literally think of a million mean things that have never once occurred to you.

Hannah: Oh yeah? Like what?

68 Marnie: Well, I wouldn’t do that. (Walks to bathroom to brush her teeth.)

Hannah: (Follows Marnie and stands in doorway.) Seriously, say one. Honestly Marnie, you are so obsessed…

Marnie: Oh, my God! Hannah:…with success and who’s who and what they have and how they got it.

Like, I was looking at Tally Schifrin the other night and I thought you probably wish she was your best friend. It’s pretty transparent. So you can tell everyone to tune in and hear your best friend on “Fresh Air.” Marnie: I like being around people who know what they want.

Hannah: People like you? ‘Cause what do you want besides a boyfriend with a luxury rental? Seriously, that’s where your priorities are. You have always been this way and now it is worse.

Marnie: No, you know what? You are worse. I can’t take you anymore. You think that everyone in the world is out to humiliate you. You’re like a big, ugly fucking wound!

Hannah: Adam says you are teetering on the edge of psychotic misery, but you’re smiling so wide that no one can tell. You are the wound.

Marnie: I am not the wound, you are the wound!

Hannah: You’re the wound.

Marnie: You’re the wound!

Hannah: You’re the wound!

Marnie: Stop saying that. I am not a wound. You are a wound.

Hannah: Maybe we’re over-analyzing this and the issue is just that I’ve got a boyfriend and you don’t and it’s as simple as that.

Marnie: (Throws toothbrush at Hannah and walks out of the bathroom to living room.)

Hannah: That’s awesome, that is a really mature way to deal with your fucking feelings! (Screaming, and throws toothbrush back at Marnie.)

Marnie: I would back the fuck off if I were you!

Hannah: Oh, I’m fucking terrified. Seriously, I mean I’m not but I probably should be, since you’ve been batshit crazy since Charlie broke up with you.

69 Marnie: Yeah? Well, you’ve been crazy since before I even met you. You’ve been crazy since middle school when you had to masturbate eight times a night to stave off diseases of the mind and body.

Hannah: Okay, that is my most shameful, painful, private secret, okay? And it might sound like a joke, but it is not fucking funny to me! And that is why I told you not to tell anyone!

Marnie: I didn’t tell anyone! I would never to that! I am just telling you now! I would never tell anyone that! I am a good fucking friend! Unlike you! You are a bad friend!

Hannah: Maybe that’s not what’s important to me right now. I don’t really give a shit about being a good friend. I have bigger concerns.

Marnie: You know what? Thank you. That is all I needed to hear. I’m done.

Hannah: What is that supposed to mean?

Marnie: I do not want to live here anymore, not with you.

Hannah: Yeah, well, I don’t want to live with you anymore, either, and I am not just saying that because you said it. I was thinking it, but I did not want to say it because I am a good friend and you are a bad friend!

Marnie: Fine!

Hannah: Great!

Marnie: Awesome!

Hannah: Very good! (Both go to their room and slam the door, camera stays on shut doors for a couple seconds and the scene fades out and credits start.)

Within this text Hannah and Marnie express their thoughts and feeling about each other, their long-standing friendship, relationships with men, and their view on how each other sees the world. Visually, this scene takes place in Hannah and Marnie’s apartment, a place that is home to both of them and a place where they feel safe. Thus, a reason Marnie didn’t need to hide the fact that she bought Tally Schifrin’s book, even though she knew Hannah holds hostile feelings toward Tally and her being a published author.

When Hannah comes home, Marnie is in pajamas and is sorting old clothing to get rid of.

70 Marnie is always shown impeccably dressed and when Hannah sees her throwing away her nice, expensive clothing she makes a comment to give it to charity. In my fieldnotes I wrote that Hannah is almost making a statement on what “good” people do and saying that Marnie isn’t “good.” Marnie offers to give a dress to Hannah but says, “it might be tight” almost retorting with a comment about Hannah’s body type and what type of woman Hannah is. The way that Hannah stays in the doorway of Marnie’s bedroom and the bathroom shows that she is not invading Marnie’s territory. Within this argument Hannah gives Marnie space and does not step into her room; my fieldnotes state that this suggests that Hannah can say what she needs to because she isn’t in Marnie’s room, but if she was in Marnie’s room she would have to censor what she might say. The shared areas such as the bathroom and the living room show both women not censoring their speech. It was interesting to see how the blocking correlated with what could possibly be said within the text. Nonverbal rules accompanied the verbal within this argument to show how femininity is presented in relation to each other and the rules that space play in talking and voicing opinions.

This text also reveals and presents how men fit into presentations of femininity in both private and public situations. Hannah states that Marnie’s main concern is that she won’t be happy or whole until she finds a boyfriend by stating, “We talk about what’s right with Charlie, then what’s wrong with Charlie. Now we talk about how you’re never gonna meet someone. ‘Cause it’s like you think meeting a guy is the main point of life, so we have, like, a summit everyday to make a game plan.” Hannah voices her opinion about relationships and critiques how she thinks Marnie sees the world. Hannah also says that, “‘Cause what do you want besides a boyfriend with a luxury rental? Seriously, that’s

71 where your priorities are. You have always been this way and now it is worse.” In private femininity is presented in a way that women can freely say what they want to or feel they need to say. The way Hannah talks about Marnie’s perception of the world is heard by Marnie and not defended. Honesty is welcomed, even if the climate is hostile. The need for men brings the conversation back to how women might stage and plan interactions with men to keep their femininity perceived in a certain way publicly. If Marnie and Hannah talk about relationships and what is right or wrong with Charlie and future relationships Marnie might have, then they are planning how femininity should be performed in public, by speaking about it privately. The need for male approval or to be in a relationship with a man to identify as a woman is an idea that transcends both public and private presentations of femininity and tells women that a man is needed to fully feel like a woman and be a woman. As such, the recurring theme of the need for a male tells women that the identity of a woman is always in relation to a man.

Being a woman and reflecting upon oneself is also revealed as part of the private presentation of femininity within this text. Both Marnie and Hannah reflect upon themselves as women and voice their findings about themselves and each other. Marnie states that Hannah judges everyone but does not want anyone to judge her and Hannah replies with, “That is because no one could ever hate me as much as I hate myself, okay?

So any mean thing someone’s gonna think of to say about me, I’ve already said it to me, about me, probably in the last half hour!” revealing that in private, without anybody present, women criticize their appearance, personality, body type, and become extremely hard on themselves. Reflection takes on a voyeuristic quality, where women put themselves in the position of other people looking back at themselves and create voices

72 for those people to criticize themselves. In this sense, self-reflection is removed from the self to the D/discourses that enable and constrain what can be said about a woman and women see themselves through the eyes of others that keep D/discourses in tact. Both women also call each other a wound, which suggests that something wrong, broken, or infected and is exposed in each of them and hasn’t healed. Being a wound reveals that something is sick with each woman and in their relationship to each other and further allows for reflection. Throughout this text women’s voices are expressed and heard.

Private presentations of femininity reveal that women can be loud, and say things without worrying about consequences that might be present in public. In private, women can lift the silence that holds them back and express themselves for better or worse. Another private presentation of femininity tells women to reveal things to their close friends to either get advice or sympathy from them.

In the episode All Adventurous Women Do, Hannah and Shoshanna have a moment to discuss what their “baggage” is and how that affects their identities as women.

Hannah stops by Shoshanna’s apartment to change and ends up staying to watch T.V. and talk. In this scene both Hannah and Shoshanna reveal what their baggage is and get advice from each other on how to handle relationships and life experiences with their baggage.

Hannah: Thanks for letting me change here, Shoshanna.

Shoshanna: (Sitting on couch wrapped in a blanket, watching T.V.) Mm-hmm.

Hannah: Do you know where Jessa is? Do you know when she’ll be home?

Shoshanna: Um. Probably not till late. She has a job now.

Hannah: Okay, I guess everybody has a job now.

73 (T.V noises of crowd gasping with surprise.)

Shoshanna: Oh, my effing “G,” no.

Hannah: What are you watching?

Shoshanna: “Baggage.”

Hannah: “Baggage”? What’s “Baggage”?

Shoshanna: It’s, like, my favorite show on the Game Show Network. No, she didn’t.

Hannah: Oh, Marnie and I don’t have cable. So I haven’t seen that.

Shoshanna: (Looks up at Hannah.) Shut up. No way. Get over here now. (Hannah walks over to sit on couch with Shoshanna.) Okay. So, there are three contestants.

Today they’re girls. And this guy Danny is looking for love, and they each have three suitcases—a little one, a medium one, and a big one. And in them they have, like, their secret baggage and they reveal it. And if it’s super freaky, he eliminates them. –Okay. Like this one chickHannah: The black one or the blonde one?

Shoshanna: Yeah, the black one. Her littlest baggage is that she spends over $1,000 a month on her weave, which host Jerry Springer thinks is “un-be-weaveable.” Her medium baggage is that she plans her wedding after the first date, and her biggest baggage is that she pokes holes in condoms.

Hannah: Whoa!

Shoshanna: Mm. Hannah: That’s a crazy thing to do.

Shoshanna: I know. What would you put in your baggage?

Hannah: I don’t know. I feel like— Shoshanna: So like, for me, I think that my littlest baggage would probably be my I.B.S. and my medium baggage would be that I truly don’t love my grandmother.

Hannah: Like, you don’t love her at all?

Shoshanna: Mm-mm, (shakes head).

Hannah: So then what would your biggest baggage be?

74 Shoshanna: That I’m a virgin. Obviously.

Hannah: Yeah, but that doesn’t count because soon you’re gonna have sex and then you’re gonna forget you ever didn’t have sex and then you’re gonna have to pick a new baggage, so it doesn’t count.

Shoshanna: I hope so. What’s yours?

Hannah: Let’s see. My littlest baggage is probably that I am unfit for any and all paying jobs. My medium baggage is that I just bought four cupcakes and ate one in your bathroom. (Shoshanna nods head in agreement.) And my biggest baggage is that I have H.P.V., which I found out today. So. Shoshanna: Oh, my God. Do you have warts?

Hannah: No, I don’t have warts, but, like (lowers voice to whisper) I haven’t looked deep inside myself, but I don’t see any warts.

Shoshanna: Oh. It’s like, much less bad then. Jessa has H.P.V. Hannah: She does? She never told me that.

Shoshanna: Yeah, like a couple strains of it. She says all adventurous women do.

(Lowers her voice to a whisper.) Do you know who gave it to you?

Hannah: (Whispering.) Okay, I thought it was the guy that I am seeing, but he’s gotten tested, so now I think it was Elijah, my boyfriend for the last two years of college.

Shoshanna: Mm-hmm. Who broke up with who?

Hannah: Okay, he broke up with me because he needed “space.” But then he called me every day for six months crying, so…

Shoshanna: You have to tell him.

Hannah: About my H.P.V.?

Shoshanna: Mm-hmm (nods head).

Hannah: Yeah, but it doesn’t have any symptoms for guys, and also it would open a lot of old wounds for him. Like, I think he’s still in love with me.

Shoshanna: Yeah, but it’s like totally the responsible thing to do. And sometimes you have to break a few eggs to do what’s right. You know what I mean? Like, do you really want all of his future lovers to suffer the same disease that you have?

No offense.

75 Hannah: Yeah, but I thought you said it’s not that big a deal.

Shoshanna: No, it’s totally not that big a deal, but it’s still like—I mean, I just, like, in the S.T.D. world, it think that’s kind of courteous.

Hannah: Do you have to do it in person?

Shoshanna: Um. I don’t know. Like, what are the other options?

Hannah: I’m just worried that if we see each other, we’re gonna end up having sex.

Shoshanna: But, like, that’s okay because you both already have H.P.V. Hannah: God, that’s a really good point.

Within this text, Shoshanna is shown at her apartment, which is safe space for her to reveal her “baggage” to Hannah. She is wrapped in a blanket on her couch and invites Hannah into her space to share this information. The television show that Shoshanna is watching aids in bringing up the topic for discussion between the two women. Talking about baggage reveals that women discuss their femininity privately. Subjects such as sexually transmitted diseases, things that happen during sex, relationships with men, appearance, body image, dieting, and family can all be discussed with honesty in private.

By discussing subjects (baggage) that wouldn’t be talked about normally or in public both women can not only get advice but also talk about what bothers them as women.

Shoshanna’s virginity being her biggest baggage reveals that without having sex she is missing some part of her identity as a female. This further reveals the idea that women need a man in order to fully be a woman. Women are expected to be sexual beings for the pleasure of men, and Shoshanna is worried that no man will want her if she is a virgin and has no experience. The apprehension shown with Shoshanna also reveals that there is a certain timeframe in a woman’s life where she is expected to lose her virginity and

76 Shoshanna has waited past that date. As such, Shoshanna’s actual baggage is revealed, it’s not the fact that she is a virgin but the possible associations that go along with being a virgin at twenty-one, and that men and women might only see her as a virgin and other facets that make up her identity. Being able to get reassurance from Hannah, someone who is not a virgin, not only aids in Shoshanna’s anxiety about sexuality but also reaffirms a D/discourse about women and sex that made Shoshanna nervous in the first place. The D/discourse on sex and gender permeate both what can be done in public and what can be said in private.

Hannah’s baggage reveals some of the problems women face in public. Hannah exposes her body image by stating that her medium baggage is “buying four cupcakes and eating one in the bathroom.” Women’s diets seem to be a major focus of their identities. The way women look has become very power-laden. What attractive and sexy means has become fairly normalized and stable from the representations of women in media. Hannah’s body is a different type of body than people are used to seeing on television. In She Did, she states, “I am 13 pounds overweight and it has been awful for me my whole life,” revealing that when women are overweight it becomes more difficult for them to perform femininity than it might be for women who are not overweight.

Although Girls presents women of different body types, in private femininity is presented as hiding in the bathroom to eat a cupcake and saying that an extra 13 pounds has made life incredibly hard. This baggage is even placed more important to Hannah than her inability to get a job, further making a statement that women’s bodies are more important than their careers. Since Hannah’s body is not something that she can hide, she retreats to eating desserts in private rather than in public, revealing that women’s bodies are judged

77 before their ability, personality, and what they have to say. Shoshanna’s head nod of agreement only affirms that the bathroom is a decent place to hide the shame one should feel about buying four cupcakes and eating one.

As seen with both women in this text, sex becomes something that is discussed in private situations. Hannah’s biggest baggage is that she has H.P.V., which is new information for her and discussing this with Shoshanna can help her process how she should now see herself as a woman. Within the normalized D/discourse of sexuality, having an S.T.D. is seen as a bad thing and something people should be ashamed of. For women, it can imply that one is sexually promiscuous and becomes broken somehow.

Along with getting diagnosed with H.P.V., Hannah has also been diagnosed with the stereotypes that accompany sexually transmitted diseases. However, Shoshanna shares Jessa’s view on having H.P.V. “all adventurous women do,” which makes Hannah see the world a little differently. Again, Jessa is resisting normalized ways of thinking and introducing a new perspective on how to be a woman.

The conversation between Hannah and Shoshanna reveal that women negotiate normalized D/discourses in private that constrain them in public. The private presentations of femininity as seen on Girls show women talking to each other, and to themselves to get advice and to simply be heard. Talking about topics in private that would not normally be brought up public shows that there is a safe discursive place in private encounters, where in public these topics might be met with judgment and prejudice. It also seems that when in private women can be less strict with what they say, wear, and look like in their overall presentations of femininity. Although normalized D/discourses are still present, in private women can question and critique what it means

78 to be a woman and act feminine. There is no watchdog (other women or men) monitoring femininity in private and so women are able to say and do things with more freedom.

Private presentations of femininity enable women to step away from the performance of femininity and reflect, negotiate, and reject what femininity is “supposed” to be. The private/public dichotomy of presentations of femininity are not completely separate. As seen in Girls, many times the four main characters privately stage, and contemplate past and future interactions they have had or will face in public. Further, the private and public worlds are connected by D/discourses that guide knowledge of the world and the self to the world.

Staging the Public in Private Placing public presentations of femininity in conversation with private presentations reveal an important relationship that further shows how femininity is presented in the show. Public presentations of femininity in Girls shows women being sexually confident while simultaneously in need of the approval of men, and being silenced. However, in private, women are seen questioning public presentations of femininity and voicing their alternatives. In private women also criticize themselves for not being woman enough, or being too much woman and what that may mean. Both public and private presentations of femininity are connected through the D/discourses of gender, sexuality, and femininity. This is seen when women contemplate femininity privately and then present it publicly. Butler (2004) states that gender is always a performance both in public and private and that gender is not performed alone, we are always doing gender with or for someone else, “even if the other is only imaginary” (p.

1). For women, expectations of gender and femininity aid the performance in both the

79 public and private realm. Within Girls, women are seen planning out or staging public interactions while in private. They do this through controlling the public interaction by privately planning what they will wear, what they will say, and how they might act. As such, the interconnectedness of private and public presentations is further discussed and interpreted.

Within the texts, Girls presents women that have a tough or hard exterior in public. Heartbreak, bad news, and stress at work do not get to the main characters in public. This is partially because the women in Girls plan out public interaction while in private. By planning out what could possibly happen in private, women may be seen as more in control in public encounters. Thus, women are presented as reserved, and in control of their bodies, words, and actions in public. This presentation of femininity in both public and private is seen most clearly with Marnie. Within Girls, Marnie’s storyline is about the transition of being in a long-term relationship to being newly single. Marnie goes through a break-up with her boyfriend Charlie after he finds Hannah’s diary and reads what Hannah really thinks about their relationship. After reading this information Charlie confronts Marnie in front of a crowd at a concert where Charlie is performing (Hannah’s Diary). While on stage Charlie introduces a new song (entitled Hannah’s Diary) and starts to sing the words that Hannah has written as notes for one of her essays.

Once Hannah and Marnie figure out what the song is really about, Marnie throws her drink on Hannah and leaves the venue. What is seen here shows the beginning of how Marnie starts to plan out future interactions with Charlie.

Charlie: Wow. Thank you all very much for coming. My name is Charlie.

Ray: And I’m Ray, and together we are Questionable Goods.

80 Crowd: Yeah!

Charlie: This next song is—it’s a new one, so bear with us. It’s our first time playing it. And it is for my g-friend Marnie, and for her friend too, Hannah. And this is called “Hannah’s Diary.”

(Hannah and Marnie are surprised and touched that Adam and Ray wrote a song about them.)

Shoshanna: Good name.

Charlie: A-one, two, three.

(Music playing softly.)

What is Marnie thinking, oh? She needs to know what’s out there, what is Marnie thinking, oh? How does it feel to date a man with a vagina? Doesn’t she want to feel an actual penis?

Shoshanna: Is this a love song?

Ray: This is the bridge (Ray pulls out Hannah’s Diary and holds it so Charlie can read out of it).

Charlie: “Marnie has to stop whining, and break up with him already. Of course it’ll be painful, but she’s already in so much agony, stuck in a prison of his kindness. Just because someone is kind doesn’t mean that they’re right. Better to end it now and cut off the limb and let the stump heal. He’ll find someone else, someone that appreciates his kind of smothering love.”

(Charlie starts to strum his guitar louder and faster until he ends the song and unplugs his guitar.)

Thank you very much for all coming out. Everyone have a great fucking night.

(Charlie and Ray exit and Ray puts the diary on his seat.)

Marnie: You’re such a fucking bitch! (Throws drink at Hannah.)

Hannah: Aah! Jessa: Fucking hell. That was fucking awesome.

Hannah: I think I’m gonna puke. (Camera fades out to black.)

Visually, this scene puts Charlie in a dominant position over Marnie. Charlie is on stage, and shown higher than the rest of the audience and is the only person (besides Ray)

81 that the audience is facing. The camera is pointed at an upward angle to show Charlie and a downward angle to show Marnie, Hannah, Shoshanna, and Jessa, further showing the dominance that Charlie holds in this situation. The lighting of the scene supports the dominance of Charlie and shows a spotlight on Charlie and his band member Ray and a dim blue lighting on the four girls within the crowd. He also has a microphone, which allows his voice to be heard over Hannah and Marnie’s voice, further putting him in a position of power. The blocking of this scene leaves Marnie and Hannah silenced in terms of them talking to Charlie but not silenced in talking to each other. Although Marnie is hurt, she does not express her feelings in public and leaves the venue as the scene ends. This texts presents femininity as very controlled and manipulated when displayed in public. Marnie does not display her emotions and controls her presentation of femininity while in public. By throwing a drink on Hannah, Marnie also displays her alliance with Charlie and not Hannah. Although Marnie did not write what was in the journal, the journal was filled with information that Hannah acquired by observing Marnie and Charlie’s relationship and by having private conversations with Marnie about her relationship. Although there were aspects of the journal that were true for Marnie, she still aligns herself publicly with Charlie, echoing the need for male acceptance discussed earlier while presenting her femininity as controlled and ‘put together’ in public.

The situation between Marnie and Charlie spans multiple episodes and after a conversation with both Marnie and Hannah, Charlie breaks up with Marnie and takes the coffee table he made for her from the apartment and leaves in a fit of anger (Hard Being Easy). Later in the episode Hard Being Easy, Marnie plans to intervene and stop the breakup to get back together with Charlie. In a breakfast conversation with Hannah,

82 Marnie states, “I’m going to get him back. I’m going to put on my party dress and my sorry face and I’m going to get him back.” This conversation presents women staging out their interactions in public by planning them in private. By putting on a “party dress” and a “sad face” Marnie is planning the interaction and the emotional responses she wants received publicly. This text reveals how women constrain and hide their emotions so others will perceive them in a certain way, perhaps in the common sense understandings of femininity that have been normalized and maintained. Femininity is thus presented as a staging event between the dichotomy of public and private where women perform their femininity in very particular ways, which include contorting their bodies, and controlling their language.

Marnie and Charlie’s storyline is presented again in the episode Welcome to Bushwick a.k.a The Crackcident, where two weeks after the break-up Marnie, Hannah, Jessa, and Shoshanna go to a large party in an abandoned warehouse. Charlie’s band is performing at the party and after seriously discussing the decision of whether or not to go talk to Charlie after his band is done playing, again staging a public presentation of femininity, Marnie goes to speak with him.

Marnie: Hey Charlie: Hey. Mm-mmm. It’s nice to see your face.

Marnie: Yeah, I thought it might be. Nice set.

Charlie: Thank you.

Marnie: It’s just nice to see that you’re playing. You know, I know you didn’t think you were doing that enough.

Charlie: Yeah, right. No, actually, we’ve got some really great things lined up.

Marnie: I’m really, really happy for you Charlie.

83 Charlie: Thanks.

Marnie: I mean, all I ever wanted for you was to be able to find satisfaction outside of our relationship.

Charlie: Oh. Marnie: It’s good to see you.

Charlie: Yeah, yeah. No, you too. You look great.

Marnie: This feels very, like, cordial and grown-up.

Charlie: Yeah, right. Well, it’s—you know, it’s mature.

Marnie: Yeah.

(An unknown woman jumps into Charlie’s arms.)

Audrey: You were fucking awesome.

Charlie: Shh. Shh. Thank you.

Audrey: You were amazing.

Charlie: Um, Marnie, this is Audrey.

Audrey: Hi. It’s nice to meet you. How good was he? It was your first gig, in like, forever and you guys rocked it.

Charlie: Hmm, gig.

Audrey: I’m so impressed.

Marnie: Um, sorry, what is going on?

Charlie: What?

Marnie: What—what is going on with this? (Points to Audrey.)

Audrey: I don’t understand.

Marnie: It’s been two weeks.

Charlie: Uh, yeah.

Marnie: This happened in two weeks?

Charlie: Uh, yeah. No, I guess we—we just meet and sort of clicked.

84 Audrey: I’m sorry, who are you?

Marnie: You’ve never heard of me?

Audrey: No, should I have? Are you like one of those “real housewives”?

Charlie: Oh. Marnie: You are a sociopath.

This interaction shows Marnie’s planned dress, smile, and exchange with Charlie being interrupted by the presence of Audrey, and some of the private ways Marnie would act displayed in public. The “mature, cordial, and grown-up” behavior is now replaced with name calling and yelling. This text further presents women as being in control and therefore being able handle messy situations with composure. By discussing whether or not to go talk to Charlie with Hannah, Shoshanna, and Jessa, Marnie was staging her interaction beforehand and trying to control the possible variables in her future interaction with Charlie. Girls presents women as being in control of their bodies, words, and interactions. As such, if women aren’t in control it becomes difficult to be in public.

This is seen in Weirdos Need Girlfriends Too where Marnie is shown alone in her apartment, in private, dressed in pajamas, with no make-up on, and her hair undone in the middle of the day. This becomes in contrast with the public presentation of Marnie as she is always shown as a very done-up woman with everything in order. However, in this scene she is sprawled out on the couch and the camera is pointed from behind Marnie.

Visually, viewers can see over her shoulder as she clicks through pictures on Facebook of Charlie and Audrey together in Rome. As she clicks through each picture, she provides commentary such as, “Ew, gay, what?” Marnie has come to define herself by her relationship with Charlie and know herself as girlfriend, now part of her identity has been removed. This scene presents femininity as women being identified by their relationships

85 with others and how this can change the public and private presentation of femininity.

Marnie’s knowledge of herself had been in relation to Charlie and for many women identity is known in relation to a male counterpart and titles such as girlfriend, wife, daughter, sister, and employee are used to address a woman’s self-knowledge. When one of those titles is removed, women have to come to know themselves in new ways. For Marnie, her identity as girlfriend is gone and her private presentation shows her identity as ‘girl on couch Facebook stalking her ex-boyfriend,’ which suggests her need for the acceptance and approval of a man.

The transition of Marnie’s identity from girlfriend to single is shown in both public and private. The need for the acceptance and approval of a man, and in Marnie’s case Charlie, plays a role in how she performs femininity in both the public and private sphere. The need for Marnie to look, talk, and act a certain way in public suggests that there are consequences to her public presentation. By controlling her public presentation she is trying to not only save face, but also trying to get the attention of Charlie to possibly get him back. Again, in both the public and private realm, men play an important part to how women choose, and sometimes don’t choose to present femininity.

The staging that Marnie goes through in private to present herself in a very particular way publicly shows that women control their femininity by contorting their bodies, dress, hair, makeup, expression, language, and movements. Another example of “controlling” or “staging” public interactions privately is seen in the episode The Return when Hannah returns to her parents’ house in Michigan and is invited to a benefit for one of her classmates that has passed away. Before the benefit Hannah stops at the pharmacy to pick up a prescription for her mother and runs into an old high school classmate who is

86 now the pharmacist. He asks her to be his date for the benefit and Hannah accepts. While getting ready in her childhood room, she tries on different dresses trying to pick out which one she will end up wearing and looks at herself in the mirror and gives herself the following pep talk.

Hannah: You are from New York, therefore you are just naturally interesting.

Okay? It is not up to you to fill all the pauses. You are not in danger of mortifying yourself. The worst stuff that you say sounds better than the best stuff that some other people say.

The visual texts of this scene show Hannah trying on different dresses from her closet, indicating that she is wearing clothing that she has had since high school. The clothing that she is wearing, the people who are going to be at the benefit, and being in her hometown suggests that Hannah is going back in time to a place where she had a hard time accepting herself. Thus a reason she needs to give herself a pep talk. The insecurities that Hannah is talking to herself about reveal that when in private, femininity is again presented as staging future interactions that might be held in public and addressing potential flaws others might notice. If Hannah is worried about leaving long pauses with unfilled conversation, she is “fixing” that potential situation by using the excuse of being a New Yorker and being “naturally interesting” stating that Michigan residents might be naturally boring. The fact that she does live in New York also makes a statement about how New York femininity is different from Michigan femininity and how they might be presented in both public and private situations. Maybe, because she does live in New York, her Michigan friends might expect her to be more interesting and she has to present her femininity in a way that is in accordance with what she might think they think about her.

87 The staging of public presentations of femininity in Girls shows women that there is indeed a “right” way to act in the presence others. In public, women are sexually confident for the acceptance and validation of men. Women also are silenced in public encounters with men and shown as docile sex objects. However, in private women question and critique the existing order of how to be feminine and are un-silenced to express their opinion and critique of femininity. The interrelatedness of both the public and private show how the Discourses of gender, sexuality, and femininity play into every day language use, texts, and social practices (discourses) of women. The subject position of women within normalized D/discourses put them in a bind. Through my interpretation of both public and private presentations of femininity, women are presented as objects while men are presented as subjects. Thus, women are presented as acted upon and the only time they are shown as active subjects is in private, which tells women their place is behind closed doors, where their lived experiences are treated as unimportant and thus relegated to private discussion.

Overall, placing public presentations of femininity with private presentations reveals how women (in Girls) contemplate their legitimacy and lived experiences in private and adjust their public performances of femininity to maintain or possibly resist the status quo. For instance, although Jessa is seen resisting dominate ideas of femininity in private, in public she gets married and conforms to the idea of women needing the approval of men. Public and private encounters set the stage for how women present themselves within the world. In private, women talk about the Discourse of gender in ways that maintain or possibly transform their presentations of gender, sexuality, and femininity in their lived experiences publicly. Yet, in public the women perform

88 femininity in terms of larger socio-political Discourses of gender that presents a particular material reality with real consequences for the women in the show. As such, many times women are constrained and subjected to the power of Discourses such as gender, patriarchy, and sexuality and women thus purposefully constrain the ways in which their femininity is portrayed in public. Consequently, the private performances of resistance to gender norms juxtaposed with public constraints to gendered performances demonstrates an interconnectedness of both private and public presentations of femininity, revealing how both are embedded within a D/discourse of gender that simultaneously enables and constrains the ways women perform femininity. Specifically, the public presentations of femininity in Girls demonstrate how women, although presented as sexually confident, are constrained and docile in relations with men.

Similarly, private presentations of femininity in Girls demonstrates how women resist dominant/docile ways of knowing femininity in private, yet actively engage being constrained again in private. To further explore the D/discourse of femininity, deconstruction is a helpful way to expose hidden meanings within the presentations of femininity and show alternative ways a text can be interpreted to open up multiple meanings of womaness as seen through the text of Girls.

Deconstructing Girls The previous interpretations of the text using Foucauldian critical discourse analysis was done to examine both public and private presentations of femininity. To further investigate the text of Girls, I use deconstruction to uncover hidden meanings within the text to expose relations of power that are often hard to locate. Deconstruction offers multiple ways a text can be interpreted. Eagleton (1976) states that deconstruction

89 works by revealing what is not said. “It is in the significant silences of a text, in its gaps and absences that the presence of ideology can be most positively felt. It is these silences which the critic must make ‘speak’” (p. 34). Thus, deconstruction focuses on constrained or suppressed meanings that lie in-between what is said and focuses on the multiplicity of meaning that a text can have. Subjectivity and reflexivity are needed to engage in deconstruction and more personal voice is needed from the author (Martin, 1990). During this section of deconstruction I will use a more personal voice to acknowledge my own interpretations (and limitations) of using this method. Within Girls, many presentations of femininity are presented in public or in private. However, both public and private presentations of femininity play off one another and inevitably show the tensions women face and how women are enabled and constrained in both spheres. What remains silent in presentations of femininity become the power-laden assumptions of gender that are difficult to locate since many times power is enacted though everyone but not localized in any individual (Foucault, 1980). When femininity is presented in certain ways through the text, what becomes taken for granted and natural about women (and about men) becomes important because it makes a truth claim about gender, sexuality, and women.

Deconstruction supports, as well as undermines, all claims to truth and “it is essential to acknowledge before proceeding that…deconstruction in turn can be deconstructed from an opposing point of view” (Martin, 1990, p. 341). The poststructuralist feminist viewpoint I use to deconstruct the following text allows me to undermine and support certain points of view, and open up endless ways the text can be deconstructed. What I hope to gain by engaging in deconstruction is revealing hidden or masked power

90 structures embedded within the discursive text and an opportunity to open up multiple meanings of femininity.

Within the text of Girls, women are consistently presented in relation to men.

Whether the male be a boss, boyfriend, or acquaintance women are shown acting differently in the presence of men than they are either by themselves or with other women. In Vagina Panic, Shoshanna, Jessa, and Hannah get into a conversation about who is a lady, and what ladies should do, say, and be. Although this text is interpreted above, it seemed particularly salient to me because although this scene is meant to be comedic, and push a story line forward, it makes explicit truth statements about how to be a woman. However, what it doesn’t say further makes a statement that relies on normalized D/discourses that have become common sense understanding on how to be a woman. To deconstruct the following text, I have first presented the entire text without comments, interpretations, or deconstruction. I will then deconstruct the text to reveal meanings not explicitly stated.

Jessa: So this guy is making you bananas? (Talking about Adam.)

Hannah: I’ve never experienced anything like it. The thing is I have absolutely no sense of how he really feels about me because when we’re together, he’s so there and he’s so present. And then he disappears for two weeks and doesn’t answer any text messages, and I feel as though I invented him.

Shoshanna: Did you invent him?

Hannah: If I’d invented him, then I wouldn’t have a giant bruise on my ass.

Shoshanna: Pause. I have something to contribute here. (Shoshanna holds up a book.)

Jessa: “Listen ladies: A tough love approach to the tough game of love.”

Hannah: Okay. I’m going to admit that I have hate-read that book.

91 Shoshanna: Oh, my god! It, like, totally changes your perspective, right? Okay, “If a man doesn’t take you on a date, he’s not interested, point-blank. ‘Let’s meet up with friends’ is not a date, it’s a date for him to decide whether you’re truly good enough to date, and that’s unacceptable ladies.”

Hannah: There has to be exceptions to that rule.

Shoshanna: “Sex from behind is degrading, point-blank. You deserve someone who wants to look in your beautiful face, ladies.”

Jessa: What if I want to focus on something else? What if I want to feel like I have udders? This woman doesn’t care what I want.

Hannah: But here’s my question, who are “the ladies”?

Shoshanna: Obvi—we’re the ladies.

Jessa: I’m not the ladies.

Shoshanna: Yeah, you’re the ladies.

Jessa: I’m not the ladies.

Shoshanna: Yes, you are. You’re the ladies.

Jessa: You’re being unfair. You can’t force me to be a lady.

Shoshanna: I’m not forcing you to be a lady. You’re just—okay. I’m a lady, she’s a lady, you’re a lady, we’re the ladies.

There are many different ways to read this text. At first glance, many viewers might just see this as a “regular” conversation between friends. Based on the normal ways in which women interact with each other, this text could be read as a normal afternoon in a park. However, other viewers might see this text and agree with either Shoshanna or Jessa’s views on femininity and womanhood. Some viewers might feel uncomfortable about this text and not know exactly why. By using deconstruction, I aim to reveal the hidden meanings of what the text is saying; in other words, what the text is saying without explicitly stating it.

Love Is a Strategic Game

92 The first part of the text describes Hannah’s relationship with Adam.

Deconstructing this text reveals love as a strategic set of moves that enable them to keep the relationship maintained because it satisfies both Hannah’s and Adam’s needs (that are created and maintained by a Discourse). This scene shows love in strategic terms as each relational participant is performing in ways that serve their individual needs. For Hannah, Adam’s presence serves as the means to legitimize her identity as a woman— something of value because a man is willing to be “present.” For Adam, Hannah’s presence serves as a body for pleasure, an available sex object. In both cases, each seems to strategically perform to get to those wants. For instance, strategy is being used when Hannah says, “I’ve never experienced anything like it. The thing is I have absolutely no sense of how he really feels about me because when we’re together, he’s so there and he’s so present. And then he disappears for two weeks and doesn’t answer any text messages, and I feel as though I invented him.” Within this text, each participant in the relationship has to know how to “play the game” to their own advantage. For Adam, he has to listen and be “present” in order for Hannah to feel safe and ultimately to use her for his pleasure. For Hannah, she has to be available to him when he texts her in order to keep him in her life and feel legitimized by his presence. If each were to fail, the relationship would dissolve. The idea of being in a relationship and not being alone has become so embedded in this text it shows that Hannah cannot be “complete” without being in a relationship, so much so that who she is in a relationship with is no longer important.

Further, the notion of relationship as strategy is seen when Hannah protects her identity as a woman in relation to a man. By not answering Hannah’s texts, it shows that

93 the relationship between Hannah and Adam is on Adam’s terms, and Hannah has willfully let it be that way. Traditional ideas and D/discourses about women are at play within the text in presenting Hannah as a woman that needs to be in a relationship to fully identify as a woman. Hannah’s identity as either a woman in a relationship or as a single woman is what is really at stake in her relationship. This reveals how women have been socialized throughout history to think that they cannot manage day to day on their own and need their identity to be legitimized by the presence of men. By shifting into adulthood, young women look at what their supposed to do next and the “supposed to” of being complete by being with a man is informed by D/discourses that have been maintained and keep women suppressed. By following the naturalized view of growing up, it becomes a common sense understanding that young women need to find a man, “before it’s too late.” Thus, the race against the clock is focused more on what women should do, and not the relationship itself. As such, this is not a relationship but a calculated set of moves that reify the D/discourse of womanhood. Deconstructing the first part of this text reveals the need for a male counterpart as a natural idea that has remained unquestionable for women. That need plays a part in relations of power that keep men enabled and women constrained.

Furthermore, when Shoshanna asks, “Did you invent him?” I feel as though she is really asking if this is how men really are. Shoshanna is the inexperienced woman in the group when it comes to men, and she doesn’t know if this is how relationships really work or if this is some relational anomaly. When Hannah replies with “If I’d invented him, then I wouldn’t have a giant bruise on my ass” she is telling Shoshanna that this is how relationships work, and this is what “real” men do. By having “evidence” of a

94 bruise, it demonstrates the physical presence of a relationship, a relationship that confirms Hanna’s femininity. The realities of relationships are messy. The trade-offs in Hannah and Adam’s relationship become real. Adam contacts Hannah whenever he feels like it (usually every two weeks) and Hannah lets this happen to keep Adam in her life.

Hannah lets Adam have “rough” sex with her and in return Adam listens to Hannah and is “so present” in order to do the whole thing over again in two weeks. In this sense, Hannah is a sexual object for Adam to use and bruise. This is a reality of their relationship. To play the “game of love,” women let men use their bodies for sex and men let women use their bodies for listening. Exposing this text as presenting love as a strategy reveals the only reason Hannah has a bruise on her backside is because she has to be submissive to Adam in order to stay in a relationship with him to maintain her “womaness.” Deconstructing this text reveals relationships as a strategic game and results in Hannah having “absolutely no sense of how he really feels.” The game of relationships continues in the next segment of the text when the women discuss the D/discourse of “the lady.”

Docile Bodies Win the Game Further deconstructing the “game” texts reveals women as always deficient and needing to adapt and change. In order to win the game, women need to be docile. For instance, the text also describes more of what women should and shouldn’t do to maintain a D/discourse of femininity. Contributing to the conversation about Hannah and Adam’s relationship, Shoshanna gets out her copy of Listen ladies: A tough love approach to the tough game of love. Not only does the books title contribute to the idea of relationships as a game, but it maintains the D/discourse of women first being

95 expected to find a man, and second being able to “play” the game of love, which includes making all the “right” moves by looking a certain way to win the game. The idea of love, marriage, and relationships is then brought down from this grand idea of love, and finding a soul mate, to saying the right thing, looking a certain way, and engaging in strategy to ultimately win and gain a man. The idea of the “winning” in the game of “love” also assumes that women aren’t fully women until they are known in relation to men, such as a girlfriend, or wife. In other words, their identities aren’t legitimized until they can be known in relation to a man.

Although many women would like to reject the idea of love as a game, it’s hard to do given that many of the ways women come to know the world are embedded into D/discourses that don’t get questioned and seem completely normal. Hannah maintains this thought by admitting she has “hate-read” the book. Even though she doesn’t like what the book might mean for women, she reads it to gain information the book has to offer. The book’s ideas have penetrated Hannah’s thoughts about men and even though she might not realize it, Hannah is playing into the game in her own relationship.

Shoshanna’s delight in the book comes from the book (as a D/discourse) telling her what she was doing wrong as a woman and how to fix it. This also assumes that men don’t have to change and that the problem in relationships lies with women. Women are flawed in some way and need help to fix these flaws in order to gain a man. Men are not flawed, or at least not as flawed, and don’t need to change behaviors, dress, or appearance to date a woman. This leaves men enabled and women constrained. This D/discourse also puts a burden on women to feel that their bodies are always something that needs improvement.

The statement that the book has “changed her perspective” also tells women that they are

96 doing womaness wrong and need to change something about their femininity in order to be “better.” This not only limits femininity to certain ways women should be, but also closes off multiplicity and fragmented ways to present and perform femininity.

Real Women Are Docile Objects In addition to love being a strategic game that needs to be won by changing how a woman performs femininity, deconstructing this text further reveals women as docile and in need of being “chosen” to be legitimate. “If a man doesn’t take you on a date, he’s not interested, point-blank. ‘Let’s meet up with friends’ is not a date, it’s a date for him to decide whether or not you’re truly good enough to date, and that’s unacceptable ladies.”

This text thus tells women that they should be submissive and passive with men, because it assumes a man needs to do the choosing and a woman should wait to be chosen. It assumes that women need to wait around, and make themselves look dateable in order to be asked on a date and interact with a man. Further, this text makes a truth statement that men ask women out, and that men are active in choosing what woman they want. This truth of dating not only objectifies women, but also makes the role of women a silent and passive one. Not only does this text put women in a passive subject position but assumes that all women are inherently good. Within this text, the idea of a date is also meant to woo women. Men are put in a position to show a woman what he has to offer, this again puts women as passive participants in the dating process. The text also assumes that women are already “truly good enough to date” and that it is unacceptable for men to think twice about that. Not only does this contradict the idea that women need to fix themselves to win a man, but it assumes that all women want to date a man. By being docile objects that are available for men to do what they want with, this text tells women

97 that it isn’t their choice to decide if they want a man or not. Some women simply don’t want to date, some might not by “truly good enough to date” and some might not believe in the D/discourse about having a man to be happy, but again this text takes away the voice of women to say otherwise and places the idea of agency with men. Within this text, various truth statements about women are being made. By calling all women “the ladies,” this texts prescribes the way to be feminine. Further, the book within this text is saying that women who don’t act in the prescribed way are having trouble finding a man (making another statement that the only thing that should matter to a woman is finding a man) are being feminine in the wrong way.

Along with the idea of women being docile objects available for men, the text makes a truth statement about how women should view sex. When the book states, “Sex from behind is degrading, point-blank. You deserve someone who wants to look at your beautiful face,” it tells women that what is acceptable and unacceptable in bed. Calling any position where your partner cannot see your face inappropriate assumes that there are only a handful of ways to do sex properly and still remain a “lady.” Something that isn’t said here is what makes up a lady? So far, this texts has said what a lady isn’t, which includes active, enabled, likes sex from behind, likes to be alone, and able to ask a man out on her own. Hanna’s bruise might then seem to indicate that she is not a lady, has been degraded, and remains actively docile by continually participating in the relationship game with Adam. Thus, this text is using a power-laden D/discourse that is taken for granted to say who and what a lady can be. By seeking out the silences within the text and reading in-between the lines, the statement on what makes up a lady becomes clear and keeps the interests of women constrained, hidden, and suppressed. Jessa resists

98 this D/discourse of “the ladies” and is met with more sustained assumptions of womanhood.

