Gender Constructed Online, Stereotypes Reified Offline: Understanding Media Representation of Adolescent Girls on MySpace


Date: January 1, 1970
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The online social networking site MySpace has received more hits and more media coverage than any of its social networking counterparts, including Facebook and Friendster, and is in fact, one of the most visited sites on the Web because it allows its users to create media and construct identity easily while sharing their interests with other users and the world. However, the mainstream media has painted a picture of MySpace as a place where adolescent girls post “scantily cladÀ photos of themselves and where sexual predators constantly lurk – and according the critical content analysis performed in this piece, the two are often subtly and troublingly linked. This plays into the hegemonic discourses of femininity and masculinity and constructs adolescent girls as sexualized victims and often blames the technology instead of the sexual predators who are drawn to them.


Publisher: Paper presented at the annual meeting of the International Communication Association, TBA, San Francisco, CA, May 24, 2007
Year of Publication: 2007

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