Feminism och genus i svensk medieforskning

Abstract

This artide is an overview of feminist or gender perspectives within Swedish media research during the last ten to fifteen years. Books and contributions to anthologies are described and the research sorted into two categories, populär culture within media and journalism. Although this categorisation is to be questioned due to blurred boundaries of fact and fiction in media, it is useful in an overview in order to avoid the risk of neglecting one orthe otherfield. One can conclude that feministic or gender oriented research about populär culture in the media is mostly dealing with the content and questions of gender constructions, especially representation of women, but there is also an increasing interest for male constructions including representation of relations between women and men. There is a claim for not talking of the existence of one woman voice but instead of a manifold of women's voices. Little is to be found regarding the reception of populär culture and even less regarding conditions of production. The research about journalism is more oriented towards texts by women journalists and often historically oriented. Here questions of gender constructions are not salient and to some degree this can be understood by the unwillingness to let journalistic products be analysed as constructions. Nevertheless one of the most remarkable features of the feminist media research in Sweden during the last decade has been to identify and make visible (and readable) women journalists from the early part of the last century. Media and communication studies as a discipline was established at the Swedish universities around 1990. As a new academic field it should be expected to be free of old traditional bonds, but gender or feministic aspects within media research constitutes less than 10 percent of the total registered media research.