Resistance to the Docile “Lady”?

The idea of “the ladies” becomes interesting to examine and look at what assumptions of femininity are being made when the D/discourse of “lady” is perpetuated and combined with ideas of men, sex, and womanhood. Furthermore, resistance to the notion of being a “lady” or challenging what and how is a “lady” reveals contradictions and tensions in the notion of what a lady is (and whether it can even be defined without a man). Even when Jessa’s resistance is made, it is met with the obviousness that we are all ladies because “we just are.” The difficulties in finding words for saying why one is a lady are epistemological and ontological questions that Shoshanna has trouble answering.

How does a woman come to know the world as a woman? Further, how does a woman know what womaness is? Although “she just does” could be one acceptable answer, I argue that there is more at play here. Understandings of the world are created and maintained and become so embedded in the way we make sense of the world and the self in relation to the world that it almost seems trivial to question it. The common sense understandings of the world in relation to how to be a woman and how to perform womaness become naturalized. The D/discourse of being a lady becomes second nature to many women and when it is treated as natural, it constrains and suppresses other ways of knowing, and performing femininity. The way Shoshanna explains who is a lady reinforces the naturalization of gender and sexuality within lived experiences in women’s lives. Shoshanna states, “I’m not forcing you to be a lady. You just—Okay, I’m a lady, she’s a lady, you’re a lady, we’re the ladies.” This statement suggests that all women are

99 ladies, which actually does in some sense force the D/discourse of “being a lady” on Jessa. By simply implying that because you are born a female, you’re automatically a lady ignores how one comes to know gender and sexuality and assumes sameness in women. The normalized D/discourse of gender has been pushed on all women, and it is a D/discourse that many women have helped maintain without even knowing it.

Questioning the D/discourse of “the ladies” opens up room to consider how this knowledge came to be, and what other opportunities women enable.

Overall, deconstructing this text reveals how the D/discourse of femininity, sexuality, and “the ladies” presents a sense of normalized femininity that because we are female we are expected to want and strategically pursue marriage, or some formal relationship to a man. As such, relationships are more important than ideas of love because women need to be in a relationship to feel legitimized. To play the “game of love” and win, women’s bodies need to be docile. Women are to be seen as passive objects, patiently waiting for a man to come along and choose us. Further, our dress, hair, body, and words are monitored not only by ourselves, but by other women as well as men in order to make ourselves more appealing. By remaining docile, and being chosen by a man, “real women” are thus docile women. Normalized D/discourses of femininity and gender tell women to focus on their identity as in relation to a male counterpart. It constrains how women come to know the world and the self in relation to the world. This D/discourse also becomes discursively maintained as common sense understandings of the world. Embedded meanings of femininity naturalize the ways in which women come to know themselves as feminine. Thus, other ways of being feminine or acting feminine get “othered” and treated as unimportant. Questioning the notions of what a woman is

100 exposes tensions that are often hidden and not expressed every day and also places definitions of femininity as always in relation to men. When Jessa questions common sense assumptions of femininity and “the ladies,” she opens up discursive space for femininity to be meaningfully talked about and opens up multiple ways to be a woman and perform femininity.

When initially reading the original text, some women might be unaware of the ways in which the text explicitly lays out femininity and being a lady. However, other women might react differently, either agreeing with Jessa’s distain or being uneasy with the text altogether. Deconstruction reveals reasons for the uneasiness, by exposing the underlying assumptions at play within the text and trying to decentralize the power of a D/discourse and reveal the tensions and contradictions embedded in the text that are not explicitly stated. Although I provide possible ways to re-read the text by deconstruction, my interpretations are just a way to look at the text. Deconstruction is an endless process (Martin, 1990) and even through my poststructuralist feminist perspective I have left other interests out to focus on my interests as a woman.

The findings from the interpretive section reveal that women are presented differently in public and private interactions. Public presentations of femininity present women as sexually confident yet in need of the approval of men to legitimize their presence. Women are also shown being silenced by men and sexually objectified in public encounters. In private, women are enabled to question and voice opinions about the D/discourses that constrain them. Women also privately plan out future presentations of femininity that will happen publicly. Interpretation of the visual texts present in each episode aided in the interpretations and presentations made about femininity. Camera

101 framing and wardrobe presented women as silenced in the presence of men and using dress as a way to plan out public interaction. Furthermore, deconstructing the selected text reveals meanings not explicitly stated in the show. Specifically, love is presented as a game of strategy and in order for women to win the game and be legitimized by being in a relationship, women’s bodies need to be docile in relation to men. Questioning the notion of what a woman is (or can be) exposes tensions in the ways femininity is presented in Girls and questions the ways in which women come to know themselves in relation to the world through the D/discourse of the show. In the next section, I discuss my findings in terms of the literature reviewed and the theoretical background from which this study is grounded.

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DISCUSSION

The findings in this study of Girls provide insights into gender, media, and D/discourse. Specifically, these findings show how ideas of both Discourse and discourse arise in the media. This includes how ideas of gender, sexuality, and femininity are part of media texts that are always connected and in relation to embedded systems of thought about the world and our relation to the world. The exploration of Girls helps to reveal how D/discourses are created, maintained, negotiated, and possibly changed within the various media presentations about them. In particular, these findings reveal how genderbased texts are related to the Discourse of gender and how the media presents both discourse and Discourse within its (re)presentations of texts. In addition, the findings of this study reveal media as a D/discourse in itself with specific implications for knowledge/power of femininity in society. Consequently, when the media becomes perceived in terms of being a D/discourse, the ways individuals come to know the world and the self in relation to the world is at stake in becoming naturalized and unquestioned.

As such, the findings of this study reveal D/discourse of media in two, interconnected ways. First, the texts of Girls present both the discourse of being a women and the Discourse of gender informing these discourses. As such, the findings of this study are discussed as contributing to the idea of the D/discourse of gender being mutually constitutive. Second, the findings of this study are discussed is in terms of the media being a D/discourse. Specifically, when Girls is considered a D/discourse, the texts

103 embedded within this media presentation create ideas of gender that become normalized and thus presentations of gender are normalized and stable. As such, in the following sections, I will discuss my findings in relation to D/discourse of gender within the media and follow with a discussion of my findings in terms of the media being a D/discourse.

Combined, the findings of this study both extend the study of discourse to media presentations of gender and expose media as a D/discourse of gender.

D/discourse and Presentations of Femininity The findings of this study examine how femininity is presented through the texts of Girls. Through the findings, femininity is presented differently in public than in private and many times the main characters plan out public interactions in private.

Through a poststructuralist feminist lens, the particular D/discourse I interrogate is the D/discourse of gender. Throughout Girls, gender is dealt with at both levels of D/discourse; through talk, texts, and embedded systems of meaning about gender and femininity. By keeping gender as a focus in the texts of Girls, the D/discourse of gender emerged through both aspects of D/discourse and is also a mutually constitutive D/discourse within the text.

Many times throughout the findings, women negotiated the notion of gender by engaging in talk. When Hannah’s boss touches her inappropriately, she stays silent in the presence of her boss but she talks about her experience with other women. Discussing how to handle sexual harassment, gender roles, and presentations of femininity were all present in the text between Hannah and her co-workers. As such, negotiating lived experiences of sexual harassment through talk enabled Hannah to make sense of the interaction with her boss, and simultaneously constitute what it means to perform

104 femininity as docility. The presentations of talk, within the text of the script, is seen in both public and private situations. In private, women engage in talk to discuss many issues related to femininity. For instance, Hannah and Shoshanna talk about their personal “baggage” and how that can be constraining to their performances of femininity in public. Further, the text of “the ladies” reveals that when in private women negotiate gender, sexuality, and their own presentations of femininity through talk. Within these texts, talking about being a woman is the way that the women make sense of the world and their subject positions within that world. Discourses are thus reconstituted in the ways these women talk and interact with each other. Ideas of gender are talked about, negotiated, and performed within Girls. Although talk is considered a text in this study, the ways women are shown in conversation are important to study as a type of discourse in how ideas of gender are not only presented, but created, maintained, questioned, and possibly transformed in Girls. By airing weekly, Girls re-orders and re-enforces knowledge of women and femininity in society for viewers. Studying Girls is important because while it seemingly presents women in a new, contemporary way (sexually confident) at the same time it (re)presents women that are aligned in patriarchal ways that position women as docile and only legitimized by the presence of man.

Common forms of discourse also emerge through the visual texts: including wardrobe, lighting, set, camera angels, movement of characters, and everything that appears within the frame of the camera. These visual texts communicate ideas of gender and femininity in the way the text visually appears, and many times what is seen says more about gender than what is said in the script. The visual texts accompany the script by adding more context to meanings of gender, sexuality, and femininity. When the

105 camera shows a close-up of Hannah’s face while she is being sexually harassed and viewers can see the discomfort and shock in her face while remaining silent, it becomes more of an impact for the overall meaning of what the scene is conveying and what meaning is being made from this scene. In this case, the visual text in the scene purposefully highlights Hannah’s silence as a woman being acted upon by a man by having the camera intentionally focused and showing a close-up on Hannah’s mouth, the place where she would voice her discomfort in the situation. The visual texts are also very noticeable in the scene where Charlie exposes the contents of Hannah’s diary. In this scene, Charlie is on a stage with lighting and an audience oriented toward him, while Marnie is positioned within the dark lit crowd. Again, the visual texts within this scene aid in Charlie’s voice being heard over Marnie’s. Visual texts are an important area to study within Foucauldian critical discourse analysis since visual texts are part of the overall D/discourse being examined. Specifically, the visual presentations help articulate the subject positions of the women in Girls. The discourse of talk and text found within Girls aids in how the Discourse of gender is reasoned about and made meaningful not only to the women within Girls but also to the many viewers who watch Girls on a weekly basis.

Further, the findings of this study examine how Discourses of gender are present in Girls. With a focus on exposing D/discourses of gender and femininity embedded in Girls, the interpretive findings and exposed taken for granted assumption of gender and femininity are evident throughout the texts. As such, the findings of this study reveal normalized presentations of femininity as a confident, yet docile body, supports the mutually constitutive approach to D/discourse offered by Fairhurst and Putnam (2004).

106 Specifically, the findings of this study show how large-scale systems of meaning are present in talk and texts, which simultaneously aids in the women in Girls understanding presentations of femininity that are embedded in the normalized Discourse of gender. As such, these findings present how D/discourse shapes the order and knowledge individuals have about the world.

Overall, by simultaneously looking at both levels of D/discourse, a comprehensive vantage point is gained to see how gender is both enacted though language and how texts are informed by larger ideas on how women “should be.” For instance, gender, femininity, and womaness are all talked about through the texts of Girls. Within the text of “the ladies,” what it means to be a gendered being is brought into question and talked about between the characters. When Jessa, Shoshanna, and Hannah talk about what is means to be a lady, who is a lady, and what ladies should do, not only are they taking a D/discourse about gender and talking about it, but they are also negotiating and possibly transforming what this Discourse means within their own lives and if it aligns with their idea of femininity through their talk. By engaging in talk about gender, that talk can continually reshape, reconstruct, and possibly change the Discourses that institutionalize women. Taking the Discourse of gender and talking about what it means, or what it should mean then brings Discourse to a micro level of discourse.

Examining the D/discourses present within the text of Girls reveals a knowledge of the world that is power laden and can be possibly constraining for gendered subjectivities.

As such, the D/discourses that are present in media become a powerful storytelling agent that millions of viewers watch on a weekly basis. These D/discourses become normalized and many individuals watching media presentations of women don’t question why a

107 certain way of presenting femininity is shown and not another possibility. Thus, the role of the media as a D/discourse is discussed below to further explore how the discursive approaches to media in this study reveals complex ways the media contributes to gendered subjectivities.

Media as a D/discourse As a television show that has a large viewership, when viewers tune in to Girls to find out what is going to happen with major storylines they also watch how women perform femininity and thus how Girls presents ideas of gender. From what is written in the script, to the editing room, to the finished project, the media shows how to live in the world as a (gendered) individual. The media thus becomes a D/discourse that aids in creating and maintaining viewers’ knowledge of the world. It does this first by the qualities in which it tells stories to an audience. As mentioned previously, the visual texts within media become a unique text that can be studied by both discourse and media scholars. Visual texts include wardrobe, lighting, cinematography, camera movements, character blocking, everything that fits within the frame of the camera, as well as the actual script the actors follow. The words the actors say from the scripts also become a text that remains distinct to media and scripted programming. As actors put on their wardrobe, say the words on their script, and move around the set, the ideas of discourse are enacted on screen. For instance, when Marnie and Charlie break, up she tells Hannah, “I’m going to get him back. I’m going to put on my party dress and my sorry face and I’m going to get him back.” When she gets to Charlie’s apartment, she is indeed in a nice dress and acts apologetic. The writers and producers planned this entire on-screen interaction, have filmed it, and then present it for viewers to make sense of it. Wardrobe

108 coordinators put a lot of thought in planning out which particular dress Marnie’s character should wear to Charlie’s apartment, the director and producer put in thought to storyboard how each particular scene should look before they even shoot it, and actors put in effort to embody their character. The entire show of Girls is premeditated and meticulously thought over by a host of people that make decisions as to not only what viewers will see and what stories will be told, but how those stories are told and seen, and how women are presented, which is part of Discourse.

Discourses, as enduring systems of thought, are constructed through a system of language and texts, which Girls helps produce on a weekly basis. Yang (2008) suggests that within media there lays a discursive layer that supports the production of meaning.

Within Girls meanings of gender, sexuality, and femininity are made through various texts and since Girls is a show about women, presentations of femininity and meanings of gendered subjectivities will be made. Producers, directors, and actors of Girls think out presentations of women constantly. Thus, Girls extends particular ways of knowing femininity by choosing to show women in certain ways over others. The Discourse of gender is embedded and revealed within the texts of Girls, making the media and its functions D/discursive.

This research looked at Girls to uncover meanings of gender though the ways women are presented to reveal how Girls creates and maintains a D/discourse of gender.

Informed by Tuchman (1978, 1979), normalized meanings of women are created through showing dominant ways of knowing gender though the media that keep women shown in relation to men and keep women silenced and docile. Within Girls, the D/discourses of gender and sexuality present women as sexually confident and silenced in public due to

109 their need to be legitimized by a male counterpart. As such, though interpretation of multiple texts within the show, women are shown in need of a man. In order to get a man to notice them, women remain silenced and docile, while being sexually confident.

Although being sexually confident may be enabling for women, their silence is still constraining. If women were portrayed as confident beings within Girls, docility and passiveness may not be shown and their silence may be transformed into a voice. The D/discourses created within the texts creates and maintains a way of knowing femininity and gender that become constraining subject positions for women. The media serves the interests of dominant meaning formations that hides and marginalizes other modes of being. By presenting femininity in certain ways, it suppresses other ways of knowing gender. Thus, subject positions become subjected to the power of the D/discourses of gender shown in Girls and individuals will not conceive of acting in ways that are precluded from this D/discourse.

As such, through media presentation of Girls, viewers see four twenty-something women living their lives in New York City. As a scripted show, Girls presents “real life” situations that women might perform in their daily lives. As such, Girls offers viewers the “slice of life” realism of what life looks like for twenty-something women. As McQuail (1977) states, we can expect “the mass media to give an order of importance and structure to the world they portray, whether fictionally or as actuality” (p. 81). This is due to presentations that are made repeated and consistent in the mediated realm. As actors portray experiences that are constituted in language, they create ways of knowing the world and the self in relation to that world. According to Weedon (1997) entertainment media constructs realism through the choices about what is presented as normal and what

110 is presented as peculiar. If individuals watching the show internalize the D/discourses of gender that are being presented through Girls, it takes a way to know gender and normalizes it to become the way to know gender, which is problematic for how individuals come to know themselves and others as gendered beings. Gendered subjectivities are thus constrained through the media and in this instance Girls presents femininity in certain ways over others. As such, this study of Girls reveals how media plays a significant role in the reproduction of gender normalization in society.

Overall, the findings of this study interpret the meanings of public and private presentations of femininity in Girls and reveals how the television show Girls is a discursive practice. The texts become communicative practices in which gender can be interpreted and deconstructed to reveal the ways in which gender is presented and the implications that has for viewers, women, and media makers.

Implications and Conclusion Within this study, I have interpreted and deconstructed presentations of femininity within the television show Girls. The interpretive findings show how presentations of femininity exist in a dichotomy of public and private, showing how women in Girls present themselves differently in public then they are in private. Further, deconstruction reveals suppressed meanings of femininity within Girls and shows how the discursive texts of media can reify inequalities of gendered subjectivities. Though Girls women are presented in public as sexually confident and silenced. Private presentations reveal women questioning femininity and voicing opinions on their subjectivity. Women are also shown privately staging and planning how they will be feminine in public presentations. Deconstruction revealed women’s relationship to men as a strategic game

111 where women are able to win by being docile “ladies.” These findings have several potential implications. In particular, these findings have implications for women watching the show Girls, implications for those in the media industry to reconsider the ways they present gender norms, and implications for scholars of gender, D/discourse and media.

First, when viewers watch Girls, they are watching presentations of femininity that can be possibly enabling or constraining for the ways in which they come to know the world and the self as gendered individuals in relation to the world. As such, these findings have implications for viewers’ subjectivities being colonized by normalized discursive presentations of femininity in Girls. Not only do viewers see presentations of women in Girls but they also see how women are clothed, what women say (and don’t say), how women move, and how women interact with men. By showing women as silenced, Girls tells viewers of any gender and sex that women are silent, docile, and in a strategic game to gain legitimacy by being with a man. Not only do these presentations of femininity aid in coming to know the world, but they can become normalized and unquestioned, keeping the lived experiences of women suppressed and treated as unimportant. Thus, viewers that tune in weekly to Girls should be weary of the presentations of women they see on the screen and question these presentations. A critique to this suggestion could be to turn the channel or turn the television off.

However, if Girls presents only one of many normalizing D/discourses of femininity, then if media subscribers turn the channel they still may see similar (re)presentations of women on the next channel. Viewers of the media have limited agency in choosing what to watch. When the media is considered a D/discourse it aids in ordering the ways in

112 which knowledge of the world is constructed. Thus, even turning off the television will not fully erase ideas of gender and femininity that are prevalent in reality and in the media. The burden of changing how women are presented in media comes down to the people that produce and create these images. The findings of this study can thus help reveal to viewers the potential consequences of unreflexivley consuming the media.

These findings might help viewers consider their role in the maintenance of gendered ways of knowing.

Further, this study has potential implications for those creating media. As Tuchman (1978, 1979) asserts, media organizations are responsible for presentations of women in the media and throughout history these organizations have been dominated and controlled by men. Although Girls has many women behind the scenes, presentations of media seem to be entrenched in dominate ideas of gender that marginalize the interests of women. As such, producers, writers, directors, cinematographers, wardrobe designers, set designers, and actors all collaborate in deciding how to present women on Girls. As shown through the findings, many times women are presented as docile and in need of a man to legitimize their femininity. By presenting women in these particular ways, it constrains other ways of knowing femininity. Although many of the people responsible for creating these (re)presentations of women take time and plan out how these characters will develop, the findings of this study show how neglecting to see women in new ways and present those ways to their audiences can help show alternatives and make them available to women as other possible ways of being. Girls creator, Lena Dunham, has been recognized for breaking down normalized views of body types by showing her own body in Girls’ content. Dunham’s character, Hannah, is shown nude in many episodes

113 and although the show does show alternative representations of body types, this is accompanied with a text that says this type of body is unacceptable. In She Did, Hannah states, “I am 13 pounds overweight and it has been awful for me my whole life” further maintaining the image of women as slim and fit. As such, the creators and producers of the media actively create knowledge of the world and the self in ways they might not even be aware of. These findings should help media producers become more aware of the possible consequences of unreflexively creating presentations of women (or anything).

The media is a great storyteller that tells millions of people on a daily basis what the world is like and how to live in it. If multiple ways of knowing femininity are to be present in the media, it is up to the creators of mediated content to add these presentations. By adding new and different ways of being a woman or a gendered individual, not only will this lessen the constraints on femininity and gender roles but also bring legitimacy to previously “othered” ways of knowing gender.

Additionally, this study has potential implications for D/discourse, feminist, and media scholars. In particular, by considering the role of media a D/discourse, feminist scholars can gain unique insights into how gender is constructed, presented, and normalized though mediated texts and the discursive functions of media. Further, media scholars can also look to the media as a D/discourse to discover the communicative function the media provides on ideas of Discourse, power/knowledge, and subjectivities and study the media in nuanced ways that include a strong focus on D/discourse.

Specifically, a rich focus on D/discourse provides an alternative perspective to gain insights into television media not offered by classic media studies by focusing on knowledge and subjectivities. When the media is viewed through texts, knowledge and

114 subjectivities emerge that become power-laden and constraining for women. As such, this study offers possible opportunities for scholars interested in Discourse, gender, and media to continue exploring these complex relationships.

Throughout this study, I realize that my interpretations and deconstructions are only a way to read the texts presented in Girls. I also realize that the interpretations I made were made through a poststructuralist feminist lens that seek out ideas of gender and power/knowledge, and that other interpretations can be made from different perspectives to see new outcomes. By using deconstruction, I recognize that my deconstruction can also be deconstructed and reveal the feminist, discursive, and mediated assumptions that I ground my study in. Further research that considers media a D/discourse could also be engaged in to reveal how the media aids in creating knowledge/power of the world, the people in it, and the self in relation to the world. More studies that challenge traditional ways of studying the media should be engaged in to critically explore not only the role of the media but the D/discourses perpetuated and privileged by the media. The intersection of media, D/discourse, and gender is interesting to consider in new ways that remain uniquely communicative.

This study examines presentations of women in the media through Foucauldian critical discourse analysis in order to explore dominant ideas of gender and femininity embedded within D/discourses that constrain the lived experiences of women. Language and D/discourse are heavily power-laden and enable certain meanings to be made while constraining other meanings. Thus, D/discourses such as gender and sexuality are maintained and treated as natural and the ways individuals come to know the world are entrenched in power/knowledge relations that keep the interests and subject positions of

115 women are constrained and treated as unimportant. To investigate D/discourses of gender and femininity further, this study examines media presentations of femininity from a poststructuralist feminist lens to explore the HBO television series, Girls. Using methods of Foucauldian critical discourse analysis and deconstruction, Girls is used as a text to interpret and deconstruct presentations of femininity to reveal hidden meanings and expose multiple ways the text can be read. Findings reveal that ways in which women are presented in public, in private, and how women are shown negotiating past and future public interactions. Deconstruction reveals that the text treats love as a strategic game in which women need to be docile and passive in order to be legitimized by a male. The findings from this study present a second type of discourse that is critically aligned and questions the presentations of women in Girls, which possibly can be used by viewers to question presentations of femininity that are shown in media and open up new and potentially enabling ways to understand femininity. Secondly, creators and producers of the media can also use these findings in order to consider new ways of presenting femininity. By presenting many different types of women and presenting them each with equal legitimacy, new understandings of women and femininity can be made that may lessen constraints on women.

According to Foucault (1970, 1980), there are particular ways of coming to know something and each way of knowing is power-laden and aids in ordering the world. The flaw with an ordered way of knowing is that one does not notice how they are ordered.

Power becomes a system that is enacted in everyone but not localized in any individual, aiding in the naturalization of meaning. As this study explores, the power of the D/discourses of media, gender, sexuality, and femininity normalizes the knowledge one

116 has about the world and how to live in the world. The ways in which women are presented become hidden and embedded in power relations that keep women constrained.

While some of the presentations of women on Girls can provide viewers with a critique of normalized femininity, a multiplicity of presentations of women can aid in the ways individuals come to know the world and the self as gendered in relation to the world that could possibly dismantle dominant meanings and open up room to change the ways women are presented.

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Discourse Analysis: Its Development and Application to the Structure of News Teun A van Dijk Journal of Communication

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Reprinted From Journal of Communication Spring 1983 Volume 33:2 Copyright © 1983 by The Annenberg School of Communications

Discourse Analysis: Its Development and Application to the Structure of News

by Teun A. van Dijk

Concepts and contributions of the study of language to the explication of the structure and meaning of texts are reviewed and applied to the study of news.

Developments in the last decade within such areas as text linguistics and, more generally , within the growing interdisciplinary study of discourse, have potential applications for the systematic analysis of mass media messages. Discourse analysis can make more explicit the classical approaches to "content analysis." It can also stimulate a research paradigm within mass communication that sees textual analysis not only as a method of research—for example, in the study of media effects—but also as an autonomous endeavor toward the construction of a sound theory of media discourse.

Because the study of discourse has become a large field in the past ten years, my discussion here must be limited to those aspects of discourse analysis that seem most relevant for the study of media discourse. Thus, I will pay little attention to those properties of discourse that can be characterized in terms of linguistic grammar in the strict sense, such as the syntax and semantics of (isolated) sentences.

Rather, I will be concerned with more specific textual structures that have been neglected in linguistics. Similarly, I cannot go into the details of stylistic and rhetorical analysis of media discourse, although much work in this área still needs to be done. Finally, I will also limit my application to news discourse in the press, thereby neglecting TV, film, and radio discourse, the role of images in audiovisual forms of discourse, and other types of newspaper discourse such as advertisements and commentaries.

Teun A. van Dijk is Professor in the Department of General Literary Studies, Section of Discourse Studies, University of Amsterdam.

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Discourse Analysis and the Structure of Nonos

Of course, the study of discourse is not restricted to the structural analysis of texts. I will show that the psychology of discourse processing, concerned with the cognitive principies of the comprehension and remembering of texts, is of fundamental importance in mass communication research.

The 1970s saw a wide interest in the study of "texts" or "discourses" in such disciplines as linguistics, semiotics, literary scholarship, psychology, sociology, and anthropology.

In each of these disciplines, an interest in texts seemed to mark a paradigm shift with respect to earlier studies of the structures and functions of language. Besides a focus on the "system" of language, explicitly accounted for within structural and generative-transformational grammars (62), a new emphasis was placed on the analysis of language use (e.g., within cognitive and sociocultural contexts), on language use as social action (e.g., within the study of so-called speech acts [821), and on the analysis of "natural" data (e.g., everyday conversations). In several of these areas, attention shifted from the study of individual words, phrases, or sentences to an analysis of structures and functions of actual forms of language use, that is, to discourse.

This wide interdisciplinary interest in the study of discourse has earlier historical antecedents, of course. Classical rhetoric, from the work of Aristotle to the present day, has always been concerned with the (persuasive) properties of discourse, and the sophistication of its analysis of rhetorical operations, such as the so-called "figures of style," has met with some competition only with the advent of structuralism (49, 58, 71).

21

Journal of Communication, Spring 1983

Structuralism also brought a decisive reorientation to the study of literary discourse (11, 47) in such areas as classical poetics and literary scholarship.

This "structuralist revolution" in the classical study of discourse in the twentieth century has two main sources. First, structural linguistics provided the necessary methodological renewal by offering an explicit definition of structural units and categories and the formulation of rules.

Second, anthropology, itself inspired by this development in linguistics, gave impetus to the very successful structural analysis of narrative (1, 4, 39, 72; for a survey, see 41). The systematic analysis of discourse would be unthinkable without these predecessors of the 1960s.

Yet, in addition, a more general account of language use, interaction, and communication is needed. Despite its earlier emphasis on abstract sentence grammars, linguistics has been at the center of this development, providing the necessary explicit methods for the systematic analysis of discourse. Besides the mainstream paradigm of Chomskyan generative-transformational grammars, the 1960s saw the formation of several "schools" of linguistic discourse analysis (3, 12, 24). First, the tagmemic school, centered around the work of Pike (70) in describing non-Western languages, has always paid attention to discourse, especially to stories and the structure of paragraphs (40, 61). Second, among the European approaches to discourse in linguistics, the systemic grammar of Halliday has inspired many studies (10, 27, 44, 59) at the boundaries of grammar and stylistics and now manifests itself mainly in the school of discourse analysis at the University of Birmingham (8, 9, 83). The third major influence carne from those working in (mainly German) text linguistics and text grammar, who advocated the construction of grammars that would account for linguistic structures beyond the boundaries of the sentence (3, 12, 14, 67, 68, 69).

The linguists also had company in other fields. Sociolinguistics urged that more attention be paid to actual language use and that the hitherto silently presupposed social nature of language be taken seriously. Apart from dialectal and sociolectal variations in language use, or the study of the interdependence of linguistic forms and social categories such as situation, institution, age, gender, status, and role or group membership, sociolinguistics also was confronted with language use in discourse, especially under the impetus of work by Labov (54, 55). It has been increasingly accepted that language systems and language use are not autonomous, but are inextricably related to the interactional functions and the social contexts of verbal communication: language and discourse forms thus mark or "indicate" their relevant social parameters (81) and are treated as manifestations of social action of a specific kind.

Closely related to this development in sociolinguistics has been a growing interest in the study of many discourse forms (after the earlier study of myths and folktales) in their cultural context (2, 42) within the fields of anthropology and ethnography. Such studies typically show that

22

Discourse Analysis and the Structure of Netos

storytelling not only has different structural categories in different cultures, but also puts specific constraints on who can tell what to whom under what circumstances or, similarly, on how greeting rituals or other speech events take place in such cultures.

The emphasis on naturally occurring speech has led many to the analysis of everyday conversation. Inspired by earlier work in microsociology, mainly within the so-called "ethnomethodological" tradition (33), both linguists and sociologists have formulated a number of basic principles of the "dialogical" and interactional aspect of language use and discourse, such as turn-taking, strategic moves, and everyday storytelling and arguing (80, 85, 88). ,Ffoliwngarkyuecomprhnsi edbyth sentence-grammatical paradigm of generative-transformational grammar, psychologists, too, discovered discourse. Both cognitive psychologists and scholars from the new burgeoning discipline of Artificial Intelligence (AI) developed models for the processing of discourse and its representation in memory, which have been widely applied, for example, in educational psychology (e.g., in the study of reading). These psychologists not only formulated the important cognitive dimension of discourse interpretation, but they also developed their own structural models, such as narrative grammars, and were the first to work out explicitly the now well-known assumption that understanding discourse presupposes vast amounts of general knowledge of the world.

Before bringing the theoretical and analytical results of these various approaches to discourse to bear on the study of masa communication, I will offer a brief summary of some basic principies for the analysis of discourse.

Since the diversity of theoretical, methodological, and terminological persuasions is too impressive to allow a short synthesis, I will here formulate the main properties of discourse against the background of my own earlier work (12, 14, 16, 18). I refer to other work for details or different approaches.

Verbal utterances, such as sentences, discourses, texts, or messages (I will henceforth use the term "discourse"), are usually analyzed first on different levels. The structures at each of these levels are accounted for by specific sub-theories or even sub-disciplines of linguistics. Thus, there is phonology, accounting for the structure of sounds and intonation, morphology, formulating the principles of word formation, syntax, providing the mles according to which words of different categories can be combined into grammatical sentences, and semantics, dealing with the meaning of words, phrases, sentences, or whole discourses by formulating tales of interpretation. As opposed to such "underlying" meaning structures, the phonological, morphological, and syntactic

23

Manual of Communication, Spring 1983

expressions manifesting this meaning are sometimes simply called "surface structures." In practice, much of the work in discourse analysis has concentrated on semantic structures, that is, on meaning, because earlier work on sentence grammars tended to focus on surface structures.

In addition to there levels, different units of analysis can be distinguished in discourse: individual words (lexical items), various structures of the clause, whole sentences, sequences of sentences (paragraphs), or whole discourses. The overall topic or theme of a discourse, for instance, can be studied only at the semantic level of the discourse as a whole, not at the level of individual words or sentences. Hence, a rather rough distindtion is usually made between "local" and "global" structures of discourse, with the former pertaining to sentences and immediate sentence connections and the latter to larger segments of the discourse or the discourse as a whole.

Next, cutting through the various levels mentioned aboye, and both locally and globally, different dimensions of analysis can be distinguished. Thus, stylistic variation can occur at several levels, such as lexical choice, word formation, or syntactic structures. Similarly, rhetorical operations (such as alliteration, parallelism, metaphor, or irony) also require definition on various levels. Finally, there are different modes of the manifestation and use of discourse, such as spoken or written/printed discourse, monologues, and dialogues. The various units, categories, dimensions, and levels, along with the rules defining them, will all be called "textual." However, discourses are not just isolated linguistic "objects," but are integral parts of communicative acts in some sociocultural situation, which I will call "context." Thus, it is a contextual property of the discourse type "verdict" or "plea" that it is rightfully used only in the courtroom and by a judge or lawyer. At the boundary of text and context, the pragmatic analysis of discourse is concerned with the dimension of action in which a discourse is taken as some conventional forro of social action (promise, threat, question, congratulation), called a "speech act."

I have provided, in extremely succinct terms, some elementary notions of discourse analysis. The various schools of discourse analysis mentioned aboye can be distinguished, in part, on the basis of their specific interest in some textual or contextual property. Thus, some people will exclusively study discourse style, or intonation in spoken discourse, or overall meaning, or specific social constraints on the context. Similarly, there can also be specialization in certain discourse types or genres, such as everyday conversation, stories, classroom discourse, textbooks, proverbs, or news. Each discourse type, then, could—or rather, should—be characterized in terms of a specific combination of various textual and contextual properties. A judge's verdict, for instance, should have a specific (formal) style and is constrained to specific overall meanings (themes, topics).

24

Discourse Analysis and the Structure off News

Thus, to focus on news discourse (as I will below) requires a full analysis of its various levels, units, dimensions, modes, and social contexts. Of course, a relevant analysis would focus on those structural aspects that are typical. Structural differences exist not only between two such disparate discourse types as an everyday conversation and a psychology textbook, but also between a spontaneous everyday talk and a job interview, although both are dialogues. It is therefore not easy to specify in general what the properties of a discourse are at the various levels and for the respective units and dimensions. Nevertheless, we can specify some fairly general characteristics, which then can be further detailed for news discourse.

1. Functionality. If a discourse is taken to be the utterance of a sequence of sentences in some social context, then the various properties of such a discourse are assumed to be functional with respect to various aspects of the social context. That is, both surface structures and meanings are produced and understood as indications about characteristics of the speaker (e.g., intentions, wishes, moods), the relations between speaker and hearer (e.g., confidence, intimacy, power), and the type of social situation (e.g., a court trial, a school lesson, a birthday party). This will hold for surface structure style, such as lexical choices and sentence structures, and also for the possible topics or themes talked about or the speech acts that may or should be performed with the utterance of the discourse. The functionality also holds, therefore, "within" the discourse: the surface structure not only expresses or indicates social structure, but also, and even primarily, is meant to express underlying meaning (35).

2. Meaningfulness. A textual sequence of sentences is distinct from an arbitrary collection of sentences in the sense that, in principle, such a sequence should be meaningful. One of the typical conditions for meaningfulness of a discourse is some kind of unity, which is usually described in terms of local or global coherence. Local coherence means that subsequent clauses and sentences are meaningfully related, because the facts to which they refer are causally related or because the propositions expressed by these clauses or sentences are related (one proposition may be a specification, generalization, or example of a previous proposition). Global coherence pertains to larger parts of the discourse; this kind of global unity is usually described in terms of such notions as "topic" or "theme." Such themes or topics are accounted for theoretically in terms of so-called "semantic macrostructures." Thus, a fragment of a discourse or a whole discourse is considered to be globally coherent if a topic (represented by a macroproposition) can be derived from such a fragment. Note that part of the meaningfulness criterion for discourse is not only that (sequences of) sentences have meaning, but also that they are "about" something: they refer to (real or imagined)

25

Discourse Analysis and the Structure of News

course is less studied as a form of "social practice" in its own right, for which it is a legitimate aim to make explicit the inherent structures at all levels of analysis.

Second, a discourse analysis primarily aims at the explication of qualitative data rather than quantitative data. Of course, quantitative measures may well be based on an explicit analysis of a more qualitative kind.

Third, while content analysis is primarily based on observable, countable data, such as words, phrases, sentences, or stylistic features, a discourse analysis will—apart from making explicit such surface structures in tercos of modem grammars—also pay attention to underlying semantic structures and make explicit implications, presuppositions, connections, strategies, etc., which usually remain implicit in the discourse. It will try, in terms of empirical theories, to find the rules or principles underlying the structures, the production, and the comprehension of media messages.

Finally, a discourse analysis will be part of a more embracing cognitive and social theory about the rules and strategies that underlie the production and understanding of media discourse. Instead of merely correlating, it will try to explain, in precise cognitive models, how various structures of media discourse come about and how media discourse is understood and represented in memory. Hence, the relation between content properties and specific "effects" is split up in terms of a number of highly complex cognitive and social-psychological models of information processing.

Of course, these distinctive features of discourse analysis are taken to be relative to content analysis as a whole. There are certainly studies that have come close to one or more of these aims. Many of these studies have appeared in England (and in Germany; see 84) and often explicitly mention their opposition to traditional communications research in the U.S. Work done at the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies of the University of Birmingham (e.g., 43), influenced by several theorists in France (such as Barthes, Althusser, Poulantzas, Lacan, and Pécheux), has especially focused on the ideology of media discourse. Through more explicit linguistic discourse analysis (and another theory about the role of the media in society), such work attempts to uncover implied meanings that represent ideological positions. A similar goal can be found in the media analyses of some linguists (e.g., 28, 53) who, by meticulous syntactic analysis, show that the very sentence structures in news can mask who are the responsible "agents" in some events and that newspapers (e.g., the Sun and the Morning Star) thus can be differentiated linguistically according to their underlying ideologies. Finally, the Glasgow University Media Group (36, 37), in its well-known Bad News studies of television news, also applies a systematic verbal and visual analysis, uncovering how the very photographs or noun phrases employed can bias the news, for example, in favor of employers and against

27

Journal of Communication, Spring 1983

(striking) workers. These few studies indicate the kind of approach I hope to stimulate and, if possible, to make even more systematic and explicit (for detail, see 20).

The theses formulated aboye can be illustrated and further elaborated for a specific kind of media discourse—news in the daily press.

I will focus here on textual structures of news and largely ignore the various contextual conditions and constraints on such textual structures.

The latter have received much attention in recent years, especially in sociology (7, 26, 32, 38, 76, 87). These studies emphasize that news is not simply an (incomplete) description of the facts, but a specific kind of (re)construction of reality according to the norms and values of some society. They also show that news production is part of a complex of professional routines for the management of possible sources, the interaction among journalists, and the possible "formulations" of reality.

To such a social background, which will not be discussed further here, should be added a cognitive perspective. The perception, construction, and formulation of reality as news events not only underlie social routines of journalistic (inter)action, but also fundamental strategies of information processing. I stressed aboye that media discourse should not be seen merely as a ready "product" of news-gathering activities, but as the manifestation of a complex process in which knowledge, beliefs, and opinions are matched with existing or incoming information about events, the social contexts of news production, and representations of the reading public. More specifically, it should be stressed that news production is not a direct representation (biased or not) of events, but rather some form of discourse processing (19).

Reporters will seldom be direct witnesses to events; rather, their data are mostly other discourses, such as eyewitness reports (60), press conferences, press releases, statements of officials, interviews, documents, or news of other media and press agencies. Hence, the construction of news is most of all a reconstruction of available discourses. The interpretation processes, the representation and the retrieval from memory of these discourses—at various stages until their final form—make up one of the basic but ill-understood components of news production.

Work in the psychology of discourse processing has contributed much to the understanding of these processes (22, 29, 30, 48, 51, 78).

This work shows what decoding operations and strategies are at work in short-term memory during the understanding of discourse, how discourses are represented in and retrieved from long-term memory, and what the role is of world knowledge in these processes of understanding and representation. It has shown, for instance, that memory for discourse is especially semantic and that, aboye all, the themes or topics—that is, the semantic macrostructures—can be retrieved from memory, depending also on the schematic organization of the discourse, on the one hand,

28

theSrucofNts

and the goals, perspective, and interests of the reader, on the other.

Studies have also offered insight into the roles played by knowledge of and beliefs about the would in the processes of understanding and producing discourse (79).

These results are fundamental for a sound theory of the production and understanding of news as forros of discourse processing. It is now known more or less explicitly, in precise cognitive models, what it means to be "biased," what the relation is between textual structures and representations of "reality," what the precise conditions are of the well-known "selective perception" of both journalists and readers.

Similarly, the criterio of newsworthiness formulated by Galtung and Ruge (31) can be reconstructed in even more precise cognitive tercos.

This psychological work not only provides a basis for the sociological work done on news production as "social practice"—and thereby an account of the structures and the roles of underlying ideologies—but, aboye all, insight into the very structures of news discourse. The organization of news discourse is both a result of and a condition for the cognitive operations of journalists and readers, respectively, in the production, reproduction, or understanding of the news "data." Besides the social routines, then, the cognitive routines that lead to the conventional structuring of news discourse must be formulated. I will focus here on the textual "consequences" or "conditions" of these basic cognitive principles.

Within the general framework sketched aboye, I will review some of the properties of news discourse, touching on cognitive expectations, stylistic structures, local and global coherence, and schematic superstructures. A full-scale analysis of even one news article would be very complex, depending on the degree of formality desired, so my analysis must be fragmentary and merely illustrative. In a description of a large corpus, particularly, selective analysis of some relevant features is practically always necessary. As was indicated aboye, the analysis will not only be purely "structural," but will also involve some cognitive implications. This is necessary because the actual "understanding" of a news discourse depends not only on its manifest structures, but also on already presupposed cognitive information and processes (strategies) of interpretation and representation. In other words, empirically speaking, the structure of a news discourse is ultimately the one assigned to the text by the reader. General structural features, then, are abstractions from such cognitive representations.

An important cognitive aspect of news discourse interpretation is the set of expectations the reader brings to bear even before reading the discourse itself.

Already established in the reader's cognitive control system, regulating the flow of information between short-term memory and long-term memory (knowledge and beliefs), will be some overall goal for reading

29

Analysid

Journal of Communication, Spring 1983

the discourse, such as the acquisition of knowledge about political events. The reader will also have activated and stored in the control system the relevant general knowledge about the newspaper and its dominant views on political matters (ideology) and possibly will have concrete expectations about the type of semantic information (e.g., foreign affairs) on some specific page. Episodic memory (the part of longterm memory that stores all incoming experiences) will yield, by a strategy of "reminding," information about events that was gained in the last few days. Finally, the news reader will have activated general knowledge about the structural format, e.g., the so-called news discourse "schema" (see below), of news articles in the particular newspaper.

