Global Media Journal

Guest Editors' Notes

When we originally set out to publish our anthology Women and the Media: Diverse Perspectives (University Press of America, 2005), our goal was to initiate a global dialogue about issues related to women and the media. This current issue of the Global Media Journal advances that dialogue and interrogates the continuing need for a global study of women and media. While we are in a “post-feminist” era governed by third wave feminists, global media depictions of women still indicate that women do not have as powerful a voice as they should. This issue, however, gives voice to women as media critics and activists.

In Jammer Girls and the World Wide Web: Making an About-Face, Debra Merskin demonstrates how girls and young women respond to media images that have a deleterious impact on their self esteem. Through the web, girls are learning to voice their concerns about media depictions, and in so doing, they are taking a stand against a patriarchal institution. This article explores how the web has become a media genre for young activists.

We are pleased to include How the Grammys changed my life: Becoming an op ed columnist written by Latina activist and columnist for the Hartford Courant, Bessy Reyna. By sharing her process of becoming an op ed columnist, Reyna demonstrates the importance of her cultural voice as a vehicle to offset and challenge conventional ideas. As a woman working in the media, Reyna gives a practical and authentic narrative about risk taking. Voices like Reyna’s truly have the ability to transform the media and educate individuals about racism, sexism, and homophobia.

Kimiko Akita’s article Orientalism and the Binary of Fact and Fiction in Memoirs of a Geisha explores how colonialism and Orientalism operate in modernized western society. By exposing the popularity of the book and feature film Memoirs of a Geisha, as a construction of western viewpoints with little authentic cultural information, Akita challenges the way Japanese women are continuously depicted and marginalized. In Japan, the Geisha is a trained artist, yet both the book and the film lead readers and viewers to believe the westernized view that the Geisha is a prostitute. Objectifying and Orientalizing Japanese women creates a misperception about these women, thus rendering them voiceless.

In The New Eastern European Woman: A Gold Digger or an Independent Spirit? Elza Ibroscheva demonstrates how women in Eastern Europe are struggling to create a voice through folk songs. By examining Bulgarian women’s folk songs, Ibroscheva depicts a new post-Communist gendered identity for women. Ibroscheva explains that women are still negotiating this new identity in a post-Communist world with new rules. With this new identity, Ibroscheva hopes that women will explore other women’s issues, which will eventually change the status of women in Eastern Europe.

Finally, Lenie Brouwer’s Giving Voice to Dutch Moroccan Girls on the Internet allows us access into a cultural world. While the Internet connection has given these Dutch Moroccan girls a voice, Brouwer argues that the Internet gives them agency as well. By interacting with other girls like themselves, these web participants explore how their identities are shaped by religious and social conventions.

We present this issue with the hope that the global dialogue about women and the media will continue and that scholars will be inspired to write about how women’s identities are shaped through the media. The articles presented here demonstrate a visible and viable voice that will influence the future of the media. We wish to thank the following individuals for serving on the editorial board for this special issue: Barbara King, Carroll College, Cynthia Lont, George Mason University, Lori Montalbano-Phelps, Indiana University Northwest, and Abhik Roy, Loyola University Marymount.

In addition to these articles, which demonstrate a burgeoning area of research on women and the media, the managing editor of the Global Media Journal, Yahya Kamalipour, has included four articles: Naren Chitty’s UNDP Websites and Social Change, The Discourse of Technology in Western Representation of China: A Case Study by Qing Cao, Emotional Intelligence in Peace Journalism, part 3 by Gabriele Frohlich, and Political economy of communication, human security, and development: The first 100 days of Evo Morales’ Government in Bolivia by Irene Strodthoff. Naren Chitty’s article, UNDP Websites and Social Change develops a complex theoretical framework and methodology for a study of headquarters, regional, sub-regional, and national level websites of the UNDP (United Nations Development Program), demonstrating the nature of governance that the sites facilitate. Chitty creates a framework that describes five matrices linking the global political economy and regional, administrative, and ethno-historical matrices to individuals and concludes that the UNDP has consolidated corporate image and values through an integrated architecture for its website.

In The Discourse of Technology in Western Representation of China: A Case Study, Qing Cao explores perspectives in the representation of China through the case study of a BBC television documentary series, Road to Xanadu. The series was the most comprehensive history documentary ever broadcast in Britain about China. Through an examination of visual representations and the meaning created by these visual representation, Cao traces the Westernized discourse and the values and assumptions implied through this discourse. Frohlich, in her article, Emotional Intelligence and Peace Journalism, part 3, examines peace journalism by studying the media’s responsibilities and impact in relationship to emotional intelligence and psychological trauma. The third part of her paper outlines alternatives and options for the development of training journalists. And finally, Irene Strodthoff, in her article, Political economy of communication, human security, and development: The first 100 days of Evo Morales’ Government in Bolivia studies the political economy of communication and development, how poverty, lack of education, and little access to information undermines human security, and several aspects of what constitutes a civil society.

Fall 2006 Issue of Global Media Journal-American Edition