Thursday, November 29, 2007

Writing your final project

You are going to focus more on method and findings, and less on reviews of literature, since we've spent the semester talking about that literature. That's why you need only a study to shadow, and this can be more for its methods than for its subject. You can look at patterns of fathers in TV sitcoms, using the music video chapter for its pattern- or theme-seeking methods. We will talk more in class, if you still have questions.

Some last links for our consideration

We'll wrap up a lot of things this Friday, and I'll look forward to seeing you then for a kind of roundup of ideas and methods that we've talked about this semester. If you like, bring a favorite web link or DVD and we'll make time to show and/or to talk about as many as we can. I'm bringing popcorn for the crowd.

If you get a chance to go to YouTube, here are some key words to use:
"A Girl Like Me," "Unilever," "Dove Onslaught" (we've already looked at this one in class), "Slob Evolution," and "Dove Evolution." Some of these will make you laugh, although the first is a sobering look at the effects of media? society? history? racism?

Interested in or concerned about stereotypes of white males? Click here:
http://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/matthew-sheffield/2007/09/06/balancing-medias-anti-male-stereotypes

and here, for stereotypes of fathers in general:
http://diyfather.com/content/the-21st-century-dad-no-time-for-old-stereotypes

In class, we've spoken a bit about smart dads from past decades, including Cliff Huxtable, Ward Cleaver and others, compared to less-than-bright Homer Simpson, Ray Barone, a few WB dads and others. This could make a good study, if you are still casting about for a topic.

bell hooks, a philosophy prof at City College in New York, has interviews up at YouTube and essays on the web, to discuss Spike Lee's work and other issues. You may find her discussions at YouTube by just typing her name, and you may also read her work about depictions of men in film at:

www.allaboutbell.com/On-Death-and-Patriarchy-in-Crooklyn.htm
www.allaboutbell.com/when_men.htm

Monday, November 26, 2007

A link about the Axe-Dove advertising controversy

http://adage.com/article?article_id=122185

News reports on African-American women

Here's information from NBC Nightly News, which will feature a series of stories about black women, starting tonight:

"NBC NIGHTLY NEWS WITH BRIAN WILLIAMS" SPECIAL FIVE-PART SERIES "AFRICAN-AMERICAN WOMEN: WHERE THEY STAND" TO AIR BEGINNING ON MONDAY, NOVEMBER 26

New York, N.Y. – November 15, 2007 – Throughout the week of November 26, "NBC News With Brian Williams" will take a look at the issues facing African-American women across our nation in a new series "African-American Women: Where They Stand." The series will cover a wide-range of issues from their role in the ’08 Presidential race, to the increased health-risks that they need to be concerned about.

Monday’s installment will discuss African-American women's progress in the education field. Nearly two-thirds of African-American undergraduates are women. At black colleges, the ratio of women to men is 7 to 1. And that is leading to a disparity in the number of African-American women who go on to own their own businesses. Rehema Ellis will talk to educators, students and businesswomen about why this disparity exists.

Tuesday, Ellis will look at relationships within the African-American female community. Many agree the gender disparity in education and business among African-Americans is having an effect on relationships that African American women have. Some even say the implications could redefine "Black America's family and social structure." In the past fifty years, the percentage of African-American women between 25-54 who have never been married has doubled from 20% to 40%. (Compared to just 16% of white women who have never been married today). Ellis sits down with the members of a Chicago book club and talk about this difference and how it impacts them.

Dr. Nancy Snyderman will discuss the increased risks for breast cancer for African-American women on Wednesday. Mortality rates for African-American women are higher than any other racial or ethnic group for nearly every major cause of death, including breast cancer. Black women with breast cancer are nearly 30% more likely to die from it than white women. Premenopausal black women are more than twice as likely to get a more aggressive form of the disease. And, not only are African-American women more likely to die from breast cancer, but they're less likely to get life-saving treatments. Dr. Snyderman will profile one of the only oncologists in the world who specializes in the treatment of African-American women with breast cancer.

On Thursday, Ron Allen will take viewers to South Carolina -- the first southern primary state -- and ask the question: Will race trump gender or gender trump race? In South Carolina, black women made up nearly 30 percent of all democratic primary voters in 2004. This year, polls show a significant number are undecided, torn between choosing the first African-American or first female Presidential candidate. Allen talks with the undecided, as well the state directors for the Clinton and Obama campaigns, who happen to be African-American women.

To close the series on Friday, Dr. Snyderman will raise the frightening statistic that African-American women are 85% more likely to get diabetes, a major complication for heart disease. And, like breast cancer, more black women die from heart disease than white women. Dr. Snyderman will profile a leading expert and a unique church-based outreach program in South Carolina that seeks to spread the word about heart disease risks to black women congregants.

Mara Schiavocampo, Digital Correspondent for "Nightly News," will address two hot topics in the African - American community: interracial dating and the impact of hip hop music on black women. Interracial dating is a growing trend in the African - American community. An Essence.com poll found that 81% of participants approved of black women dating non- black men. According to a U.S. Census Bureau report in 2000, 95,000 black women were married to white men. In 2005, that number increased to 134,000. Schiavocampo will talk to experts about the trend and discuss how this defines the "Black family" of the future.

Schiavocampo will convene a panel of leading black men and women from the hip-hop industry for an engaging discussion on whether hip hop lyrics and videos positively or negatively affect black women. The roundtable also will address how these portrayals are affecting relationships between black women and black men.

Consumers can go online to join the discussion and share their thoughts on message boards. They can also read and respond to blog entries at www.nightly.msnbc.com <http://www.nightly.msnbc.com/> .

