International Journal of Communication
Publishes a Special Section on
New Feminist Studies in Audiovisual Industries

What is the role of current audiovisual practices in the representation of gender identities and feminist interventions?

This Special Section on New Feminist Studies in Audiovisual Industries, guest-edited by Maria Pilar Rodriguez, Miren Gutierrez, and Maria J. Pando-Canteli, offers an innovative and interdisciplinary approach to the study of the diverse ways in which audiovisual content and advertising communicate gender identities in the time of social media platforms. This section focuses on advertising (i.e., femvertising and menvertising), television series, animation films, and social media platform content (e.g., GIFs) to look at crosscutting issues, such as feminism, the anti-feminist backlash, gender, ageism, and new masculinities, by analyzing texts, images, discourses, and communicative experiences.

Together, the contributions in this section provide a wide range of innovative approaches to academic fields, combining insights and methods to produce new hybrid research. What these articles have in common is, first, an effort to provide new knowledge, either by reviewing previous theories and methodologies to apply them to new contexts, perspectives, and cases, or by generating new fields of study through interdisciplinary research. Second, they all share a profound political commitment to work toward gender equality and social justice. Finally, all of the articles convey the need to push the boundaries of research and expand traditional academic limits to achieve new ways of investigating feminist methodologies.

The articles also offer a panoramic view of issues that are seldom explored, despite their relevance, such as new masculinities, women’s aging, and algorithmic biases in audiovisual content. Encompassing all women’s life stages, this Special Section offers a polyhedral and interdisciplinary assessment on how mediated audiovisual practices and publicity represent gender identities and enforce or contest feminist efforts. It employs a varied array of methods and tools—from automatized computing to content analysis—which also shows how new feminist research is expanding and developing. Finally, it offers a state-of-the-art review of the latest on gender and audiovisual products. 

We invite you to read these articles that published in the International Journal of Communication on January 6, 2021. Please Ctrl+Click on the article titles below for direct linking to the papers of interest. We look forward to your feedback!

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New Feminist Studies in Audiovisual Industries: Feminism, Gender, Ageism, and New Masculinities in Audiovisual Content — Introduction
Maria Pilar Rodriguez, Miren Gutierrez, Maria J. Pando-Canteli 

The Fourth Wave in Audiovisual Content: A True Achievement of Feminism?
María Silvestre Cabrera, María López Belloso, Raquel Royo Prieto 

Algorithmic Gender Bias and Audiovisual Data: A Research Agenda 
Miren Gutiérrez 

The Portrayal of Men and Women in Digital Communication: Content Analysis of Gender Roles and Gender Display in Reaction GIFs 
Diego Álvarez, Alejandro González, Cristina Ubani 

“Menvertising” and the Resistances to New Masculinities in Audiovisual Representations 
María J. Pando-Canteli, María Pilar Rodríguez 

Employer Femvertising: Women Empowerment in Employer Brand Messages 
Lorena Ronda, Garazi Azanza  

The Shifting Image of Hegemonic Masculinity in Contemporary Television Series
Lisa Cuklanz, Ali Erol 

Ageing and the Creative Spirit of Women in the Audiovisual Market: The Case of Olive Kitteridge (2014)
Asunción Bernárdez Rodal, María Isabel Menéndez Menéndez 

Gender Representation in Subscription Video-On-Demand Spanish TV Series 
María Marcos Ramos, Beatriz González-de-Garay 

Female Leadership Represented in Animation for Children and the Sociocognitive Learning of 21st-Century Girls 
M. Rosario Neira Piñeiro, M. Esther del Moral Pérez, Lourdes Villalustre Martínez 

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Larry Gross, Editor
Arlene Luck, Founding Managing Editor  
Kady Bell-Garcia, Managing Editor
Kasia Anderson, Managing Editor, Special Sections
Maria Pilar Rodriguez, Miren Gutierrez, and Maria J. Pando-Canteli, Guest Editors

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