A 'manual on masculinity'? The consumption and use of mediated images of masculinity among teenage boys in Ireland

Most of the research on masculinity in Ireland stresses the influences of family, work and education in the construction of gender (Ferguson, 1998; Ferguson and Synott, 1995; Ferguson and Reynolds, 2001; McKeown et al., 1998, Owens, 2000). Although the impact of the entertainment media is regularly alluded to, there is a dearth of empirical work in this area. While it is generally agreed that mediated images play a highly influential role in young people's lives, both the nature and the scope of this influence remain unclear in the absence of concrete ethnographies of reception. This paper discusses the findings of a quantitative and qualitative investigation into Irish male teenagers’ consumption and reception of a broad range of media texts and discusses these findings in relation to the relevant literature. It points to the shortcomings of both 'hypodermic needle' theories, which claim direct media influence, and of some active audience theories, which posit consumers as impervious to ideological influence. Contrary to popular discourses which frame the media as an autonomous, regressive force that lags behind a more progressive reality, the findings presented here suggest that mediated fictions are part of wider 'gender scripts' (Nixon, 1996) that both inform and are informed by the social structures within which (male) viewers are immersed

The lads from New Ireland :a textual and audience analysis of marginalised masculinities in contemporary Irish film.

In the mid- to late-1990s, Irish Cinema underwent a radical shift, which entailed, among other significant features, a thematic trajectory from the rural to the urban, from the historical to the contemporary and from the local to the universal. This shift also involved a radical reconfiguration of cinematic masculinities, not only in relation to the representation of male characters but also in terms of how masculinity as discourse was being addressed. The earlier critiques of traditional patriarchal masculinity, which emerged from a more politically-engaged and less commercial period in Irish filmmaking, began to give way to more ambiguous, male-centered narratives, whose protagonists resist unequivocal ideological categorisation. What is most striking about this new cycle of male-themed and male-oriented films is their preoccupation with underclass, criminal and socially-marginalised masculinities at the height of the Celtic Tiger, a time of unprecedented economic prosperity in Ireland. Although Ireland’s increased prosperity has also brought forth a number of urban, middle-class films featuring new, gay and reconstructed men {About Adam, Goldfish Memory and When Brendan Met Trudy), the enduring centrality and popularity over the past decade of ‘indigenised’ versions of a number of male-oriented (sub)genres from elsewhere merits particular attention. This thesis explores the changing discursive constructions of masculinity which characterise this strand of contemporary Irish filmmaking and the varying meanings and pleasures which they offer to different subsections of the male audience

Interculturalism and multiculturalism in lreland: textual strategies at work in the media landscape

This essay is based on qualitative research undertaken by the Working Group on Media and Interculturalism, based at Dublin City University. The working group is a series of ongoing research projects exploring recent initiatives in the Irish media that have introduced and activated discourses on multiculturalism, interculturalism, anti-racism, diversity and citizenship. The purpose of this project was to explore how the Irish media is contributing to structuring (and normalising) the discourses in which, and through which, public understandings of and responses to socio-cultural changes are being formed

Women, men and news: It's life, Jim, but not as we know it

In the twenty-teens, there are increasing numbers of women occupying executive positions in politics, business and the law but their words and actions rarely make the front page. In this article, we draw on data collected as part of the 2015 Global Media Monitoring Project and focus on England, Scotland, Wales and the Republic of Ireland. Since the first GMMP in 1995, there has been a slow but steady rise in the proportion of women who feature, report or present the news (now at 24 per cent), but that increase is a mere seven per cent over twenty years. Not only is there a problem with visibility but our data also suggest that when women are present, their contributions are often confined to the realm of the private as they speak as citizens rather than experts and in stories about health but not politics. Just over a third of the media professionals we coded were women and older women are almost entirely missing from the media scene. Citizens and democracy more generally are poorly served by a news media which privileges men's voices, actions and views over the other 51 per cent of the population: we surely deserve better

Women, men and news : it's life Jim, but not as we know it

In the twenty-teens, there are increasing numbers of women occupying executive positions in politics, business and the law but their words and actions rarely make the front page. In this article, we draw on data collected as part of the 2015 Global Media Monitoring Project (GMMP) and focus on England, Scotland, Wales and the Republic of Ireland. Since the first GMMP in 1995, there has been a slow but steady rise in the proportion of women who feature, report or present the news (now at 24 per cent), but that increase is a mere 7 per cent over 20 years. Not only is there a problem with visibility but our data also suggest that when women are present, their contributions are often confined to the realm of the private as they speak as citizens rather than experts and in stories about health but not politics. Just over a third of the media professionals we coded were women and older women are almost entirely missing from the media scene. Citizens and democracy more generally are poorly served by a news media which privileges men’s voices, actions and views over the other 51 per cent of the population: we surely deserve better