Gender
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amount of interest in the way in which gender
identity might influence and be influenced
by communicative behaviour. Language,
non-verbal behaviour and the conventions of
everyday social interaction can be seen to carry
many messages pertinent to the construction
and display of gender identity.
Richard D. Gross in Psychology: Th e Science
of Mind and Behaviour (Hodder Arnold, 2005)
notes that whilst sex is the term often used to
refer to ‘the biological facts about us, such as
genetic make-up, reproductive anatomy and
functioning, and is usually referred to by the
terms “male” and “female”, gender, by contrast,
is what culture makes out of the “raw material”
of biological sex’.
Expectations of appropriate behaviour for
males and females can vary from one culture
to another and, over time, within a particular
culture or society. Debate exists within our
own society regarding expectations of gender
roles and such debate has the potential to spill
over into confl ict. Th e link between gender and
male and female categories can be complex. A
transvestite, for example, in playing out this
role adopts the appearance and other aspects of
behaviour usually associated with those of the
opposite sex.
Several researchers have argued that interper-
sonal processes play a crucial role in establishing,
maintaining and changing notions of gender. It is
arguable that maintenance of a gender identity
requires the individual to carry off a performance
in line with expectations others hold of suitable
behaviour for the identity claimed. Judith Butler,
for example, in Gender Trouble: Feminism and
the Subversion of Identity (Routledge, 1999)
stresses the crucial importance of performance,
and thus of verbal and non-verbal communica-
tion, in the construction of gender identity.
Mary Crawford and Rhoda Ungar in Women
and Gender: A Feminist Psychology (McGraw-
Hill, 2004) make a similar point: ‘Gender is a
kind of performance, and the actors must learn
their lines and cues. Like acting, gender is best
performed when it appears most natural.’ Th ese
authors note that sociocultural expectations
exist as regards appropriate performances and
that social sanctions may be applied if these are
challenged too much. However, whilst everyday
performances may typically reinforce expecta-
tions, they also have the potential, over time, to
change them.
Ideas about appropriate gender behaviour
also lie at the heart of notions of femininity and
masculinity and include assumptions about
radio and TV as a multi-source not only of
information, but also as a means of opening up
the airwaves to the public as communicators.
Consumers of communication now have at their
fi ngertips the power to evade traditional modes
of gatekeeping. Text, pictures, the latest movies,
pop tunes have all become available for down-
loading online; and if gatekeeping has always
been a process of manipulation by the commu-
nicators as well as selection, the consumer can
do this too with the images and texts that he/
she can summon up and print or broadcast (see
youtube).
As populations access the Net in increasing
numbers, there is the potential for a shift of
control from producer to consumer, to the point
when ‘manning the gates’ becomes near impos-
sible and arguably pointless. Mass-media gates
continue to exercise power within their own
parameters, but out there is the blogosphere
- millions of content-providers competing with
traditional media, and with each other, for user
attention.
Further, news itself has lost dominance as
demand for social networking (see network-
ing: social networking) has advanced in
popularity, and as cost-cutting in the media
industry has resulted in newspaper closures
and the retreat of fact-based programmes in TV
output.
Th e crowding-out of traditional gatekeeping
also threatens to reduce the ability of govern-
ments to exercise intervention in the form of
regulation and censorship, though not their
desire to do so. Th e very freedom of expression
that electronic data-exchange offers people
worldwide prompts many governments to seek
to curb this freedom by ever more sophisticated
blocking devices, new legislation directed at
service providers or covert deals in return
for rights to operate. See agenda-setting;
consensus; digitization; demotic turn;
displacement effect; galtung and ruge’s
model of selective gatekeeping, 1965; mr
gate; mobilization; network neutrality;
white’s gatekeeping model, 1950; yaros’
‘pick’ model for multimedia news, 2009.
See also topic guides under media: processes
& production; news media.
▶Bu Zhong and John E. Newhagen, ‘How journal-
ists think while they write: a transcultural model of
news decision making’ (Journal of Communication,
September 2009).
Gender Gender is a socio-cultural variable with
considerable potential to infl uence behaviour.
In recent decades there has been a signifi cant