All these types of information are crucial for the structural or cognitive analysis of a particular article. For instance, they allow possible disambiguation of short headlines or the activation of relevant knowledge and beliefs about some ongoing political event, such as general knowledge about war when reading of, say, the Israelí attack on Lebanon in June of 1982. Such packets of organized conventional knowledge, called "frames" or "scripts" (79), are important determinante of the inferences necessary to understand each word, sentence, or sentence connection. In addition, such scripts may pertain specifically to the political ideologies of the parties involved in international conflicts.

1

2

A stylistic analysis of surface structures—the study of variation in the expression of underlying meanings and reference of utterances—can reveal both cognitive and social functions of language choice.

The grammatical choices made for a discourse (or by a speaker)—the choice of specific lexical items over others, or the expression of underlying propositions in different syntactic structures—may sometimes be arbitrary (and beyond cognitive control), but may also be functional.

One such type of variation can involve the cognitive context of reading.

For example, simple, short sentences, with standard noun-phrase verbphrase (or subject-predicate-object) structures, may be easier to understand than long, complex sentences .

More interesting, though, are the possible social implications of stylistic variation. First, a style register can indicate some specific

3

For detailed analysis of these strategies of comprehension, using a Newsweek text, see (22).

For details of a computer program simulating this kind of "subjective information," see (5).

A complete description of the surface structures of news discourse, that is, of the precise graphical and especially the syntactic and lexical or morphological properties of each sentence, is of course possible, but not always relevant. For this kind of analysis, which would rather be interesting for linguists, the reader is referred to the usual linguistic grammars of sentence structure (for an introduction, see 62).

1

2

3

30

Discourse Analysis and the Structure of News

degree of formality or familiarity. Second, it can indicate the specific beliefs, opinions, and ideologies of the journalist/newspaper that is describing the events. Of particular interest is the choice of lexical items used to denote some participant in the events described.

Thus, Halloran (45, p. 95) shows that the descriptions used in the press to characterize participants in demonstrations against intervention in Vietnam ("hooligans," "thugs," "mob," "horde," etc.) will often have negative implications ("connotations"), and the same holds for the actions and properties described by verbs and adjectives. Similarly, in a case study I conducted in Amsterdam about the coverage in the national and local press of "riots" following a police action against squatters, I also found systematic differences between the lexical description of the demonstrators by the national press agency and by the popular (conservative) newspapers, using the Dutch equivalents of "hooligans," "rioters," "rowdies," and "thugs." Also, the lexical items used to describe the police and their actions, although they were also violent, were usually more neutral (for details, see 21).

The Glasgow Media Group (37) has shown that, in the coverage of industrial affairs, the press will typically choose lexical items to denote workers and their actions ("strike," "disruptive actions," etc.) that are more negative than the items chosen to denote the actions of the employers. Also, the workers are typically described as "demanding" and the employers as "offering," and not the converse. Thus, even at this restricted level of stylistic variation in lexicalization, basic opinions and ideologies about social participants and social actions can be expressed.

Fowler et al. (28) have focused in particular on the syntactic structures of sentences. They have discovered that if, for instance, the police are reponed to be the agents of violent actions, such agency is not expressed in the more active "first position subject" position, as is usual (see 35), but rather "suppressed" in passive sentences and nominalizations ("many demonstrators were hurt").

Although lexical choice is a typical phenomenon at the local level of sentence, it is also relevant for discourse analysis because a whole discourse will typically exhibit some kind of stylistic coherence: throughout the text, lexical choices will be made from the same register and, in order to denote the same referents, will be subject to the same evaluative dimensions. Even "neutral" words, such as "sympathizer," can receive a negative connotation in certain contexts. In the process of macrostructure formation—that is, the derivation of overall topics or themes (see below)—this means that an overall negative concept of a participant is formed, even if not all denominations are actually negative. And it is the overall concept that is most readily retrieved in memory (51).

4

In the 1970s, many studies paid attention to the ideological bias of lexical choice in the press (e.g., 6). For further aspects of stylistic analysis, see (10).

4

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Journal of Communication, Spring 1983

Although lexicalization is usually treated as a surface structure phenomenon of language use, it is in fact halfway between the surface structure and underlying semantic structures of meaning. The use of "hooligan" vs. "demonstrator" is not just an equivalent alternative choice to express the same underlying meaning. There is, of course, a difference in meaning, but only in terms of how identity is referred to: the same participant is denoted by the two expressions. The same holds for the lexicalization of predicates expressed in verbs and adjectives.

The combination of such concepts in propositions can result in evaluative implications for whole propositions (see 63, 64).

In the scope of analysis beyond the sentence level, news discourse, like all discourse, should exhibit local semantic coherence, which, like other meaning aspects, should be expressed in surface structure (see 44).

As shown aboye, local coherence of discourse is defined in terms of the relations of meaning or references that exist between propositions: locally coherent propositions will denote "related" facts in some episode or will themselves be functionally organized (e.g., by a "generalparticular" relation). Unlike simple stories, in which conditional relations such as those of cause or reason and consequence may domínate (see 13, 17), news stories will also have functional or rhetorical relations of local coherence (see 18, 40, 75).

The most pervasive news discourse type of this kind of local coherence appears to be specification. Some fact is described, and a next sentence will give details or particulars, thus organizing the discourse along a dimension of "general toward particular" (a dimension that will be further discussed below). Thus, The Guardian reports on July 8, 1982, on page 6, under the headline "Soviet Embassy compound hit in Beirut duel," as follows: Beirut: Israeli forces and beleaguered guerrillas blasted each other in a 20-hour duel in and around Beirut and police reponed 22 people killed and 39 wounded before the guns fell silent at midday yesterday. There was no breakdown of civilian and military casualties.

The first few propositions of these two sentences are properly connected by conditional/temporal relations (among the facts denoted): mutual fight causes casualties, which condition the information reported by the police. The information that some detail was lacking in the police report is not "conditioned" by the previous facts, however. Rather, it is a specification of the previous proposition. At the same time—and with important cognitive implications—this sentence presupposes that such information (about the breakdown into civilian and military casualties) could be expected, or normal, or a property of previous reports about the Israel-Lebanon war (as indeed is the case—a bit of information stored in the reader's episodic situation model of this war that has been construct-

32

Discourse Analysis and the Structure of News

ed through previous news items). With respect to this implied knowledge, the last sentence also functions as contrast or denial, which means that, in terms of local coherence connections, propositions can have several functions at the same time. "Israel used tanks, gunboats, and field artillery" is a typical example of specification.

The inverse operation can also hold. The next paragraph in this article begins, Yesterday brought the total of officially reported Palestinian and Lebanese casualties in Beirut to 2,633 killed and 3,612 injured since the invasion of June 6.

From the "local" action of today, a generalization or summarization is made. Again, this is not a description of the actual events as such but a characterization at a higher level, an inference, about the whole event by the journalist. Note that the definite use of the noun phrase "the invasion" presupposes (or by presupposition reminds the reader of) the major initial action of this war, thus reinstating from memory the relevant episodic knowledge. Below, I will show that "previous events" is a special conventional category in the overall organization of news discourse. I will therefore provisionally assume that news discourse has both conditional and functional coherence relations among propositions as soon as the events themselves are described. In that case, the functional relation will tend to be specification, that is, the description of lower-level particulars or details. Generalization will occur as soon as a comparison or summary is necessary with respect to previous events.

Contrast or denial will usually come into play when information is compared to expectations derived from previous events or from memory scripts (and ideology). Thus, Halloran (45) observed that peaceful demonstrations can be described with such denials of violence, a routine strategy that may lead readers to associate demonstrations (or even the reportedly peaceful demonstration) with violence anyway.

To be meaningful, a discourse should not only be locally coherent, but also globally coherent—there must be some kind of "semantic unity" to the whole discourse.

Intuitively, this semantic unity is obtained by assigning some theme or topic to the discourse or to a fragment of the discourse. In the case of the newspaper article just analyzed at the local level, this means that the overall meaning or theme is "Israel and guerrillas (PLO) blasted each other, yesterday. Such a theme, according to my theory of discourse (14, 16), is defined by a macroproposition and not just by isolated concepts (e.g., "fight"). Such a macroproposition is derived from the information, represented in the respective propositions expressed by the text, of the -

33

»urna! of Communication, Spring 1983

discourse as a whole. This derivation takes place through macrorules, such as deletion (of irrelevant detail), generalization, and "construction" (in which component actions, for instance, define an overall action).

For the news article on the Lebanon war, this is indeed the case. The rest of the text provides details about the weapons used, the damages to the Russian Embassy (forming the other macropropostion of this discourse), and other damages. In order to derive the relevant macropropositions, the reader needs not only the information expressed in the discourse, but also more general knowledge of the world. The reader must know that tanks and gunboats are weapons used in wars and that this "use" is against another party, that is, the "enemy." And, if several buildings of the Russian Embassy are reported to be damaged "during" the Israeli shelling, knowledge of the world (the "war" script) tells the reader that probably the damage was caused by the shelling. Finally, the overall theme, defined by one or more macropropositions thus derived, can also involve overall opinions—evaluations of the facts—derived from the way the facts are described locally, as in the news coverage of the squatter "riot" in Amsterdam.

Besides the intersubjective macrostructure as indicated by the text, I should emphasize the role of the subjective macrostructure as assigned by the reader, according to the cognitive model. In the latter case, the macrostructure can be personal and subjective, bringing to bear personal knowledge, beliefs, and opinions, and thereby defining what is important or relevant for the reader. From the local information "A and B blasted each other," the reader who disapproves of the Israeli invasion will construct the macroproposition "the Israelis (again) attacked the PLO/West Beirut" or even "the Israelis again violated the cease-fire."

Macrostructures have been shown not only to organize information from discourse at a rather high level in memory, but also to be recalled much more readily than local micropropositions (50, 51). The (subjective) macrostructure will be the essential information called on in reading the news for storage, recall, and further use in constructing a "picture of the situation" and, eventually, knowledge of and opinions and altitudes about the world (for radio news, see 57).

The overall organization of news discourse reflects this importance of macrostructures. These will typically be expressed by titles or headlines, by initial or final summaries, or by leads. Macrostructures are usually signalled by (a) a prominent position in layout, (b) a change in typeface, and/or (c) bold or capital letters. The headline, thus, will typically express the most important macroproposition, where "importance" is defined in terms of general knowledge and beliefs defining the newsworthiness criteria (19, 31). The lead, often printed in bold type (although not in the Guardian example cited here), will express, in a first few sentences (which are, by definition, "thematical sentences"), the full macrostructure of the news discourse. Following sentences will then progressively specify further details of the events, with the less impor-

34

Discourse Analysis and the Structure of News

tant ones at the end (with the practical consequence that these can, if necessary, be cut by the editor). Unlike argumentatively structured discourse, such as scholarly papers, where the important conclusion comes at the end, and unlike weekly news articles, which may express an opinion at the end, news in the daily press is organized by the principle of relevance or importance, along a dimension of decreasing prominence with respect to the macrostructure. This means that one can read only the headlines or the lead, or only some part of the discourse, and still process the most important information. In fact, as Reder and Anderson (73, 74) have shown, readers (at least of textbooks) will often remember no more of texts than their summaries (see also 51).

For the processing of news discourse, the headlines, the lead, or the first thematical sentences are crucial for various reasons: they organize ("attract") attention for specific articles; they allow one to decide whether or not to read the rest of the discourse; they give the main theme, even without further reading; they activate the relevant knowledge from memory that is needed in order to understand the rest of the text; and, last but not least, they form a macrostructure that will serve as an important strategic cue in controlling the local understanding of the subsequent text. Indeed, a lack of title, or a biasing title, can inhibit or fully distort the local comprehension of a text (see 23, 52).

From a methodological point of view, the importance of macrostructural analysis in mass media research is that it allows the explicit definition of main topics or themes in messages, even for those cases where these macrostructures are not specifically expressed in surface structures, that is, in titles, leads, or thematical words and sentences.

More specifically, such an analysis allows the demonstration of cases in which a headline does not express the macrostructure of a text, a phenomenon often observed in the case of a "misleading" headline. In such a case, the newspaper/journalist has, so to speak, "upgraded" some detail to macrostructure status, e.g., on the basis of subjective criteria of relevance. Given the important functions of macrostructures in comprehension, representation, and hence in recall, a sound theory and derived practical method of analysis is a powerful instrument for mass communication research and a renewal for classical content analysis.

The various functions of propositions in a discourse can become conventionalized in a given culture and for given discourse types in such a way that they can be analyzed as constitutive structural categories for that discourse type.

Thus, the initial sentences of a story can globally function as the setting of a story. In the same way, a story can have a complication, a resolution, and an evaluation (see 12, 56). Similarly, since the first classical theories of the syllogism, argumentative discourse has been

35

Journal of Communication, Spring 1983

analyzed in terms of different kinds of premises and a conclusion. All these categories of a discourse type together form a conventional schema, which I have called a superstructure (15, 16). This schema has a hierarchical nature: some categories should be defined at higher levels than others. Theoretically, a schema or superstructure is a functional organization of the macrostructure of a discourse. In other words, a superstructure is the overall "form" for the overall content defined by the macrostructure. And indeed, such forms, which are some kind of higher-level textual "syntax," can be defined explicitly in rule systems or grammars (though such grammars are of course different from the usual sentence grammars). Narrative grammars have been developed, then, especially for stories (see 17, 41). Of course, such conventional categories are particularly relevant for those discourse types that occur frequently in some culture and for which the ordering and other constraints on the semantic content have become conventionalized and hence learned.

Since many participants in Western culture are regularly confronted with news discourse in the press (or on television), such news articles perhaps also can be assigned a conventional superstructure. Such a superstructure is postulated in Figure 1.

The categories of "headlines" and "lead" in newspaper discourse are well known and need no futher explication. Note that both together define a higher-level category of "summary" and "introduction," with the semantic constraint that this "summary" must express the semantic macrostructure of the text as a whole; at the same time, it functions as the "introduction" to the text, because here the main events and participants and the location and time are introduced (such that the body of the text may, even pronominally, co-refer to these).

Categories 1 ("summary") and 2 ("episode[s]") together form the proper "news story" category at a higher level. It is with respect to this higher-level "news story" that the "comments" are given. The "comments" are the typical expression, signalled as such, of the beliefs of the journalist/newspaper. An "episode" can be described first in terms of "reminding" the reader of information given earlier (or elsewhere) in the newspaper. "Antecedents" provide the information about the facts that precede the actual events (and that may or may not have been reported before). "Actual events" is the kernel of the news story and describes the main (new) events now in focus. Usually, though, especially in "quality" newspapers, there will be a section, which may run from one sentence to a whole paragraph, with further "explanation" of the actual events, that is, some specific "context" of the actual events (e.g., a demonstration in Europe in the context of the visit of the U.S. president), as well as "background," which provides the historical, cultural, or political information about the actual events, participants, countries, or social problems.

36

Discourse Analysis and the Structure of News

Figure 1: A proposed conventional superstructure of news discourse 1. Summary/introduction 1. 1. Headlines (with super-, main-, and sub-headlines, and captions) 1. 2. Lead 2. Episode(s) 2. 1. Events 2. 1. 1. Previous information 2. 1. 2. Antecedents 2. 1. 3. Actual events 2. 1. 4. Explanation 2. 1. 4. 1. Context 2. 1. 4. 2. Background 2. 2. Consequences/reactions 2. 2. 1. Events 2. 2. 2. Speech acts 3. Comments 3. 1. Expectations 3. 2. Evaluation

These categories are theoretical; they define a prototypical news discourse. This means that, in an actual news discourse, some of them need not occur explicitly, e.g., because it can be assumed that readers already have that information or because such information is deemed to be irrelevant. In the latter case, a proper understanding of the description of the actual events can become pardal or even biased if readers do not, in fact, have the information.

The hierarchical schema also defines the ordering of the text as a whole, from left to right (or from top to bottom). However, the superstructure may undergo transformations. For instance, category 2.2, giving consequent events or speech acts (typically, statements of politically important participants or observers), can be placed earlier and previous information" or "antecedents" (categories 2.1.1 and 2.1.2) placed later in the text.

The categories enumerated aboye can be specifically defined by a rule system (see 62) or by a hierarchical schema, as in Figure 2. The terminal categories of this schema are filled with (macro)propositions of the newspaper discourse. I have applied the schema to information from another newspaper article from the same page of The Guardian, headlined "Kremlin talks tougher," in which the negative reaction of the Russians is described with respect to U.S. plans to evacuate the PLO from West Beirut.

Although with such a short text, not all categories are filled, it is easy to find news texts in which these categories can be discerned. Further empirical work should be done in order to test the relevance of this news schema. It should also be investigated experimentally whether such a news schema has some cognitive "reality": do readers in fact organize a news discourse according to such categories; do they "expect" them or "

37

Figure 2: Superstructure of "Kremlin talks tougher"

THE GUARDIAN

GUARDIAN July 8 1982

The Kremlim, whict has accused the US of supporting and, indeed, encouraging the Israelí invasion of Lebanon, is 12 known to be concerned about the possibility of a US troop P ) ( 13 presence there, however temporary. Analysts have been P arguing that one important 14 reason why the Soviet Union (p ) has been acting with restraint 15 so far in the crisis has been the Kremlin's desire to do nothing that might give the US P the justification for direct 16 military intervention.

By Mella Piek The Kremlin is obviously The Soviet Union, which has P 17 waiting to see what becomes of been reluctant to respond to the Reagan proposals. MeanPLO pressure to become more P while, Tass yesterday sharply directly involved in the 18 condemned the attack on its Lebanon crisis, yesterday embassy buildings on Tuesday hinted that it might adopt, a P night, which caused extensivo P tougher stance if President Re19 damage to the six storey Soviet 4 agan's plan to include US trade mission in Beirut, and a troops in a multinational peace nearby apartment block for force goes ahead.

Soviet staff. Tass claimed that P Israelí artillery had directed Already angered by Israelí 20 P heavy tire on the embassy shelling of the Soviet Embassy 5 (P compound in West Beirut, Mos21 ) ares.

P cow's first public reaction to P 6 The official Soviet news President Reagan's plan was to agency stopped short of accus22 P /ID accuse the US of " preparing ing the US of collusion. But 8 for direct military intervention 7 (P ) the Soviet Foreign Minister, in Lebanon."

Radio Moscow 23 P Mr Gromyko, again accused the also asid that President Reagan P 9 US of the direct encouragemest would be acting illegally if US of Israelí aggression.

24 (p ) landing craft were on their ) (P 10 way to Lebanon.

P

Kremlin talks tougher

11 (P

)

25

News discourse

Summary/ introduction

Headline

Comments

Lead

Consequences

Events

Explanation

Background

P2, P3, P4

P4 , Pa Plo,P5,P6 , P19,P21 Reagan plan Israel's shelling of Soviet Embassy

Evaluation

Actual events

Antecedents

PI

Expectation

Pa,P12, P13.P14, 1,15,1316 Soviet Union restraint to help PLO Soviet Union accused U.S. to encourage invasion

Main events

Context

Ps,Pa, Pie

P7 , P2 ( P10 ),

Israel's shelling of Soviet Embassy

Soviet Union will be tougher

P19,P20, P2425)

Soviet Union actuses U.S.

P17

Soviet Union obviously waiting to. . .

P22

TASS stopped short of accusing U.S. of collusion

Soviet Union condemns Israel attack on embassy Note: Terminal categories in the schema are propositions. Those in "headline" and "lead" are macropropositions. The main event is the Soviet Union's tough reaction against Reagan's plans. Hence "antecedent" events are Reagan's plans. The context for the Soviet tough reactions is (its anger about) Israelí shelling of the Soviet embassy. But this is a/so an "antecedent," namely, for p ie : Soviet Union condemns Israel. The "background" explains why the Soviet Union is tough now and not before, and provides the (earlier) Soviet interpretation of the invasion. Under the terminal categories are some summarizing (macro) propositions. Part of "antecedent" could be "previous information" (the Embassy anide on same page).

Journal of Communication, Spring 1983

"miss" them when they are not given? Comparing different narrative schemata for news stories, Thorndyke (86) arrived at a negative conclusion, but other research on the role of schemata in psychology points in another direction (51, 65, 66, 77).

A final kind of structure, provisionally called "presentational," can be mentioned here. Although these structures could be ranged under the category of surface structures, I treat them separately because they are relevant at all levels and thus constitute a separate dimension. First are such obvious properties, well known from practical insights into news in the daily press, as page number, position on the page, size, printing types used, and number of columns. Other aspects of presentational structure are the presence of photographs and, in television news, the relations between spoken text and stills or film.

In fact, some of these structural properties could be called rhetorical and can be compared with the "performance" or "delivery" of spoken discourse. Nonverbal information, in this case, is provided by other semiotic means, such as location and size. Obviously, these semiotic signals of various kinds have, or at least are intended to have, specific cognitive implications: location, size, etc., correlate with importance or relevance of the news and therefore can be considered as macrostructure signals at an intertextual level. That is, they signal which of many facts or events is relatively more important. Empirical research about newspaper reading, gaze, skimming, etc., will reveal the relevant implications of these various presentational structures in comprehension and recall.

Findahl and Hóijer (25) have shown in a number of experiments the relevance of presentation of TV news on recall (the role of visuals and also of reformulations).

After a brief summary of some major directions in discourse analysis and of some principles of discourse structures in general, I have tried to show that news discourse in the daily press can be described systematically and explicitly on the basis of results of text linguistics and discourse analysis in the last decade. I have shown that surface structure (stylistic) analysis, as well as the analysis of local and global coherence (macrostructures) and that of a specific news schema, may be relevant in an account of mass media "messages." Such an account should be embedded in a cognitive model of news production, comprehension, and recall.

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Say 'No' to Female Stereotyping: A Case Study of 'Bhag Amina Bhag' Article · April 2020

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Say ‘No’ to Female Stereotyping: A Case Study of ‘Bhag Amina Bhag’ by Ayesha Waheed Fellow of PhD Department of English, National University of Modern Languages, Islamabad.

Email: shahraja76@gmail.com Abstract Women- a second name to male victimization- is treated stereotypically as weak, submissive, emotional, marginalized, illogical individual in the media round the globe. At the most their beauty and looks are encashed just like a commodity to be sold and no serious concerns are raised to improve their status and dismal conditions. Films, radio, drama and newspapers are no exception to this. However, feministic awakening has made women to resist such an inequality and they, taking help of media, tried to propagate their positive and strong image in the world around. Bhag Amina Bhag is one such trial to place a female athlete in a nonromantic and non-glamourized; yet strong, independent, and honorable way on the center stage despite the opposition of the society. Her journey from oblivion to the victory stand is linguistically analyzed with the yardstick of CDA to determine the working of underlying ideologies and shared social norms which resisted such a change and became evident through the discourse pattern and social context of the participants involved.

Key Words: Anti-stereotypes, CDA, feminism, Bhag Amina Bhag Introduction: “How do we recognize the shackles that tradition has placed upon us?

For if we can recognize them, we are also able to break them. ” Since time immemorial, the womenfolk have been declared as “Eve- the temptress”, the “unclean”, the harbinger of “shame and rottenness”, “continual dripping on a rainy day” (Cassuto, 1961 quoting Genesis 3) and many religious testaments hold witness to the accounts for declaring them so. Generations after generations the same mindset prevailed and kept turning up as an ideological underpinning in the church, folklore, myths, anecdotes etc. and the phenomenon gradually seeped into the real life which declared the daughters of Eve as weak, dependent, submissive, voiceless, illogical, a mean for continuation of the human race, and non-human commodities which are worthy to be ‘tamed’ and ‘traded’ under the subjugation of dominant menfolk. The poor woman accepted this all as her fate since she was the culprit of the Original Sin and a reason for all the worries and pains in the world. Her silent approval and self-generated exile from the kingdom of human beings could never make her stand, as a human being, on the equal pedestal with the man since then.

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The paper focuses on a telefilm Bhag Amina Bhag telecast on Geo TV in May 2013, portraying the life struggle of a Pakistani athlete Nasim Hameed who was declared as the fastest woman in Asian games. The story was written by Farah Usman, scripted by Mrs. Noor ul Huda Shah and directed by Mr. Yasir Nawaz. The character portrayal of the heroine, in the telefilm, takes her out of the shackles of the stereotypical role and makes her stand as an individual in front of the world. The researcher aims to trace out the women’s progression from her stereotypical to individual role and the resistance she faces from the immediate surroundings when she is making her presence felt, her voice heard, and her dreams fulfilled. Such an analysis will help the playwrights, policy makers, and future researchers to ponder and explore such real-life stories and present them as successful role models and not as headstrong and selfish women.

Rationale for Research Methodology: The topic understudy aims at exposing the covert ideological framework hidden in the linguistic contents of the telefilms; a thorough analysis of the dialogue can be achieved by applying methods of critical discourse analysis. Batstone (1995) opines that with the help of CDA, an analyst tries “to reveal how texts are constructed so that particular (and Potentially indoctrinating) perspectives can be expressed delicately and covertly; because they are covert, they are elusive of direct challenge, facilitating what Kress calls the “retreat into mystification and impersonality” (p.

198-199).

Fairclough elaborates that the communication is constrained “by the structures and forces” (1989, p.vi) of social institutions that exercise their power “through ideology and ideological working of language” (p. 2). Hence, there is need to unveil the “exploitive social relations, through focusing upon language” (p. 4). His approach “Critical Language Study” (p. 5) revolves around analyzing text, process of production and interpretation and their relationship with their social conditions, “both the immediate conditions of the situational context and the more remote conditions of institutional and social structures”(p. 26).

His contemporary, Van Dijk holds that for conducting any ideological analysis of language it is important to note that ideologies are influenced and shaped by a complicated range of mental factors and therefore “cannot be simply read off actual text and talk”. In fact, a series of “theoretical steps” is required to expose the hidden ideologies by linking the “surface” of text to the “underlying” ideologies (1995a, p. 142). The complex ideological semantics in the text and talk follows a strategic design of describing ‘ingroups’ in positive terms and ‘outgroups’ in negative terms. “This”, according to Van Dijk, “is a familiar finding in intergroup theory, theories of stereotyping and (other) social cognition research” (p. 143). He asserts that the “schemata and underlying ideologies”, related to the groups, influence lexical choices and complex structures in text and talk. He, further elaborates that the ideological makeup for creating collective identity can be revealed by analyzing phonological structures, graphical structures, syntactic structures, semantic structures, lexical style, rhetoric, pragmatic and interactive style (p. 145).

The account mentioned above elaborates that a “socio-cognitive approach to critical discourse studies seems pertinent when analyzing collective identities”(Koller, 2012, p. 20) interwoven in linguistic contents. In order to conduct a thorough research of the contents and observe the role of language in constructing social identities the telefilm will be carefully seen and relevant scenes and dialogues will be transcribed and translated in English. Later, Van Dijk’s socio-cognitive model (2001) will be used to carry out a qualitative analysis of stereotypical/ antistereotypical role of the women in the telefilm.

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Data Analysis: The analysis will be carried out under three broad categories i.e discourse analysis; social cognition; and the discourse and society.

1st Dimension-- Discourse analysis: This includes the analysis starting from the topic or heading (semantic macrostructures) of the text under review since the topic plays a fundamental role in any communicative event. Topic represents what “a discourse is about globally speaking,...and explain overall coherence of text and talk” (p. 102). Dijk directs to enlist macroproposition, as a starting point, in order to summarize the whole text under review (p. 102) and to determine what this text is about. The title of the telefilm Bhag Amina Bhag suggests that it’s about a woman (feministic/ patriarchal underpinning) Amina who is being supported to run for a cause. For the current study the micropropositions can be as under: M1 Amina is an aspirant sports woman who is discouraged by the family M2 She secretly participates in school race with the support of her childhood friend Haris M3 Father (Abba) and elder brother (Wajid) punish her and manhandles her M4 Her mother and childhood friend take her side and leave home M5 She participates in other events and remains away from home which is counted as suspicious by the locals of the vicinity and her forced engagement with Chacha’s son also breaks M6 She continues her successful journey and her younger brothers, father and the locals join in M7 Seeing his sister leading at an international event Wajid also joins in with the words ‘Bhag Amina Bhag’! and receives her with pride on her way back It can be observed that various macropropositions represent some tenets of feministic/antifeministic ideology. In other words, macropropositions depict the resistance by the patriarchal society against feministic awakening and then apply these to the special case of ‘Bhag Amina Bhag’.

The next two levels of analysis signify critical study of local meanings and formal structures.

The analysis of discourse reveals the selection made by the speakers according to their socially shared beliefs and mental models and depict “an overall strategy of positive selfpresentation and negative other presentation, in which our good things are emphasized and their good things are de-emphasized” (p. 103). Moreover, formal structures which are less consciously controlled by the speakers (p. 106) such as intonation, syntactic structures, rhetorical figures, turn taking, repairs, hesitation etc. These formal structures reveal much more than the actual words and signify the working of mental models in use of ideological discourse representing Us versus Them.

In the film under review there are many instances which highlight the Us versus Them paradigm; however some are depicted below.

The story opens with Amina running after a kite on the roofs and in the streets, which is something unusual in the society and is considered bad for a grown-up girl to do so. As results she receives beating from her father and a long lecture from her mother (Amma).

Amina: Amma save me!

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Amma: No one will save you today... God’s curse this much wandering is not found even among boys. You are always found jumping from one roof on to another and you do not stay at home. Who will marry such a roof-jumper, people in the street and all the relatives are annoyed with her? No one will even send a proposal for her.

Amina: Abba! You have always hit me hard. What else you want.

Abba: Shameless! You are arguing with your father.

The opening dialogues between Amina and her parents determined that her skill of running fast is a curse and that’s why she receives bad names of a wanderer, roof-jumper, and shameless from her own parents. A similar situation is prevalent in her surroundings in the form of her three brothers, a childhood friend Haris and immediate neighbourhood. Her brother couldn’t play football well so his teammate asks him: Teammate: Your sister can play better than you. Learn to play or else ask your sister to teach you.

Brother: How many times I have asked you not to take my sister’s name in the game. I’ll break your head.

And there starts a fight among the team members again due to Amina’s physical skills.

Haris called her a “fugitive” and labeled her as a “stubborn” and “kalloo rani (dark princess)” though he was her sole supportive in the beginning. The elder brother Wajid was the most aggressive one who even abused her instead of appreciating her when she caught hold of a thief in the street. Later the same brother beats Amina when he finds her picture of prize distribution in a newspaper.

Amina: People get happy on the success of their sisters. What kind of brother are you? You are beating me like a savage. What bad have I done? I have just won a trophy.

Wajid: I am not shameless like others. You have spoiled family name and now you want me to appreciate you. Rascal ... I’ll chop down your legs... I’ll kill you.

Later Wajid, at another place labeled her as “advertisement of disgrace/infamy” and in conformity with his Abba treat her as a “disgracer for the family” and even Abba warns her that wherever she’ll go disgrace and disrespect will accompany her there.

The women in her neighbourhood commented suspiciously about her activities and her photograph in the newspaper. One of the women even confided with her to be in-laws and says: I don’t know how you could get your son engaged to a girl like Amina. You people are so pious and that girl is out of control and keeps jumping around in streets....What I’ve heard and seen told you. Her pictures were printed in the newspaper, God knows what remarkable has she done.

Amina’s teacher at stitching school was so annoyed with her speed to run the mechanical machine with her feet that she advised her to run a motorbike in circus rather than learning stitching.

Amma, being a woman, is also made a victim in the hands of patriarchal son and husband who consider it their right to yell at her and blame her for Amina’s misdeeds. At one occasion Amma complaints of dripping ceilings during rain and Abba says: Abba: Always remain thankful. Your daily cribbing has taken away the blessings.

Amma: I don’t crib. Should I sleep like you under these dripping ceilings... One day bury us all when the house will collapse.

Abba: (infuriated) Will you shut up or else I’ll slap you.

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Abba and Wajid consider Amma blameworthy for Amina’s bringing bad name and dishonor to the family. Wajid, though her son, blatantly misbehaves with her and tries to correct her.

Abba: ...Ill- fated! You and your daughter has embarrassed the us in the society around.

Stop this wandering around and mind you! Don’t go out of home, I’ll break legs of both of you.

Wajid to his Amma: Who are you to take such a big decision? Have you asked anyone?

Wajid to his Amma: Have you gone mad? You’ll send this rascal to college...this is height of shamelessness.

Abba: My Abba was right when he said that this woman (pointing towards Amma) will destroy my life.

Wajid to Amma: So now you are ready to spend your daughter’s earning. Its height of shamelessness.

Wajid: Abba! You are right. They have made much fun of us....(pointing to Amma) Now if you don’t listen to me, I’ll not give you money for your daily expenditures and then you’ll be raising hue and cry.

The male characters are portrayed as the bread earners who are financially supporting their families, dependable (Amna asks her Abba to get her new shoes, Haris accompanies Amina to stitching school, Haris supporting Amina emotionally and psychologically to participate in race) and act as the sole decision makers and morally sound to beat the women and bring them on track.

Women are dependent, subservient, labeled with dehumanizing metaphors (Amina considers herself a cattle) and are not given any active role in the family affairs. Their good deeds (Amina’s abilities and Amma’s managing domestic affairs and raising kids in meager resources) are deemphasized while ours good deeds (bread earners, endurance, morally sound) is emphasized as is mentioned in the above quoted examples.

However, distinct tint of portrayal is found in the second half of drama where weaker characters as Amma and Amina came out of their stereotypical roles and stood against the patriarchal society with dignity and honor, despite all odds. It’s now the turn of Amma who raises her voice and tone during conversation, threats her son to slap him, take a decision of changing the home and sending Amina to college. The whole aura of Amma exudes confidence, independence, strength and domination which is depicted in her conversation and body language.

The same transformation is found in Amina’s character who convinces everyone in the vicinity of her abilities and rightful stature; as a result the views and choice of language used to describe Amina dramatically changes. Amma’s awakening is found in the following scene: Amma to Wajid: Hold your horses else I’ll cut your tongue...you have forgotten how to talk to your mother.

Wajid: Who are you to take such a big decision? Have you asked anyone?

Amma: I am your mother. Got it . I don’t need to ask you and make it well understood. Ok. Abba: I haven’t talked to you and you’ve finalized for a new home. What is the urgency?

Amma: I’ve paid for two months advance rent as well....

Abba to Amma: I’ll kill you. When I told you that Amina will not go to college then she will not go (and moves forward to slap her).

Amma: (pushes him back with force) Amina will go to college and surely will go, whether you kill or bury us.

Abba: My Abba was right that this woman will destroy my life.

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Amma: If you were destroyed then your this son (pointing towards Wajid) wouldn’t have studied and earned money rather he would be coated in cement and gravel. Offer thanks that I dragged you out of ignorance and your son is able to earn some money.

Wajid to Amma: So now you are ready to spend your daughter’s earning. It’s height of shamelessness.

Amma to Wajid: You get lost Wajid. Today I’ll have no regard for your age and slap you.

Amma’s words and tone echoes the dominance which was once experienced by Abba and Wajid.

Now she is no more submissive, docile and inactive rather could take a stand for her decisions and is economically independent.

Likewise it was Amma herself who changes her opinion about Amina and seeing her success decides to take a decision to send her to college. Amma who earlier wanted Abba to break Amina’s legs now takes her side and appreciates her in a long dialogue with Abba and Wajid.

Amma to Wajid: ... Don’t worry, I have a daughter who earns and never makes a mention of it. For the last 4 years she has been contributing in running the home but nobody ever knew it. Ha! Instead of having a son like you a daughter like Amina is better, a thousand times better....

Amina’s to be father-in-law came to her home and seeks her forgiveness. He wanted her to be the daughter-in-law for his family as “...it would be a great honour for my family” and declares her a “jewel” which he refused to take earlier thinking it to be a “stone”.

A similar change is visible in the language of the women in the neighbourhood. One of them says: Woman: Wajid Bhai! Congrats. Your sister has done great....

Haris: She’s our rocket. Wherever she goes, she’s appreciated.

After winning trophy in Iran, when she comes home everyone delightfully welcomes her.

She pays regards to her Abba who remains standing speechless for sometimes and says: Abba: I am sorry, my daughter.

Amina: Don’t say this Abba.

Haris: Where will you keep your trophy; there is no room left in the house...

Abba: Give it to me. For keeping it, I’ll myself make a shelf for it.

The concluding moments of the telefilm presents Wajid along with whole mohallah watching a live sports program and when Amina starts the race he mumbles “Bhag Amina Bhag” and gradually increases the intensity when she is getting closer to the finishing line and later celebrates her success along with the whole family.

The change in the attitude and the use of positive discourse in the later half portrays woman in her anti-stereotypical role and signify that she is only existed when she goes out of the bounds of her classical role.

Haq & Munawar (2013) felt this wave of change and carried out a discourse analysis of a drama serial named after a female protagonist Bilqees Kaur. The story depicts the real-life situation of a woman bound in traditional shackles and the way she empowers herself to act as a custodian of the value system in her family. All this is done when “she rebels against being a stereotypical woman and shuns off her womanliness... [and] emerges as an independent woman”(p. 2033). The researchers analyzed the contents by applying discourse analysis further comment that Pakistani media is attempting to present such positive image of women that could educate their audience about the real life and its problems.

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Context Model & Event Model: “Context model and event model are the mental representation in the episodic memory” (p. 112), where people store their opinions, beliefs, shared values and experiences. These mental models then “control many of the properties of discourse production and understanding of formal properties of discourse such as ...speech acts, style and rhetoric...” (p. 109). In the text under review the overall societal domain is that of a status of woman in the society and signify the actions that resist or advocate the freedom of a woman in Pakistani society. The local setting of this communicative event is a lower-class family in a conservative mohallah where the communicative role of the participants is that of speakers involved in interactional role of defender and opponent of women freedom. The addressee is implicitly referred to as “people”, “society”, “people in neighbourhood” etc. and the whole of Pakistani society at large. The whole act of suggesting what is a norm, what is acceptable in society and what are the consequences of not following a set social norm; is performed through the speech acts of accusing Them—the liberated womenfolk—and defending Us—the menfolk and the society following the stereotyped norms. The lexical choices are appropriate for such a communicative context and reflect the status or position of interlocutors through the selection of vocabulary and other stylistic devices. Hence context model controls the whole of communicative event. In the examples mentioned above the communicative events in different situations reflect the role of context model when stern language of Amma is understood to Wajid and Abba, who in earlier situation was not able to utter anything insulting to her son and husband. Likewise the positive use of language by the neighbors and Chacha after Amina’s success depicts “the situationally relevant selection of the information [they] have and construe these as meanings to be expressed in talk” (p. 111).

The mental models form a bridge between discourse and society and between personal and societal as represented in following fig 1. These models explicate and describe “how social structures influence and are affected by discourse” (p. 112).

Discourse

Fig 1 Social cognition Society

2nd Dimension-- Social Cognition: Social cognition or socially shared representation, knowledge, attitudes and ideologies are ‘particularized’ in mental models and it is again through mental models that these “social collectivities” (p. 113) are reflected in text and talk of the individuals. The shared mental models help us acquire our knowledge of the world, socially shared norms and ideologies from everyday discourse such as conversation, print and electronic media.

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express thru text & talk

Mental models

Socially shared values norms, ideologies

Strengthen or make

The socially shared knowledge, norms, values, attitude, and ideologies related to feminism or anti- feminism will be focus of inquiry in the current research. The opening scene of the telefilm displays a presupposition on the part of Amma that girls who go out and boldly behave are not liked by the society and no one sends a proposal for such a girl. The womenfolk-as mother, sister, wife- is never to be discussed among the menfolk especially friends or colleagues and finding them to be the talk of the town is never acceptable to any father, brother or husband. It is the same shared social norms that compelled Amina’s brother to initiate a fight when a team member asked him to learn football from her.

Amina’s Brother: How many times I’ve asked you not to take my sister’s name in the game.

I’ll break your head.

Likewise, Wajid insulted Amma and Amina for Amina’s running after a thief and catching hold of him in the street. Wajid considered it to be a matter of shame and humiliation for the family that the whole street was talking about her. He was mad in rage when he finds that her success story as an athlete has been published in the newspaper. He also objected Amma’s independent decision making and threatened her that he’ll stop financial support if such boldness is continued.

The pinching comments given by the neighbors on the printing of her picture in newspaper and her absence from home due to tournaments also typify the social cognition of the actors involved in conversation. The same is testified in one of Amma’s replies to Harris: Amma: You are a boy. Society will not coin stories about you.

The society considers a male member to be a sole bread earner and a financial supporter for the whole family, that’s why the female education is considered to be of least importance in such a scenario. Abba signified this when he says: Nothing to worry about your test it’s just an ordinary thing. You think as if after studying you’ll become an executive. Do it for brothers! For brothers!

The scriptwriter very smartly shares the utter feministic ideology embedded in the social makeup of the society that considers spending females’ earning as a shameless act and treats only male members as bread earners, through Amina and Harris.

Amina: I wish I were a boy.

Harris: It’s nothing being a boy or a girl; it’s just being human and having courage.

Amina: I mean if I were a son, I could have supported Abba financially with my job.

Harris: You can do everything. Who has stopped you?

Amina: My fate.

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The females’ training and discipline to lead a respectable life in the society is considered as the sole responsibility of their mothers. That’s why the mothers are always telling their daughters to behave this way or that way so that the daughters could spend their lives with ease once they get married. Amma, displays her cultural knowledge (p. 114) when she asks Amina to get ready before going on a wedding ceremony and make her wear bangles and stilettos: Amma: O ill-fated! Learn the skill of getting ready before going out. You’ll also have to marry one day. ...

Moreover, her constant reminders of seedhi tarah chal and oorhani sayhii ker etc echo the disciplining of a mother.

Though a secondary role to play, her fiancé becomes the mouthpiece for the patriarchal ideology that wants a woman to be properly trained and expert in household chores before she gets married and continue to serve her husband and his family throughout their lives.

Fiancé to Amma: My mother was asking that does Amina know anything other than stitching.

Amma: Son, every girl knows something of the household. She’s young and will learn these things till her marriage.

Fiancé: Aunt! I wish someone make hot chappatis for me, take care of me, and serve me.

The ideologically dominating role of a man being a husband, brother or a son and its deliberate display is visible in the discourse shared among Abba, Wajid, Amma, and Amina and is mentioned above in the first level analysis.

The mental models make the social actors utter/speak whatever is socially inculcated and transmitted into their minds through continuous rendering of shared values, beliefs, and ideologies in one way or another. The same shared model made Amma reveal the ideological stance behind a woman’s expectations from a husband after her years of untiring services for the family.

Amma: What I’ve asked for? A home for you and your kids. What I’ve got for all this hard work and service. Two slaps... If you can’t give a home, at least give respect in front of children.

The choice of words “home for you and your kids” echoes centuries old concept that home and children belong to men and men alone and women are just like caretakers who are just longing for a respectable place in the society as a reward for their services.

