Gender Politics and Moral Norms Across Media

In recent years, we have witnessed a growing body of research focused on identity politics, public shaming, and social outrage in the contemporary media landscape. Morality is often at the core of these debates. At times, societies are gripped by moral panics (Cohen, 1972/2011) and attribute the cause of such feelings of panic to certain media products such as TV dramas, reality TV, or advertising (Critcher, 2006; Guo, 2017). Yet, evidence that these media products contribute to audiences’ moral imagination and reflection in a positive sense increases (Bilandzic et al., 2017; Krijnen, 2009, 2011; Krijnen & Tan, 2009; Krijnen & Verboord, 2011, 2016). On social media platforms, the entanglement of morality with actions of gender-based harassment, status-seeking, and intergroup conflicts (Huang, 2021; Marwick, 2021) always dominates public attention. On the one hand, the existing moral norms and standards are often used to legitimize individual online practices and even to mobilize collective actions; on the other hand, the state and market actors draw on moral norms to regulate and moderate media content under the name of protecting public interests. This thematic issue aims to explore the historical trajectory and continuity of the vital role of media in shaping social dynamics and moral norms, particularly through the lens of gender, from a global perspective.

We welcome contributions that empirically and theoretically engage with the topic of gender, media, and morality, and encourage contributors to reflect on the topic with its intersections of class, race, geopolitics, etc. For example, and not limited to:

• In the process of formation and mobilization of moral norms, what roles do media play?
• How can we critically study, analyze, and compare the complex moralized rhetoric across media?
• What are the political and social consequences when the moralized rhetoric is used to target specific social groups (i.e. women and LGBTQ communities)?
• What kinds of power dynamics between individuals, social institutions, market actors, and nation-states are reflected in the construction of moral norms?

References

Bilandzic, H., Hastall, M. R., & Sukalla, F. (2017). The morality of television genres: Norm violations and their narrative context in four popular genres of serial fiction. Journal of Media Ethics, 32(2), 99–117. https://doi.org/10.1080/23736992.2017.1294488

Cohen, S. (2011). Folk devils and moral panics. Routledge. (Original work published year 1972)

Critcher, C. (2006). Critical readings: Moral panics and the media. Open University Press.

Guo, S. (2017). When dating shows encounter state censors: A case study of If You Are the One. Media, Culture & Society, 39(4), 487–503. https://doi.org/10.1177/0163443716648492

Huang, Q. (2021). The mediated and mediatised justice-seeking: Chinese digital vigilantism from 2006 to 2018. Internet Histories, 5(3/4), 304–322. https://doi.org/10.1080/24701475.2021.1919965

Krijnen, T. (2009). Imagining moral citizenship: Gendered politics in television discourses. In B. Cammaerts, S. Van Bauwel, & I. Garcia-Blanco (Eds.), Moral agoras: Democracy, diversity and Communication (pp. 115–133). Cambridge Scholars Publishing.

Krijnen, T. (2011). Engaging the moral imagination by watching television: Different modes of moral reflection. Participations: Journal of Audience and Reception Studies, 8(2), 52–73. https://www.participations.org/08-02-04-krijnen.pdf

Krijnen, T., & Tan, E. S. H. (2009). Reality TV as a moral laboratory: A dramaturgical analysis of The Golden Cage. Communications: The European Journal of Communication Research, 39(4), 449–472. https://doi.org/10.1515/COMM.2009.027

Krijnen, T., & Verboord, M. (2011). De televisie als morele oefenruimte. Een kwantitatieve exploratie van morele reflectie naar aanleiding van televisieverhalen. Tijdschrift voor Communicatiewetenschap, 39 (2), 57–76. https://doi.org/10.5117/2011.039.002.057

Krijnen, T., & Verboord, M. (2016). The moral value of TV genres: The moral reception of segmented TV audiences. The Social Science Journal, 53(4), 417–426. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.soscij.2016.04.004

Marwick, A. E. (2021). Morally motivated networked harassment as normative reinforcement. Social Media+ Society, 7(2). https://doi.org/10.1177/20563051211021378

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