Alexandra Wallace is the executive producer of "NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams." Bob Epstein is the senior broadcast producer, and Rich Latour is the senior producer for this series.

Thursday, November 15, 2007

Final assignment

You'll find a scholarly study that you would like to recreate with new texts and data (you may choose any study from our textbook, from our class discussion, or from a journal).

For instance, you'll decide to model your own study based on a previous content analysis of a newspaper or you'll replicate a semiotic study of women's images in magazine ads by choosing updated ads. Your "shadow" project will quickly summarize this earlier study and its results; it will touch on one of the most important sources in this earlier study's literature review; it will explain your own new corpus and method; and it will report your findings and conclusion.

Your study should be double-spaced and between 750 and 1,000 words. It will have a cover sheet, your own original research and discussion (following the outline below), a references page that includes citations for the study you are shadowing and for one of its most important sources; and attachments with charts or samples of texts that you analyzed.

Here's an outline to use, as shown in this (shortened) example.

Cover sheet

Title:
Men all demure in ads, but not so with women

Two-sentence summary of findings:
Men in ads for television shows in two entertainment magazines were all depicted in demure dress. Women were depicted as partially clad or suggestively dressed, as well as demure.

Summary of the previous study:
The previous study by Reichert, Lambiase, Morgan, Carstarphen & Zavoina (“Beefcake & Cheesecake,” Spring 1999, Journalism & Mass Comm Quarterly) reveals that women are depicted more explicitly than are men in magazine ads, during a comparison of ads from 1983 and 1993. In this study of six magazines, women were three times more likely to appear in sexualized dress than men.

Its most important foundation literature and how it relates to your own project:
The most relevant study used by the previous study is the study by Soley & Kurzbard (“Sex in Advertising,” 1986, Journal of Advertising), which established used a similar coding scale, with these categories: demure, suggestive, partially clad, and nude. This earlier study, upon which the Reichert, et al., study is based, found that while the percentage of sexually oriented appeals in ads hadn’t increased, the amount of explicitness in the ways women were depicted had increased over time.

Corpus and method:
My corpus comprises all full-page ads for television shows, appearing in the July 29, 2005, issue of Entertainment Weekly and the Sept. 26, 2005, issue of People Magazine. The method is quantitative and qualitative content analysis, in which the main character in each ad was coded first as male or female, and then was coded for dress attributes. Descriptive analysis was used to discover information that cannot be captured in coding schemes.

Findings:
People magazine included 10 depictions of main characters in ads for television shows: 7 of women and 3 of men. All three depictions of men were coded as demure; 4 depictions of women were demure, 2 were suggestive, and 1 was partially clad. In Entertainment Weekly, there were 3 main characters coded: 1 man who was demurely dressed, and 2 women who were partially clad. Both magazines featured more depictions of women as main characters than men. A typical “partially clad” depiction could be found in an ad for Desperate Housewives, in which a main character was dressed in revealing evening wear (and reclining). Yet, demure depictions were captured for dramas such as Grey’s Anatomy and Commander in Chief, in which women were depicted in progressive roles.

Conclusions:
This mini-study fits much of the prior research on advertising depictions of men and women, in which females are much more likely to be depicted sexually and are more likely to be depicted more explicitly. A larger study of print ads for television shows could be attempted to see if this pattern continues, and this information could be compared to findings from studies of broadcast advertising for television shows. Are men ever depicted in sexual ways in these ads, and if so, when? It would also be interesting to discover whether the women depicted in television advertising, if dressed provocatively, were main characters in the shows themselves or were simply minor characters used sexually to attract attention to the show.
[Your report should be between 750 and 1,000 words.]

References:
[You'll list at least two.]

Attachments

Tuesday, November 13, 2007

Part 2: Asian and Asian-American stereotypes

Here's an article that might help you identify films or other media for analysis of these stereotypes:

http://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/story?id=771790&page=1&Entertainment=true

Resources for final projects, part 1: GLAAD

The first link is to GLAAD's effort to identify stereotyping, along with either positive or demeaning images of gays and lesbians and others in entertainment media. One of the links is for information about the transgendered character on "Ugly Betty." The second link is to GLAAD's news round-up; it might be an important resource for those of you who want to analyze coverage of these issues in the news media.

GLAAD Eye on the Media
http://www.glaad.org/eye/index.php

Current issues
http://www.glaad.org/eye/stories.php#ucc_ejector

Other helpful links include these:
www.usc.edu/schools/annenberg/asc/projects/soin
www.signorile.com/articles/advonyt.html
www.signorile.com/articles/nyp124.html

Wednesday, November 7, 2007

Here's the link to the new blog site

We are still working on this site, incorporating your changes and correcting typos. But, go ahead and go to the site to see if we have your blog address and to determine if it works.

http://untjour4250.blogspot.com/

Relevant articles on race, music videos, and hip hop

Here are two links to stories from this week's NYTimes, one with the headline "Protesting demeaning images in media" and the second titled "For clues on teenage sex, experts look to hip-hop."

The first article covers protests by the group "Enough Is Enough," a group of mostly black activists who are picketing in front of the homes of Viacom executives every weekend. The second article does a good job of questioning whether watching such videos has adverse affects on teens. As we've discussed in class, this is a tough question to answer, whether we're talking about video games, music videos or other media.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/05/arts/05enou.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/06/health/06well.html

Monday, November 5, 2007

Special program

At 4 p.m. Wednesday, Nov. 7, two Holocaust survivors will be speaking in Room 255 of the Eagle Student Service Center about their experiences and their recent book about being separated after being sent to the Nazi death camps and how they found each other again. Rosalie and William Schiff live in the D/FW area, and it's a real privilege to have them as speakers on our campus.

The event is free and open to the public.