However, all the tables turned when Amma stands against the tides of the society and makes this whole anti-feministic discussion feministic whereby women are also considered as individuals who can grab the opportunities to excel in education and sports; can take part in running the financial affairs of a home and become an emblem of honor and respect for the whole family even after going out of her stereotypical role of a submissive, passive, dependent, and illogical human being. Though such mental models are new and would be difficult for conservatives to adjust with them, but their propagation through media is expected to bring a change. This change in stereotypical mode is evident in following few instances: Amma to Wajid: ... Don’t worry, I have a daughter who earns and never makes a mention of it. For the last 4 years she has been contributing in running the home but nobody ever knew it. Ha! Instead of having a son like you a daughter like Amina is better, a thousand times better....

Harris becomes the mouthpiece for this new mental model and speaks in favor of a newer version of womanhood who is not in the confines of home but is independently breathing in the open.

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Harris to Amma: All the men in your family are mad. What Amina has done that it has brought disaster in your lives. She has won such a big trophy by defeating the girls from 150 schools. You should be happy for this and you are sitting here and crying. You should shed tears for your son Ali who goes for playing football and comes back with marks of fighting. All of your sons are useless and they do not worth their salt. You spend your whole day in household chores. Do you know how world is progressing? How are girls winning medals and trophies for their nations and countries? Round the world, all major newspapers celebrate their success. You may watch on TV how they are excelling in different fields. Allah has blessed your daughter with such a talent which is found in one among million...

In fact, data under study initially depicts the social representation of women in a stereotypical way and then towards the second half the depiction takes a turn and treats woman as an independent human being who breaks the shackles of traditions and makes herself powerful and sovereign despite all odds. All this is depicted discursively and is mentioned above.

3rd Dimension—Discourse & Society The social situations, action, actors and societal structure need to be analyzed to determine the link between discourse and the society.

The social situation of the understudy communicative event i.e. the telefilm signifies a lower middle-class locality and a working-class family with four children. The family members as well as the people in immediate social setting are found caught up in the rut of conservative patriarchal thinking of male as norm and display the same through their speech acts. In the changed scenario i.e. after feministic awakening, the social situation permitted Amma’s stern actions and confident utterances and her loud and clear verdicts targeting the whole society including various groups, organizations, institutions, at large as its addresses.

CDA not only focuses on the speech acts but also takes interest in those actions and social practices that are achieved through discourse. The under review discursive event apparently traces the success story of a girl from being an ill-fated individual to a world-renowned athlete; but actually “much more than that” (p. 116) is done. Initially the male hegemony and dominance was defended and supported and a rebel like Amina was tried to be repressed through verbal and physical means. However, since beginning, Harris is portrayed as leftist to counter all such efforts to subdue the women voice and gradually becomes successful in getting his message transferred to Amma and Amina to stand and fight for their existence. Doing so the patriarchal society and its supporters came under sheer attack which is depicted in the long and assertive dialogues by Amma and Harris, as mentioned above. With Amina’s continued successes and changes in the attitude of the staunch anti-feministic faction, the liberal feminism was promoted and the female patriotic contributions have also been highlighted. The initial negative representation and later positive representation of rebellious female characters is justified in the wider global social context where a wave of awareness has inspired all and sundry and is now entering in Pakistan. Amina’s participation in an international championship held in Iran explicates the openness of Muslim countries towards women participation in sports events and portrays them as moderates and not extremists. Moreover, Amina’s dark, thin, and unimpressive looks (Kuloo Rani) invalidates the concept of glamorization attached to a woman represented in media.

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Findings & Conclusion: The data analysis reveals that the wave of feminism has touched upon the media elites and decision makers in Pakistan as well. Though the trend of anti-stereotypical portrayal was in vogue, as mentioned earlier, but it used to be in the form of series of episodes. However, transmission of such a strong message with almost all the round characters, in the span of 80 minutes is an achievement in itself.

The whole account of the discourse analysis reveals that the portrayal of women character in the telefilm is a mixture of stereotypical and anti-stereotypical in nature. The film begins and progresses with the role of women as submissive, oppressed, and dependent home-makers and the same is depicted through their linguistic choices and the language used by the others for them; however, their awareness takes them out of the shackles and they resist this treatment through verbal and physical means. Consequently, they’ve to pay the price of being independent and again become outcast and are portrayed as ‘them’ by all the members of society since rebellious women had challenged their socially accepted norms and traditions and tried to uproot their patriarchal ideology in the name of modernism and freedom. However, the latter events account for a changed scenario when the Us in the society started portraying Them in a dignified and respectful manner and accepted the newer version of a woman who is independent, free, strong and active yet dignified and is respectful to the socio-cultural norms of the society. Amina Sheikh who performed the role of Amina in the telefilm comments (Khalid, 2011): “I felt very strongly while doing this film and after viewing it, (I realized) this piece of work truly defines the identity that Pakistani cinema should signify. Not only did this film have a progressive plot and encouraging message but more importantly it was rooted and very relevant to us as a nation.”

The current study is indicative of the change that the whole society in general and media in particular is undergoing in recognizing women and women related issues. They are now at the center stage neither as a charmer nor as a victim; but as an individual who is respectable, strong, economically independent, and can stand on equal footing with man in the society. It’s now the social construction of gender- “One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman” (Simone de Beauvoir as cited in Hekman, p. 92, 2006) and the family financial matters and domestics are interchangeably taken care of by either of the genders in the current social and global situation.

In future, a comparative analysis of two such indigenous telefilms or a cross-cultural comparison with the telefilms made on such topics in other parts of the world can be conducted for a still deeper analysis.

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Feminist Media Studies

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Gender and China's Online Censorship Protest Culture Cara Wallis To cite this article: Cara Wallis (2015) Gender and China's Online Censorship Protest Culture, Feminist Media Studies, 15:2, 223-238, DOI: 10.1080/14680777.2014.928645 To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/14680777.2014.928645

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Feminist Media Studies, 2015 Vol. 15, No. 2, 223–238, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14680777.2014.928645

GENDER AND CHINA’S ONLINE CENSORSHIP PROTEST CULTURE Cara Wallis

This article offers a feminist critique of three user-generated texts designed to protest Internet censorship in China: the “Song of the Grass-Mud Horse,” the “Green Dam Girl,” and “My Elder Brother Works for SARFT.” These have been widely celebrated as offering democratic potential in a highly regulated political environment, yet what has been overlooked is how all three deploy a masculinist discourse and visual style that position the female body and the feminine as the site of subordination, penetration, and insult. Utilizing Harriet Evans’ notion of the “limits of gender” as an analytical tool, I argue that while these texts’ subversive character challenges the state’s ideological and technological dominance, their language and visual style reinstantiate structural gender inequality that is pervasive in China. Their reinscription of patriarchal constructions of gender thus ultimately diminishes their truly emancipatory potential. Moreover, the uncritical celebration of these media—the way visible gender essentialism is invisible in public discourse around them—reveals the limits of gender in China and the tendency to fetishize any form of resistance in authoritarian contexts.

KEYWORDS

China; “limits of gender”; censorship; e’gao; resistance

In April 2013, The Economist featured a special section on the Internet in China titled “A Giant Cage.” The report covered a range of topics but focused mostly on the government’s sophisticated methods of censorship as well as how China’s Internet users, or netizens, negotiate such constraints. While acknowledging how microblogs in particular have provided a forum for discussing controversial issues and forcing greater government accountability, the report concluded that rather than potentially ushering in a “Beijing spring,” the Internet has been effectively used by the government to build “a better cage” (Gady Epstein 2013, 15). Such framing of a discussion of the Chinese Internet as a battleground between state censorship and free expression is common in both Western media and academic scholarship. However, a preoccupation with “freedom” versus “control” misses the complexity of new media use in China (Lokman Tsui 2003). In particular, this binary can lead to the heralding of any form of mediated resistance to the party-state as unequivocally “good” and liberatory even if problematic tactics are utilized.

In this article I offer a feminist critique of a “cat and mouse” battle that was waged on the Chinese Internet in 2009 and 2010. I analyze the gendered signification of nongovernment sanctioned user-generated content, often called e’gao, created to protest the government’s 2009 “Anti-Vulgarity Campaign” as well as subsequent government attempts to “clean up” the Internet. I focus on three texts: a video called the “Song of the Grass-Mud Horse” (Cao Ni Ma zhi Ge); a manga-type meme known as the Green Dam Girl (Lübaniang); q 2014 Taylor & Francis

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and a song, “My Elder Brother Works for SARFT,” or literally “My Elder Brother is in a Bare Butt” (Wo Ge zai Guangding [Guangdian ]). The “Song of the Grass-Mud Horse” quickly generated over 1.5 million views on YouTube before it was censored (Michael Wines 2009) and an unknown number on Chinese video sharing sites (where it was promptly deleted), and it inspired countless media articles and blog posts, both in Chinese and English.

The Green Dam Girl featured prominently in discussions of the debate over the government-imposed Green Dam Youth Escort filtering/censorship software. Although not as controversial, “My Elder Brother Works for SARFT” was quite popular on the Chinese Internet (where it too was censored), and with its intertextual references to the Grass-Mud Horse and the Green Dam Girl, it functions as a sort of coda to one particular episode of government censorship.

Much attention has been devoted to analyzing these types of viral phenomena, with agreement that their clever wordplay, unique signifiers, and rebellious attitude are modes of expression that offer democratic potential in a highly regulated political environment (Hongmei Li 2011; Lijun Tang and Peidong Yang 2011). They are also celebrated as part of a sexualized public culture that has emerged in opposition to political suppression (Katrien Jacobs 2012). Yet what has gotten lost in the celebration is how these media utilize problematic constructions of gender. Thus, rather than focusing on their political significance in the conventional sense, my goal is to unpack what such user-generated content, as well as its reception, reveals about China’s post-socialist gender politics. Using a gender lens, I argue that these media deploy a masculinist discourse and visual style that position the female body and the feminine as the site of subordination, penetration, and insult. Moreover, they are a digital manifestation of what Harriet Evans (2008) calls the “limits of gender” in China, or the increased range of depictions of the sexed body without a simultaneous embrace in most popular and scholarly discourse of the critical language of gender as a means of interrogating the social and cultural power relations inscribed in notions of masculinity and femininity. Certainly consuming such media can be pleasurable, and active audiences can read these texts in diverse ways. However, I argue that while their subversive character challenges the state’s ideological and technological dominance, their language and visual style reinstantiate structural gender inequality that is pervasive in China. In this way they inadvertently support both the state and the market (which cannot always be separated), which both perpetuate the commodification and, in some cases, marginalization of women. Moreover, the uncritical celebration of these media—that is, the way visible gender essentialism is invisible in public discourse around them—reveals the limits of gender in China and the tendency to fetishize any form of resistance in authoritarian contexts.

In what follows, I first review the characteristics of new media and participatory culture and how they manifest in China given the constraints of state censorship. I next discuss historical shifts in gender norms, contemporary post-socialist gender politics, and the “limits of gender” in China. Then, I analyze each text and show how their politically subversive messages are articulated through essentialized, and at times misogynistic, representations of gender. That their progressive politics have been heralded while their problematic gender politics have been ignored is not unique in the history of counterhegemonic struggles in China and elsewhere. Although these three viral phenomena communicate their dissent in a pleasurable and powerful way, their reinscription of patriarchal constructions of gender ultimately diminishes their truly emancipatory potential.

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New Media and Democratic Possibilities The global diffusion of affordable digital technologies and high-speed Internet has led to the blurring of the distinction between media producers and consumers. There is now an abundance of user-generated content online that often combines disparate audio and/or video clips and is frequently characterized by intertextuality, or the inclusion of diverse cultural references within one media text. This do-it-yourself ethos and horizontal structure of new media usage have provoked discussion about the relationship between new media and a democratic public sphere. On one side are those such as Henry Jenkins (2006), whose notion of “convergence culture” emphasizes a participatory culture based on collective intelligence. To Jenkins, blogs, Photoshopped images, and even game play reveal the power of convergence culture to facilitate grassroots democracy. In contrast, Evgeny Morozov (2011) points to the Internet’s potential to facilitate “dedemocratication,” especially when used by repressive governments (including China) for surveillance and control. He critiques “slacktivism”—e.g., pushing a “send” button on an online petition—as a weak substitute for meaningful, engaged activism.

The conflicting views regarding Internet-enabled (de)democracy find parallels in the ambiguous nature of user-generated content. Given the anonymity and lack of formal gate-keeping structure, the web generates an equal amount of engaged debate and trolling. Moreover, just as online humor generally has been found to reinscribe gender essentialism (Limor Shifman and Dafna Lemish 2011), so too does much user-generated content aimed at making a political point. For example, Karrin Anderson (2011) argues that some of the most popular viral videos during the 2008 US presidential election undermined women’s political agency through relying on familiar sexist tropes.

Censorship and Participatory Culture in China Since the opening of the commercial web in China in the mid-1990s, early predictions in the West of the inevitability of the Internet democratizing China have been confounded by a party-state that has developed a highly regulated Chinese Internet, where censorship and commercialization coexist. The government uses various methods to censor online information, from the “Great Firewall”—a technological system of keyword filtering and ISP blocking—to various pledges of “self-discipline” that web hosting companies must sign (Tsui 2003), to a vast army of human censors.

Despite such regulation and control, there is a diversity of opinions online in China, including a large number of critical voices that are permitted as long as they don’t call for collective demonstrations (Gary King, Jennifer Pan, and Margaret Roberts 2013).

In this context, there has been an explosion of debate and dissident voices as well as user-generated content created to mock or critique government policies and social problems (Guobin Yang 2009). Such content that parodies or makes fun of an original work is often called e’gao.

E’gao can take many forms, including Photoshopped images, songs, lip-synched videos, and mashed-up films, which sometimes contain indirect political commentary (Ashley Esarey and Qiang Xiao 2008). Bingchun Meng (2009) argues that e’gao’s significance lies in its challenge to the norms of media content as well as official modes of production and distribution. Because China’s media environment is so strictly regulated, e’gao’s “carnivalesque” spirit and unconventional attitude toward “mainstream” and “officialdom”

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are seen as a way for young adults in particular to lodge a critique (Jiangfeng Hu 2008; Li 2011; Meng 2009). Moreover, the sexualized nature of some e’gao is seen as arising within a socio-political environment in which it is safer to create rude jokes than openly express political dissent (Jacobs 2012). Not surprisingly, Communist Party officials view e’gao’s irreverent humor as a threat to the government’s authority. Yet, despite the range of scholarship on e’gao, none has explicitly examined the gender politics of certain types of e’gao.

China’s Post-Socialist Gender Politics In China, changing understandings of gender find particular expression at distinct historical moments. In late nineteenth and early twentieth century China, in the midst of political and social turmoil, gender was prominently deployed by male intellectuals in debates about national salvation and modernization, with the weakness of the nation often symbolized by the deficiencies of Chinese woman, with her bound feet, illiteracy, and docile temperament (Wendy Larson 1998). After 1949, a radical restructuring of social, political, and economic life also meant a rearrangement of gender ideology. Under Mao Zedong, all citizens were “liberated,” and state feminism “guaranteed” women’s emancipation from patriarchy through her entry into productive labor. However, party policy and discourse always placed class above gender. At its most extreme, during the Cultural Revolution (1966 –1976) a feminine identity nearly disappeared from the public sphere, as women were encouraged to wear androgynous clothing and short hair and to emulate masculine mannerisms (Beverley Hooper 1998).

When China began its reform and opening policy in the late-1970s, state-enforced androgyny went by the wayside as Maoist policies and ideology were repudiated.

While images of women at the beginning of the reforms were coy and relatively innocent (Hooper 1998), with the acceleration of marketization since the mid-1990s, a booming consumer culture has been sustained through the circulation of sexualized images of men and especially women. Although China’s contemporary visual and narrative cultures contain a wider depiction of sexuality than in the past, various media all commodify and objectify women’s bodies, positioning them as either sexual or childlike (Wei Bu 2001; Evans 2008).

At the same time, mediated constructions of masculinity turn alternately to Chinese folk culture, the capitalist myth of the self-made man, or portraits of wartime brotherly solidarity (Geng Song 2010). China’s online realm has more space for alternative notions of gender and sexuality, yet it is highly commercialized and thus remains largely heteronormative.

This is despite such transgressive figures as Mu Zimei, who in 2003 blogged openly about sex and rejected gender norms surrounding love and romance (James Farrer 2007), and “Super Girl” singing star Li Yuchun, whose androgynous style was ridiculed by some but who is widely adored in online fan sites (Audrey Yue and Haiqing Yu 2008).

The “Limits of Gender” The gender representations in China’s commercial media exist in a social milieu in which consumption and displays of overt sexuality are seen as expressions of urban, globalized modernity. This is particularly true among China’s younger generations, which have witnessed their own “sexual revolution” (Suiming Pan 2006). However, China’s sexualized public culture is also a result of the government’s strategic bargain whereby

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greater consumption and lifestyle choices are offered to the populace in exchange for the suppression of political rights. In this context, Jacobs (2012) argues that online contention fueled by “erotic energy” (17), as well as an “emerging porn culture and porn taste,” should be understood as “an aspect of civil sexual emancipation” (11). However, such an optimistic view gives scant acknowledgement to China’s deeply engrained patriarchal culture and contemporary belief in binary gender, where males are strong, active, and rational and where females are the opposite (Evans 2008). Such binaries are easily folded into a fusion of global and domestic media that sexualize and objectify women.

Evans (2008) uses the term the “limits of gender” to denote how this increased range of representations exists without a simultaneous engagement with the concept of gender as the social and cultural power relations that undergird conceptions of masculinity and femininity, except in small women’s studies departments and underfunded NGOs. The limits of gender refers to the simultaneous “marginalization of gender as a category of analysis” and perpetuation of discourses “that shore up the structures and practices of binary gender difference” (375). In terms of policy, officials avoid the critical language of gender because of the social and political implications this would entail even as systemic gender inequality has given rise to an increase in social problems including domestic violence, rape, and employment discrimination. In mainstream media, “the young sexed body” appears as a signifier of personal achievement or investment in the private market, but not as a “category of meanings that interrogates established norms of gendered and, therefore, social relationships” (364).

In her analysis, Evans focuses on official policy, academic and popular discourse, and mainstream, commercial media. I extend her term as an analytical lens to unpack how unofficial user-generated content designed to resist structural political inequalities reinscribes systemic gender inequality. If, as Evans argues, the “limits of gender” can be understood “as a discursive response to the political implications of the term” (2008, 376), it can also be read as a strategy—intentional or not—of political dissent. Viewed through a gender lens such dissent seems less transgressive.

The 2009 Anti-Vulgarity Campaign and Gendered Protest At the beginning of 2009, the “Special Campaign to Rectify and Control Vulgarity on the Internet” was launched (Xinhua 2009). Compared to earlier crackdowns that specifically went after online porn or “indecency,” this campaign was more vague, as it targeted “vulgarity” and was ostensibly designed to protect youth. Some believe it was in reaction to Charter 08, a document written and posted online in the fall of 2008 by Liu Xiaobo and other Chinese intellectuals calling for political and legal reforms.1 Another possible reason was that the government was skittish going into 2009, a year of several important anniversaries, including the twentieth anniversary of the Tiananmen Square demonstrations and crackdown on June 4, 1989.2 Once the censorship campaign began, much online content was deleted; thousands of websites were shut down or targeted for “cleaning,” including popular domestic portals such as Sina; applications such as Twitter were blocked; and even circumvention technologies were at times rendered unusable. As the government heralded the closure of hundreds of pornographic and gambling websites as proof of its success in “cleaning up the harmful web,” others noted that “pornography” and “vulgarity” encompassed politically sensitive content as well, since politically oriented blogs were also censored. Although the

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majority of Chinese Internet users most likely were not aware of or affected by the crackdown at first, the reaction of those who suddenly found their daily online activity severely curtailed was outrage and/or disgust. Some posted comments critical of the government online, others made derisive jokes, and still others created e’gao.

The “Song of the Grass-Mud Horse” In early 2009, popular search engine Baidu’s Baike, an online collaborative encyclopedia (akin to Wikipedia), was hacked and entries for “10 Mythical Creatures” appeared. Clearly a hoax, most of the creatures had names that sounded like profanity, crudely referred to body parts, or were in other ways based on scatological humor. These included the “Fa Ke You,” or “French-Croatian Squid,” a transliteration of “fuck you,” and the “Wei Shen Jing,” or “Stretch-Tailed Whale,” which is a homophone for sanitary napkins (Joel Martinsen 2009). Of all the creatures, however, the Cao Ni Ma, or “Grass-Mud Horse,” gained the most popularity, and notoriety. Soon this “legendary beast” appeared in Chinese cyberspace in a variety of forms—images, cartoons, a faux documentary, a parody of a wildlife show, etc. Yet its most prominent manifestation was the “Song of the Grass-Mud Horse” (“Grass-Mud Horse” hereafter), a short video featuring alpacas in the wild, set to a nursery rhyme-like song. At first listen, the “Grass-Mud Horse” sounds like any number of children’s ditties, with its instrumentation, rhythm, and singsong melody, which isn’t surprising since it borrows the theme song of the Chinese Smurfs cartoon. In the lyrics, the Grass-Mud Horse is intelligent, courageous, and tenacious, and it lives free in the Ma Le Desert. Although the invading “River Crabs” pose a threat, the Grass-Mud Horse eventually defeats them and protects its grassland.

To understand the song, it helps to know the way homonyms are frequently used online in China. In 2006 China’s leaders put forward the goal of establishing a “harmonious society,” and to achieve this goal a range of actions have been taken to control online content. Thus, in recent years when “sensitive” online material is deleted, it has become common for the one censored to say they have been “harmonized.” “River crab” (hexie) sounds like harmony in Chinese; thus, “river crab” is an Internet meme that has emerged to mean “censorship” and/or the Chinese government.

From the above description, the “Grass-Mud Horse” seems rather innocuous.

However, the three words in Chinese for “Grass-Mud Horse” also sound like “fuck your mother” and the “Ma Le Desert” is a homophone for “fuck your mother’s cunt.” The chorus of the song is, “Oh lying down Grass-Mud Horse (Oh, fuck your mother), Oh, running wild Grass-Mud Horse (Oh, fuck your mother, hard!).” With these lyrics and the memorable melody and visuals, the video became a viral sensation in China. After it was featured in a New York Times piece (see Wines 2009), other English language media picked up the story, and it became well known outside China. Soon the video, with English translation, was uploaded to YouTube (see Figure 1). In spite of its quick banning, the Grass-Mud Horse phenomenon spawned cartoons, videos, and even merchandise. Clearly embarrassed, the Chinese government attempted to delete all content related to the Grass-Mud Horse and imposed new rules on online video sharing.

In China, with the buzz surrounding the “Grass-Mud Horse,” leading dissidents and intellectuals blogged or tweeted about the song.3 For example, Cui Weiping, a cultural critic and professor at the Beijing Film Academy, wrote that the “Grass-Mud Horse” was a clever pun intended to turn the tables on notions of decency. To Cui, through singing

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FIGURE 1 The “Song of the Grass Mud Horse” (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v¼ wKx1aenJK08)

a “cute children’s song,” netizens kept their dignity and remained civilized in contrast to the barbarian government. She thus argued that the “Grass-Mud Horse” was subversive, not vulgar. The point was not “fxxx your mother”; rather, it signified working “hard in harsh conditions.”4 Others invoked James Scott’s notion of “weapons of the weak,” or the ways that the powerless create “hidden transcripts” in opposition to those in power. In this argument, the “Grass-Mud Horse” was not about vulgarity but about bravery and staking out a contested space for free expression in a restricted environment (see Oiwan Lam 2009).

Similarly, Xiao Qiang, a scholar of the Chinese Internet at UC Berkeley, called the “Grass-Mud Horse” an “icon of resistance to censorship” (quoted in Wines 2009). Certainly part of the point of the video was to ridicule government censorship by showing how, regardless of the amount of money spent and technology deployed, the Great Firewall could be breached with a simple song (Wines 2009).

The opinions expressed above are representative of how the “Grass-Mud Horse” was immediately debated and discussed in the public sphere. There was a general consensus that it served as a vehicle for counter-hegemonic voices through inverting power relations.

Scholarly analyses of the “Grass-Mud Horse” since then have also heralded its carnivalesque spirit (Li 2011; Bingchun Meng 2011), its humor (Jacobs 2012), and its “symbolic power” to express the “solidarity of defiance” (Tang and Yang 2011, 680).

Discussions of the “Grass-Mud Horse,” then, were largely comprised of either admonitions not to focus on the song’s vulgar content or declarations that its vulgarity is precisely what gives it its humor and symbolic power. Missing from any discussion has been a recognition that it is not merely “vulgarity” that is the issue, but how such vulgarity is gendered that gives the “Grass-Mud Horse” its power.5 In other words, the limits of gender manifest through the visible signification of misogyny embedded in the “Grass-Mud Horse,” which ultimately supports gendered oppression, and the way this is rendered invisible in analyses of the meme.

Many modes of humor, in China and elsewhere, use the female and the feminine as an inventive visual or linguistic resource.6 In the “Grass-Mud Horse,” women’s body parts are amplified in the public sphere to critique a defective government. As such, gender essentialism functions in the song on many levels. First, the song makes its point by utilizing

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an insult that “naturally” involves not only female genitalia but also that of one’s mother, conjuring up the incest taboo. It’s precisely because the mother signifies that which is pure, sanctified, and to be protected (e.g., motherhood as a near universal duty for married women in China; China as the “motherland”) that the insult is so severe. Second, although the song can be understood as netizens cursing the Chinese government, it deploys the nature/culture binary through its representations of innocent, wild nature (i.e., female) under threat of penetration by freedom-denying culture (i.e., an evil, masculine government). In doing so it evokes one well-worn trope of the relationship between gender and nation—female bodies stand in for the state of the nation when national strength, order, or purity are imperiled (Nira Yuval-Davis 1997).

If we consider the wider context of the “Grass-Mud Horse,” that is, the list of the “10 Mythical Creatures,” we can also see the sexism in such e’gao. The only reference to a real person is to Li Yuchun (the “Super Girl”), whose androgynous style has violated gender norms in China. On the list, the “Chun Ge” or “Quail Pigeon,” which sounds like “Big Brother Chun” in Chinese, refers to Li Yuchun. Her disruption of heteronormativity and destabilization of taken-for-granted understandings of gender in China mean that she is ridiculed and listed in the company of sanitary napkins and expletives, as well as homophones for vaginitis, pubic hair, and masturbation.

My critique is not meant to deny the humor in the “Grass-Mud Horse” and derivative content, yet an uncritical reception of these media ignores the stakes involved in overlooking gender oppression in any form. What L.H.M. Ling (1999) calls China’s “hypermasculine developmentalism” has brought higher standards of living for millions but at the expense of growing inequality that often manifests along gendered lines: China has one of the highest global rates of suicide among women (mostly rural) as well as a gender-stratified labor market where the “myth of nimble fingers” survives on the factory floor while educated, urban women are discriminated against in hiring practices. In Ling’s notion of contemporary “global hypermasculinity,” the state’s “manly” pursuit of economic development fosters both systemic gender inequality and renders all of its citizens as “hyperfeminized”—subordinate and self-sacrificing yet lacking a political voice (1999, 280).

In the “Grass-Mud Horse,” it seems that a voice, even if virtually, can only be found through deploying binary gender.

The “Grass-Mud Horse” (and its fellow beasts) thus reveals the “limits of gender” through a gendered dual (in)visibility: the reinscription of essentialized gender in the text and an absence of any critique of this. Perhaps the silence on the gender dynamics in the “Grass-Mud Horse” stems in part from the disconnect between its visual, melodic, and lyrical components. Its childlike melody and depiction of furry alpacas belie how lyrically it assumes a masculine subject position. However, placing the song within the long history of the subsumption of gender to class and the contemporary marginalization of gender discourse in China provides greater explanatory power. Furthermore, the song’s uncritical embrace by journalists and academics in the West also shows that the use of problematic gender representations for the sake of protest, and the refusal to interrogate how these uphold systems of inequality, is not unique to China.

The Green Dam Girl On May 19, 2009 China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology issued a directive that all computers sold in China had to pre-install Green Dam Youth Escort,

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software ostensibly designed to block access to pornographic content. This policy was to take effect on July 1 in order to create a “green, healthy, and harmonious Internet environment” as opposed to a “yellow,” or pornographic, one. 7 Although users would have had the option of uninstalling the software, the directive caused an uproar in and outside China. Many pointed out that the software violated users’ rights, was full of bugs and security issues, was unreliable, and that it blocked political content as well (Yong Hu 2009).8 Shuli Hu (2009), at the time the editor of Caijing (Finance), an influential magazine, also argued that as information is a social right, the Chinese government should offer open-source software and let users decide whether to install it.

Eventually the government backed down, saying it would delay the installation of the software or make it optional at the individual consumer level. This was seen as a great victory for Chinese Internet users, many of whom gained a new awareness of censorship given the media coverage of the event. However, the software was installed in computers in schools and Internet cafés in China, and in computers sold as part of a government subsidy program to facilitate sales of appliances in the countryside. Lenovo pre-installed the software in its computers, and Sony included it on disks with new computers.

In the midst of the furor over the software, suddenly online there arrived the Green Dam Girl (Lübaniang), which also sounds like “filter tyrant” in Chinese. Visually she is a cartoon image with a river crab on her hat, carrying a rabbit (the software’s mascot), and, reminiscent of the Red Guards during the Cultural Revolution, wearing a red armband that says “discipline” (see Figure 2). She is also holding soy sauce to remove harmful, “dirty” material.9 In other images, she appeared invading the privacy of a Windows XP user by pulling down her underpants to examine her, and alongside the Grass-Mud Horse, stating, “That unhealthy information is so gross. I’m a girl worth 40 million,”

FIGURE 2 The Green Dam Girl (http://chinadigitaltimes.net/space/Green_dam_girl)

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in reference to the amount the government supposedly paid for a one-year lease of the program.10 As with the “Grass-Mud Horse,” the Green Dam Girl was heralded as an example of user-generated content voicing discontent over state control (Li 2011). Indeed, her image was part of a larger, very vocal opposition that succeeded in halting, at least temporarily, the government’s overt, heavy-handed attempt at censorship. Also like the “Grass-Mud Horse,” analyses of the Green Dam Girl have celebrated the politics of protest while remaining silent on her gender politics. Yet, the limits of gender are once again revealed through closer examination.

The Green Dam Girl is a manga-type character, and manga (and anime) often plays with gender and sexuality through androgynous or bisexual characters. However, even with its expanded notions of sexuality, manga often reaffirms heteronormativity (Kukhee Choo 2008), as is the case with the Green Dam Girl. She is modeled upon the OS-tans, which were created as cartoon characters in a Japanese Internet forum for otaku, or “geek fans” of Japanese anime and manga. The original OS-tan was supposed to represent Microsoft’s Windows Millennium Edition operating system as unstable. Such instability was then personified in a caricature of a fickle, unreliable girl. With the release of later operating systems came subsequent female caricatures, variously depicted as irritating, cute, or hardworking.11 Similar to the OS-tans, visually the Green Dam Girl embodies some of the attributes of rorikon, or Lolita-complex manga, which is usually written by males but adopts the “cutesy” style of amateur girls’ manga (Sharon Kinsella 1998). A range of sexualized, childlike characters exists within this form of “anime, comics, and games” or ACG, which is quite popular in China.12 In various images the Green Dam Girl appears as both cute and voluptuous, always wearing a short skirt, sometimes donning high boots, and often with large breasts and a thin waist. She is usually rendered as childlike though sometimes appears as a dominatrix, playing on the sound of “filter tyrant.”

Why did the Green Dam Youth Escort software materialize visually as the Green Dam Girl? Outside of China, various types of software have been created to give parents greater control over what children see and do online, with names typically evoking their guardian or watchdog function, such as Cybersitter, K9, and Safety Eyes as well as the obviously gendered NetNanny. I argue that the Green Dam Youth Escort software was parodied as the Green Dam Girl for two reasons. First, because it was ostensibly providing a service, it was feminized in line with how service work in China, as in many parts of the world, is feminized, and as “women’s work,” trivialized. Moreover, the Green Dam Girl is feminized to represent the inept Chinese party-state. Like her fickle OS-tan predecessor, she is bestowed with a mission yet one she is incompetent to fulfill. In line with dominant gender binaries, what is weak and ineffective is synonymous with the feminine.

As with the “Grass-Mud Horse,” the Green Dam Girl elicited numerous spinoffs and derivative content, including animated cartoons and songs. The controversy even made its way to the Hitler meme, or the short segment where an irate Hitler berates everyone around him at the end of the movie Downfall, which has been dubbed or subtitled thousands of times to comment on everything from the Xbox to the state of various football teams.13 In the spinoff related to the Green Dam Girl, entitled “The Green Dam Loses Face, the Head Goes Crazy” (Lüba diu lian, yuanshou fa biao), the scene is juxtaposed with an action sequence from the French film Banlieue 13, where a male martial arts hero jumps the wall—the Great Firewall—causing the net administrators to be humiliated.

It may seem odd that the chosen hero is not a Chinese action star, but instead the French

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parkour practitioner David Belle. However, the creator of the mash-up clearly used this film, whose inhabitants live in a ghetto surrounded by a high, barbed wire-topped wall and under constant police scrutiny, to draw parallels with Internet control in China.

The Green Dam Girl exists for a masculinized gaze, in a reversal from the feminized, powerless citizen seeking a voice in the “Grass-Mud Horse.” Yet like the “Grass-Mud Horse,” the critique is communicated through the deployment of essentialized gender, which again is so familiar it is apparently invisible. This dual (in)visibility of gender once more reveals the limits of gender in contemporary China, while also showing continuity with the past. A century ago male intellectuals utilized the bound-foot, docile Chinese woman as a stand-in for the state of the weak nation. Now the inept, juvenile Green Dam Girl signifies an ineffectual and infantilized government, which, in the Downfall spinoff, is humiliated by the masculine, powerful, clever wall-jumper.

“My Elder Brother Works for SARFT” As the buzz around the “Grass-Mud Horse” and the Green Dam Girl was beginning to wind down, in late 2009 a new music video appeared starring a new character: “My Elder Brother Works for SARFT” or literally “My Elder Brother is in a Bare Butt” (Wo Ge zai Guangding [Guangdian ]) (“Brother SARFT” hereafter). The double meaning comes from a play on “Guangdian,” which is the abbreviated term for SARFT, the State Administration of Radio, Film, and Television. Although this video was not created in direct response to a new government edict, it can be seen as one of the concluding responses to both the 2009 “Anti-Vulgarity” campaign and the Green Dam Youth Escort software controversy due to its timing and intertextual references to the “Grass-Mud Horse” and the Green Dam Girl. Similar to the previous texts, it also reveals the limits of gender in China.

As its name implies, SARFT is the bureaucracy in China charged with regulating and censoring traditional mass broadcast media. SARFT has always frowned upon and sought to control e’gao not only because it considers much of it “harmful,” but also because amateur video producers skirt the typical channels of media production and distribution in China (Meng 2009). In December 2007, SARFT and the then Ministry of Information Industry published particularly stringent rules designed to regulate content as well as the websites that could distribute online audio and video. In March 2009, in the wake of the “Grass-Mud Horse,” SARFT issued new regulations meant to supplement the 2007 provisions, including requiring licenses for Internet broadcasting and prohibiting sexual content as well as content that misrepresents China.14 Due to its role in restricting e’gao it is not surprising that SARFT was eventually parodied.

Melodically “Brother SARFT” is catchy with an upbeat tempo, like the “Grass-Mud Horse.”

Rather than originating from a children’s ditty, however, it borrows a song called “Shiny Happiness” (“Qiong Kaixin”) by a Chinese pop/punk band, The Flowers (Huar Yuedui). The highpitched female vocal is layered on top of the original vocal and sounds like it was generated by a computer using auto-tune and harmonizing software (the latter is popular in anime theme songs and is also apparently a reference to the government’s “harmonious society”).

Visually the video is just one still image of a manga-type female character that stylistically resembles the Green Dam Girl. She too is modeled after characters from ACG, where there is a range of tender, shy, childlike yet sexualized “sisters.” Her small waist sets off her breasts, and she wears a short ruffled schoolgirl skirt as well as what appears to be a red armband. Unlike the Green Dam Girl, however, her appearance seems amiss. Her orange

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hair is in two ponytails tied by brown ribbons, yet it is a bit unkempt. One of her eyes is covered with a patch, and there is a cut on her forehead (see Figure 3). Text superimposed over the image at the beginning of the video references sadomasochism and bondage, implying the reason for her battered appearance.

Lyrically, like the “Grass-Mud Horse,” “Brother SARFT” relies on homonyms to mock censorship, beginning with the title (e.g., SARFT/bare butt). Like the “Grass-Mud Horse” and the “Green Dam Girl,” it also deploys gender to critique censorship in China, this time through a juxtaposition of essentialized masculinity and femininity. The song depicts SARFT as having the power to delete websites, censor content, and impose fines. The “elder brother” thus resembles Big Brother in its totalitarian power and authority. SARFT is also portrayed as lacking integrity and willing to accept bribes in the form of the “Grass-Mud Horse.” It is implied that SARFT partakes in sexual favors as well, possibly from the Green Dam Girl, who is the “most beautiful” and offers “satisfaction guaranteed.” SARFT is hypocritical too, desiring to watch “soft” sisters, most likely in pornography, and then professing “shock” at what is shown. The “sister” in the song, on the other hand, lacks any sort of agency. She is tender, naı̈ve, and submissive and is an object to be both protected and consumed. As a passive sexual subject, her consumption can also involve abuse, as depicted in the still image. Other characters in the song include hackers and male Internet “geeks” who are obsessed with going online.

In its themes and aesthetics, “Brother SARFT” borrows from rorikon, yet although similar in visual style to the Green Dam Girl, the “Brother SARFT” song presents an important counterpart. In that the Green Dam Youth Escort software was designed to provide a “service,” its representation through the Green Dam Girl is in line with social constructions of service work as labor that is feminized and thus often trivialized. A pertinent example of this construction in China is found in domestic service: 90 percent of China’s domestic workers are women, mostly middle-aged rural-to-urban migrant workers or laid-off workers from failed state-owned enterprises (International Labor Union 2009). They have low wages and social status, and their employment is excluded from China’s labor law because it is seen as informal. SARFT, however, is a large bureaucracy in China that issues decrees, imposes laws, and controls multiple media institutions. As a powerful regulatory institution, it “must” be

FIGURE 3 My Elder Brother Works for SARFT. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v¼kNnH8ujBTfc)

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gendered masculine. This is not because its administrators are primarily men, though they most likely are given the gender dynamics in Chinese officialdom. Rather, unlike the nation, which is often rendered as “the motherland,” the state exemplifies the supposed masculine qualities of rationality, strength, and power. Even if the point of the “Brother SARFT” song is to mock SARFT, the institutional masculine authority of SARFT is not diminished.

Exemplifying the limits of gender, the song reinforces binary gender difference, particularly the active male/passive female construction found offline in everything from sex education materials to women’s magazines (Evans 2008).

“Brother SARFT” was widely available online (with 29,000 copies even on the highly censored Baidu),15 and was proclaimed to be another example of humorous coded resistance (Jillian Kay Melchior 2010). Indeed, it could be argued that “Brother SARFT” is merely depicting reality in a clever and entertaining way. Those familiar with China cannot miss the correlation between official corruption in the form of bribes and sex in “Brother SARFT” and China’s real-world hypermasculine political and business culture, where sex scandals involving local male officials and young anonymous women are a regular occurrence (with “gotcha” images frequently uploaded online). However, in the same way that these scandals are routinely attributed to “corruption” with little or no discussion of the underlying gendered power differentials revealed by the scandals, the song’s critique of censorship and officialdom does not question systemic gender inequality. The visual and lyrical reinscription of gender essentialism is mutually constitutive with unspoken gendered structures, in line with the limits of gender in China.

The Limits of Gender as Cultural Orthodoxy As many feminist scholars have argued, gender is not only about individual bodies but systems of representation, language, and power, supported consciously or unconsciously by structures, institutions, artifacts, and practices. The “Grass-Mud Horse,” the Green Dam Girl, and “Brother SARFT” were created in a cultural context where it is safer to resist government oppression and censorship through sexualized humor than to lodge overt political protests; thus, these memes have been celebrated as liberatory. However, viewed through a gender lens they demonstrate the pervasiveness of highly orthodox and non-emancipatory gender discourses in China. In fighting state power, they reinscribe inequitable gendered power relations, as all three are infused with particular gendered signification. The female body is the site of insult or penetration, service and weakness are feminized, and ineptitude is identified with femininity. Masculinity, on the other hand, is synonymous with rebellion, action, power, and authority.

Such gendered critiques of censorship follow a long history in which sexed and gendered bodies, particularly women’s bodies—whether real or mediated—have been at the forefront in debates over culture, politics, economics, and even the destiny of the Chinese nation-state. The use of gendered tropes for such purposes is not unique to China, but China’s post-socialist gender politics have arisen out of its particular socio-cultural, historical context. The manner in which gender essentialism and oppression are both visible in the texts and invisible in public discourse around such texts offers further insight into the limits of gender in China. Through drawing upon essentialized gender that is embedded within state discourse and commercial consumer culture to lodge their critique, these texts inadvertently support the state and the market. Moreover, the silence both within and outside China on how these texts reinscribe gender inequality in their effort to overturn

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systems of oppression reveals how resistance against authoritarian state control is often fetishized. That is, it seems that any resistance is seen as progressive even if its tactics contain highly regressive dimensions.

To close, perhaps it is no wonder that in China to combat this sense of powerlessness, offline in the physical world male artists such as Zhang Huan and Ai Weiwei have used their naked bodies to protest censorship. The male phallus as a source of manly power is thus mutually constitutive with the containment and trivialization of the female and the feminine in struggles for a political voice in China. Still, gender essentialism transcends national boundaries and has been a significant part of social movements across space and time. For the sake of resistance and the advancement of what are considered larger goals, gender equality is often something either saved for later or completely absent from public discourse. It is as though the ubiquity of essentialized gender and the trivialization of the feminine renders them invisible. My goal has been to examine such issues in one realm of the Chinese Internet and thus to make them remark-able.

Acknowledgements I thank Xi Cui for his assistance with some research for this paper. Thanks also to Anne Balsamo, Sarah Banet-Weiser, Jenny Chio, Ashley Currier, Wendy Larson, Rebecca Gill, Rui Shen, Joan Wolf, and two anonymous reviewers for their helpful feedback.

NOTES 1. See http://chinadigitaltimes.net/2008/12/china-detains-prominent-dissident-ahead-ofhuman-rights-day/. Liu Xiaobo was subsequently arrested and sentenced to eleven years in jail. In October 2010 he was awarded the Nobel Peace prize.

2. Other important anniversaries included the May Fourth (student) Movement of 1919, the Tibetan uprising of 1959, the NATO bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade in 1999, and the 60th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic on October 1.

3. Although blocked, Twitter could be accessed via VPN. China’s domestic microblogging platforms were not yet developed.

4. For an English translation, see http://chinadigitaltimes.net/2009/03/cui-weiping-%E5% B4%94%E5%8D%AB%E5%B9%B3-i-am-a-grass-mud-horse.

