What Can We Learn About Feminism from Web Portals? – Analysing Media Bulletins

Abstract

In contemporary society, the media is a powerful social force capable of actively supporting but also negating feminist values, even though the feminist perspective is today woven into the political and institutional lives of Western countries (McRobbie, 2009). Feminism is considered to be instrumentalised and words such as “empowerment” and “choice” are often used in the media and popular culture “as a kind of substitute for feminism” (McRobbie, 2009). This paper presents a media analysis of articles published by the five most visited Croatian web portals in 2019. The content of the articles was analysed by the qualitative method of thematic analysis. The results show that feminism is a neglected topic on web portals and most often found in “news”, “culture” or “film” sections. The results of the thematic analysis identified five thematic frameworks which encompass the published articles: feminist pioneers, female politicians and feminism, celebrity feminism, feminist activism, and feminism and film. The first framework “feminist pioneers”, along with the “feminist activism” framework, are more educational in the nature of their reporting, while the “celebrity feminism” framework deals more with the topics of violence towards women, women’s relationship with their bodies and gender equality in general. The presentation of female politicians within the framework dealing with politics and feminism is the most neglected because it is practically devoid of any political-feminist content while the “film and feminism” framework is almost entertaining in character because it is mostly based on commenting on movie characters and their lifestyles as well as screenwriter choices. Although all of the identified frameworks mention and broach a series of subthemes, except in the case of feminist activism, these subthemes are not problematised nor can the audience reach a wider comprehension. Young people, as regular consumers of news content on the most visited web portals, cannot acquire a realistic image of feminism, and in rare occasional news items can they obtain a cursory education on feminist values.