Just like home: remediation of the social in contemporary news broadcasting

In this paper we examine contemporary news presentation, noting some of the discursive and textual features as broadcasters endeavour to capture and hold target audiences in an intensely competitive and connected environment. Drawing on Bolter and Grusin’s (1999) notion of ‘remediation’ we examine how the news studio and presentation style has begun to borrow artefacts and language styles that resemble the domestic sphere in layout and discourse. We begin by noting the increasing use of domestic furniture from which news is presented before then examining how the presenters in a particular news program present a newspaper review section during the program. What is notable here is the way the presenters do not stick to the topical news stories of the day but use the stories to touch off further personal stories about themselves, and which take up most of the allocated time slot. In the final section we examine how this level of informality is utilised in integrating viewer comments and feedback into the going interaction maintaining a level of synchronicity of topical comment

Gender and media representation: politics and the 'double bind'.

In recent decades, more women have been elected into office, showing the gains which have been made as more take a seat at the political table. In 2008, women occupied 18.3% of parliamentary seats worldwide, growing to 24.3% in 2019 (IPU 2019). While some affix a positive slant to this upward-moving trajectory, others see this slow tread onwards as overwhelmingly unsatisfactory. According to the World Economic Forum, if the same rate of change were to continue as it has done, the global gender gap in politics would take 107 years to close (World Economic Forum, 2018). Women’s low numbers in parliaments across the world highlight that, as a category, they are still an underrepresented group, showing this to be a globally systemic issue. In terms of representative democracies, these low figures are significant, as they arguably have implications for both the descriptive and substantive representation of women (Celis and Childs 2008) and also send important signals about who is elected to stand for the “public” in positions of power and included/excluded in political decision-making. This chapter focuses on the gendered mediation – the gendered discursive practices embedded in social norms (Gidengil and Everitt, 2003) – of female politicians and how this may perpetuate entrenched attitudes around gender norms, thus contributing to women’s mis- and under representation in global politics

From feminism to FemInc.ism: On the uneasy relationship between feminism, entrepreneurship and the Nordic welfare state

Feminism in the Nordic countries was primarily formulated in terms of ‘state feminism’. The women’s movement cooperated with feminist government officials and politicians, resulting in societies that can be considered to be the most gender-equal societies in the world. Historically, the state provided for a large publicly-financed welfare sector which made it possible for many women to combine work and family through the state’s implementation of family-friendly policies, while simultaneously providing employment opportunities for many women. However, since the financial crisis of the 1990s, there has been a political change influenced by neo-liberal thought, in which politicians have handed over the welfare state’s responsibilities to the market, and, instead, the politicians have encouraged entrepreneurship, not least among women. Further to this development, there has been a change in emphasis from entrepreneurship (understood as starting and running a business) to entrepreneurialism which, in addition to a belief in the efficacy of market forces, also contains a social dimension where individuals are supposed to be flexible and exercise choice. In this article, we ask whether this entails a change in the feminist project in the Nordic countries, and if so, what the likely consequences are for this project, both in practice and in research. In order to answer this question, we reviewed existing Nordic research on women’s entrepreneurship and examined how this body of work conceptualizes entrepreneurship, gender, the state, and equality. We also considered whether any trends could be identified. We relate our findings to recent changes in government policy and conclude that the current discourse on entrepreneurship challenges, and possibly weakens, state feminism, but we also conclude that this discourse may also provide space for new forms of feminist action, in market terms. We coin the term FemInc.ism to denote feminist action through enterprise and we discuss a number of important challenges that research on this phenomenon is faced with