5. Although I heard that some Chinese feminist scholars critiqued this meme, I was not able to find any published critiques.

6. See, for example, Salam Al-Mahadin (2003). There isn’t space for an in-depth discussion of this point, but one salient example concerns a twist on the CCP slogan, “One central task, two basic points” (yige zhongxin, liangge jibendian), where the “central task” means economic construction and the two basic points are adhering to the Four Cardinal Principles and persevering in reform and opening up. A colloquial joke is that the one central task is a woman’s vagina and the two basic points are her breasts.

7. See http://rjfwys.miit.gov.cn/n11293472/n11295227/n11298103/12397944.html 8. The software was also the target of a foreign lawsuit accusing its designers of stealing code.

9. The soy sauce has been interpreted as either a disinfectant or a reference to a phrase, “da jiangyou” (buy soy sauce), which went viral after a passer-by was interviewed by a news reporter about a sex scandal. He used an expletive to convey his lack of interest

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10.

11.

12.

13.

14.

15.

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and said he was just out buying soy sauce. After this, “da jiangyou” became a sarcastic way to express not getting involved in sensitive topics.

See http://www.danwei.org/net_nanny_follies/green_dam_girl.php.

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OS-tan.

See http://baike.baidu.com/view/2338870.htm?fr¼ala0_1_1.

For background on the meme, see http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/downfall-hitler-meme.

See http://www.sarft.gov.cn/articles/2009/03/30/20090330171107690049.html.

See http://chinadigitaltimes.net/2010/01/music-video-%E2%80%9Cmy-brother%E2%80% 99s-at-the-bare-bottom/.

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ESAREY, ASHLEY, AND QIANG XIAO. 2008. “Political Expression in the Chinese Blogosphere.” Asian Survey 48 (5): 752 – 772.

EVANS, HARRIET. 2008. “Sexed Bodies, Sexualized Identities, and the Limits of Gender.” China Information 22 (2): 361 – 386.

FARRER, JAMES. 2007. “China’s Women Sex Bloggers and Dialogic Sexual Politics on the Chinese Internet.” China Aktuell: A Journal of Contemporary China 36 (4): 10 –44.

HOOPER, BEVERLEY. 1998. “‘Flower Vase and Housewife’: Women and Consumerism in Post-Mao China.” In Gender and Power in Affluent Asia, edited by Krishna Sen and Maila Stivens, 167 – 193. London: Routledge.

HU, JIANGFENG. 2008. “Spoofing and Youth Subculture.” China Youth Study 6 (148): pp. 5– 10. (in Chinese).

HU, SHULI. 2009. “Green Dam and Filter Tyrant: Public Power and Social Rights.” Caijing, June 20. (in Chinese). Accessed February 2, 2011. http://magazine.caijing.com.cn/2009-06-20/ 110187194.html HU, YONG. 2009. “Dilemma and Conspiracy: Analysis of China’s Netizens’ Rights—Using the Green Dam as an Example (in Chinese).” Shanghai Journalism Review 11: 66– 71.

INTERNATIONAL LABOR UNION. 2009. “Fact Sheet: Domestic Workers in China.”

JACOBS, KATRIEN. 2012. People’s Pornography: Sex and Surveillance on the Chinese Internet. Chicago: Intellect.

JENKINS, HENRY. 2006. Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide. New York: New York University Press.

KING, GARY, JENNIFER PAN, AND MARGARET ROBERTS. 2013. “How Censorship in China Allows Government Criticism but Silences Collective Expression.” American Political Science Review 7 (2): 326 – 343.

KINSELLA, SHARON. 1998. “Japanese Subculture in the 1990s: Otaku and the Amateur Manga Movement.” Journal of Japanese Studies 24 (2): 289 – 316.

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2009. “China: More on Grass Mud Horse.” Global Voices Online, March 2. Accessed March 5, 2009. http://globalvoicesonline.org/2009/03/02/china-more-on-grass-mud-horse/ LARSON, WENDY. 1998. Women and Writing in Modern China. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

LI, HONGMEI. 2011. “Parody and Resistance on the Chinese Internet.” In Online Society in China: Creating, Celebrating, and Instrumentalizing the Online Carnival, edited by David Kurt Herold and Peter Marolt, 71– 88. London: Routledge.

LING, L. H. M. 1999. “Sex Machine: Global Hypermasculinity and Images of the Asian Woman in Modernity.” Positions: East Asia Cultures Critique 7 (2): 277 –306.

MARTINSEN, JOEL. 2009. “Hoax Dictionary Entries About Legendary Obscene Beasts.” Danwei, February 11. Accessed February 2, 2011. http://www.danwei.org/humor/baidu_baike_ fake_entries.php MELCHIOR, JILLIAN KAY. 2010. “Contentions: China’s Clever Netizens.” Commentary, January 19. Accessed April 28, 2011. http://www.commentarymagazine.com/2010/01/19/chinas-clever-netizens/ MENG, BINGCHUN. 2009. “Regulating Egao: Futile Efforts of Recentralization.” In China’s Information and Communications Technology Revolution: Social Changes and State Responses, edited by Xiaoling Zhang and Yongnian Zheng, 52– 67. New York: Routledge.

MENG, BINGCHUN. 2011. “From Steamed Bun to Grass Mud Horse: E Gao as Alternative Political Discourse on the Chinese Internet.” Global Media and Communication 7 (1): 33– 51.

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Cara Wallis is an assistant professor in the Department of Communication at Texas A&M University. E-mail: cwallis@tamu.edu

Continuum Journal of Media & Cultural Studies

ISSN: 1030-4312 (Print) 1469-3666 (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/ccon20

Chinese feminists on social media: articulating different voices, building strategic alliances Bin Wang & Catherine Driscoll To cite this article: Bin Wang & Catherine Driscoll (2019) Chinese feminists on social media: articulating different voices, building strategic alliances, Continuum, 33:1, 1-15, DOI: 10.1080/10304312.2018.1532492 To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/10304312.2018.1532492

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CONTINUUM: JOURNAL OF MEDIA & CULTURAL STUDIES 2019, VOL. 33, NO. 1, 1–15 https://doi.org/10.1080/10304312.2018.1532492

Chinese feminists on social media: articulating different voices, building strategic alliances Bin Wanga and Catherine Driscollb a

Qu Qiubai School of Government, Changzhou University, Changzhou, China; bGender and Cultural Studies, The University of Sydney, Sydney, Australia ABSTRACT

KEYWORDS

This article considers the importance of social media to contemporary Chinese feminism, in the process introducing two important groups, Feminist Voice and Women’s Awakening, who have used social media platforms for their activism in the past few years. Various online strategies have been taken up by their young members to ensure the best outcome for their advocacy. In particular, these feminists use social media to articulate a specific presence, or voice, that would be more difficult to sustain using more traditional modes of Chinese feminism. And they also attempt to cultivate relationships with mainstream journalists, building alliances they hope will encourage more gender-conscious reporting and more positive representations of feminism. While social media does not overcome all the obstacles to feminism that is becoming more visibly influential in China, these media groups stand out as key voices in Chinese feminist and youth activism today, with implications for how we understand contemporary feminism on an international scale.

Chinese feminism; social media; youth activism; Feminist Voice; Women’s Awakening

Introduction In 2016, a few days before the International Women’s Day (IWD), Women’s Awakening (WA) – a Chinese feminist group located in Guangzhou – launched a campaign called ‘resisting March Seventh, celebrating March Eighth’ (Fan Sanqi, Guo Sanba) on China’s microblog platform, Weibo (owned by Sina).1 Women’s Day, on March 8, officially known as Sanba Funü Jie, has long been a non-statutory holiday in China, and women working in state institutions and private companies are sometimes granted a half-day break from work.2 While IWD clearly links feminism and the Chinese state and funü is still prevalently used in official discourse, this term has become ‘increasingly subaltern and less ontologically sexual’ and nowadays more often denotes middle- and old-aged women (Donald and Zheng 2009, 496). This makes both funü and Funü Jie less appealing to girls and young women. Instead, nüren, another Chinese words associated with youth and femininity, are preferred by young women,3 and a special ‘holiday’ for girls – set a day earlier on March seventh – has become popular among Chinese youth. This Girl Students’ Day (Nüsheng Jie) used to be observed only sporadically, on various university campuses in the 1990s and 2000s, but in recent years, it has been celebrated on a much larger

CONTACT Bin Wang wangbin@cczu.edu.cn This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article. © 2018 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group

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scale, especially since big e-commerce corporations began to promote this unofficial event as a consumer carnival. To demonstrate their disapproval of March 7 as further elevating youthful feminine sexuality, feminists at WA thus launched a counter-campaign to critique contemporary Chinese consumer culture as catering centrally to young women while stigmatizing working or lower-class women for their putative incompatibility with ideal images of sexualized femininity.

As one means of disseminating this campaign, WA launched a photo competition, soliciting photographs from their followers. Contributors were instructed to hold up placards bearing slogans condemning Girl Students’ Day. Among the first few photos posted on WA’s Weibo (Figure 1), one participant holds a banner bearing the hashtagged theme of the campaign (#fansanqiguosanba#),4 along with the following slogan: ‘Do not constrain me with the name princess, I am funü Luo Bobo’.5 It did not take long for other feminist groups to join in, including the Beijing-based Feminist Voice (Nüquan Zhisheng), who wrote supportive commentaries on the campaign for their own social media feeds. Apart from critiquing consumerism, in the process of the campaign Chinese feminists at Feminist Voice (FV) and WA also exposed targeted campus banners which, in the name of celebrating Girl Students’ Day, contained messages of sexual harassment.6 Following concerted efforts by these groups, #fansanqiguosanba# became a ‘hot topic’ on Weibo, more mainstream media outlets such as Sohu and NetEase covered it on their web-portals, followed by interested journalists from newspapers and television. Within a few weeks, the campaign had generated more than 70 thousand following posts and Weibo reports a 100 million readers.7 In late March 2016, when Bin Wang visited WA and met its managing editor Beibei, she said that while she and her colleagues had set out to plan activities around Women’s Day, they were quite amazed at the impact of this campaign.

For us, #fansanqiguosanba# is an example of the ways contemporary Chinese feminists are using social media to bring attention to gender issues in China. This article draws on fieldwork in China, including short-term participant observation and

Figure 1. Women’s Awakening, 2016.

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one-on-one interviews with the staff of FV and WA.8 This essay considers how these feminists have helped give new visibility to feminism in China in recent years. We will discuss some of the strategies such groups have taken up to sustain their public presence on social media and to amplify their influence by connecting with other feminist groups and with the mainstream media. We are also particularly interested in the relative youth of these activists, and in what this refashioned media activism has to say more broadly about the currency and form of feminism among girls and young women on an international scale.

Feminist media gets ‘social’ FV’s direct predecessor was Women’s Media Watch Network (Funü Chuamei Jiance Wangluo, WMWN), founded by a group of journalists in Beijing in 1996. In the 1990s, an older generation of Chinese feminists started to establish non-government women’s organizations, especially in the capital city. For example, Wang Xingjuan set up hot-lines to offer psychological counselling to women, including victims of domestic violence, and Chen Yiyun’s Family Centre attempted to build shelters to help affected women (Milwertz 2002; Wesoky 2002). These efforts were further facilitated by the 1995 United Nations (UN) Fourth World Conference on Women and its parallel NGO Forum (Huang 1995; Wang 1996). Significantly, this conference is remembered as having generated new ‘conceptual frameworks for Chinese feminist activists’ (Wang and Zhang 2010, 41). To adopt the UN strategy of ‘gender mainstreaming’ as part of the Beijing Platform for Action, the concept of ‘gender’, previously only used by a few academic feminists, entered the official language of Chinese governmental agencies, including China’s official women’s body the All-China Women’s Federation (Women’s Federation). WMWN was successfully set up a year later, with a stated aim to monitor gender discriminatory messages in both state-owned and the then burgeoning commercial media sectors, while offering gender-aware alternative reportage and commentary (Chen 2009; Feng 1998).

In the years following 1995, WMWN continued to pursue its mission to expose insufficient and stereotypical representations of women in news and advertisements.

However, from the early 2000s on, feminists working there encountered a rapid shift in the media landscape. In a very short time span, the Internet opened up a new space for feminist advocacy, producing a growing number of user-generated feminist forums and communities on Chinese bulletin board-style forums, such as Baidu Postbar, and social networking sites like Douban. WMWN adapted to this change, quickly establishing the ‘Women’s Voice’ website, and from 2009 to 2011 it published a weekly online magazine under that name. These strategies did not fully overcome a lingering issue in that, as Liu Ting (2008) observed early on, women’s organizations in China were focused on oneway dissemination of information and lacked substantive interactions with their audience. In response to this, WMWN also focused at this time on building a social media presence, especially on Tencent QQ (QQ), a Chinese instant messaging tool that can be used to set up discussion groups. In April 2011, as relayed by FV’s current director Jing in an interview, one follower on QQ mentioned that the name for their Weibo account might change from Women’s Voice to Feminist Voice, exactly to stress the phrase ‘feminism’ (nüquan zhuyi).

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WMWN had joined Weibo in 2010, just as this new platform was rising to popularity (Wang 2016; Yang, Goldstein, and deLisle 2016). However, like many NGOs at this time, staff at WMWN were still undecided about the utility of microblogs. Lacking sufficient personnel to manage all available online tools, balancing a social media profile continues to be a set of delicate choices when prioritizing one platform can mean virtually abandoning others. When Jing arrived to work as an intern in mid-2011, her primary assignment was to maintain the Women’s Voice website and online magazines. As other staff did not pay much attention to Weibo, she also chose to attend to this in her spare time, often editing pieces from the websites or magazines to post on this microblog. At this critical moment in the history of Chinese social media, this Weibo soon gained quite a significant number of readers, convincing others in the group to take up this platform for advocacy.

In the case of WA in Guangzhou, such a transition was not required for a group formed comparatively late. Indeed, online social media is a founding premise for this group. WA arose from a loose association of female journalists, first founded in 2004, but the group was not an active organization until 2013, when one of its members, Li Sipan, decided to formerly establish an NGO under the name New Media Women’s Network (Xinmeiti Nüxing Wangluo). At that time, setting up a costly website did not seem like a viable option, and the Network channelled its limited resources into building a profile on Weibo and on the new platform WeChat (Weixin),9 with ‘Women’s Awakening’ as its English-language name for both sites. Although relatively new, by mid-2016 WA has generated almost 100 thousand followers and become one of the several influential media-oriented feminist groups in contemporary China.

Young feminists at work While FV and WA have gathered an increasing number of followers, both remain small organizations, respectively, having only three and two formal employees. FV also have an intern and a volunteer who contribute, for example, by finding materials to post. All workers in these small teams are in their early or mid-twenties. When Bin first met Jing and Beibei in their offices, he asked each of them whether he needed to contact the previous directors, respectively, Lü Pin and Li Sipan, and they both replied that it was unnecessary. Despite their youth they were already in charge.

Such independence of young feminists was not, however, a surprise to their older colleagues. Ke, a well-known academic feminist, refuted the popular media view that she and Li Sipan were behind the recent wave of feminist activism in Guangzhou. Those clueless critics, she said, wrongly presumed that young people could not initiate activism. ‘They are now the main subjects (zhuti) of the movement’, she added.

I do not even have the energy to do all these things. They want to do things and they push that forward. I do not think I have much to do with it. If [the movement] still awaits us, it will never move. . . Young people are amazing. . . We were not in similar conditions growing up so we did not know much [about feminism] then, but they have prime opportunities and they grow up very fast. (Interview)

Encounters with young Chinese feminist activists, including those at FV and WA, support Ke’s view. Unlike feminists one generation earlier, who often did not engage much with

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feminism until postgraduate years, young women can now enrol in Women’s and Gender Studies courses. Moreover, they access information about feminism through the Internet and Chinese students thus generally develop a feminist consciousness at an earlier age.

The staff in these groups all, to varying degrees, knew about feminism when they were undergraduates. Among them, Teresa at FV and Qing at WA were already seasoned feminists before graduation, as both had joined student-run feminist societies. In the past decade, similar campus groups have gradually been established in Chinese universities, especially where Women’s and Gender Studies programmes are well-developed and teachers actively support student activism. At a university in Guangzhou, in 2013, Ke and her colleague Song decided to compose and perform a new version of The Vagina Monologues to commemorate the 10-year anniversary of its first performance on a Chinese campus. They encouraged students taking or auditing their classes to form a preparatory group, and Qing soon signed up as its photographer. During that work, she and other members visited urban and rural communities to collect women’s stories in preparation for the play, an experience that facilitated her greater understanding of feminism. In her last year in college, for her Media Studies graduation project, Qing produced a documentary on blind Chinese massage workers, a ‘disability’ issue which she examined from a feminist perspective. She also began to work as an intern for WA. As an organizer of #fansanqiguosanba#, Qing has recently been working on a new documentary that she hopes can visually represent this event.

Teresa had participated in a feminist group as a student, but after graduation found it difficult to locate or develop activist organizations in that inland city, and she moved to Beijing in 2015 to apply for her current job at FV. At the time of Bin’s visit, she was responsible for preparing the upcoming ‘Media and Gender’ workshop discussed below.

FV’s current director Jing, the oldest of Teresa’s co-workers, had arrived a few years earlier. Jing’s feminist activism in Beijing is not confined to FV, and she has also been involved in organizing performances of the Chinese adaptation of The Vagina Monologues. Her own crucial period of learning about feminism was also at university – as a masters student of Gender Studies in Hong Kong. However, not all FV’s and WA’s staff members were already dedicated young feminists before joining those groups. FV and WA offer internship and volunteering opportunities for college students, but their online writings have also inspired feminist inquiry in many readers. Both Sue and Beibei, now respectively working at FV and WA, learnt about feminism after subscribing to the group’s social media accounts. They had been interested in working for NGOs, or as journalists, but had not been student activists. They initially came to interviews for their current positions without any very strong attachment to their feminist orientation.

However, by the time Sue and Beibei were interviewed in 2016, they certainly identified with feminism, and working for these groups had propelled their transition from students to activists.

Steering feminist social media Workers at WA and FV are very familiar with the impact and workings of social media, and continue to study the features of various available platforms as well as the habits and preferences of their followers. For example, when asked why she often came to the

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office quite late and seemed less occupied in the morning, Sue noted that she worked after usual office hours because they would put up online posts in the evening, knowing that followers are off work or school at that time and have more chance to read their articles and provide simultaneous boosts to the posts’ visibility. Like their counterparts in other parts of the world, these Chinese feminists help engender a form of networked or virtual feminism (Han 2018; Keller 2015; Li and Li 2017; Schuster 2013). As Kaitlynn Mendes notes, ‘social media have become coordinating tools for nearly all political movements’, but the ‘right conditions’ are needed to make these work as modes of civic engagement (2015, 34). For contemporary Chinese feminists this means, aside from mastering daily operating skills, that they must attend to public discourse and government policy that are sometimes specific to the Chinese condition.

As scholars on Chinese youth, Internet and social media point out, the Internet is not inherently liberatory and not free from politics existing in other social realms (Damm 2007; Leibold 2011). In China, censorship has posed a major problem for feminist social media activism, with some of their ‘unruly’ posts being abruptly deleted and some accounts suspended for a period. WA’s WeChat account was twice cancelled when it reported the police detention of five feminists in March 2015 (Wang 2015), and again when it commemorated that event towards the end of 2015. Beibei had to register a new account for the group each time, meaning they inevitably lost many followers. On 8 March 2018, FV suffered a more devastating blow as their public accounts on both Weibo and WeChat were permanently blocked and they had to circulate WeChat feeds among personal friends or retreat to older platforms like Sina Blog. Despite the fact that feminists always stay alert to the political environment and, as we will discuss, are engaged in processes of pragmatic compromise at sometimes, they cannot master all the relevant arbitrary rules or avert all unpredictable risks.

While censorship is an explicit form of suppression, there are other implicit linguistic and cultural barriers that can limit feminist online activism. As Khun Eng Kuah comments, ‘micro-power politics in the cyberspace often mirror and [reinforce] offline gender relations and the patriarchal social structure’ (2008, 16). For the activists at WA and FV, Chinese popular culture is permeated by essentialist gender discourse that often blatantly devalues women or values femininity that conforms to male standards. Even in seemingly progressive online protest cultures against censorship, which may challenge ‘the state’s ideological and technological dominance, their language and visual style reinstantiate structural gender inequality that is pervasive in China’ (Wallis 2015, 224).

While there are certainly feminist sympathizers on the Chinese Internet, there are many who dismiss feminism, invoking stereotypical accusations, including the more broadly familiar charge that feminists are man-hating (Han 2018; Huang 2016). For these young activists, such a situation demands patience, as they have to focus on delivering feminist messages rather than becoming embroiled in debating hecklers.

Both FV and WA have quite limited financial resources. To fund their planned activities, let alone formally employ more staff, they must seek funding opportunities.

But they also must be careful about these opportunities, especially if the money comes from foreign agencies or foundations that the government already monitors. At the same time, they are also constrained by their identity as a group serving a public interest, and this raises questions about posting advertisements, which are sometimes offered in the wake of their recent achievements. Several activist groups, including WA,

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indicate that they do not accept advertisements. At FV, Jing and her colleagues Sue and Teresa were also cautious on this issue. One afternoon, they received a call from a women’s foundation, asking if they could place an advertisement on FV’s Weibo, offering 5000 RMB. This ad would promote a public fundraising campaign, aimed at supporting rural women to start their own small businesses. The FV workers agreed that this seemed to serve a good purpose, and the foundation’s association with the Women’s Federation probably informed this decision as well.

A few days later, however, they struggled for hours to come to a decision over an offer from a small condom company to pay for their brand to be implicitly mentioned in FV’s relevant posts. Such ‘soft ads’ (ruanguang) blur the boundary between advertisement and public announcements in the interest of women’s health. They finally agreed, on the condition that they would author the advertisements and write them in a women-centred way. In return, the company offered 500 RMB, plus 20 packs of condoms with a nominal price of 79 RMB each. Sue did not want to bargain for more money and indicated the condoms would be ‘used as gifts for fans [followers] in our future activities’. These inquiries led to clarification of the conditions upon which future advertisements would be accepted: advertisements must not violate the basic tenets of FV; the content of advertisements must be relevant to the organization’s ideas (so as not to leave an impression that they had become commercialized); and, finally, advertisers must bring clear benefits to their followers, such as the condoms in this instance. Jing said frankly that many companies now utilize feminist ideas to sell products but that these were ‘after all better than discriminatory ones’.

Such income helps maintain their activities and is no less necessary for groups that primarily work online. The increasing number of such requests attests to FV’s popularity and influence. More generally, however, Chinese feminist social media activists work in a network of small groups in similarly difficult financial situations. This encourages them to support each other, at least by mutually reposting articles and publicizing activities on social media. They also offer other kinds of lateral support to groups that might be thought of as competitors for popularity and influence. One example is Joinfeminism, an online Weibo group whose members translate overseas feminist videos/texts and post them online. When this translation group was founded, they sought advice from FV, and secured their help in establishing their own account. This connective function is an important feature of the microblog format, as boyd et al. also note of Twitter usage, so that ‘even in groups that are bounded in space, time and participant group’ social media both inclines to a ‘conversational practice’ while users ‘loosely inhabit a multiplicity of conversational contexts at once’ (2010, [14]).

Intersecting conversations that can occur in multiple locations are important for feminist activists. This is what Mendes (2015) calls the ‘real time information’ dimension of microblogging, in her study of the Slutwalk movement, also dominated by young feminist activists. Mendes suggests this function is crucial to movements like Occupy, but ‘has been less important for SlutWalk, which has not been met with police resistance or crowd-control measures’ (2015, 37). While the particular format of SlutWalk is not as prevalent in mainland China, due to heavy censorship of street demonstrations, Chinese feminists have launched social media and small-scale public space activism addressing issue of sexual harassment and violence. Sometimes such activism has resulted in Chinese

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feminists being put under strict surveillance, or even prompted break-in examination by the police, and these groups take care to constantly update the progress of such incidents, and their whereabouts, with others feminists and social media followers.

Similar research in other places evidences that social media encourages densely layered interactions of different networks and helps ‘girls and women to connect, share and find solidarity’ (Keller, Mendes, and Ringrose 2018, 33). In their discussion of digital feminist activism, Mendes et al. use the example of Hollaback! (https://www. ihollaback.org/), an anti-street harassment website founded by young feminists in New York in 2005 and ‘[n]ow active in 31 countries’. (forthcoming, [2]) Through hubs like Hollaback!, as in the recent #MeToo and #BalanceTonPorc campaigns (the former predominantly in English and the latter entirely in French), feminists aim to document sexism that might otherwise remain invisible. Certainly what needs to be made visible, what will be effective documentation, and how important documentation might be in the repertoire of feminist activism are all affected by the Chinese context.

Back in 2005, when social media and even the Internet were not as developed in China, Chinese feminist networks were less strongly connected with each other, and with those in other countries. In recent years, however, feminists at FV and WA continually report news about such events as Slutwalk and the Women’s March. In late 2017, when the #MeToo campaign started in the USA, feminists in China debated its relevance, and from January 2018 on, after several women publicly exposed cases of sexual harassment through social media platforms, they initiated their own #MeToo campaign showing their solidarity with affected women around the world (Lü 2017; Zeng 2018).

Social media has brought many benefits to feminists, but this does not necessarily make it the ideal context for feminist activism. Just as Slutwalk activists have indicated that Twitter is ‘not the best platform for in-depth discussions’ (Mendes 2015, 37), Jing and Sue have stressed that while social media brought them more followers, they often did not have adequate time or personnel to pursue conversations with their followers, and platforms such as Weibo did not allow them to talk about gender or feminist issues in depth. Finally, they are also highly aware that their readership remains small compared with the social media accounts of mainstream media groups. To reach broader audiences, some Chinese feminists see building connections with the mainstream media as necessary for their own activities.

Connecting with the mainstream media During the #fansanqiguosanba# campaign with which we began, WA’s founder Li Sipan (2016) wrote an op-ed piece for the popular website Sohu, explaining the purpose of the campaign to a broader audience. This kind of interaction with mainstream media is not uncommon. Lü Pin (2014) at FV has remarked that their communication strategy was to ‘strive for the support of the mainstream while keeping an alternative stance’. While the importance of the latter aspect was stressed by all participants, many also acknowledged the necessity of gaining mainstream support.

Such strategies merit closer examination. A caveat is needed here. As Silvio Waisbord has recently argued, digital activism should not only be seen as a communicative tactic. Certainly the impact of the Internet

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has broken up the traditional nexus between media and activism. No longer the media are centralized institutions that activists aim to influence to draw attention or to mobilize to garner support for their causes nor are the alternative media the only vehicles for popular expression that keep governments and corporations at a distance. (Waisbord 2018, 2)

However, digital feminism is not only a new means for the same message. ‘Instead, the internet offers myriad opportunities for citizenship.’ (Waisbord 2018, 2) Recent feminist activism in China has been discussed as a ‘feminist counterpublic’, ‘circulating counter-discourses and counter-interpretations’ on issues concerning women, gender and sexuality (Ip and Lam 2014, 247). Nancy Fraser’s well-known concept of ‘counterpublic’ does seem useful in seeking to understand the mix of community support and outreach in these groups that makes social media a vital resource. Fraser argues that counterpublics ‘are by definition not enclaves’ because they address and work for a broader social scene, working both ‘as spaces of withdrawal and regroupment’ and ‘as bases and training groups for agitational activities directed towards wider publics’ (1997, 82). Jessalynn Keller argues, with reference to girls’ feminist blogging in English, that their interactivity might be discussed as ‘networked counterpublics’ in that the connectivity that manifests and encourages this makes them something more ‘than an assortment of individual[s]’ (2015, 78). In the Chinese case, where FV and WA exemplarily share posts and support with other feminist groups online and also sometimes seek cooperation offline, this connectivity sometimes extends to other left-leaning groups. For example, working with limited funds, FV once shared an office with Yiyuan Community – a youth organization focused on helping marginalized urban groups – as well as with a group called Suburban Village Website which that aimed to support migrant workers.

However, in contemporary China, feminist ‘counterpublics’ are interwoven with ‘state organizations, [other] civic groups, and supranational interests [that] collide, compete, and cooperate with one another’ (Iam-Chong and Lam 2014, 246). Some feminist media groups not only collaborate with other counterpublics but also hegemonically empowered groups, including mainstream media. While social media can help set agendas and shape public discussion in China, its impact is usually limited unless there is also engagement with mainstream media (Chase 2012; Jiang 2014). In China, mainstream media can be crudely divided into two types – state-owned official media and marketoriented commercial media – although the latter is also under the regulation of the state and the former has become increasingly market-oriented (Zhao 2008). In a recent article, Li and Li (2017) maintain that for young feminist activists who utilize social media, building rapport with market-oriented media is ‘a core political resource’. They stress young feminists’ close relation to market-oriented media, in contrast with older feminists who they consider to have more affinity with state-affiliated organizations, including the official media (Li and Li 2017).

There is some truth in this claim, but the division also seems too absolute. While this new orientation seems apparent in WA, it is not the case with FV. While FV is also composed of young feminists, they are in close contact with state organizations including the Women’s Federation and official media. While the Women’s Federation usually works within a government remit and represents itself as ‘conservative’, for example in campaigns advocating familial and marriage harmony, its local branches sometimes

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cooperate with feminist groups on issues of shared concern (Hsiung, Jaschok, and Milwertz 2001; Iam-Chong and Lam 2014). Examples include FV’s online dialogue with local Women’s Federation staff over a small-scale 2016 anti-domestic violence event, and collaboration with another feminist organization, directed by an older-generation feminist Feng Yuan, to host a two-day workshop titled ‘Media and Gender – Raising Gender Awareness Workshop for Media Professionals’. This workshop addressed practical aspects of gender-conscious journalism, with speakers recruited from a variety of agencies, including a project officer from UN Women and an editor from Chinese Women’s News.

Feminists at FV have a pragmatic attitude towards engagement with commercial media, and with official media at both state and provincial level. Hoping to engender more positive coverage of their activities and other feminist issues, they have tried to enhance their relationship with journalists, both by communicating with them on social media and organizing gender workshops where they could build more direct relations.

In the short term, at least, these workshops seem to have positive effects. Before and after the workshop, the organizers sent out evaluation forms, and the results suggested that most participants had acquired a better understanding of ‘gender’, with many noting that they found the workshop stimulating or helpful.

Still, Li and Li remain concerned that market-oriented media mainly report on young feminists’ activism ‘for its news value rather than to support an issue’ (2017, 13), and that this reporting will stop if the particular issue is no longer considered exciting for readers.

It is also unclear to what extent editors and reporters affiliated with the Women’s Federation, or other government agencies, are willing to be supportive of feminist activists. Participants at both FV and WA suggested that, even compared with 2 or 3 years ago, more progressive journalists have begun to show an interest in feminism.

Gender issues, even including feminism, have begun to appear more frequently in the mainstream media, especially on websites and social media platforms that are less strictly censored and less limited than printed publications. As Fraser’s counterpublics model suggests, these feminist networks are able to partly ‘offset, although not wholly to eradicate, the unjust participatory privileges enjoyed by. . . dominant social groups’ (Fraser 1997, 82). In China, as in other countries, young feminist activists often find social media indispensable for making their different voices publicly heard.

The ‘fourth wave’ and popular Chinese feminism WA and FV represent some significant changes to Chinese feminism in recent years but also continuities and, moreover, differences within which is widely perceived to be a new generation of Chinese feminist activism. While some aspects of our discussion here, such as strict censorship on the internet and street activism, are specific to the Chinese context, even these are revealing for thinking about the relations between digital culture and what on a broader international scale is discussed as the increasing visibility of investment in feminism among young women. Mendes, Keller and Ringrose call this a ‘cultural moment. . . in which feminism has never before been so popular’ (Mendes, Keller, and Ringrose forthcoming, [1]) and, according to Sarah Banet-Weiser and Laura Portwood-Stacer, ‘feminism has undeniably become popular culture’ (2017, 884). The politics of this moment is sometimes labelled ‘fourth wave’ feminism (Cochrane 2013;

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Munro 2013), but it goes by other names that do not always support the model of historical feminist waves, or that vary it. Meg Tully, for example, has recently discussed ‘millennial feminism’ as ‘largely based on the core tenets of third-wave feminism, albeit updated for a digital age’ (2017, 2) and characterized by a set of values that coalesce as a ‘generation’. Compared with their ‘cynical’ and individualistic third wave predecessors, Tully argues, these digitally oriented young feminists are characterized by ‘optimism, sincerity, social progressiveness, and devotion to community’, connected by ‘personalized’ digital networks rather than through ‘traditional’ institutions (2017, 2). This new feminism is thus defined by how it is done; by its modes of articulation more than its goals. While questioning the usefulness of the fourth-wave label, Mendes et al. also acknowledge a shift in feminist practice centrally enabled by digital culture (Mendes, Keller, and Ringrose forthcoming, [10]). As Ealasaid Munro argues, for attempts to define this moment in feminist history, ‘the reliance on the internet is a constant’ (2013, 22).

The use of the Internet has clearly allowed new forms of expertise and authority that bypass, at least in some circumstances, the previously established means by which the interests of Chinese feminism and its significant voices were defined. Even when the concerns of WA and FV overlap closely with those of earlier feminist activists – as when distinguishing young feminists from commodified images of ideal girlhood during the #fansanqiguosanba# campaign – online social media provides new means of communication and validation that are in turn both more accessible and more relevant to girls and young women – as with WA’s Weibo photo competition. Online social media also escalates dialogue between Chinese feminists and those in other countries, spurring new questions about the situation of feminism in China. Young Chinese feminists certainly attend to specific local issues, such as the plight of migrant women, but they are less concerned with the question of ‘indigenization’ than older feminists. Rather, they often position recent feminist campaigns in China, some of which we have discussed here, as part of an international discourse. Taking the #MeToo event for example, again, they have been striving to join an international fight against sexual harassment and sexual violence.

At the same time, seeking a resilient platform on which to maintain their activism, young feminist Chinese NGOs highlight important continuities and connections with nondigital feminism. WA and FV draw on, sustain, and help produce offline social networks through forms of institutionalization that keep their activism relatively independent of any specific leaders or contributors. This, in turn, requires pragmatic engagement with the interests of other groups and organizations that may be incompatible with the apparent dominance of what is now often described as ‘call out culture’ (Munro 2013) in feminist social media activism. At least, calling out misogyny can only be one part of a feminist practice committed to building sustainable activist institutions like WA and FV (cf. Han 2018).

In this article, we have summarized the experiences of FV and WA and suggested that they are telling examples of how, in the past few years, young Chinese feminists have used social media to help build support networks and disseminate their arguments.

While almost all such groups have social media accounts, FV and WA have concentrated on media as the venue for feminist advocacy and have fully utilized social media to connect with Chinese youth, in particular. We want to note in conclusion, however, that digital tactics are not the only important change apparent in these new groups.

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Alongside their social media campaigns, and apparently more traditional workshopstyle activism, we should notice a changed relationship to popular culture more broadly.

Some of these groups stage feminist plays and others focus on street performance art (Tan 2017; Wei 2014). Street performance was the pivotal practice of the ‘Feminist Five’ detained in 2015, and the increased interest in gender and feminism apparent in Chinese mainstream media is also a shift in popular discourse. A changed relation to the popular seems just as important in the Chinese case as the admittedly utilitarian dimensions of feminist social media. As Banet-Weiser and Portwood-Stacer point out, ‘the popular of popular feminism’ is necessarily ‘a terrain of struggle, a space where competing demands for power battle it out’ (2017, 884), and this is true of the current Chinese context even if feminism is not, at present, equally accessible there as a broad field of consumer goods, whether objects for sale or mass-media figureheads.10 To go beyond a critique of ‘commodity feminism’ in which the popular, even in its mass cultural form, is not necessarily the enemy of feminist politics, Banet-Wieser and Portwood-Stacer propose the concept of a ‘traffic in feminism’ (885) that positions ‘market visibility. . . as the solution to. . . structural inequality’ (886). While this is ostensibly what WA’s campaign against Girl Students’ Day also counters, the need for a careful analysis of multiple types of popular feminism is apparent in the way ‘market visibility’ also describes the counterpublic goals of social media feminism, and in pragmatic conversations between social media activists and both state- and market-oriented media institutions. Working towards, rather than presuming, a popular discourse in which feminism has a positive valency, these groups strive to provide a feminist perspective on contemporary Chinese society and culture working simultaneously across multiple platforms and for multiple audiences.

Notes 1. The word ‘Weibo’ means microblog in China. Although other Chinese companies (such as Tencent QQ) have also opened microblog platforms, the one run by Sina has clearly been the most popular among Chinese internet users. Thus, in this article by Weibo, we specifically refer to Sina Microblog.

2. It is relevant in this context that International Women’s Day began as a socialist rally in 1911, later nationalised as a celebration of woman suffrage in Soviet Russia (from 1917), and adapted to international politics by the UN in 1975–77. In China, IWD was first celebrated in 1924 and later co-opted into the political agenda of both Nationalist and Chinese Communist parties (Edwards 2016). After the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, it became more formally recognized as a ‘holiday for parts of the citizenry’, along with Children’s Day (June 1st), Youth’s Day (May 4th), and Army Founding Day (August 1st, for soldiers). Private companies do not usually observe this holiday as paid leave is not legally mandated.

3. Various Chinese words for women have a different conceptual history and contemporary significance; see Tani Barlow (2004) and Stephanie Donald and Yi Zheng (2009) for more detailed discussion.

4. Chinese social media uses double hashtages to signpost a discussion theme.

5. Women’s Awakening on Weibo (https://weibo.com/p/1008080738813470eda6b33acafa75 be98097c?k=%E5%8F%8D%E4%B8%89%E4%B8%83%E8%BF%87%E4%B8%89%E5%85% AB&from=501&_from_=huati_topic).

6. We thank one of our anonymous reviewers for pointing this out. Indeed, Girl Students’ Day has been an occasion for some male college students to spread discriminatory and offensive

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8.

9.

10.

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messages on campus. We do not extend our discussion to these issues here as they were not the focal point of WA’s campaign in 2015, but it is certainly worthy of more attention in subsequent research.

These Weibo statistics are available at https://weibo.com/p/1008080738813470eda6b33aca fa75be98097c?k=%E5%8F%8D%E4%B8%89%E4%B8%83%E8%BF%87%E4%B8%89%E5% 85%AB&from=501&_from_=huati_topic.

This fieldwork was conducted from March to June in 2016, for Bin Wang’s (2017) doctoral dissertation, Chinese Feminism: A History of the Present (University of Sydney, 2017), including mainland feminist academics and students as well as activist groups.

In China WeChat is the most popular messaging and social networking app, and owned by Tencent.

On celebrity feminism as a particular formation of the putative fourth wave that also demands historicisation, see Anthea Taylor (2016).

Disclosure statement No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors Bin Wang is a Lecturer in Media Studies in the Qu Qiubai School of Government at Changzhou University. His research interests include gender studies, youth culture, new media, and small towns. Bin completed his PhD in the Department of Gender and Cultural Studies at the University of Sydney in 2017. His thesis examined the development of popular and academic feminism, as well as feminist activism, in contemporary China.

Catherine Driscoll is Professor of Gender and Cultural Studies at the University of Sydney. Her research focuses on youth and girls studies, media and popular culture, rural cultural studies, and cultural theory. Her books include Girls (2002), Modernist Cultural Studies (2010), Teen Film: A Critical Introduction (2011), The Australian Country Girl: History, Image, Experience (2014) and, with Alexandra Heatwole, The Hunger Games: Spectacle, Risk, and the Girl Action Hero (2018).

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REPORT ON THE MASTER THESIS IEPS – International Economic and Political Studies, Faculty of Social Sciences, Charles University Title of the thesis: Author of the thesis: Referee (incl. titles):

Feminism in China: Recent changes and new trends Cheng Wang Dr Janusz Salamon

Comments of the referee on the thesis highlights and shortcomings (following the 5 numbered aspects of your assessment indicated below).

1) Theoretical background: Cheng Wang’s thesis research project appeared from the start both easy and difficult and easy – both for the same reason. The topic might be considered easy, because – for variety of reasons - there are very few serious scholarly studies on the topic that might be considered reliable. By the same token, however, it proved difficult to find sufficiently reliable and sufficiently diverse sources – especially quantifiable data that would be relevant to the subject matter. These objective limitations proved to be the main challenge that led to various shortcomings of Cheng’s thesis. Perhaps the most negative impact of these limitations can be seen in the relative weakness of the theoretical framework of the thesis. The thesis on this topic is bound to have limited validity without quantitative contribution. Without such contribution also the qualitative aspect of the analysis of the transformation of feminism in China proved to be elusive and this aspect of the theoretical framework also is also unclear.

2) Contribution: The contribution of Cheng’s thesis has to be judged against the background of the limited work done so far on this topic. So Cheng Wang deserves credit for the intellectual courage of choosing a topic that is, in the current Chinese context, controversial and yet of great importance in the long-term perspective. One does not expect from a Master’s thesis to make a ground-breaking contribution to what is a difficult scholarly debate, but taking on board a topic that scholars shy away from is a promising sign for a student of a study programme in international economic and political studies which aims at preparing its graduates for tackling new and complex social and economic problems of the globalizing world.

3) Methods: As already indicated in point (1), the limited data with which Cheng Wang was working made the achievement of the methodological balance between quantitative and qualitative approaches to the subject matter difficult, therefore the methodological aspect of the thesis is its greatest weakness.

4) Literature: Bibliography is a mixed bag in this case, because on one hand Cheng apparently made an effort to take into account the relatively few available scholarly works that may shed light on the subject matter of her thesis, but a more theory-conscious approach to the issue at hand, would require learning from the scholars who studied analogical transformations of feminism in the country undergoing analogical rapid social transformations as witnessed in the Peoples’ Republic of China in recent decades. But here again one realizes that the research topic chosen by Cheng proved very ambitious.

5) Manuscript form: The work bears signs of significant effort to make the work stylistically acceptable, and the overall structure is orderly, with footnotes and bibliography acceptable.

Box for the thesis supervisor only. Please characterize the progress in the working out of thesis (e.g. steady and gradual versus discontinuous and abrupt) and the level (intensity) of communication/cooperation with the author: Discontinuous; intensified at the last stage of cooperation.

Sugested questions for the defence are:

1) How the political context of the Peoples‘ Republic of China that is governed a political party committed to the programme of „socialism with the Chinese charactristics“ influences the processes discussed in your thesis?

2) How does the Chinese cultural heritage shape the current Chinese debates about feminism and about the place of women in society?

I recommend the thesis for final defence. I recommend the following grade: “C”.

