Feedback
archal, assumptions about the behavioural
diff erence expected of men and women and the
assignment of social roles and status that rests
on them; and what it perceives as a widespread
devaluing of women’s attributes, experiences
and perspectives.
One focus of current research is the explora-
tion of the role played by the media both in
fostering and reinforcing sexism and more
generally notions of femininity and masculinity,
and media coverage of women’s rights issues and
the feminist movement and its ideas. Another
important research interest is the degree to
which language and its use refl ect and perpetu-
ate sexism and assumptions about diff erences
between masculine and feminine behaviour.
See gender; performativity. See also topic
guide under gender matters.
▶Liesbet van Zoonen, ‘Feminist perspectives’ in
James Curran and Michael Gurevitch, eds, Mass
Media and Society (Arnold, 1996); Caroline Ramaza-
noglu and Janet Holland, eds, Feminist Methodology:
Challenges and Choices (Sage, 2002); Jennifer Coates,
Women, Men and Language (Pearson Education,
2004); Mary Crawford and Rhoda Ungar, Women and
Gender: A Feminist Psychology (McGraw-Hill, 2004);
Lana F. Rakow and Laura A. Wackwitz, eds, Feminist
Communication Th eory (Sage, 2004); Janet Holmes
and Miriam Meyerhoff , Th e Handbook of Language
and Gender (Blackwell, 2006); Charlotte Brunsdon
and Lynn Spigel, eds, Feminist Television Criticism: A
Reader (Open University Press/McGraw-Hill Educa-
tion, 2008); Sue Th ornton, ‘Media and feminism’ in
James Curran, ed., Mass Media and Society (Blooms-
bury, 2010).
Fibre-optic technology One of the wonder-
products of the Information Age, fibre-optic
cable is fi ne-spun glass, a mixture of silicon and
oxygen, through which digital codes are passed
in pulsing light. Its impact on telephone technol-
ogy has been immense, and its potential for this,
cable television, and many other purposes turns
so rapidly into achievement and new possibili-
ties that even the experts fi nd it diffi cult to plan
for fi bre’s accelerating capacity.
Fibre-optic cable can carry ten times further
than coaxial without requiring a booster. Over
7,500 different channels can operate along a
single pair of optical fi bres, though the potential
number lies in millions. Because fibre-optic
transmission is free from electrical interference,
cable can be cheaply laid along existing railway
lines; it can follow existing electricity pylons,
enclosed in the earth wire. Fibre-optic cable has
crossed the English Channel and the Atlantic
(1989).Powell – ‘thoroughly pro-deregulation and pro-
market’ – as stating on his fi rst day in offi ce that
he ‘had waited for a visit from the angel of public
interest ... but she did not come’. See deregula-
tion; regulatory favours.
Feedback According to Chambers Twentieth
Century Dictionary (ed. A.M. Macdonald, 1972),
feedback is the ‘return of part of the output
of a system to the input as a means towards
improved quality or self-correction of error’;
in A Dictionary of New English, 1963–1972 (eds,
C.L. Barnhart, S. Steinmetz and R.K. Barnhart,
Longman, 1973), feedback is ‘a reciprocal eff ect
of one person or thing upon another; a reaction
or response that modifies, corrects, etc., the
behaviour of that which produced the reaction or
response’. Without feedback – the signal that is
stimulated by an act of communication, biologi-
cal, mechanical, human or animal – meaningful
contact halts and cannot make progress.
Feedback is the regenerative circuit, or loop, of
communication. A student who submits his/her
essay to the teacher expects feedback in terms
of comments and a mark. Unless this feedback
occurs, the student lacks guidance for the
future; more, he/she is likely to be demotivated
and draw back from further communicative
interaction. When the student’s essay is returned
it may contain positive or negative feedback:
harsh comments, without encouragement, and
a low mark might well be more demotivating
than not receiving any feedback at all. Praise and
supportive criticism on the other hand are likely
to produce a positive response – of greater eff ort
and motivation.
Central to the purpose of feedback is control;
that is, feedback enables the communicator
to adjust his/her message, or response, to that
of the sender, and to the context in which the
communicative activity takes place. At the
interpersonal level feedback is transmitted by
voice, expression, gesture, sight, hearing,
touch, smell, etc. The greater the distance
between communicators, the fewer the ‘senses’
being employed to ‘read’ and return feedback,
the more diffi cult it is to arrange and control,
and the more diffi cult it is to assess its nature
and meaning. See audience measurement;
cybernetics. See also topic guide under
communication theory.
Feminism Th ough embracing diff erent perspec-
tives and schools of thought, fundamentally
feminism is concerned with the advancement
and achievement of equal social and political
rights for women, and the fi ght against sexism.
Feminism challenges many traditional, patri-