White Women Wanted? An Analysis of Gender Diversity in Social Justice Magazines

The role of media in collective action repertoires has been extensively studied, but media as an agent of socialization in social movement identity is less understood. It could be that social movement media is normalizing a particular activist identity to the exclusion of other demographics. For ins...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Societies (Basel, Switzerland) Switzerland), 2016-06, Vol.6 (2), p.12
Main Authors: Wrenn, Corey, Lutz, Megan
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Activism
Animal human relations
Animal rights
Animal rights movement
Animals
Collective action
Content analysis
Culture
Ethnic identity
feminism
gay rights
Gender
Identity
Inequality
Intersectionality
Left wing politics
LGBTQ rights
Mass media effects
Media
Multiculturalism & pluralism
Race
Racism
Sexualization
Social activism
Social justice
Social movements
Socialization
Thin bodies
Veganism
Vegetarianism
White people
Women
Womens rights
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:The role of media in collective action repertoires has been extensively studied, but media as an agent of socialization in social movement identity is less understood. It could be that social movement media is normalizing a particular activist identity to the exclusion of other demographics. For instance, Harper has identified white-centrism in anti-speciesist media produced by the Nonhuman Animal rights movement and supposes that this lack of diversity stunts movement potential. Using the lesser-studied Nonhuman Animal rights movement as a starting point, this study investigates two prominent Nonhuman Animal rights magazines. We compare those findings with an analysis of comparable leftist movements also known to exhibit diversity strains. A content analysis of Nonhuman Animal rights, women's rights, and gay rights magazine covers spanning from 2000 to 2012 was undertaken to determine the manifestation of gender, race, body type, and sexualization. We find that the Nonhuman Animal rights media in our sample overwhelmingly portrays white women with a tendency toward thinness, but with low levels of sexualization as comparable to that of the other movements. All three movement samples unevenly depicted gender, overrepresented whites, and underrepresented non-thin body types.
ISSN:2075-4698
2075-4698
DOI:10.3390/soc6020012