SUMMARY OF POINTS AWARDED (for details, see below): CATEGORY POINTS Theoretical background (max. 20) 10 Contribution (max. 20) 15 Methods (max. 20) 13 points) Literature (max. 20) 15 points) Manuscript form (max. 20) 18 points) TOTAL (max. 100) 71 points) POINTS points) The proposed grade (A-B-C-D-E-F) C

DATE OF EVALUATION: 10.6.2020

___________________________ Referee Signature

Overall grading scheme at FSV UK: TOTAL POINTS 91 – 100 81 – 90 71 – 80 61 – 70 51 – 60

GRADE A B C D E

50 – 0

F

Level of performance = outstanding (high honour) = superior (honour) = good = satisfactory = low pass = failure. Thesis is then not recommended for defence.

International Journal of Heritage Studies

ISSN: 1352-7258 (Print) 1470-3610 (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rjhs20

The Utility of Discourse Analysis to Heritage Studies: The Burra Charter and Social Inclusion Emma Waterton , Laurajane Smith & Gary Campbell To cite this article: Emma Waterton , Laurajane Smith & Gary Campbell (2006) The Utility of Discourse Analysis to Heritage Studies: The Burra Charter and Social Inclusion, International Journal of Heritage Studies, 12:4, 339-355, DOI: 10.1080/13527250600727000 To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/13527250600727000

Published online: 16 Aug 2006.

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International Journal of Heritage Studies Vol. 12, No. 4, July 2006, pp. 339–355

The Utility of Discourse Analysis to Heritage Studies: The Burra Charter and Social Inclusion Emma Waterton, Laurajane Smith & Gary Campbell

This paper reviews the methodological utility of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) in heritage studies. Using the Burra Charter as a case study we argue that the way we talk, write and otherwise represent heritage both constitutes and is constituted by the operation of a dominant discourse. In identifying the discursive construction of heritage, the paper argues we may reveal competing and conflicting discourses and the power relations that underpin the power/knowledge relations between expertise and community interests. This identification presents an opportunity for the resolution of conflicts and ambiguities in the pursuit of equitable dialogues and social inclusion.

40ls18@york.ac.uk Laura 00000July JaneSmith 2006 International 10.1080/13527250600727000 RJHS_A_172664.sgm 1352-7258 Original Taylor 2006 12 and & Article Francis (print)/1470-3610 Francis JournalLtd of Heritage (online) Studies

Keywords: Discourse; Burra Charter; Critical Discourse Analysis; Social Inclusion; Heritage; Community The term ‘heritage’ has, in recent times, taken on a currency in popular, policy and academic discourse that verges on the promiscuous. Despite the increasing usage of the term, we do not believe that there is either a clear sense of what the term might mean or anything resembling a solid understanding of the social and cultural work heritage discourses actually do. The aim of this paper is to review a rigorous, critical method that can assist us in talking about how people talk about heritage. We believe this to be particularly important for a number of reasons; not least is the prevalence of an uncritical, common-sense understanding of what heritage entails. Smith refers to this as the Authorised Heritage Discourse (AHD) which, she argues, promotes a consensus approach to history, smoothing over conflict and social difference.1 This representation, which incorporates a set of conservative, if not reactionary, and distinctly Western, Emma Waterton, Laurajane Smith and Gary Campbell, University of York. Correspondence to: emmawaterton@yahoo.co.uk ISSN 1352–7258 (print)/ISSN 1470–3610 (online) © 2006 Taylor & Francis DOI: 10.1080/13527250600727000

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social messages, has become ubiquitous in the public’s understanding of heritage. It also has alarming resonance in the amenity societies, state heritage agencies, government policy, national legislation and international charters, and the cultural and professional values of those people with access to forms of expert knowledge who work to promote the conservation of heritage.

In this paper, we propose to demonstrate the utility of discourse analytic techniques, particularly those of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), in showing how a particular discourse acts to constitute and mould the various representations of heritage. The techniques reviewed provide the tools for two complementary projects: a broader, critical reflection of the discursive work underpinning and sustaining the AHD; and an engagement with a specific, concrete case study. This case study will be The Burra Charter: The Australia ICOMOS Charter for Places of Cultural Significance (1979, revised 1999). We have chosen the Burra Charter because of its international usage, its links to the philosophy of the influential International Charter for the Conservation and Restoration of Monuments and Sites, 1964, or Venice Charter, and, most importantly, the extent to which the Charter has been used as a reference point in promoting community inclusion in heritage conservation.

The kind of analysis we propose has a number of useful consequences; not only does it prompt a critical discussion of what heritage is but it can also facilitate the development of more equitable dialogue between a range of stakeholders. In many Western countries there have been concerted moves by amenity and government bodies engaged with heritage conservation and preservation to promote the greater inclusion of a range of often-marginalised stakeholder groups into the management process.2 As Smith points out, any attempts at engaging with community or stakeholder groups must take into account the power relations that underlie the dominant heritage discourse, as these may inadvertently work to discourage the equitable participation of those groups whose understandings of the nature of heritage are excluded from that discourse.3 It is also vital to understand how that discourse establishes the authority of certain speakers at the same time as marginalising others before any concrete sense of inclusion can be achieved. We here advocate the use of CDA, and identify the semiotically sophisticated—and socially relevant—contribution it is able to make to heritage research.

CDA—Application in Heritage Studies and the Burra Charter The Burra Charter, originally drafted in 1979 by Australia ICOMOS, is a policy document designed to outline best practice within Australian heritage management and conservation processes, but has since become an international standard for such processes. It deals specifically with issues of cultural significance and aims to define the principles and procedures considered necessary for the conservation of ‘important places’.4 In 1992, Domicelj noted that the Burra Charter was based on ‘good sense and so it can be applied very widely’.5 Subsequently, in recent years it has been imported wholesale and adopted by countries such as the UK, where it has found synergy with many of the philosophies underlying conservation and heritage management there.

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Indeed, the Burra Charter, while written for an Australian context,6 has become an integral part of the common sense of broader heritage management and conservation.

Its author, Australia ICOMOS, is part of the international professional organisation ICOMOS (International Council on Monuments and Sites), which carries substantive authority in making pronouncements about the nature and meaning of heritage.

ICOMOS membership comprises heritage professionals and academics, and the organisation works to provide advice to national governments and international organisations about the philosophy, terminology and methodology for conservation and management practices in a range of policy contexts.7 In Australia, the Burra Charter is the single most important professional code of conduct, and shares discursive space with a range of governmental policies about heritage management. Internationally, it is part of a suite of similar policy documents that form a regulatory genre chain aiming to guide practice and influence national public policy and governmental conservation practices. The Charter is thus a document given particular gravitas by the authority of its authorship and the self-referential role it has enjoyed at both national and international levels. Moreover, along with several similar documents, it has also acquired a prominent, and globally dominant, reputation that is called upon to define the nature of cultural heritage.

With its original drafting in 1979, the Burra Charter incorporated and accepted the underlying philosophy of the Venice Charter, a canonical text of international policy.8 While the Venice Charter still enjoys immense popularity and has been recited in many succeeding charters and conventions, it has also begun to attract criticism, particularly aimed at its privileging of authenticity, and fetishism of the tangible and monumental.9 Indeed, the Venice Charter may be understood as the international repository of the authorised heritage discourse. From this perspective, heritage is conceived as an immutable, bounded entity, most likely to take the form of a site, building or monument, perhaps an historic park, garden or battleground, which is valued for its intrinsic qualities of age, rarity, beauty or historic importance.10 This discourse stresses the importance of nationalism and national identity, and champions an ancient, idealised and inevitably relict past for the assumed universal rights of future generations. The benefits of heritage afforded to present generations fall within the parameters of education, tourism and information.

In 1999, the Burra Charter underwent its third, and most substantial, revision, following minor revisions in 1981 and 1988. The aim of the latest revision was to incorporate ‘new ideas’: … especially the broadening of the conception of cultural significance to include not only fabric but also use, associations and meanings. The revised charter also encourages the co-existence of cultural values, particularly when they are in conflict …11

This revision is thus part of a larger response to the active criticism of a range of commentators who have questioned the authorised view of heritage. Such criticisms come not only from external groups who intersect with the dominant discourse, but come also from heritage practitioners and commentators trying to practise within its constraints. These challenges collectively stress the idea of heritage as something

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created and produced in, and as a resource for, the present.12 Here, heritage becomes more about meanings and values than material artefacts.13 Recent initiatives and policy agendas aimed at combating social exclusion, racism and impositions of dominant interpretations of heritage globally have also challenged the authorised discourse.14 However, while it is important to acknowledge that the revision of the Burra Charter forms part of an attempt to incorporate changing attitudes to community inclusion, participation and consultation, this attempt remains largely unsuccessful. One of the primary reasons for this is that of discourse, and the uncritical acceptance of a dominant or authorised approach to heritage. The practice of heritage management is currently undergoing a process of transition, in which different interpretations, strategies of management and social groups compete for authority. This competition will play out partly in changes of discourse and partly in processes of social change, and the utility of CDA lies with its ability to harness the discursive level to the level of society.

We apply the theoretical project of CDA to the social practice of heritage management to reveal not only that the AHD has achieved hegemony but also to understand how this hegemony is realised linguistically—and thus perpetuated.

Critical Discourse Analysis as a Way Forward Although the idea of discourse is well established within heritage studies, it remains disappointingly ill-defined in terms of its utility as an analytical category. This oversight highlights the proposition that many of the concerns of current heritage management practices are, in large part, issues that are discursively constructed. In other words, the ways by which we create, discuss, talk about and assess heritage issues do matter. As such, the development of rigorous and usable strategies to understand the concept of discourse and the role it plays in the social practice of managing heritage needs to be attempted.

For us, CDA provides the way forward for understanding the implications of discourse in terms of how heritage is both understood (in abstract) and managed (in practice).

Although it is not the only critical perspective that seeks to reveal the operation of language in social processes, CDA differs from alternative approaches in one key way.15 It provides a method that allows the analyst to perform an interlocutory role in the dialogues between texts and social interactions in its oscillations between the close and detailed inspection of texts and an engagement with broader social issues.16 As Fairclough, a key proponent of this approach, puts it, the analysis should not be an ‘either/or’: On the one hand, any analysis of texts which aims to be significant in social scientific terms has to connect with theoretical questions about discourse (e.g. the socially constructive effects of discourse). On the other hand, no real understanding of the social effects of discourse is possible without looking closely at what happens when people talk or write.17

CDA is, therefore, an attempt to move beyond paraphrasing the content of text and speech towards understanding what it is ‘that it is doing’ in operation. It also develops past seeing things purely in terms of meaning and looks also to the structure, organisation

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and management of language. Language thus becomes both an end in itself and a resource for a broader enterprise: the analyst studies language but uses this analysis as a tool for examining something else entirely in the pursuit of progressive, emancipatory and empowering social agenda.18 What Does Critical Discourse Analysis Do—Intellectually, Socially, Pragmatically?

In order to identify what CDA actually does—intellectually, socially and pragmatically—it needs to be unpacked in more methodological detail. Taken at its most basic, CDA, like many other approaches to discourse analysis, is the study of society through the study of language.19 While each approach arguably revolves around a handful of internal consistencies, they are nonetheless oriented to different principles of analysis, including the types of questions posed and the assortment of methodological tools used.20 For CDA, Fairclough espouses these principles of analysis most clearly,21 although they are also associated with Wodak22 and van Dijk.23 Recently, these principles have also found synergy with a number of other authors in a variety of texts,24 journals25 and Web pages.26 Pragmatically, key concepts of analysis are applied to a social ‘problem’ with a focus on understanding how language and semiosis figure in that problem.27 This problem may revolve around issues of gender, racism, identity, organisational or institutional discourse, social policy, environmental policy, media language and so on.28 The intellectual programme of CDA is socio-political in stance, and imports a number of interrelated concepts from broader social theory. These have been adapted and moulded into a distinct framework for understanding the specific relationships that link discourse with society, so that CDA becomes the analysis of discourse as a form of social practice, based on the assumption that every social practice will inevitably have a semiotic element.29 As Fairclough points out: … what is going on socially is, in part, what is going on interdiscursively in the text … and that the interdiscursive work of the text materialises in its linguistic and other semiotic features.30

From this premise, discourses are seen both to constitute certain knowledges, values, identities, consciousnesses and relationships, and be constitutive in the sense of not only sustaining and legitimising the status quo but in transforming it.31 The impact of this construction of discourse is thus explicitly tied up with notions of power and ideology.32 Indeed, the CDA project becomes critical in the sense that it actively attempts to unpack and reveal instances of apparent ‘inevitability’, or, in other words, accounts that are dominant essentially through their appeals to represent commonsense or seemingly natural approaches.33 Dominance, social force, discrimination, or organised power and control become accessible in an analytical sense through examinations of the ways by which this index of power is expressed, constituted and legitimised by the use of language.34 Accessing this type of information unfolds through a multi-layered analysis, in which texts are linked in numerous ways to wider society in accordance to a degree of

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distance. Close inspection of texts requires the analyst both to see and feel by reading, but also enter a more conscious and deliberate process of analysis in order to penetrate the complex layering of linguistic, rhetorical and semantic devices.35 The description that emerges from this textual analysis is then considered with regard to how it is consumed in society, taking discourse at this stage to be a discursive practice and route to interpretation.36 The final layer of enquiry requires the analyst to see discourse as a social practice, or the level at which the ideological effects, common-sense approaches and naturalisations meet with resistance or not.37 All three stages are essential for making CDA exactly that—a critical discourse analytical strategy—with the latter stages providing social perspectives, and the former providing the elements that make it discourse analysis and not just an intense social analysis.38 In order to analyse the operationalisation, or enactment of discourses, CDA draws upon a number of key concepts. Operationalisation is itself broken into three movements between text and society: genres, discourses and styles. ‘Genres’ are defined as ways of acting, ‘discourses’ as ways of representing, and ‘styles’ as ways of being. All three are revelatory of social identities and positionings.39 Interactions through genres, discourses and styles loosely correspond to three different types of meaning-making in text: action, representation and identification.40 We say loosely because these relationships, while durable, are also flexible.

Perhaps one of the most central concepts utilised in CDA draws from the implicit or explicit dialogues that exist between one text and others: intertextuality.41 Framing a text in relation to other texts implies choice, and highlights a sense of what is being excluded and insulated against, and what is being worked into the interaction. Policy documents developed at a national level have counterparts at international levels, and these interact across and between each other often in complex ways. For example, both the Burra Charter and the World Heritage Convention (The Convention Concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage, 1972) make reference to the philosophies espoused by the Venice Charter, which also makes links to the Athens Charter (Athens Charter for the Restoration of Historic Monuments, 1931). Alongside these more obvious references to intertextuality, the above texts also construct meaning relations through text semantics and thematic continuity, embodying familiar principles of heritage management without ever stating them explicitly. As Lemke42 argues, this requires that a particular discursive formation, in this case heritage, will be interpretively prior to any particular text. The reader recognises the familiarity and context of the text, and uses this to ‘read’, predict and decipher meaning. Certain discursive framings of heritage are recurrent across these international texts, and together they work to construct what appears to be a cohesive and consensual approach to heritage and its management. Here, the idea of ‘heritage’ does not draw specifically upon its lexical meaning but rather reflects a subtly altered meaning that is recognisable, familiar and constant across the overall discursive pattering of the texts.

Intertextuality links with the linguistic conception of assumption, which likewise connects one text to others. However, the two concepts differ in their outcome: for the former, difference may be opened up with the injection of external voices, and for the latter, difference is overlaid and closed down through claims of common ground.43 In

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revolving around difference, both concepts make contrasting reference to dialogicality, but operate at different ends of a sliding scale. At one end, there is a purposeful engagement with other texts, and at the other, there is a diminishing of that conversation.44 The degree to which a text enters into dialogicality is thus expressive of a willingness to negotiate and interact.

Importantly, then, minimal dialogicality, or the absence of it entirely, is illustrative of a completed process of naturalisation, in which conflict and difference have been suppressed. Degrees of dialogicality are assessed both through the analysis of vocabulary and with reference to modality. Essentially, modality is expressive of the commitment the author (and thus text) has made to a particular proposition of truth: … [it] involves the many ways in which attitudes can be expressed towards the ‘pure’ reference-and-prediction content of an utterance, signalling factuality, degrees of certainty or doubt, vagueness, possibility, necessity, and even permission and obligation.45

For example, ‘may’ or ‘should’ imply a greater scope for dialogical possibilities than ‘is’ or ‘will’—the former are open to alternative suggestions, whereas the latter are categorical. Modality is thus a useful indicator of self-identity—if one is committed wholeheartedly to one thing, and not to another, a picture of how that individual represents the world begins to emerge.46 To illustrate, the Venice Charter, a cornerstone of the international heritage policy chain, embeds a high degree of modality, or commitment, to the AHD, which can be seen in the preamble to the document: Imbued with a message from the past, the historic monuments of generations of people remain to the present day as living witnesses of their age-old traditions … The common responsibility to safeguard them for future generations is recognized. It is our duty to hand them on in the full richness of their authenticity.

Themes of stewardship and moral obligation radiate from the above statement, linked to the idea of age-old monuments or physical survivals from the past that are valued for their authenticity and historic content. These statements are making explicit, evaluative assumptions that are reinforced by their intersection with powerful markers of modality. Our duty is laid out as categorical, as is the content of that duty. Not only does the preamble illustrate a high level of commitment to the obligations laid down, this commitment it made on behalf of others—indeed, on behalf of all of us.

Subject positioning and social relations also offer a means by which to make meaningful analytical statements. Institutional policy documents, for example, serve particular interests and negate others. These interests are reinforced through the persuasive practices invoked to provide a sense of legitimacy and authority. From positioning we reach action, and begin to question what it is about language that allows some things to be done and not others.47 This line of questioning brings in patterns of transitivity, in which verbs, as doing words, start to make revelations about the textual and social constructions of different participants and their positionings. Which participants are given mental, behavioural and/or relational capacities to act? What identities are being constructed, and how does this position the participant in terms of how they speak about, understand and interact with the world?

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One final, but nonetheless important, contribution CDA holds for this paper lies with its ability to reveal and assess claims of inevitability. By making reference to an authorised heritage discourse we are also arguing that a particular understanding of heritage has been naturalised and fed into policy, allowing specific meanings and values to dominate as inevitable. We argue that this authorised discourse is at work within heritage policy documents, and provides ‘common-sense’ rules by which to act, speak and interact. Moreover, we argue that this discourse sustains, legitimises and bolsters particular identities, transforming them into a consciousness that makes it difficult for alternative perspectives to find voice.

With our analysis of the Burra Charter, part of what is at issue is the tension that emerges when calls for greater inclusion and plurality are placed within a context already dominated by the firmly established and authoritative discourse of the expert.

The paradox, of course, revolves around attempting to loosen controls and create equitable dialogue, but doing so through a discourse that is by its very nature dialogically restricted. The application of CDA techniques thus allows us to look for and unpack the parameters in place within heritage management that dictate what can and cannot be said, from whom authority should come, in what forum and using what understanding of reality.48 The Discourse of the Burra Charter To operationalise CDA it is first necessary to identify the problem or issue, that here lies with the tension between the constitution of the text by its reliance on expert knowledge, and its attempts to make available discursive space for community participation in the management process. This is assessed in two ways: firstly, in conjunction with a broader analysis that situates the document within the social events and networks of practices that validate and authorise it; and, secondly, through the microanalysis of the discourse as it is asserted within the Charter itself. In the microanalysis we focus on the discursive construction of the Burra Charter, discuss its overall textual organisation, and isolate specific semantic and grammatical instances in which important discursive work is done. Key terms such as ‘fabric’, ‘cultural significance’ and ‘preservation’ are identified as examples that are able to demonstrate the extent to which particular discourses are invoked and utilised to create a distinct sense of what constitutes conservation practice.

A sense of self-referential authority emerges from the overall organisation of the text, in large part due to the lack of specificity with which key concepts are addressed and communicated. In conjunction with a direct and straightforward form of address, this vagueness ensures that the reader is never really sure who determines cultural significance, and by what criteria. For example, in the section ‘Who uses the charter?’ there is a sense of inclusiveness in the long list of interested parties who may find the Charter useful. However, this is undermined in the introductory paragraph, which notes that the Charter was initially drafted as a guide to practitioners, but that: ‘Anyone involved in the care of important places will probably make better decisions if they understand the charter.’49 What this does is establish the understanding of the concerns of

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practitioners as central to good decision making. Overall, the text reads more as a series of categorical statements that signal authority and expertise in an explicitly unidirectional flow of information, with a seriously diminished dialogicality of text. In short, there is a reduction of all differences of opinion into a text of consensus.50 As Walker and Marquis-Kyle’s commentary on the charter observes: The Charter defines the common processes of caring for places—maintenance, preservation, restoration, reconstruction, adaption, and also interpretation.51

This sense of overarching authority is reinforced by the use of passive and impersonal language, a linguistic move that is dubious in itself considering the nature of the document, but which becomes particularly problematic when the Charter attempts to deal with plurality and multi-vocality. Essentially, the problem is one of contradiction.

Contemporary calls for community participation and the inclusion of diverse associative values and meanings do not sit comfortably within the overall tone of the document when placed together with traditional notions of authority and expertise.

Indeed, the distinctive styling of semantics works to construct an objective, factual, and thus seemingly natural, account of the conservation process, when it is in reality privileging a particular perspective.

With this in mind, it is possible to argue that the succession of optimistic changes that arrived with the 1999 revisions are put at risk and marginalised by precisely those assumptions that have remained implicit and uncritically accepted. It is worthwhile to consider what rhetorical purpose this vagueness actually serves, as while it may be largely unintentional, it is very revealing of an important set of key phrases that have assumed a sense of shared familiarity, and thus gone unexplored.

The term ‘fabric’ is central. Indeed, the scope of the Charter is aimed explicitly at a tangible conception of heritage: These principles and procedures can be applied to a wide range of places such as a monument, a ruin, a courthouse, a midden, a cottage, a road, a mining or archaeological site, a whole district or region.52 They [places of cultural significance] are historical records, that are important as tangible expressions of Australian identity and experience.53

The idea of historic fabric is thus the focus of concern for the Burra Charter, which details policies on the way fabric should be treated in terms of management, conservation, interpretation and so forth. The other key concept is that of cultural significance.

Indeed, this idea of cultural significance provides the basic premise for the document: All significant places should be conserved. This is not a matter of choice … If cultural significance is not retained, then the processes are not conservation (and action is needed for conservation), or the management is not in accordance with the Charter.54

The keystone of the Burra Charter is that nothing should be done to a place and its fabric that alters the cultural significance of that place. While these are useful philosophical principles, the construction of terms such as fabric and cultural significance inherently contradicts attempts of social inclusion and community participation for reasons that will be explored throughout the analysis.

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Within the Charter, cultural significance is defined as ‘aesthetic, historic, scientific, social or spiritual value for past, present or future generations’.55 ‘Fabric’ is defined as ‘all the physical materials of the place’.56 For the Charter, cultural significance is ‘embodied in the place itself, its fabric, setting …’.57 This idea of fabric assumes that cultural significance is inherently fixed within, thus becoming physically manifested and subject to conservation, management and other technical practices. What is problematic here is the naturalisation of cultural significance as a material concern, which gives the appearance of an unproblematic and natural relationship between the subject of the Charter and those experts in the material sciences. This conceptualisation of heritage has antecedents back to antiquarian assumptions that artefacts embodied, or even contained, a fixed meaning that could be unlocked through simple possession and observation.

The sense of the appropriateness of experts, their authority and ability to unlock the nature of cultural significance of heritage places, is reinforced by a series of legitimising techniques that work to underpin the moral weight of the expert. These words, used in conjunction with that of fabric, are ‘respect’, ‘caution’, ‘evidence’, ‘safeguarded’, ‘protection’, and the cautionary use of terms such as ‘distort’ and ‘conjecture’. All these terms implicitly make reference to the cognitive validity of conservation professionals.

Another example is: In this illustrated Burra Charter Australia ICOMOS aims to illuminate and explain the sensible advice contained in the Charter.58

This statement makes an explicit value assumption regarding the content of the Charter, marking it out as sensible, from which the reader can read the implicit message that processes of conservation that deviate from this framework are undesirable. Further techniques that reveal the assumed appropriateness of the expert are found in the moral evaluations rehearsed in the text. A particularly clear example is found in Article 5, in which values of objectivity and precision are called upon to underpin ‘good practice’ in understanding significance: This article warns against bias and subjectivity in understanding significance and deciding what to do—bias that may easily develop if not enough skill, care, rigour or goodwill is applied.59

Again, this type of language makes appeals to impersonal, ‘unbiased’ thinking capable of providing rational decisions. This is based on the existential assumption that ‘unbiased’, objective thinking is, indeed, a possibility.

The sense of expertise created through appeals to objectivity and moral evaluation is juxtaposed with new inclusive statements that attempt to prioritise public interest, such as: … conservation, interpretation and management of a place should provide for the participation of people for whom the place has special associations and meanings, or who have social, spiritual or other cultural responsibilities for the place60

and Co-existence of cultural values should be recognised, respected and encouraged, especially in cases where they conflict.61

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Not only do these things sit problematically together because there is no active sense of what participation actually means, there is also a failure to identify to what extent, or how, the expert should give ground or engage with community and/or non-expert participation. Perhaps more importantly, the idea that the conservation values of experts might be just another set of cultural values is entirely absent in the discursive construction of the text, and for that matter all texts of this sort. The frequent discursive use of cultural significance in the singular belies a sense of inclusion of multi-vocal understandings of the nature and meaning of heritage places. Further, this multi-vocality is obscured by the regulatory genre employed by the Charter which requires that the central defining phrases are unambiguous. There is little room left in this genre for counter-arguments or dialogue. What is significant here is the lack of explicit examination of the inherently dissonant nature of heritage within a Charter redesigned to address community contestation of the dominant heritage discourse.

In addition, non-expert values are relegated to terms such as value and meaning, which are vaguely defined in the Burra Charter, and are never associated with the allimportant term cultural significance with its added authority through its physical embodiment in fabric. In terms of discourse analysis, perhaps the most interesting point here is the application of modalisation, which alters the authority of the concepts under discussion. When considering cultural significance, non-modalised, categorical assertions are used; for example: Cultural significance is embodied in the place itself, its fabric, setting, use, associations, meanings, records, related places and related objects.62 Cultural significance means aesthetic, historic, scientific, social or spiritual value for past, present and future generations.63

Both explicitly attribute a fixed meaning to the term through this use of non-modalised language, along with exhaustive lists. By contrast, discussions of value and meaning are conducted in modalised language, and are thereby dialogically open to a number of possibilities. For example, ‘A place may have a range of values for different individuals or groups’64 and ‘Such cultural values might include political, religious, spiritual and moral beliefs that are broader than the cultural significance of the place.’65 What this suggests is a willingness to relinquish some control over the mediation of value and meaning, but a staunch unwillingness to give ground when dealing with cultural significance—an unwillingness that may well be tied up in the existential assumption that cultural significance is embodied in the fabric itself. As such, while cultural significance and values and meanings may appear to be given equal weight, the semantic relations within the sentences dealing with their definition suggest what Fairclough terms a perceived ‘logic of difference’.66 Some articles demonstrate the construction of community and non-expert participation as another area of technical concern for the expert to deal with or an audience for expert opinion rather than active participants. This is revealed, for example, by examining patterns of transitivity in which the use of particular verbs reveals the behavioural capacities assigned to different subject positions:

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Groups and individuals with associations with a place as well as those involved in its management should be provided with opportunities to contribute to and participate in understanding the cultural significance of the place. Where appropriate they should also have opportunities to participate in its conservation and management.67 Indigenous people are the primary source of information on the value of their heritage and how it is best conserved, and must be offered the opportunity for an active role in any project or activity involving their heritage.68 For many places, the role of people with skills and experience in conservation is to respond to requests for advice from people with spiritual or other cultural responsibilities for the place.69 The obligation to involve people is accompanied by the responsibility of those involved with management or undertaking a project to listen, learn and respond.70

Effectively, the textual relations are setting up the specific subject positionings. The use of verbs such as ‘offer’, ‘involve’, ‘oblige’ and ‘provide’ relegate groups and individuals to audience status wherein they are required to ‘understand’ the significance of the place under the ‘direction and supervision’ of people with ‘appropriate knowledge and skills’.71 ‘Participants’ are contrasted with ‘the experts’, pushed into the role of beneficiaries, and thus made passive. The experts, as activated subjects, become ‘those who make things happen’.72 Attempts to activate non-experts through the inclusion of participatory clauses and recognition of multiple values thus remain textured in a process of creating passivity that accentuates their subjection to the conservation and management process. The vagueness of ‘where appropriate’ also begs the question of who determines what becomes appropriate.

The definition of preservation offered in Article 1.6 ‘maintaining the fabric of a place in its existing state and retarding deterioration’ is also illustrative of the contradictory bind described above.73 The act of preserving fabric is an act, following the logic of the Burra Charter, of preserving cultural significance. The Burra Charter intertextually incorporates and invokes a ‘conserve as found’ ethos, through both explicit and implicit links with the Venice Charter and the authorised heritage discourse, where heritage, as both Urry and Emerick argue, become frozen moments in time, separated from the present and the cultural landscapes in which they occur.74 Significance thus becomes immutable, and expert pronouncements become binding legislative statements.75 The immutable nature of cultural significance thus established means that the expert does not have to give ground on their sense of significance, as cultural significance becomes something non-experts have to understand rather than contribute to. Further, it implies that expert evaluation need not necessarily change the cultural significance of a place in response to community participation, which makes the inclusion of community participation in the Charter inherently tokenistic.

Conclusion Our purpose in writing this paper is to facilitate critical self-reflection, informed by techniques that have yet to be extensively explored in heritage studies. Clearly, our agenda is one of promoting community participation that does more than simply let

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community groups share existing conservation and heritage practices. In our view, community participation must hinge on the concept of negotiation, not only over conservation and heritage values but also over the very meaning and nature of heritage, so that the conservation ethic itself is open to renegotiation and redefinition.

For us, discourse analysis is an important methodology for identifying, problematising and unpacking the constitutive discursive field of heritage. This identification allows analysis of the work that the discourse does in maintaining the intellectual frameworks that govern practice and regulate the boundaries between the communities of authority and other community interests. This process is integral to any attempts to develop an inclusive heritage practice that does more than simply assimilate, but rather engages in communications with communities that are dialogically open to criticism and self-reflection.

The discourse analysis of the Charter that we have conducted suggests that, although laudable and sincere attempts have been made to incorporate a greater sense of social inclusion and participation in the Charter’s revision, the discursive construction of the Burra Charter effectively undermines these innovations. It is useful, therefore, to ask whether those privileged by the discourse have an ‘interest in the problem not being resolved’.76 Whether the construction of the discourse is an active attempt to maintain the privileged position of expertise in management and conservation processes, or is an unintended outcome of a naturalised and self-referential approach, is no longer at issue. Indeed, there are elements of truth in both statements. Certainly, the discourse is deeply naturalised and part of the common sense of the conservation and heritage ethos—indeed, it is constitutive of the practice of heritage conservation. Something is at issue, however—the consequences of the discourse. Intentionality thereby becomes either irrelevant or secondary to what Foucault refers to as the power/knowledge consequences of discourse, which establish regimes of truth, and forms of power and subjectivity that have social and material effects.

Notes [1] Smith, Uses of Heritage.

[2] See, for instance, Newman and McLean, ‘Heritage Builds Communities’; Byrne et al., Social Significance; Derry and Malloy, Archaeologists and Local Communities.

[3] Smith, Archaeological Theory and the Politics of Cultural Heritage.

[4] Walker and Marquis-Kyle, The Illustrated Burra Charter, 7.

[5] Domicelj, ‘Foreword’.

[6] Walker and Marquis-Kyle, The Illustrated Burra Charter, 7.

[7] Ibid., 6.

[8] Starn, ‘Authenticity and Historic Preservation’, 9.

[9] Smith, Uses of Heritage.

[10] Kuipers, ‘The Creation of Identities by Government Designation’, 206; Smith, Uses of Heritage.

[11] Walker and Marquis-Kyle, The Illustrated Burra Charter, 4.

[12] Hall, ‘Whose Heritage?’; Littler, ‘Introduction’; Smith, Uses of Heritage; Bagnall, ‘Performance and Performativity’, 89; Graham, ‘Heritage as Knowledge’, 1004; Dicks, ‘Encoding and Decoding the People’.

[13] Graham, ‘Heritage as Knowledge’, 1004.

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[14] Naidoo, ‘Nevermind the Buzzwords’; Littler, ‘Introduction’; Littler and Naidoo, ‘White Past, Multicultural Present’.

[15] Blommaert, Discourse, 21.

[16] Fairclough, Analysing Discourse, 3; Fairclough, ‘The Discourse of New Labour’, 229.

[17] Fairclough, Analysing Discourse, 3.

[18] Fairclough, ‘The Discourse of New Labour’, 230; Taylor, ‘Locating and Conducting Discourse Analytic Research’, 15.

[19] The wider landscape of discourse-analytical strategies incorporates traditions such as systemic functional linguistics (SLF), Foucauldian discourse analysis, functional linguistics, Reinhart Koselleck’s concept analysis, conversational analysis (CA), visual analysis, the discoursehistorical approach, Laclau’s discourse analysis, Hajer’s discourse analysis, Dryzek’s discourse analysis and interactional socio-linguistics—some of which are complementary and will be included in this discussion.

[20] Blommaert, Discourse, 21; Tonkiss, ‘Analysing Discourse’, 246–47.

[21] Fairclough, Critical Discourse Analysis; Fairclough, ‘Critical Discourse Analysis’; Fairclough, Analysing Discourse; Fairclough, ‘The Discourse of New Labour’; Chouliaraki and Fairclough, Discourse in Late Modernity.

[22] Wodak, ‘What CDA is About’; Wodak, ‘Critical Discourse Analysis’; Wodak, ‘Gender Mainstreaming and the European Union’.

[23] van Dijk, Discourse as Social Interaction.

[24] Lazar, Feminist Critical Discourse Analysis; Chilton and Schäffner, Politics as Text; Marston, Social Policy and Discourse Analysis; Wetherell et al., Discourse Theory and Practice; Tonkiss, ‘Analysing Discourse’.

[25] Critical Discourse Studies; Discourse and Society; Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education; Language in the New Capitalism; Discourse Studies.

[26] http://www.ling.lancs.ac.uk/staff/norman/norman.htm; http://www.discourse-in-society.org/ ; http://www-english.tamu.edu/ds/discours.html [27] Fairclough, ‘The Discourse of New Labour’, 232.

[28] Martin and Wodak, ‘Introduction’, 5.

[29] Fairclough and Wodak, ‘Critical Discourse Analysis’, 258; Fairclough, ‘The Discourse of New Labour’, 234; Martin and Wodak, ‘Introduction’.

[30] Fairclough, ‘The Discourse of New Labour’, 240.

[31] Fairclough and Wodak, ‘Critical Discourse Analysis’, 258.

[32] Fairclough and Wodak, ‘Critical Discourse Analysis’, 258; Janks, ‘Critical Discourse Analysis as a Research Tool’, 329; Chouliaraki and Fairclough, Discourse in Late Modernity, 4; Blommaert, Discourse, 24–25.

[33] Fairclough, ‘The Discourse of New Labour’, 229.

[34] Martin and Wodak, ‘Introduction’, 6.

[35] Janks, ‘Critical Discourse Analysis as a Research Tool’, 58.

[36] Blommaert, Discourse, 27.

[37] Ibid.

[38] Fairclough, ‘The Discourse of New Labour’, 238.

[39] Fairclough, ‘The Discourse of New Labour’, 235.

[40] Fairclough, New Labour, New Language, 28.

[41] Chouliaraki and Fairclough, Discourse in Late Modernity, 118–19; Fairclough, ‘The Discourse of New Labour’, 233; Lemke, ‘Intertextuality and Text Semantics’, 85–87.

[42] Lemke, ‘Intertextuality and Text Semantics’, 90.

[43] Fairclough, Analysing Discourse, 41.

[44] Ibid.

[45] Verschueren, 1999, cited in Fairclough, Analysing Discourse, 165.

[46] Fairclough, Analysing Discourse, 166.

[47] Janks, ‘Critical Discourse Analysis as a Research Tool’, 56.

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McKenna, ‘Critical Discourse Studies’, 14.

Walker and Marquis-Kyle, The Illustrated Burra Charter, 7.

Fairclough, Analysing Discourse, 41.

Walker and Marquis-Kyle op. cit. (note 4) commentary on the Australia ICOMOS, The Burra Charter, Article 1, 11.

Walker and Marquis-Kyle, The Illustrated Burra Charter, 7.

Australia ICOMOS, The Burra Charter, preamble.

Australia ICOMOS, The Burra Charter, Article 2.

Ibid., Article 1.2.

Ibid., Article 1.3.

Ibid., Article 1.2.

Walker and Marquis-Kyle, The Illustrated Burra Charter, 7 emphasis added.

Australia ICOMOS, The Burra Charter, Article 5.

Ibid., Article 5.1, original emphasis.

Ibid., Article 13.

Ibid., Article 1, emphasis added.

Ibid., Article 1, emphasis added.

Ibid., Article 1, emphasis added.

Ibid., Article 13, emphasis added.

Fairclough, Analysing Discourse, 88.

Australia ICOMOS, The Burra Charter, Article 26.3, bolded emphasis added, other emphasis in original.

Ibid., Article 12, bolded emphasis added.

Ibid.

Ibid., Article 26.3, bolded emphasis added.

Ibid., Article 30.

Fairclough, Analysing Discourse, 148.

Australia ICOMOS, The Burra Charter, Article 1.6, original emphasis.

Urry, ‘How Societies Remember the Past’; K. Emerick, ‘From Frozen Monuments to Fluid Landscapes: The Conservation and Preservation of Ancient Monuments from 1882 to the Present’, unpublished PhD diss., University of York., 2003.

Bauman, Legislators and Interpreters.

Fairclough, Analysing Discourse, 10.

References Australia ICOMOS. The Burra Charter. Australia: Australia ICOMOS, 1979.

———. The Burra Charter. Australia: Australia ICOMOS, 1999.

Barthel, D. Historic Preservation: Collective Memory and Historical Identity. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1999.

Bauman, Z. Legislators and Interpreters. Oxford: Polity Press, 1987.

Blommaert, J. Discourse: A Critical Introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005.

Byrne, D., H. Brayshaw and T. Ireland. Social Significance: A Discussion Paper. Hurtsville: NSW National Parks and Wildlife Services, 2003.

Chilton, P. A. and C. Schäffner, eds. Politics as Text: Analytical Approaches to Political Discourses.

Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2002.

Chouliaraki, L. and N. Fairclough. Discourse in Late Modernity: Rethinking Critical Discourse Analysis. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1999.

Derry, L. and M. Malloy, eds. Archaeologists and Local Communities: Partners in Exploring the Past.

Washington, DC: Society for American Archaeology, 2003.

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Domicelj, J. ‘Foreword’. In The Illustrated Burra Charter: Making Good Decisions About the Care of Important Places, edited by P. Marquis-Kyle and M. Walker. Sydney: Australia ICOMOS, 1992.

Fairclough, N. Critical Discourse Analysis: The Critical Study of Language. Essex: Pearson Education, 1995.

———. New Labour, New Language? London: Routledge, 2000.

———. ‘The Discourse of New Labour: Critical Discourse Analysis’. In Discourse as Data: A Guide for Analysis, edited by M. Wetherell, S. Taylor and S. J. Yates. London: Sage, 2001: 229–66.

———. ‘Critical Discourse Analysis’. In How to Analyse Text in Institutional Settings: A Casebook of Methods, edited by A. McHoul and M. Rapley. London: Continuum, 2001: 25–38.

———. Analysing Discourse: Textual Analysis for Social Research. London: Routledge, 2003.

Fairclough, N., P. Graham, J. Lemke and R. Wodak, ‘Introduction’. Critical Discourse Studies 1, no. 1 (2004): 1–7.

Fairclough, N. and R. Wodak, ‘Critical Discourse Analysis’. In Discourse as Social Interaction, edited

by T. A. van Dijk. London: Sage, 1997: 258–84.

Hajer, M. ‘Discourse Coalitions and the Institutionalisation of Practice: The Case of Acid Rain in Britain’. In The Argumentative Turn in Policy Analysis and Planning, edited by F. Fischer and J. Forester. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1996: 43–76.

Janks, H. ‘Critical Discourse Analysis as a Research Tool’. Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education 18, no. 3 (1997): 329–42.

Kuipers, M. J. ‘The Creation of Identities by Government Designation: A Case Study of the Korreweg District, Groningen, NL’. In Senses of Place: Senses of Time. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005: 205–18.

Lazar, M., ed. Feminist Critical Discourse Analysis: Gender, Power and Ideology in Discourse. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005.

Lemke, J. L. ‘Intertextuality and Text Semantics’. In Discourse in Society: Systemic Functional Perspectives. Meaning and Choice in Language: Studies for Michael Halliday, edited by P. H. Fries and M. Gregory. New Jersey: Ablex, 1995: 85–114.

Marston, G. Social Policy and Discourse Analysis: Policy Change in Public Housing. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004.

Martin, J. and R. Wodak. ‘Introduction’. In Re/reading the Past: Critical and Functional Perspectives on Time and Value, edited by J. R. Martin and R. Wodak. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2003: 1–16.

McKenna, B. ‘Critical Discourse Studies: Where to from Here?’ Critical Discourse Studies 1, no. 1 (2004): 9–39.

Newman, A. and F. McLean, ‘Heritage Builds Communities: The Application of Heritage Resources to the Problems of Social Exclusion’. International Journal of Heritage Studies 4, nos. 3&4 (1998): 143–53.

Smith, L. Archaeological Theory and the Politics of Cultural Heritage. London: Routledge, 2004.

———. The Uses of Heritage. London: Routledge, 2006.

Taylor, S. ‘Locating and Conducting Discourse Analytic Research’. In Discourse as Data: A Guide for Analysis, edited by M. Wetherell, S. Taylor and S. J. Yates. London: Sage, 2001: 5–48.

Tonkiss, F. ‘Analysing Discourse’. In Researching Society and Culture, edited by C. Seale. London: Sage, 1998: 245–60.

Urry, J. ‘How Societies Remember the Past’. In Theorizing Museums, edited by S. Macdonald and G. Fyfe. Oxford: Blackwell, 1996: 45–65. van Dijk, T. A., ed. Discourse as Social Interaction. London: Sage, 1997. van Leeuwen, T. ‘Discourses of Unemployment in New Labour Britain’. In Challenges in a Changing World: Issues in Critical Discourse Analysis, edited by R. Wodak and C. Ludwig. Vienna: Passagen, 1999: 87–100.

Walker, M. and P. Marquis-Kyle. The Illustrated Burra Charter: Good Practice for Heritage Places.

Burwood: Australia ICOMOS, 2004.

Watt, P. and K. Jacob. ‘Discourses of Social Exclusion’. Housing, Theory and Society 17 (2000): 14–26.

Wetherell, M. ‘Editor’s Introduction’. In Discourse Theory and Practice: A Reader, edited by M. Wetherell, S. Taylor and S. J. Yates. London: Sage, 2001: 9–13.

International Journal of Heritage Studies 355 Wetherell, M., S. Taylor and S. J. Yates, eds. Discourse Theory and Practice: A Reader. London: Sage, 2001.

Wodak, R. ‘What CDA is About—A Summary of its History, Important Concepts and its Development’. In Methods of Critical Discourse Analysis, edited by R. Wodak and M. Meyer. London: Sage, 2001: 1–13.

———. ‘Critical Discourse Analysis’. In Qualitative Research Practice, edited by C. Seale, G. Gobo, J. F. Gubrium and D. Silverman. London: Sage, 2004: 197–213.

———. ‘Gender Mainstreaming and the European Union: Interdisciplinarity, Gender Studies and CDA’. In Feminist Critical Discourse Analysis: Gender, Power, and Ideology in Discourse, edited

by M. M. Lazar. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005: 90–113.

Critical Asian Studies

ISSN: 1467-2715 (Print) 1472-6033 (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rcra20

What is made-in-China feminism(s)? Gender discontent and class friction in post-socialist China Angela Xiao Wu & Yige Dong To cite this article: Angela Xiao Wu & Yige Dong (2019) What is made-in-China feminism(s)?

Gender discontent and class friction in post-socialist China, Critical Asian Studies, 51:4, 471-492, DOI: 10.1080/14672715.2019.1656538 To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/14672715.2019.1656538

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CRITICAL ASIAN STUDIES 2019, VOL. 51, NO. 4, 471–492 https://doi.org/10.1080/14672715.2019.1656538

What is made-in-China feminism(s)? Gender discontent and class friction in post-socialist China Angela Xiao Wu

a

and Yige Dong

b

a

Department of Media, Culture, and Communication, New York University, New York, NY, USA; bDepartment of International Political Economy, University of Puget Sound, Tacoma, WA, USA ABSTRACT

ARTICLE HISTORY

Contemporary Chinese feminism has drawn much attention in academe and popular media, yet its ontological roots and the politics of naming has largely escaped scrutiny. This paper first demonstrates that China’s post-socialist transition has given rise to a new gendered structure of power, in response to which urban young women have assembled various discursive and material practices in their struggles. Second, the social rupture and shock caused by these practices have led to the popular perception that an undifferentiated “feminism” has been proliferating in contemporary China. Combining historiographical and ethnographic research, this paper maps out the overall landscape of women’s agitations and identifies two latent strands of “made-in-China feminism” – with varied sociopolitical significance – that engage with cultural norms at the grassroots level. In grasping China’s ongoing gender antagonism with its full complexity, this paper discusses the limitations of existing scholarly approaches to contemporary Chinese feminism. This analysis contributes to the ongoing conversation on imagining a feminist politics in non-Western societies that disrupts the political, economic, and cultural orders all at once.

Received 27 December 2018 Accepted 13 August 2019 KEYWORDS

Feminism; China; neoliberalism; gender; class

On an early morning in September 2017, IT developer and entrepreneur Su Xiangmao jumped to his death, putting an end to a 104-day marriage and his wife’s exacerbating blackmail. The phone app owned by Su’s company soon opened with an announcement of his “murder” by his “vicious wife Zhai Xinxin,” (with her mobile and ID number attached). This and the detailed suicide note Su left online led to a crowdsourced prosecution. Zhai’s photos, her occupation as a model and “Miss Etiquette,” her postgraduate degree, and her past intimate relationships were aired. It appeared that the thirty-one year-old had attended boot camps and joined online groups that help women “fish millionaires,” and had allegedly reaped millions from this and an equally short previous marriage.

“As a single woman earning a junior faculty wage at a Beijing university, I say with full confidence: in Chinese metropolitan areas, the most comfortable way of life is staying single and childless (thus no need to buy an apartment); this is especially true for women.” This Weibo post comes from the account of Lengxuecainü (“cold-blooded talented woman”), a thirty-something with 67, 000 online followers. Another of her typical posts goes: “I say this to those fools and scoundrels who keep saying ‘What’s wrong to pursue love’ or ‘What’s wrong to devote to one’s family’: Luxuries like ‘love’ and ‘family’ are not for you if you lack the resources to buy CONTACT Angela Xiao Wu © 2019 BCAS, Inc.

angelaxwu@nyu.edu

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whatever you please. The way to go is work hard, make money, be economically independent and not a pushover.1”

In contemporary China, waves of women’s agitation flood popular media, especially the Internet, in response to various news items, entertainment programs, gossip, and anecdotes. China Central Television’s annual Spring Festival gala has been condemned for staging “misogynistic” shows.2 Commentaries on celebrity cheating are castigated for having gender “double standards.”3 When a transnational cosmetic brand aired an advertisement that endorsed career-driven (and wrinkle-free) Chinese women, this novelty unleashed a spectacle of rejoicing and catharsis.4 In quick succession, such outcries have drawn much international attention to what some see as a “Chinese feminist awakening.”5 Meanwhile, the domestic backlash has been fierce. “Feminism” (nüquanzhuyi) can literally mean “an ideology for promoting” either “women’s rights” or “women’s privileges.”6 When viewed as the latter, “feminism” becomes a dirty word in popular discourse. Online discussions are studded with phrases like “feminist whores” (nüquanbiao) and “feminist cancer” (nüquan’ai), conveying an image of callous, selfish, and money-hungry Chinese women. The term “Chinese country feminism” (zhonghua tianyuan nüquanzhuyi) also circulates. Zhonghua tianyuan, or “Chinese country,” comes from “Chinese country dog” or “Chinese country cat,” terms used to distinguish local mongrel dogs and cats from “Western” pure breeds.

Questioning this undifferentiated labeling is the starting point of our analysis. This politics of naming and the ontological roots of Chinese feminism(s) have largely escaped the existing scholarship. In response, our study consists of two parts. First, we demonstrate that China’s post-socialist transition has led to a new gendered structure of power, in response to which urban young women have assembled two latent strands of discursive and material practices in their struggles.7 Second, we argue that the social rupture and shock caused by these practices have led to the popular perception that an undifferentiated “feminism” has been proliferating in contemporary China.

This essay proceeds as follows. First, we briefly review the history of Chinese feminisms and map out the landscape of women’s agitation in contemporary China to specify what we call “made-in-China feminism” or “C-fem.” After this, through a historiographical analysis of the trajectories of gender and class during China’s post-socialist reform, we demonstrate how, coupling cultural imperatives with material arrangements, a particular marriage market has been consolidated. Next, we identify two latent strands under the façade of C-fem and its backlash on the ground. We then contextualize C-fem’s formation to further assess its two strands’ varied sociopolitical significance. This also allows us to 1

Both posts, last accessed on December 12, 2017, are no longer available. https://m.weibo.cn/status/4094651981862386? luicode=20000061&lfid=4117696075051742, and https://m.weibo.cn/2870661324/4117696075051742.

2 Denyer and Xu 2015.

3 Kaiman 2016b.

4 Guo 2016.

5 Kaiman 2016a; Xiao 2015.

6 Sudo and Hill 2006.

7 There is no consensus about the nature and periodization of post-Mao China. Some scholars prefer “reforming” or “market socialism” to stress China’s ruling communist party and politically dominant state sector, yet others choose “state capitalism” to highlight China’s integration into global capitalism. We use “post-socialist” to capture both the change and continuity since 1978 in class and gender order.

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better understand the form that the anti-feminist backlash takes in containing female transgressions at the present conjuncture. By grasping the ongoing gender antagonism in China in its full complexity, our essay sheds light on the limitations of current scholarly analyses of Chinese feminism at the grassroots level. Ultimately, we seek to contribute to the ongoing conversation on imagining a feminist politics that disrupts at once the political, economic, and cultural orders.

Chinese feminisms and made-in-China feminisms In recent years, the phenomenal flourishing of gender-based antagonism fueled by digital technologies has led to a wave of research and commentaries on “Chinese feminism.” The literature cuts two ways. The liberal camp treats feminism as rights-based activism against the authoritarian state.8 Notably, five young activists (the “Feminist Five”) were detained for organizing street-based advocacy against sexual harassment in 2015, spurring domestic and international protests, both on- and offline.9 The second, a neo-left camp of primarily China-based academics, highlights the class and urban privileges of Chinese feminist performances and their uncritical embrace of Euro-American white, middle-class feminism.10 According to this camp, an emphasis among urban, well-off young women on individual “choice,” “empowerment,” and “voice,” while being indifferent to structural injustice and economic redistribution, demonstrates how their agenda converges with that of neoliberal capitalism. This stance has been inspired by the work of scholars such as Nancy Fraser.11 Different from extant literature that glosses over or presumes the actual content of feminism, our essay approaches this as “interpretive constructs” attached to certain configurations of thoughts and practices under specific historical circumstances.12 This is a particularly effective approach to studying women’s struggles in the Global South, where the concept of feminism, often seen as an import, has caused much confusion and hostility.13 The perceived ascendance of feminism in a society signals women’s growing awareness of their oppression and exploitation in the existing relations of power and their intention to do something about it. Such “agitation on women issues” always generates a backlash.14 Viewed in this perspective, indigenous Chinese feminism does not have an ontological boundary. Always a crucial, albeit contentious, component in China’s major political and social transformations, it has taken different forms since the beginning of the twentieth century.

Drawing on existing literature, we have identified four forms of historical Chinese feminism. The birth of Chinese feminism, “an event of global proportions that is yet to be 8

Fincher 2018; Li and Li 2017; Liu, Huang, and Ma 2015; Tan 2017; Wallis 2015.

On the eve of International Women’s Day in 2015, five young women were arrested by the Chinese police in Beijing. After garnering enormous support worldwide, the “Feminist Five” were released after thirty-seven days of detainment and interrogation. Still subject to constant police harassment, these women have issued online statements reiterating their devotion to the feminist cause.

10 Chen 2016; Dong 2016; Huang 2016.

11 Particularly influential is Fraser’s “Feminism, Capitalism, and the Cunning of History.” Fraser 2009. For this piece’s influence within the neo-left camp, see Spakowski 2018. Also representative of this line of work are Fraser 2013; 2017; Harris and Dobson 2015; Rottenberg 2013.

12 Ferguson 2017, 227–228.

13 Kumari Jayawardena advocates the use of “feminism” that goes beyond “movements for equality and emancipation which agitate for equal rights and legal reforms” to “[s]ignify agitation on issues concerning women” in a larger sense. Jayawardena 2016; 2.

14 Jayawardena 2016.

9

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properly grasped and analyzed as such,” can be dated to the turn of the twentieth century when radical thinkers, social reformers, and revolutionaries such as He-Yin Zhen, Jin Tianhe, Liang Qichao, Qiu Jin, and Tang Qunying advocated for women’s political, economic, and civil rights as a part of national modernizing projects.15 This was followed by a generation of liberal-leaning feminists, who came of age after the May-Fourth Movement (1919) and made inroads in professional spheres in the Republican period (1911–1949).16 After the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) took power in 1949, socialist feminists carved out a space within the state, mainly through the All-China Women’s Federation (ACWF), and pushed forward a series of campaigns promoting women’s legal rights and economic benefits.17 In the 1980s, a group of female university professors, lawyers, journalists, and local ACWF cadres started building NGOs, which gained momentum after the 1995 World Women’s Conference in Beijing. Typically focused on issues such as domestic violence, reproductive health rights, and rural women’s empowerment, these gender-based NGOs were tactically affiliated with various official institutions and funded by foreign agencies such as the Ford Foundation. Maneuvering among the state, foreign donors, and other social sectors, these groups usually avoided using the term “feminism” and kept a lowkey profile in order to push gender-equality agendas in a country in which the government tightly controls civil society organizations and the public is not attuned to rights-based political discourse.18 Two decades into the twenty-first century, the new flourishing of women’s agitation, unprecedented both in its scope of participation and its visibility, has incited multifarious forms of discourse on feminism. To better contextualize our analysis, we provide a conceptual map for the overall landscape of women’s agitations in contemporary China. In this diagram, we lay out four ideal types of agitation across two dimensions – the level of institutionalization and the primary site of operation (Table 1).

What sets what some observers call a current “Chinese feminist awakening” apart from the agendas of the ACWF and gender-based NGOs is its grassroots nature. In the context of liberal democracies, such autonomous, spontaneous women-empowering voices and actions are sometimes referred to as “popular feminism,” and their contours can be traced through ordinary women’s blogging and online debates, rather than institutional documents, academic musings, or interviews with veteran activists from small circles.19 This angle is particularly useful for thinking about the Chinese case, given the government’s suppression of civil society organizations and street-level collective activism.

However, a further differentiation of grassroots “popular feminism” by site of operation is required to map the ecology of Chinese women’s agitations. The CCP’s monopoly on power and its concerns about legitimacy make it particularly sensitive to citizens’ criticisms of state policies and government practices. Nevertheless, a brave few have waged open protests against gender-based violence and gender discrimination in education and employment as well as advocacy for LGBTQ rights and a women friendly public

15

Liu, Karl, and Ko 2013.

Wang 1999.

Wang 2016.

18 Dong 2014; Wang and Zhang 2010.

19 McRobbie 1978; Mohanty 2013; Munford and Waters 2014; Taylor 2012.

16 17

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Table 1. Landscape of Women’s Agitations in Contemporary China.

Note: The content of each cell is not exhaustive, but consists of main examples of the conceptual space.

space. Besides the “Feminist Five,” these include Ma Hu, a female college graduate who filed a lawsuit against China Post for discriminatory hiring.20 In fact, given the current political climate, it is the cultural realm that has become the main battleground. Here conflicts occur regarding female sexuality, romantic relationships, and familial issues – often mediated by the Internet. This confinement, however, simultaneously emboldens their expression, in sharp contrast to the cautionary self-presentation of feminist actors within institutional establishments. These voices and practices are what we call “made-in-China feminism” (or its shorthand “C-fem”). C-fem serves as a reservoir of energy and inspiration for activists challenging state policies and for a range of organizations that provide counseling services.21 We use “made-in-China feminism” and “C-fem” instead of “feminism” to make the familiar foreign and foreground local complexities. Deploying this terminology helps highlight the politics of naming. On the ground, while many self-identify as feminist, what they share is being labeled by others as “feminist” – which has negative associations in popular understanding – or various other aforementioned derogative terms for women’s agitations in the Chinese context. Adopting the term “C-fem” also highlights that what C-fem encompasses is not necessarily feminist as per feminist theories, which are usually from the Global North.

By focusing on C-fem, our approach to contemporary Chinese feminism(s) entails a shift in theoretical perspective. We see C-fem, together with a backlash against it, as constituent of a new cultural formation coming out of specific hegemonic negotiations at China’s present conjuncture. This means both the forms of struggles, and the ways they are spoken of, have taken shape in response to evolving structures of power.22 Hence in 20

Dong 2019.

For instance, the Feminist Five and Ma Hu are part of a bigger, looser group of self-described “young feminist activists” (qingnian nüquan xingdongpai) who use street art and popular theater to challenge sexist cultural norms.

22 Gramsci 1971. For a similar approach to feminist practices, see Aslan and Gambetti 2011. For a similar approach focused on the politics of naming, see Hall et al. 1978.

21

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addition to clarifying the actual configuration of the gender antagonism that is largely underexplored, our approach is a theoretical intervention in the scholarship on Chinese feminism. First, while liberal scholarship focuses almost exclusively on activism censored and prosecuted by the state, our approach recognizes a larger realm of women’s agitation and that “the opponent is not the state as much as it is the other collectivities attempting to set the rules of identity construction in something like a ‘civil society.’”23 In other words, the anti-feminist backlash in China mobilizes disciplinary forces that are much more comprehensive and rigorous than the state’s alone. Second, unlike those on the neo-left who view current gender politics as separate from, or even at the expense of, class politics, our approach foregrounds the “actual historical intricacies of economic and sexual politics”24 and situates C-fem in a historical and structural analysis along both the axes of gender and class.25

Shifting political economy and the rise of a post-socialist marriage market Inspired by Marxist-Leninist theory and practice, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) set out to build a classless society by abolishing private property after it took power in 1949. It also pushed forward gender equality by mobilizing women to participate in public production so that they could achieve equal political and economic status.26 With mixed results, these radical measures brought forth a relatively egalitarian society and fundamentally transformed gender relations in both the public and domestic realms.27 Yet, throughout the Maoist era (1949–1976), the state’s firm and complete control of “women’s work” obstructed open and critical discussions about gender. Although feminists working within the state managed to introduce various institutional arrangements to expand women’s participation in the public sphere, independent women’s organizations were not allowed and a set of vocabulary for women’s autonomous movements was (and still is) missing in the discursive domain.28 In contrast to the erasure of traditional femininity from public representation (although in practice, hierarchical gender relations 23

Patton 1993; 173.

Cooper 2017, 23. Historically, specific family values and gender norms have been functional for class stratification in various nationalist, modernization, and neoliberal projects. See Brown 2006; Cooper 2017; Jayawardena 2016; Radhakrishnan and Solari 2015.

25 Our following analysis takes the form of a “conjunctural analysis” that delineates how the multiple, potentially heterogeneous, historical forces operating in a society during a given period fuse together into a particular articulation. See Clarke 2010; Hall et al. 1978; Laclau and Mouffe 2001.

26 Gilmartin 1995.

27 In the domestic realm, by decreeing a progressive Marriage Law (1950), the CCP mobilized the masses nationwide to transform people’s marital practices and their understanding of gender and family relations (Diamant 2000). In the workplace, massive industrialization and agricultural development incorporated an unprecedented number of women into the labor force, leading to a female employment rate above ninety percent (Jiang 2004). The 1954 Constitution and new labor regulations created equal pay for men and women, paid maternity leave, and public childcare service (Hooper 1984). For working women, comparable wages substantially reduced their economic dependence on their husbands. In this highly politicized society of general material scarcity, women chose their spouses based primarily on political trustiness and much less on economic capital (Croll 1981).

28 Women pursuing their own interests outside of the Party’s agenda and leadership were considered selfish and politically treacherous (Barlow 2004; Johns 2010). Instead, women’s issues were politically and organizationally subsumed to classcoded struggles (Manning 2006a). The CCP attributed women’s disadvantages to their class position, instead of gender, and maintained that the path to women’s liberation was to abolish private ownership and eliminate class inequality. The official denial of a female identity independent from class, together with the CCP’s commitment to its own gender-leveling projects and institutional arrangements, led to the socialist gender norms that silenced sexual expression, elided physiological differences between sexes, celebrated masculinized women, and downplayed conventional femininities.

See Barlow 2004; Honig 2003; Manning 2006b.

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and gender segregation continued29) popular discourse emphasized class status. The party’s pre-revolutionary class categories served as ongoing reference points despite the fact that class-leveling policies had subsequently radically altered peoples’ material reality.30 Over time, class as a pervasive signifier in public discourse was used to justify ideological cleansing and factional fights.31 Beginning in 1978, the CCP and the state shifted their attention towards economic modernization and systemically abandoned Maoist policies and ideology. On the class front, the CCP’s previous commitment to class egalitarianism gave way to national development at the expense of class stratification. “Let part of the people get rich first,” Deng Xiaoping was famously quoted as saying. From the early 1980s to the late 2000s, while China’s investment in human capital development dramatically increased at all levels, its national Gini coefficient also increased, from 0.3 to nearly 0.5.32 Against the spectacular rise of wealthy elites and a massive middle-class were forty million laid-off state workers and more than 200 million migrant laborers.33 Starting in the 1980s, the word “class” (jieji), with its antagonistic connotation, was replaced by a more neutral term, “stratum” (jieceng).34 Despite this discursive suppression, Maoist economic egalitarian ideology lingers in the minds of large sections of the population, fostering a shared sense of unfairness – a kind of hidden injury of class – aimed at the new middle class and wealthy elites.35 On the gender front, with the erosion of permanent state employment and welfare provisions, the public and the domestic spheres have been re-segregated. Many previously socialized reproductive functions such as childcare have been handed back to the family, effectively to working women, jeopardizing their positions in an increasingly competitive labor market.36 Furthermore, under the joined forces of marketization and reform discourse, the public discursive terrain has witnessed rapid sexualization, characterized by the essentialization and naturalization of gender differences that rectify the de-gendered, de-sexualized, ascetic culture that prevailed during the socialist past.37 Desire has reemerged in public culture, oftentimes celebrated as the dominant marker of global modernity and as an offense to state authority.38 Imageries of female sexuality have taken over the discursive landscape in print and electronic media.39 At the same time, the state’s harshest family planning policy – the single-child campaign in urban China – has given rise to the discourse of “nurturing the most intelligent child” through intensive mothering, which both the state and the consumer market eagerly promote.40 All of this resonates 29

Andors 1983; Hershatter 2011.

Wu 2014. Although the CCP established a largely (materially) egalitarian society through drastic measures, it continued to impose class distinctions among the masses based on different political and social origins. In official discourse, the masses of peasants, workers, and their offspring were represented by the Party and thus were the dominant power, whereas the old elites were the dominated class under the former’s surveillance and discipline.

31 Walder 2002.

32 Attané 2012; Hoffman 2010.

33 While estimates of the size of China’s middle class vary, depending on the definition, it ranges from 109 million to nearly 400 million. See Zhou 2018. For a discussion about laid-off and migrant workers, see Frazier 2010; Franceschini, Siu, and Chan 2016.

34 Anagnost 2008; Pun and Chan 2008.

35 Goodman 2008; Osburg 2013; Tomba 2004; Zhang 2010.

36 Du and Dong 2008; Liu 2007.

37 Barlow 2004.

38 Jacobs 2012.

39 Chen 2016; Evans 2008; Farrer 2002; Rofel 2007.

40 Greenhalgh and Winckler 2005; Song 2011.

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with male public intellectuals’ call for married women to “return home” to fulfill their “long neglected” domestic duties.41 More recently, this conservative trend has been reinforced with the state’s open embrace of Confucianism, the core values of which include filial piety, ancestral worship, the benevolent authority of parents, and a hierarchical order based on gender and age. According to official discourse, it is through embodying these virtues that individuals cultivate their loyalty to the state – the sum of all families under the heaven.

This imperative articulates women’s familial obligations to the maintenance of social stability.42 In the last three decades, urban gender gaps in labor force participation, unemployment rates, and income have dramatically widened – despite diminishing gender disparities in education.43 Meanwhile, the pressure for women to settle for marriage keeps increasing, leading to a “leftover women” panic since the 2000s.44 Furthermore, legal reforms designed to promote the rule of law, despite invoking expectations of legal equality, have instituted private property rights in ways that constrict women’s entitlements to real estate and other assets upon divorce, which in turn enhances the traditional marriage institution.45 This shifting political economy, with its particular entwinement of class and gender, has led to an emerging structure of power. The alignment of the post-socialist state’s agenda, market forces, and rekindled patriarchal values has culminated in a gendered marriage market that emphasizes hypergamy, institutionalizing women’s sexuality as their means to economic security.

It is under this new structure of subjection that what we call “made-in-China feminism” has arisen, along with the societal backlash that attempts to contain it. What further explains C-fem’s unprecedented momentum is the gender effect of the one-child policy.

Most Chinese women born in cities in the 1980s and the 1990s were single children; without male siblings, they had access to all the resources at their primary families’ disposal and barely experienced any explicit gender bias in their early formative years.46 Their assumed entitlements to equal opportunities and treatment began to crumble as they moved through the school system and into the workplace, both of which explicitly favor men.47 This has cultivated, unintentionally, generations of women with unprecedented gender awareness and an aversion towards gender inequalities. Socialized into individualistic values accentuating personal desire and choice, and equipped with 41

Song 2011; Yan 2008.

Hird 2017.

43 Rural gender inequalities have also worsened. For more discussions, see Jacka 2014. From 1990 to 2010, the percentage of women without education decreased from 34.7 to 6.6 percent in rural areas and 10.9 to 3.5 percent in urban areas. For women with education, the average length of their education nearly doubled during this period, from 4.7 to 8.8 years, gradually narrowing the gap with men (6.6 and 9.1 years respectively). During this time, however, the employment rate for urban women fell rapidly, from 76.3 percent in 1990 to 60.8 percent in 2010. Attané 2012.

44 In the late 2000s, government institutions, commercial organizations, television programs and Internet portals started to concertedly push young women to marry at all costs, including foregoing their careers and entitlement to marital property. For further discussion, see Fincher 2014 and To 2015. This despite the fact that, compared with China’s neighbors, Chinese women are marrying younger, are more likely to be married, and are supposed to have more bargaining power given the sex-imbalance from selective abortion and infanticide. See Jones 2007.

45 For details about the newest Marriage Law (2011), see: http://www.loc.gov/law/foreign-news/article/china-supremepeoples-court-issues-third-interpretation-of-marriage-law/ 46 Greenhalgh and Winckler 2005.

47 Zhang, Hannum, and Wang 2008.

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technological savviness, these young women are more prone to personalized online expressions about female sexuality and relationships. This mode of utterance also survives the authoritarian state which, as already discussed, suppresses collective, public activism and acts quickly to crush nascent organized advocacy for policy change.48 It also accounts for C-fem’s explosive online dynamism in the 2010s.

As our following analysis shows, among women’s practices coping with the ascendance of the post-socialist marriage market, the two strands that threaten the hegemonic order the most have been particularly targeted, lumped together, and labeled “feminism.”

The two strands of made-in-China feminism The following analysis draws from our multi-sited ethnographic work between 2012 and 2017, including one author’s research on China’s online political cultures and the other’s participant observation in various on- and offline communities of feminist activists. The online environment is particularly challenging for ethnography, given a lack of physical locales and boundaries as conventionally understood.49 Therefore, conducting multisited or extended-case ethnography, wherein the ethnographer, “empirically follow[s] the thread of cultural process itself” across multiple sites, is instrumental to studying micro-level online interactions.50 Our observations came from multiple online venues.

These include commentaries and discussion threads focused on prominent instances of C-fem controversies on Tianya and Zhihu (two major online forums), social media (Sina Weibo and Renren), national news portals (Sina and 163), online outlets for feminist activism such as Women’s Voice (nüquanzhisheng) and New Media Women (xinmeiti nüxing), as well as news reports and interviews published in domestic and foreign media outlets.

Entrepreneurial C-fem: performing sexuality for economic security The world is fair; go seek what you desire. […] Marriage is anchored by children and property. Taking control of children and property means taking control of your marriage. Once your man’s wallet is in your possession, his impulse to cheat withers; even if he cheats on you, he gets only substandard partners and would slink back to your side (ayawawa).51

The first and most pronounced strand of C-fem is what we call the “entrepreneurial” strand, for it encourages women to abandon traditional wifely duties such as submissiveness and self-sacrifice so they may exercise their autonomy on the marriage market to maximize their personal returns. Women’s leverage, or power, over men is therefore their own sexual attraction, including traditional femininity and domesticity, all of which are in the hands of women to cultivate and enhance. To best capitalize on this sexuality requires careful calculation and self-discipline.

One extreme example of the entrepreneurial strand is the Zhai Xinxin incident described in the first epigraph, wherein the highly-calculating woman predator repeatedly extracted material benefits from heterosexual relationships, culminating in the death of a 48

Erguang 2017; Tatlow 2017.

Hine 2015.

50 Marcus, quoted in Gatson 2011, 247.

51 See http://blog.sina.cn/dpool/blog/s/blog_48a2f5fd0102eahs.html?wm=3049_a111.

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husband. Also illustrative of this strand is the reiteration of the “phoenix man” cautionary tale. A “phoenix man” refers to a man with a rural background who, like the legendary phoenix that once fledged in a modest nest, has managed to secure a white-collar job in the city.52 According to this entrepreneurial perspective, such a man is pernicious to his wife’s interests because his rural upbringing requires him to drain his resources to supply his paternal family in the countryside. “Never marry a phoenix man” is a mantra that summarizes many online posts in which urban women who married men with rural origins detail their woes. Yet another manifestation of the entrepreneurial Cfem is its celebration of If You Are the One, a top-rated television dating show, for its refreshing presentation of woman’s power; on stage, women participants, always thin, fair-skinned, and eloquent, evaluate and choose bachelors. In the show’s most publicized episode, a “between-jobs” male contestant invited a female participant for a supposedly romantic ride on his bicycle, to which she responded: “I’d rather weep in a BMW.”53 The entrepreneurial interpretation of these events centers on women’s “self-protection” – that is, women should not fall for “pure love.”

As a more detailed example, we have chosen ayawawa. With a following of 2.7 million on Weibo (Twitter’s Chinese counterpart), ayawawa is a self-claimed “relationship consultant”. At age thirty-six, she has published six self-help books on relationships, owns an online cosmetics store, and is married and a mother of two. In 2016, her popularity earned her a media award sponsored by the Tianjin Municipal Government, including the city’s official Women’s Federation. Posing as a new type of role model for young women in China, ayawawa exerts immense influence through her “PU-MV theory,” basically a “how to marry well” guide. “PU” stands for paternity uncertainty, or the likelihood of infidelity in a marriage; “MV” means mating value, or a woman’s reproductive potential and sexual attractiveness. According to ayawawa, to be a strong competitor on the marriage market, a woman must work hard to increase her attractiveness, marry young, and reduce her PU by appearing virtuous, loyal, and chaste.

To help her fans put theory into practice, ayawawa frequently asks them to rate women’s attractiveness in the images she posts on her Weibo account, and then corrects their scores with her authoritative take. “How many points can you get?” she then asks her readers, telling them, “Never overestimate your attractiveness and miscalculate your overall marriage value. Target the right range of guys to save too long a wait on the market!” Every day, hundreds of fans anxiously seeking a spouse post their selfies under ayawawa’s posts, begging for her authoritative evaluation. They follow her advice to identify the most economically promising guy within the range that corresponds to their own worth, based on ayawawa’s formula. Yet with a sense of direction and autonomy on the path to personal wellbeing, these women do feel empowered. A self-described “average-looking” thirty-five-year-old with a doctorate degree who had “wasted much time in the marriage market” wrote that, thanks to ayawawa, she had learned “how to control emotion and display minimal PU,” and was able to “capture” a man with a civil service job, adding, “he put my name on the housing register and let me handle most of his income.”

52

Wang 2014.

See Li, Luzhou Nina. 2016.

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What ayawawa and others like her advocate has resonated with women’s anxiety and despair navigating the marriage market in China. Meanwhile, by heightening women’s economic stakes and exacerbating hidden class grievances, the entrepreneurial route to “woman’s empowerment” simultaneously corrodes intimate relationships.

Non-cooperative C-fem: liberating female sexuality from the marriage market While the entrepreneurial strand aims to maximize women’s material interests by ruthlessly performing traditional femininity in the marriage market, another, albeit largely obscured, strand of C-fem operates by the opposite logic. It cherishes autonomous female sexuality and considers personal economic standing not an end in itself but a means to sexual autonomy in society. We call this the “non-cooperative” strand because its empowerment of women arises from denouncing the prevalent marketization of the marital institution. In fact, it was the non-cooperative C-fem behind a counterstrike during the “leftover women” (shengnü) panic. In response to widespread media accounts sensationalizing China’s growing numbers of single women, non-cooperatives argued that “leftover women” (剩女) are actually “successful women” (胜女, with the same pronunciation, “shengnü”), whose excellent education and economic resources render them neither keen on conventional marriages, nor willing to settle for mediocre men.

Non-cooperative C-fem dominates Feminist Voices (nüquan zhisheng; hereafter “FV”) and New Media Women (xinmeiti nüxing), two self-labeled feminist media outlets on the Internet. Many of their initiatives contest prevalent norms of heterosexual marriage and strive to redefine singlehood and unmarried motherhood. For example, FV organized a crowdfunding event to install “anti-marriage bombardment” (fanbihun) subway ads in Beijing during the 2016 Chinese New Year, a time of family gatherings and conflicts due to “marriage bombardment” – when parents and extended family members collectively pressure the young to marry. Thousands chipped in; within a month FV gathered 35,000 RMB (US $5077), enough to place their poster in Dongzhimen, one of the busiest downtown Beijing subway stations. The poster read, “Dear Dad and Mom: The world is big and life takes many forms. I can be single and be happy.” (Figure 1) During the crowdfunding campaign, FV also published a series of letters from readers.

One reader described the best way to fend off social pressures, echoing a tenet seen in many other letters: “An independent life requires economic independence. Having a voice requires having money.”

A growing online community of women vows a lifetime of singlehood in the face of the marketization of marriage. Lengxuecainü’s posts, as shown in our second epigraph, are examples of this. When she points out “the most comfortable way of life” for women in urban centers is to stay single and childless, she implies that prevalent marriage norms subjugate women and require substantial economic resources. To her, therefore, rather than pursuing family life, women should make a life through hard work.

Most recently, a star scientist and the kind of work-family tradeoff she represents became an inspiration for many young Chinese women. Nieng Yan, a world-leading molecular biologist trained at Princeton, was appointed a full professor at China’s prestigious Tsinghua University at the age of thirty and returned to Princeton as an endowed professor at forty. She has won numerous titles, including Nature’s “Star of Science in China” award, and is a foreign associate of the United States National Academy of

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Figure 1. Original (left) and Eventual Design (right) of the “Anti-Marriage Bombardment” Poster. The original design has “Marriage bombardment, Back off!” at the center, and “My life, I’m in charge” and “No marriage bombardment this New Year” on the two sides. The eventually used design has in blue “Singles are good youth too; spread the positive energy of singlehood.” Note: For why the organizers had to go with this “gentler design,” see Tatlow 2016.

Sciences. While proud of her achievements, the Chinese public keeps asking about her marital status and how she maintains work-family balance. Actively advocating for women in science, Yan never hesitates to speak about gender-based discrimination and openly embraces her single, childless lifestyle – a defiant stance rarely taken by successful career women in China. More than 720,000 people follow her Weibo account and millions have listened to her public talks and commentaries on the primacy of work for self-fulfillment online.

Yan is an icon for the non-cooperatives. According to one poster, “Marriage and childbearing are women’s largest sunken cost. Look at Yan; [then] look at those women who committed suicide due to postpartum depression – at the same age without distractions, women are capable of living a life with more excitement, options, and meanings.”54 The perceived conflicts between career accomplishments, on the one end, and marriage and childbearing, on the other, have become more heightened after the Chinese government ended its one-child policy in 2015 and began to promote two-child families. This restoration of reproductive legal rights spurred much uproar among young women, which all 54

https://www.weibo.com/6593893685/HsiR8vi6O?refer_flag=1001030103_&type=comment, Accessed June 2, 2019.

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makes sense when put in the Chinese context at the current conjuncture. Not only can surrounding sociocultural pressures force women to devote more time and vitality to their nuclear families, employers start discriminating against even those already with one child with the recognition that these women can potentially bear (and raise) another child.

However, non-cooperative C-fem, by heightening meritocracy and women’s earned spots in the class hierarchy, oftentimes displays a class-based attitude. This exacerbates the resentment of men, especially those in disadvantaged class positions, who feel threatened by women’s self-empowering voices. As both the non-cooperative and entrepreneurial strands of C-fem arouse strong sentiments associated with class grievances, the former is oftentimes ignored or mistaken for the latter by the public it seeks to engage.

To demonstrate this dynamic on the ground, we present below the vicious debates surrounding the play Yindaozhidao, arguably China’s first case of gender-based antagonism that drew crowds both on- and offline.

The backlash: talking past the non-cooperative strand Yindaozhidao, or “The Vagina’s Way/Say” (thereafter “VWS”), is a Chinese adaptation of Eve Ensler’s play, “The Vagina Monologues.” Although many casts have performed this play in China, the one from Beijing Foreign Studies University (BFSU) is the most well-known due to their innovative promotion in the winter of 2013.55 The students released “My Vagina Says” photos on Renren, a Chinese version of Facebook. In the photos, each cast member holds a board with a handwritten sentence that begins with “My Vagina Says,” followed by sentences such as “I Can Be Sexy, But You Can’t Harass Me,” “Someone Can Enter If I Say So,” and “Virginity is Bullshit!” The photos quickly found their way on to numerous social media websites, blogs, forums, and news portals. Within days, “BFSU girls” made it into the “hot search” list of Weibo, which at the time boasted a user base of approximately sixty million.56 Within three weeks, a video of these photos had been viewed more than two million times.57 These images generated an extensive backlash aimed at Chinese feminism and contemporary Chinese women in general.58 At the same time, many young women, mostly without much knowledge about the play itself, spoke out to defend the BFSU performers, backing up what they believed was a rightful feminist cause.

In the midst of heated debates over the VWS photos, a sympathetic poster published an essay entitled “Liberation and Autonomy” on Renren, offering a lengthy interpretation of each of the “My Vagina Says” sentences. This essay also became a target of critics. One commentator, Yan, expressed his long-held grudge about C-fem: [It] is so fake. It seeks all [feminine] rights but discards [feminine] responsibilities. […] Many young women in China think only of enjoyment, want this and that, and never talk about what they should do for the family. As for these board-holding girls from BFSU, after this will there be any men who dare take them?

The same “Young Feminist Activists” group was also involved in the campus production of the VWS. Wei 2013.

Jaffe 2013.

58 Wei 2013; Zhou and Cao 2013. Unsurprisingly, the overwhelming majority of participants in this backlash, according to social media user base data obtained by investigative reporters, were men. See Zhou and Cao 2013.

55 56 57

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In response, Lu, a VWS supporter posted: “Those BFSU girls will become independent and successful social elites. They will pick those most suitable to themselves out of hordes of admirers.” Refusing to back down, Yan provided his own interpretation of “the mentality of these BFSU girls”: They entered BFSU, learned some foreign words, and feel a sudden increase in their selfworth. They think they rank higher than average Chinese guys. But they are not good looking enough to secure fu’erdai (the second generation of wealthy families). Seducing foreigners seldom pans out either.

He concluded by suggesting that making a show like this was their only way to get attention.

Yan’s remarks are representative of critical comments all over social media and news portals. What these critics are targeting and magnifying is the entrepreneurial strand of C-fem. The root cause of their hostility and rage lies in their perception that C-fem – here embodied in popular support for the VWS photo promotion – pushes for the abandonment of traditional female chastity, so that feminist women may gain class privileges through wielding their sexuality. One comment makes clear the presumed linkage between women’s “sexual liberation” and male elites’ exclusive benefits: “Nowadays many officials have an ernai [‘second-wife’ or mistress], a sannai [‘third-wife’] … is this the liberation of women or of officials?” Another deplored, with rare frankness: Are women’s rights inadequate in today’s China? Are men not respecting women or are women just too demanding? As for college students, who owns the luxury cars waiting at the university gates during weekends? […] We men haven’t yet protested against harassment!

If this indeed is a claim of victimhood, far more frequent are commentators who vent their bitterness by projecting themselves onto upper-class men, with the power of buyers, to denounce women on the exclusive market. As one narrated: “My pal, a gaofushuai (a tall, rich, and handsome man) goes clubbing a lot, and has slept with dozens of BFSU girls. During our chats, whenever it comes to BFSU girls, he would sneer and say ‘those whores’.”59 As suggested by such comments, the perception that female sexuality is increasingly monopolized by privileged men is the basis of the most profound anxiety and frustration brewing among the economically less well-off majority. These men feel excluded from the alleged transactions that occur between women and upper-class men. Striving to maintain a sense of power in the face of this “immoral trade,” they unsurprisingly concentrated on the VWS performers’ appearances in those photos. Commentators evaluated and compared each young woman’s looks and ridiculed them for daring to draw attention to their sexuality when they are not sexually attractive enough. “Only the pretty ones get to speak,” one curt comment summarized, “the ugly ones stand back.” In this meaningmaking framework – which is also that of the entrepreneurial strand – the young women at BFSU and the Chinese women they symbolize are worthless if they lack sufficient sexual appeal. They are thus not in a position to demand much; worse, with limited “assets” to begin with, they have bankrupted themselves due to sexual promiscuity.

59

Consistent with the widespread social tension and anxiety we have unpacked here, a systematic study of Chinese online neologisms has found that terms referring to women stress sexuality and for men, monetary capital. Szablewicz 2014.

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However, the voices that supported the BFSU cast in this controversy belong to the non-cooperative strand. For example, Lu (quoted earlier) defended the BFSU women by emphasizing the activists’ full command over their own sexuality, because they “will become independent and successful social elites.” In other words, their ability to succeed economically allows their sexuality to be an end in itself. Frustrated by critics’ concentration on women’s sexual worth, the non-cooperatives argued that male “losers” or “sleazy guys” (weisuonan) would never stand a chance with women with successful careers and income. For example, one supporter tried to cheer up the BFSU cast by saying: “Ignore weisuonan’s foul-mouth. Why does it matter? Would an economically self-sufficient girl ever accept a weisuonan boyfriend?” Others explained that the detractors were victims of their low education and their hyper-online activity reflected their insignificant offline lives.

Nonetheless, anti-feminist critics make concerted efforts to reduce the non-cooperative strand to its entrepreneurial counterpart by ignoring women’s economic standing and their capacity to rival men in education and the workplace. In this case, the protagonists were enrolled at BFSU, a top-tier university in China. Commentators repeatedly pointed to the tuition costs borne by parents, refusing to acknowledge China’s infamous college entrance competition. For example, one framed the situation as such: “If my daughter were like you, I would not allow her to enter university. Parents work hard to pay for your college, and this is what you’ve learned?”

Contested transgressions: made-in-China feminism and its backlash In sum, under C-fem’s monolithic veneer, there are two transgressive strategies that women have utilized by redefining and realigning resources, rights, and responsibilities.

Both disrupt the hegemonic order, but in different ways. The entrepreneurial strand urges women to trash traditional wifely duties and work on performing conventional femininities to profit from the marriage market. To be sure, hypergamy is not new in China.

However, what distinguishes the entrepreneurial proposition is its emphasis on women’s individual agency and its blunt utilitarian view of marriage and heterosexual relationships in general. It is a woman herself, not her parents or any other authorities, who is responsible for the enterprise. Her ultimate goal is personal economic security, rather than the economic success or respectability of her family. This unsettles hegemonic family values and hence the stability of the marriage institution.60 However, by manipulating patriarchal norms for material gains, this strand enacts traditional patriarchal expectations of women and enhances hegemonic masculinity based on both economic and sexual dominance.61 Notably, a number of entrepreneurial women such as ayawawa have started relationship counseling businesses that sell their own successful stories and capitalize on the anxieties of their followers.

Conversely, the non-cooperative strand seeks to steer women away from the marriage market by encouraging them to aspire to career advancement and economic self-reliance.

Its emphasis on personal economic advantages is often mistaken as a sign for supporting Along these lines, the entrepreneurial strand may have the potential to “queer” the institution of heterosexual marriage.

We thank Hae Yeon Choo for this provocative observation.

61 Also see Song and Hird 2014.

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the neoliberal order. We argue it be interpreted in the context of the post-socialist patriarchal system as an option that permits women to take charge of their economic and personal lives. This non-cooperative strand forgoes the internal logic of the given system in both symbolic and material terrains, amounting to a systemic destabilizing force to structural oppression distinct to post-socialist China. Women who associate with this strand are more likely to take risks and participate in open protests targeting government practices and legislations (Table 1).

Meanwhile, the unsympathetic society at large keeps projecting and criticizing noncooperatives in the image of its entrepreneurial counterpart. Amidst China’s glaring economic inequality, an anti-feminist backlash formulated as such transposes the simmering discontent toward (male) elites onto transgressors of the gender order. Feminists – projected in the image of the entrepreneurial strand only – are blamed for abandoning conventional gender norms and for serving as sexual resources used by upper-class men to strengthen their masculinity. In comparison, to confront non-cooperative C-fem would bring a sense of emasculation. After all, the hegemonic masculinity in post-socialist China entails economic success and possession of female sexuality; posing a double threat, non-cooperative C-fem dismisses the hypergamous marriage market and focuses on women’s own career achievements. In short, persistent ignorance of the distinction between C-fem’s two strands makes it more effective to appropriate and channel suppressed class antagonism in the containment of female transgressions.

Furthermore, the discursive terrain in post-socialist China is conducive to the entanglement of class in gender discourses. On the one hand, market reforms have drastically changed gender representations, with previously suppressed gender and sexual expression now allowed, both legally and socially. Lacking an established critical language of gender, the post-socialist deluge of gender/sex representations is unusually “hospitable,” serving as a plethora of titillating materials that other social forces and agendas can conveniently mobilize.62 On the other hand, the post-socialist transition has included the discursive suppression of socioeconomic class. When class inequality is systematically rendered unrecognizable in popular representations, the misery and anxiety it engenders is absorbed by the discursive category of gender at the latter’s expense. Building on existing analyses of Chinese post-socialist transition that insightfully point out that the category of “gender” has served as a stand-in for “class,” 63 we argue that the ways in which C-fem channels acute yet unexpressed class antagonism, when considered at China’s present conjuncture, amount to a hegemonic displacement. Through this displacement, conflicts (such as class) perceived by ruling elites as more threatening have been absorbed by those seen as more manageable (such as gender discontent).64

Conclusion Assuming a state-society dichotomy, liberal observers of Chinese feminism have singled out actions and voices that potentially challenge regime legitimacy, paying little attention to the substance of local gender contentions. Readily borrowing the critical framework 62

Evans 2008. For example, Chinese online protest culture, acclaimed for its excellence in undermining state authorities, is often riddled with sexist images and narratives. See Wallis 2014.

63 Dai 2006; 125–158. Wang and Ying 2010.

64 Hall et al. 1978; Ortner 2006, 41.

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tackling neoliberalism, Chinese neo-left critics conflate Chinese feminism and post-second wave identity politics, despite the fact that the latter has unfolded in a different political, cultural, and economic milieu. Coming from ideologically opposite orientations, both intellectual accounts suffer from an analytical blindness to the local context in which women’s subjectivities and pursuits took shape. In this light, the prevalent portrayals of gender antagonism endemic in post-socialist China constitute a peculiar case of the ahistorical evaluation of Third World feminism.65 Chinese feminism is discursively annihilated as it is besieged by the liberal preoccupation with China’s “authoritarian present” and the neo-left agenda to resurrect its “socialist legacy.”66 Instead of deploying “feminism” as a self-evident reference, we focus on locally emergent women’s agitations identified and perceived as “feminism.” We further specify the primary form of these agitations – what we call “made-in-China feminism” – in relation to the broader ecology of gender politics in contemporary China. Combining ethnography and historiographical analysis, we approach C-fem (and its accompanying backlash) as a cultural formation at China’s present conjuncture. Specifically, China’s transition to postsocialism has set in place a new gendered structure of power that culminates in the predominance of a particular marriage market, a heterosexual institution governed by a market logic which emphasizes women’s economic dependency on men and their sexual objectification by men. Made-in-China feminism encompasses two forms of female transgressions that disrupt this hegemonic order. Out of the two, compared to its entrepreneurial counterpart, the non-cooperative approach may potentially develop into a collective force capable of initiating structural change. To what extent and in what ways this future holds, of course, remains an empirical question awaiting careful research. Meanwhile, the backlash against it embodies a hegemonic reformulation whereby suppressed class antagonism gets entangled in ever-intensifying gender antagonism.

This propensity for class resentment to articulate with gender politics also calls for rethinking the prevalent intellectual approaches to gender politics in China. Failing to recognize Chinese society’s class predicament, which conditions and obstructs genderbased agitations, the liberal approach reduces C-fem’s multi-sited battle to anti-regime activism and in turn constructs a narrowly-bounded narrative with bleak prospects.

The neo-left approach, in contrast, regards the (purportedly homogeneous) C-fem as an identity-based neoliberal project lacking an explicit agenda on class justice – a critique usually aimed at European and North American identity politics. In so doing, in the Chinese context the neo-left intellectual critique risks being co-opted by a societal backlash that holds grassroots feminism responsible for the worsening of the country’s class-based tensions.

More broadly, our analysis of made-in-China feminism suggests Third World analysts be cautious in not readily deploying the existing critique of neoliberalism. Such deployment typically follows the latter’s urge for re-prioritizing redistribution over recognition, an urge initially advanced in response to historical conditions in Europe and the United States. This leads to the assertion that local popular protests against injustice in realms other than class are prone to neoliberal cooptation. As we have demonstrated, on the 65

For a critique of such evaluation, especially against the global backdrop of neoliberalization, see Schild 2015.

See Spakowski 2018.

66

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contrary, it may be one of the perverse consequences of neoliberalization that class conflicts become dispersed onto activism within non-class discursive categories in the locality. More than a conceptual slippage, relying on this critic of neoliberalism to explain actually existing feminism in China amounts to a powerful ideological foreclosure.

Instead, we call for careful investigations into the protest rhetoric and practices that are dynamically formulated under specific historical and structural conditions in nonWestern societies. Such investigations will be critical to exploring and theorizing the emancipatory politics of our times.

Acknowledgements Our thanks to Tamara Jacka and an anonymous reader for Critical Asian Studies for their thoughtful, constructive feedback, as well as Robert Shepherd’s editorial guidance. Over the four and half years of developing this article, our thinking has progressed thanks to invaluable input from Paula Chakravartty, Wang Zheng, Eileen Otis, Hae Yeon Choo, Katrina Quisumbing King, Janice Radway, Joel Andreas, Xiaohong Xu, Nina Luzhou Li, as well as the unyielding struggles of numerous Chinese women.

Disclosure statement No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors Angela Xiao Wu (Ph.D. in Media, Technology, and Society, Northwestern University) is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Media, Culture, and Communication, New York University.

Wu is an American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) Fellow in China Studies. She investigates the connection between information technology and public cultures.

Yige Dong (Ph.D. in Sociology, Johns Hopkins University) is the Suzanne W. Barnett Chair of Contemporary China Studies and Assistant Professor in International Political Economy, University of Puget Sound. Dong is a Woodrow Wilson National Fellow in Women’s Studies. Her research lies at the intersection of gender, political economy, and contentious politics.

ORCID Angela Xiao Wu http://orcid.org/0000-0001-9559-8225 Yige Dong http://orcid.org/0000-0003-4944-0245

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Annals of GIS

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Evaluating gender representativeness of locationbased social media: a case study of Weibo Yihong Yuan, Guixing Wei & Yongmei Lu To cite this article: Yihong Yuan, Guixing Wei & Yongmei Lu (2018) Evaluating gender representativeness of location-based social media: a case study of Weibo, Annals of GIS, 24:3, 163-176, DOI: 10.1080/19475683.2018.1471518 To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/19475683.2018.1471518

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ANNALS OF GIS 2018, VOL. 24, NO. 3, 163–176 https://doi.org/10.1080/19475683.2018.1471518

Evaluating gender representativeness of location-based social media: a case study of Weibo Yihong Yuan, Guixing Wei and Yongmei Lu Department of Geography, Texas State University, San Marcos, TX, USA

ABSTRACT

ARTICLE HISTORY

Researchers have utilized location-based social media (LBSM) as potential resources to characterize daily mobility patterns and social perceptions of place. Similar to other types of big data, LBSM data also have differential data-quality issues such as accuracy, precision, temporal resolution, and sampling biases across various population groups. However, these issues have not been investigated sufficiently for LBSM users. This research aims to quantitatively examine the sampling biases of a Chinese microblogging site, Weibo, which is functionally similar to Twitter. The analysis focuses on investigating the bias in gender groups, and how this bias varies/autocorrelates in different provinces of China. The results indicate that in general, women are more likely to use Weibo in China. We also detected a strong regional pattern for Weibo gender ratios. The results provide valuable input in quantifying demographic biases in Weibo, and the methodology can be applied to other LBSM to analyse sample biases. This study also offers a data preprocessing strategy to identify potential research questions in sociology, regional science, and gender studies.

Received 24 November 2017 Accepted 27 April 2018

1. Introduction In recent decades, the development of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs, such as the Internet and Web 2.0) has provided more flexibility and capability regarding where, when, and how people connect to each other (De Souza e Silva 2007; Chow, Lin, and Chan 2011). A series of Social Network Sites (SNS), such as Facebook and Twitter, have allowed worldwide users to communicate, socialize, and share their daily lives. Meanwhile, the widespread use of smartphones, which are equipped with sensors that allow users to instantly locate themselves, has brought another crucial aspect to this development: location. Researchers have defined location-based social media (LBSM) as ‘Social Network Sites that include location information’ (Roick and Heuser 2013).

Unlike traditional travel surveys or actively collected Global Positioning System (GPS) logs (Scholtz and Lu 2014), LBSM data sets often cover a large sample size and can easily be accessed through application programming interfaces (APIs) in standard formats, and therefore can be utilized as potential resources to characterize daily mobility patterns and social perceptions of place (Malleson and Birkin 2014; Barbier et al. 2012).

The ability to accurately process such massive data sets

CONTACT Yihong Yuan

yuan@txstate.edu

© 2018 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group

KEYWORDS

Location-based social media (LBSM); sampling bias; gender studies; spatial autocorrelation; big (geo) data

brings new challenges to the big data era. Compared to geo-referenced mobile phone data such as Call Detailed Records (CDRs), LBSM data often have more reliable spatial accuracy (5–10 m from built-in GPS devices versus 100–1000 m from cellular towers). Another advantage of LBSM data is the potential to extract subjects’ background information (e.g. demographic information like age and gender), which tends to be extremely difficult to obtain from cell phone carriers due to privacy issues (Calabrese, Ferrari, and Blondel 2015). Therefore, crowd-sourced LBSM tends to provide faster and more detailed contextual data than traditional sources (Barbier et al. 2012).

Similar to other types of big data, LBSM data also have different data-quality issues such as accuracy, precision, temporal resolution, and sampling biases across various population groups. Researchers in sociology and public relations have addressed the need to validate social media data for both personal usage (e.g. information subscription) and authority usage (e.g. emergency planning) (Zamri, Darson, and Wahab 2014; Westerman, Spence, and Van der Heide 2014; Poorthuis and Zook 2017). Previous studies also focused on inferring LBSM demographic attributes from a text-

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mining perspective (Zhong et al. 2015; Sloan et al.

2015). However, the demographic bias of LBSM data and its influence on the quality of derived mobility patterns have not been thoroughly studied, which inevitably affect the reliability of mobility studies based on these data sets (Burger et al. 2011). For instance, each social media platform has certain characteristics and affordances – things that it allows and makes easy versus things that are difficult to accomplish (Rutherford et al. 2013; Golub and Jackson 2010).

This helps shape behaviour as well as the user group (e.g. race, gender, age) on social media sites (Tufekci 2014). For example, more than 50% of Twitter users are between the ages of 16 and 34 years (Business Insider 2014). Instagram, on the other hand, particularly attracts adults between the ages of 18 and 29, women, and urban dwellers (Forbes 2014). However, there is very limited research on investigating how the sampling bias in demographic groups varies or autocorrelates in space.

Realizing the necessity to evaluate the sampling biases and representativeness of LBSM in modelling human mobility (Cho, Myers, and Leskovec 2011; Hasan, Zhan, and Ukkusuri 2013), this research takes an initial step by examining the gender biases of a Chinese microblogging site, Weibo, which is one of the most popular Chinese social-networking websites and functionally similar to Twitter. Even though it is common knowledge that user profiles in any social media platform are inevitably biased, this study does not stop at confirming the fact that ‘almost all LBSM sites have a biased user group.’ Instead, we want to go one step further by addressing how this data representativeness issue is distributed spatially. That is, the demographic biases of LBSM users naturally manifest into a source of geographic biases in LBSM, which originates from the tendency of geographic features relating to each other in space, violating the assumption of independent observations required in classical statistics (Griffith 2003).

As exploratory research, this study focuses on one of the most basic demographic factors: gender. In addition to the basic question, ‘Is there an unbalanced gender representativeness in Weibo (especially for users posting their locations)?,’ we also aim to investigate two followup research questions: 1) ‘Does this under-representation/over-representation show a spatially autocorrelated pattern following the first law of geography?’ and 2) ‘Does this under-representation/over-representation show a statistically significant correlation with basic social economic factors that can be used to explain gender inequality?’ These questions are essential for assessing LBSM data quality and soundness of experimental design.

Hence, this paper contributes from the following two perspectives: 1) empirically, we examine the variation of LBSM gender biases in Chinese provinces and how these variations autocorrelate spatially, and 2) methodologically, we demonstrate how these autocorrelated patterns can be utilized as a powerful data-mining tool for crucial social topics, such as gender inequality and segregation (Yuan and Wei 2016).

This paper is organized as follows. Section 2 synthesizes related studies in the areas of LBSM and data quality. Section 3 illustrates the fundamental research design, including the Weibo data set and the methodology. Section 4 presents the data analyses and results and discusses various aspects of the output in detail.

We conclude this research and present directions for future work in Section 5.

2. Related work 2.1. Analysing user behaviours from LBSM The continued development of social networking websites (SNS) such as Twitter and Facebook provides everincreasing opportunities to explore activity patterns of individuals within diverse geographic environments, social statuses, and cultural backgrounds (Wu et al.

2014; Liu et al. 2014b; Noulas, Mascolo, and FriasMartinez 2013). LBSM has attracted users worldwide and allowed them to share their whereabouts at daily, weekly, and long-term temporal scales, making LBSM particularly suitable for modelling individual activity patterns such as activity scheduling, social network structure, location prediction, etc. These technologies also lead to a fundamental change in how citizens may contribute crowdsourcing data in the decision-making process of urban planning (Crampton et al. 2013; Elwood 2006).

Despite potential data-quality issues, previous studies have demonstrated the effectiveness of LBSM data in analysing activity behaviours and constructing mobility models (Musolesi, Hailes, and Mascolo 2004; Cho, Myers, and Leskovec 2011). For instance, Gao, Tang, and Liu (2012) investigated the role of social correlation in users’ check-in behaviour to improve the accuracy of location prediction. Hasan, Zhan, and Ukkusuri (2013) analysed the timing distribution of visiting different places depending on the activity category of individual users. Researchers also investigated how LBSM data sets can be utilized to parameterize the traditional mobility models under demographic controlling factors (Gao and Liu 2015; Noulas et al. 2012).

In addition to the analysis of individual activity patterns and space, LBSM data provide a great opportunity

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for investigating how human mobility patterns are shaped by urban environments from an aggregated perspective and how the latter (urban-oriented studies) may be managed or designed to better suit the needs of the former (individual-oriented studies) (Bawa-Cavia 2011; Cranshaw et al. 2012). As noted by Roick and Heuser (2013), the continuously shared location information through LBSM services can be used to analyse urban structures, clusters, and dynamics (Lu 2000). The concept of social sensing – using social media as a data source to study cities and societies – has provided useful information for urban planners and policymakers (Liu et al. 2015).

Because Twitter, Facebook, and several other SNS are not directly accessible in mainland China, previous studies have used Weibo as a primary data source to analyse LBSM user activity patterns and provide useful input for urban planners and policymakers in China (Zhang et al. 2016; Zhang et al. 2012; Liu, Dong, and Gu 2014a). For instance, Liu, Dong, and Gu (2014a) demonstrated how to use geotagged Weibo posts as data to analyse the distribution of air pollution topics in China. Guan et al. (2014) analysed user behaviour patterns on Weibo during hot events. However, many of these studies did not address the potential sampling biases and data-quality issues of Weibo, which is crucial for evaluating the results of quantitative studies based on such data sets.

2.2. Data-quality issues in LBSM In spite of the widespread use of LBSM as a major source of big (geo) data, there have been drawbacks in quantifying its quality issues and justifying the usage of such data in certain applications (Elwood and Leszczynski 2011; Harvey 2013; Kitchin 2013). As discussed in Goodchild (2013), big (geo)data are often assembled from various data sources that lack consistent quality control, which inevitably brings extra challenges to analysing such data. To help better understand big data quality, researchers have proposed four big V’s to determine the characteristics of big data: Volume (massive amount of data available), Velocity (how fast data is being generated), Variety (big data is a collection of data sets that are in different formats), and Veracity (the degree of accuracy and uncertainty of data) (IBM 2015). These uncertainty issues may come from various sources, from the data set to be mined, the process of mining such data, or applying uncertain knowledge to new data sets (Xia 2005; Mislove et al. 2012).

The gender representativeness issue addressed in this study can be considered a subset of the ‘Veracity’

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issue of the four big ‘V’s, which addresses the incompleteness and bias that originate from the data set itself. As discussed in Section 1, there is insufficient study on how basic geographic laws, such as Tobler’s First Law of Geography (Tobler 2004; Tobler 1979), may influence how these biases manifest spatially; hence, it is crucial to assess the reliability of LBSM data for mobility analysis (Spielman 2014; Veregin 1999), including but not limited to the following. ● Data quantity and resolution: Limited location

sampling resolution is an inevitable issue in LBSM (users may check-in once per day or even less, and check-in data are generated at a different speed for various user groups). However, in practice, the appropriate data size and sampling resolution are often determined arbitrarily when using LBSM to analyse activity patterns. There has yet to be a systematic study on how a user’s activity space changes upon collected sample size and temporal resolution of LBSM. Although in general, larger sample sizes can provide more location information for a certain user, researchers often seek a ‘reasonable’ sampling size and resolution, which achieves a balance between the details of information and computation efficiency/collection cost. In addition, researchers in computer science and engineering have also focused on the real-time processing of social media data, such as semantic labelling of fastgenerated social media posts in a real-time flow (Trinh Minh Tri and Gatica-Perez 2014). ● Data completeness, sampling bias, and population representativeness: Obviously, users of LBSM are not a randomly selected population (Golub and Jackson 2010; Rutherford et al. 2013; Crooks et al.

2013). Pinterest, for instance, particularly attracts women between the ages of 25 and 34 with average household incomes of $100,000 (Carnegie Mellon University 2014). Researchers have addressed the representativeness issue of LBSM in recent studies, which is related to the concept of ‘racialized cyberspace’ in cultural geography and political science. Previous studies investigated whether the large spread of new media reinforced or mitigated racial and ethnic stereotypes (Fekete 2015; Zook and Graham 2007). For example, Zickuhr (2013) found that age, gender, and race have substantial impact on people’s usage of social media, where young people, women, and minorities show a greater percentage of usage.

However, her results indicated that gender did not affect the rate of whether an account is

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location-enabled. These studies naturally raised concerns that LBSM data sets may not be accurate, objective, or representative of the entire population (Kitchin 2014). Studies by Leszczynski and Crampton (2016) and Hawelka et al. (2014) also discussed the validity of utilizing geotagged tweets from a selective and self-selecting population. Other biases include the ‘tyranny of the loud,’ where a small but active group of users generates a large amount of records, which distorts the representativeness of the data set (Rzeszewski 2018). As discussed in Section 2.1, current studies on LBSM spatio-temporal patterns mainly focus on analysing user preferences (i.e. where and when geotagged posts are more likely to be generated) (Hasan, Zhan, and Ukkusuri 2013), as well as their implications for urban and transportation studies (Cho, Myers, and Leskovec 2011; Bawa-Cavia 2011; Roick and Heuser 2013; Zhang et al. 2016; LibenNowell et al. 2005; Rzeszewski 2018). Many of these studies, however, do not focus on identifying how user demographic biases distribute spatially, which is crucial for understanding the influence of LBSM data biases on the quality of derived human mobility.

Even though the complexity of the geography world makes it virtually impossible for researchers to draw a random sample, and most geography experiments and surveys are ‘natural’ and uncontrolled (Goodchild 2013), it is still beneficial for researchers to understand how biased these limited samples are. Questions like ‘Are females more likely to use LBSM in more urbanized areas?’ and ‘Do industrialized large cities have a less biased sample on LBSM than smaller cities?’ can help researchers evaluate the soundness of their research design when utilizing such data sets (Longley, Adnan, and Lansley 2015). ● Data accuracy and consistency: Studies have con-

centrated on identifying spam and untrustworthy posts on social media sites (DeBarr and Wechsler 2010; Saini 2014; Guo and Chen 2014). However, there have been very limited solutions for detecting fake/suspicious location check-ins. In certain cases, it is even challenging for researchers to identify whether a social media post is from a human being or is automatically generated by an algorithm (i.e. ‘social bots’). This brings extra challenge to human mobility studies (Crampton et al.

2013; Tsou et al. 2015). Another issue to take into consideration is the accuracy of mobile GPS. Applications like Foursquare allow users to checkin to receive points and/or rewards when they are

within the vicinity of a certain location. Another category of accuracy checking applies to aggregated LBSM data in urban studies (i.e. cross-validating urban clusters and estimation accuracy with other data sources (e.g. census)).

Although this study focuses on exploring gender bias, it is worth noting that gender studies related to LBSM are not limited to imbalanced gender representation or data-quality issues. Several studies also analysed other gender-specific behaviours on social media and the implications for online communications, such as how gender differences relate to different language styles and vocabularies (Schwartz et al. 2013; Ye et al.

2018). For example, Ye et al. (2018) concluded that females are more likely to use emotional and positive hashtags while posting photos on Instagram. These gender-specific language styles also provide quantified evidence to predict gender information for users with incomplete profiles (Burger et al. 2011; Argamon et al.

2003; Longley and Adnan 2016; Mislove et al. 2012).

Besides language preferences, researchers also studied the social network structures of men and women and identified gender differences in constructing new connections and maintaining existing connections on social media (Marwick 2013; Mazman and Usluel 2011; van Oosten, Vandenbosch, and Peter 2017). Mazman and Usluel (2011) concluded that even though men are more likely to make new connections, women are actually more inclined to maintain existing relationships using social media. In Volkovich et al. (2014), the authors found a tendency of gender segregation on social media, where people with the same gender are much more likely to connect on social media; however, users with a large social circle tend to make more connections with users of the opposite gender.

As discussed in Section 1, this research aims to address LBSM data quality from completeness and representativeness perspectives. We aim to analyse the spatial distribution of gender bias in Chinese provinces and how this bias may relate to certain socio-economic factors, such as the male-to-female sex ratio at birth (SRB).

3. Research design 3.1. Data set Weibo was launched in 2009 by its parent company, Sina Corporation, and soon became one of the most influential and popular microblogging/social networking sites in China. By 2015, Weibo already had 222 million subscribers and 100 million daily users, and this number continues to grow rapidly (Sina Corp

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2013–2017). Because of its widespread usage and popularity among the public in China, we chose Weibo as our analysis test bed. The data set used in this research was acquired from the official Weibo APIs in JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) format. Weibo users can choose to publish their age, gender, education, employment, and more detailed background information in their public profiles. Previous data collections show around 20%–30% of Weibo users have their demographic information publicly available.1 We retrieved this information directly from Weibo user profiles through Weibo APIs. The location of Weibo users is acquired through built-in GPS modules of smartphones. Originally, we collected data from over 4.3 million users who checked-in their locations at least once between March 2015 and November 2015. The subset utilized in this research covers around 0.24 million Weibo users who reported their date of birth, gender, and current residential city, which is approximately 5.67% of the over 4.3 million users whose data we collected. This number is lower than the aforementioned 20%–30%, as many users with a public profile may have incomplete information (e.g. reported gender information, but no current residential city, or vice versa). Within the selected sample set, the percentage of male and female users is 33.37% male to 66.63% female. It is important to note that we use reported residential city information from user profiles instead of the coordinates of individual posts, because this study focuses on user background instead of on individual posts.

Note that Weibo also allows an individual or an entity (e.g. organizations, companies, governmental agencies, etc.) to register for a verified account, where the creator needs to submit government-issued documents to verify their information. An organizational account can also choose a gender during the registration process. In our sample set, only 2.8% of the accounts are verified, with a mix of individual (e.g. celebrities) and organizational accounts. Because Sina Corp does not currently provide a good method to differentiate between individual and organizational accounts, and semantic analysis is not the focus of this study, we did not eliminate the small percentage of organizational accounts.

Table 1 shows a few sample user profile records.

(Only data fields related to this research are displayed.)

Besides Weibo data, this research also utilizes province-level census data acquired from the National Table 1. Example data records.

User ID 3453****** 2185******

Gender Female Male

Date of Birth 1979–01-12 1990–10-15

Province Beijing Shanxi

City Beijing Taiyuan

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Bureau of Statistics of China as background information used to verify population demographics, as well as basic socio-economic data in different provinces (National Bureau of Statistics of China 2010). National census data is collected every 10 years in China, and the statistics used in this study are from the most recent data collection campaign in 2010.

3.2. Methodology As mentioned in Section 1, many existing studies have utilized LBSM data to study human mobility, but few have addressed how biases of such data or the populations they represent distribute spatially, as well as the potential data quality issues they may reveal. This study examines the sampling bias – the sample representing specific population groups in terms of gender, age, and geography, using the following three steps. ● Step 1. Preprocess data

The 0.24 million Weibo users were grouped based on the ‘current province/city’ information of their profiles. We calculated the percentage of users by gender (male:female) groups. As defined by the American Psychological Association (APA), ‘gender refers to the attitudes, feelings, and behaviors that a given culture associates with a person’s biological sex.’ (APA 2015, 3). A person’s gender identity – the inherent sense of being a male, female, or an alternative gender (e.g. genderqueer, gender non-conforming, boygirl, ladyboi) – may or may not be consistent with a person’s sex assigned at birth (APA 2015). So, although the concept of gender goes beyond being a binary variable, Weibo’s user profiles only have two options for the gender field, ‘female’ or ‘male.’ Based on that Weibo limitation, gender in this study is considered a binary variable. ● Step 2. Compare Weibo gender data with census

data To better illustrate the under-/over-representation of demographic groups in Weibo, we define a normalized M:F ratio (M:F)N as follows: ðM : FÞN ¼

ðM : FÞW ðM : FÞC

(1)

where (M:F)W and (M:F)C indicate the male-to-female ratios in the Weibo data and census data, respectively.

(M:F)N < 1 shows an over-representation of females in Weibo. In the scenario where (M:F)N > 1, female users are under-represented in Weibo data. The smaller the (M:F)N is, the better the females are represented in Weibo data.

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● Step 3. Analyse spatial autocorrelation and regio-

nal patterns The (M:F)N index defined in step 2 is used to analyse the regional pattern of under-/over-representation in demographic groups on Weibo. We use classic spatial autocorrelation analyses to explore the spatial patterns of demographic representation in Chinese provinces.

Specifically, we use the Getis-Ord General G method for the hotspot analysis (Ripley 2004) and the grouping analysis method for the detection of natural groups considering spatial constraints, which is a process to cluster regions by applying a connectivity graph (minimum spanning tree) to find natural groupings (Esri 2015). Although researchers have proposed various methods to quantify spatial autocorrelation (Griffith 1988; Gelfand 2010), we chose the Getis-Ord General G analysis because of its ability to differentiate between the clusters of high values and low values. The grouping analysis aims to explore finer regional patterns by clustering the provinces based on their (M:F)N and spatial adjacency.

4. Analysis and results Table 2 and Figure 1 illustrate the normalized ratio of male to female users in Chinese provinces, provinciallevel cities, special administrative units (e.g. Hong Kong and Macau), and users outside of China (‘overseas’), as

Figure 1. (M:F)N (normalized M:F ratio) by province.

well as the (M:F)N. Because gender is considered as a binary variable in this study, the analysis and interpretation in this section focus on female users only.

As shown in Table 2 and Figure 1, the majority of provinces exhibit an M:F ratio lower than 0.65, indicating that there are almost twice as many female users posting their locations as male users. It is noted that the average (M:F)W of the whole data set is 0.5. In contrast, the official census data indicates an opposite trend, where most provinces in China have a slightly higher male than female population ((M:F)C > 1). The Table 2. Male to female ratio (M:F ratio) from Weibo data and census data.

Beijing Tianjin Hebei Shanxi Inner Mongolia Liaoning Jilin Heilongjiang Shanghai Jiangsu Zhejiang Anhui Fujian Jiangxi Shandong Henan Hubei Hunan

M:F (Weibo) 0.605 0.499 0.543 0.475 0.468 0.47 0.456 0.44 0.506 0.532 0.45 0.585 0.562 0.539 0.581 0.594 0.57 0.43

M:F (Census) 1.068 1.145 1.028 1.056 1.081 1.025 1.027 1.032 1.062 1.015 1.057 1.034 1.06 1.075 1.023 1.021 1.056 1.058

Guangdong Guangxi Hainan Chongqing Sichuan Guizhou Yunnan Tibet Shaanxi Gansu Qinghai Ningxia Xinjiang Taiwan Hong Kong Macau Overseas

M:F (Weibo) 0.546 0.487 0.501 0.422 0.473 0.56 0.541 0.757 0.567 0.779 0.745 0.612 0.486 0.965 0.706 1.753 0.818

M:F (Census) 1.09 1.083 1.109 1.024 1.031 1.069 1.078 1.057 1.069 1.044 1.074 1.051 1.053 0.998 1.070 0.946 N/A

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correlation of M:F ratios between Weibo data and census statistics is not significant. On the other hand, the 2014–2015 statistics published by Sina Corporation (the parent company of Weibo) indicate that the M:F ratio of active users (not limited to those who post their locations) decreased from 1.56 to 1 (Sina Corp 2013–2017), indicating a trend of increasing percentage of female active users on the site from 2014 to 2015. Table 3 shows the M:F ratios published by Sina Corp from 2013 to 2017. As can be seen, the M:F ratios fluctuate from year to year and do not show a clear increasing or decreasing trend.

Additionally, a more detailed report from 2011 also indicates that, among all active users, the percentage of female users utilizing the location-based service (LBS) features (e.g. location check-in) is substantially higher than male users (M:F ratio = 0.71) (Sina Corp 2011). Our case study further confirmed that the M:F ratio continued to decrease to 0.50 in 2015 among users who checked in locations on Weibo, which implies that more and more females are actively using the checkin feature of Weibo in China.

Table 3. Male to female ratio (M:F ratio) from Sina Corp Yearly Report (Sina Corp 2013–2017).

Year M:F Ratio

2013 1.00

2014 1.56

2015 1.00

2016 1.25

2017 1.29

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Figure 1 also demonstrates the spatial distribution of LBSM gender biases among Chinese provinces. For example, the western provinces (Tibet, Qinghai, and Gansu) show a cluster of high (M:F)N, meaning that female LBSM users in these provinces are less likely to identify their locations on LBSM compared to provinces with a low (M:F)N. Figure 2 shows the results of a Getis-Ord General G analysis. We adopt the Euclidean distance to measure the distance between the centres of each province. The clustering of high/low values is based on the commonly used inverse distance method. The result confirms a hotspot of (M:F)N in northwestern China, where women are less likely to share their locations on Weibo. In addition, we can also observe two moderate cold spots of (M:F)N (1<GiZscore≤2) in northeast and southwest China. Note that outlier provinces that have distinct patterns from their adjacent provinces may not be reflected in the General-G analysis. For example, in Figure 1, Xinjiang province in northwest China has a much lower (M:F)N than the surrounding provinces (i.e.

Tibet and Qinghai); however, the General-G analysis did not pick up this isolated cold spot.

Because hotspot analysis mainly focuses on clustered extreme values, we also conducted a spatially constrained K-means clustering analysis to explore regional patterns in China (Esri 2015). We grouped Chinese provinces into clusters based on their adjacency and the

Figure 2. Getis-Ord General G analysis of (M:F)N; GiZ Score < −1.0 indicates cold spots, GiZ Score >1.0 indicates hotspots. GiZ Score ∈ [−1.0, 1.0] indicates that the feature is not a significant cold spot or hotspot.

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(M:F)N index (c.f. Figure 3). The distance method is also Euclidean distance, and we only consider contiguity along edges. The number of clusters is determined based on the Pseudo F-statistics (Esri 2015). Here, we adopt 10 clusters for the analysis.

As can be seen, the normalized Weibo gender ratios of China provinces exhibit a clear regional pattern, which can help propose hypotheses in cultural geography and gender studies in China. Some examples are as follows. ● The three western provinces (Tibet, Qinghai, and

Gansu) form a cluster of high (M:F)N. These regions are generally perceived as ‘under-developed’ areas in China with low gross domestic product (GDP) values, which potentially affects women’s openness in reporting their geographic locations in new media such as LBSM. A similar result was also reflected in Zhao, Yang, and Hao (2016), where the authors investigated the percentage of female principle investigators (PIs) funded by the Chinese National Science Foundation by province.

Tibet, Qinghai, and Gansu are among the lowest, which further confirmed gender inequality in the sciences in these three provinces. ● Northeast China (Heilongjiang, Jilin, and Liaoning) as well as Inner Mongolia and Shanxi form a cluster of low (M:F)N, whereas Central China (Shandong, Henan, and Anhui) forms a cluster of

Figure 3. Grouping analysis of Chinese provinces based on (M:F)N index.

high (M:F)N. In gender studies, male-to-female SRB is a commonly used indicator to reflect women’s social status (Pani and Pani 2010; Edwards and Roces 2009; Poston et al. 1997). The SRB data used in this study is also from the 2010 census data collection. Previous studies showed that the northeastern provinces (Heilongjiang, Jilin, and Liaoning) have a low SRB that is below the first quartile (25%) of all Chinese provinces, but the central provinces (Shandong, Henan, and Anhui) are all among the provinces with the most imbalanced gender ratios (Poston et al. 1997; Wang, Leung, and Handayani 2006). This indicates that the traditional Chinese birth preference for sons is weaker in Northeast China, but much stronger in Shandong, Henan, and Anhui, which also demonstrates a possible correlation between the social status of women and their usage of LBSM. To test this hypothesis, we conducted a geographically weighted (GWR) analysis exploring the correlation between SRB and the normalized M:F ratio from Weibo. Unlike traditional ordinary least square (OLS) regression, GWR generates a separate regression equation for every feature analysed in a sample data set to address spatial variation.

Therefore, it improves modelling accuracy and ameliorates residual errors by mitigating spatialautocorrelation (Fotheringham, Brunsdon, and Charlton 2002; Di Ciaccio, Coli, and Angulo

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Ibañez 2012). Figure 4 shows the distribution of local R2 for Chinese provinces. As can be seen, Shandong, Henan, and Anhui show the highest local R2 between 0.6 and 0.8 (i.e. the strongest correlation between SRB and the normalized M:F ratio on Weibo). Several provinces/provincial-level regions in Southwest China (e.g. Sichuan and Chongqing) also show a moderate R2 between 0.4 and 0.5. These are also the provinces with the lowest SRB and culturally more female-dominant in families and households. This further confirms our hypothesis that a higher female social status correlates positively with their location-sharing behaviour on Weibo. Note that GWR takes input from adjacent provinces to construct a regression model; hence, it did not fully capture the low cluster of normalized M:F ratio in northeast China. For example, Heilongjiang has only two adjacent provinces, making it challenging to construct a statistically significant model. ● The two special administrative units (Hong Kong and Macau) and Taiwan demonstrate very different behaviour from mainland China, with higher M:F ratios in general (Hong Kong: 0.70641; Macau: 1.752874; Taiwan: 0.965445). Macau is the only study area that has more reported male than female LBSM users on Weibo. The behavioural differences and the openness of women to LBSM in Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan on the one

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hand, and mainland China on the other, may relate to the different social regulations in these places. However, these hypotheses have to be further tested and verified in social studies, which is beyond the scope of this research.

This study aims to inspect the spatial pattern of gender biases from Weibo data, as well as provide a datamining strategy for LBSM-related studies. The methodology used in this research is valuable for pattern recognition, interest identification, and hypotheses formulation in multiple areas, such as sociology, gender studies, urban planning, and cultural geography. This was best demonstrated by the concept of ‘social sensing’ proposed in Liu et al. (2015), where the authors argued that big (geo) data are powerful sensor tools for monitoring social activities in the age of instant access. For the researchers in the LBSM field, this study is valuable for demonstrating the potential data-quality issues and demographic biases in such data sets, which is crucial for designing a sound experiment and/or exploring geotemporal factors causing these biases.

5. Discussion and conclusion As discussed in Section 1, the motivation of this research is to explore the gender biases in Weibo users, as well as investigate the spatial autocorrelation

Figure 4. Local correlation coefficient (R2) of a geographically weighted regression.

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of such biases among Chinese provinces and the derived regional patterns. In summary, this study quantified the gender biases of Weibo users from various empirical perspectives. ● The results indicate that, in general, among the

users who reported their age, gender, and current residential city, female users are more likely to report their locations on Weibo in China. This is consistent with previous findings on gender preferences on other LBSM sites, where researchers identified that females are more likely to report their geographic information on social media (Haffner et al. 2018). This verification of sampling statistics provides valuable input for various application fields, such as the personalization of LBSM user experiences. LBSM provide a rich data source for analysing demographic patterns at various spatial scales, such as investigating the variations inside different neighbourhoods of an urban system. The results provide valuable input for quantifying demographic bias in LBSM and investigating how this bias varies spatially. We also detected a strong regional pattern for LBSM gender ratios in different provinces, which further verified the conclusion of many regional studies that Chinese provinces are well bounded by diverse cultural backgrounds. The regional pattern of Weibo gender biases is potentially a synergistic result of multiple socio-economic factors, including but not limited to the social status of women, average GDP and income, etc. In this study, we confirmed

the local correlation between gender ratio at birth and the normalized M:F ratio from Weibo. ● The methods and results of this study provide valuable input for various applications, including but not limited to: 1) quantifying and reducing demographic biases in LBSM data to achieve a more accurate result; 2) providing a data-mining strategy for social topics, such as gender inequality; and 3) reconfirming and validating regional patterns from other sociology studies. For example, it is well known that certain Chinese provinces are grouped or bounded by similar cultural backgrounds; however, it has been challenging to quantify such patterns in social studies before big (geo)data became available.

It is important to highlight that although this study generated valuable insights for investigating the biases of LBSM across geographies, there are several aspects that may be further addressed in future studies. ● Potential modifiable areal unit problem (MAUP): It

Figure 5. Point density distribution of male and female users in Beijing.

is worth noting that the MAUP may affect the analysis results (Horner and Murray 2002; Jelinski and Wu 1996). MAUP refers to a source of statistical bias that can radically affect statistical hypothesis tests when point-based measures (e.g. population density) are aggregated into districts.

As an exemplary study, we have used the provincial-level scale (consistent with the census data published by the Chinese census bureau). For example, Figure 5 depicts a point density analysis

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of male and female users in Beijing. As can be seen, the two gender groups demonstrate distinct patterns, where females are more spread out over the entire city with a few clusters in the southwest and the east side of the city, and male users clustered at the city centre. This may cause substantial sampling biases if the study area is only limited to a subregion of Beijing. Future studies can focus on exploring how spatial scales and MAUP impact our results (i.e. perform cross-comparisons of results at the city or sub-city levels). ● Accuracy of self-reported data: This study is based on self-reported data from user profiles. It is possible for users to report false data when registering for a Weibo account, which inevitably affects the results of this study. However, the gender/age ratio derived from this study is consistent with the trend indicated in the official demographic statistics published by the Sina Corporation (the parent company of Weibo) (Sina Corp 2013–2017), which supports the usability of user profile data despite its potential accuracy problem. ● Weibo API protocol sampling issue: In practice, the sampling strategy of LBSM access protocol is often controlled by the data vendor (González-Bailón et al. 2014). Weibo, for example, only makes unfiltered ‘firehose’ data available for selected business partners and leaves the sampling strategy and protocol of its publicly available Search and Streaming APIs in a black box. This research does not evaluate the effect of API sampling strategy because: 1) the firehose data are generally not available to the public; and 2) the volume of geotagged posts from such APIs was shown to be spatially representative and was close to the complete set, especially if a geographic bounding box was used (Morstatter et al. 2013). ● Creation of a more synthetic model for sampling bias: In addition to SRB, we also attempted to correlate the sampling bias indicator (M:F)N with various other socio-economic factors, such as the average income, urbanization ratio, and GDP of provinces, but none of the factors in isolation was significantly correlated with (M:F)N. This is potentially due to the limited number of provinces that demonstrate a connection between (M:F)N and these explanatory variables to even construct a GWR regression model. In addition, this suggests that even though the sampling bias reveals a clear regional pattern, the underlying cause of how this bias varies spatially is a multifaceted synthetic effect, which may relate to various aspects of daily life, such as cultural background, economics,

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education, employment, government spending, etc., and these effects can be further explored in sociological studies. ● Correlation of demographic biases with activity space/trajectory analysis: This study is an initial attempt to quantify the data-quality issue of LBSM and how this issue manifests geographically.

Our next step is to correlate the demographic information with specific individual activity space and trajectory indicators. Although previous studies have attempted to classify neighbourhoods (such as the Livehoods project (Cranshaw et al.

2012) and/or extract activity anchor points (e.g. ‘home’ and ‘work’) from LBSM (Qu and Zhang 2013), there is a lack of understanding of the morphology (e.g. shape, size) of activity space from such user-contributed data sets (Malleson and Birkin 2014), as well as the correlation of these measurements with user demographics.

The methods and models can be applied to other LBSM data sets (e.g. Twitter or Foursquare) to test their robustness. Even though demographics may not be directly available on certain SNS such as Twitter, it is potentially obtainable through semantic analysis based on previous studies. We will further extend this analysis to other demographic factors such as age, employment, and education level. In this study, we used only gender ratios to measure the overall number of Weibo users in each demographic group; future studies may measure more detailed aspects of how these demographic groups are using Weibo, such as the frequency and time of check-ins.

Owing to the nature of self-reported data, it is possible for users to falsify or spoof their profile information; future research can cross-compare user profile information by analysing the content of their Weibo posts and the structure of their social network. This study only included users who reported their age, gender, and residential city, which can potentially introduce additional biases into the sample set. In addition, LBSM as an input to the analysis of human mobility has the potential to transform research in diverse fields, including geography, transportation, planning, and economics, and this study provides a reference for verifying LBSM user sampling biases when using such data in human mobility studies.

Note 1. http://www.datatang.com/data/46324.

Disclosure statement No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

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