Combating old problems in new media
Catherine Murray, 604.838.5272, 778.782.5526; murraye@sfu.ca
Rina Fraticelli, symposium organizer, 778.998.5148; rina@womeninvew.ca
Carol Thorbes, PAMR, 778.782.3035; cthorbes@sfu.ca
A three-day symposium (Oct. 14-16), SexMoneyMedia, will bring together international artists, film industry leaders and policy-makers to evaluate worrisome new trends and old problems in media coverage of women.
Researchers at Simon Fraser University’s School of Communication and Department of Gender, Sexuality and Women’s Studies (GSWS) and Women in View, a coalition of independent artists and professionals, are hosting the conference. It will be held at SFU Vancouver’s Harbour Centre campus, downtown.
They are alarmed that 40 years after the birth of feminism and despite women’s growing digital media purchasing, designing and marketing power, media, especially new media, continue to victimize women.
“The lack of women in production management in an increasingly competitive new media world is perpetuating and intensifying their exploitation in all forms of media,” says Catherine Murray, GSWS chair. “This includes film, television, video games and social networking.”
The communication professor notes sharing porn and even gang rape videos and posting children-for-sale ads on the Internet exemplify how new media can be used to devalue women and minority groups.
Murray says SFU’s Faculty of Communication, Art and Technology was an early champion of society’s need to critically examine whether new media are merely replicating old social problems.
“Society needs more pro-social participation of women in content creation of all media to combat misogyny, celebrate advances and promote sex-positive media,” advises Murray.
Notable symposium presenters and panelists, such as Sarah Diamond, will address the root causes and effects of media’s continuing marginalization of women from their most influential creative and leadership positions. Diamond, president of the Ontario College of Art & Design, and an expert on new media theory and practice says: “As digital technologies transform traditional media, women are effective in some sectors of these emerging industries, while glaringly absent in others.
“Sex stereotyping is a salient feature of the gaming industry whose content production is heavily influenced by mostly male engineers and computer scientists.”
Symposium delegates will debate proposals on how diverse minorities and women can gain a better footing in the boardrooms of media conglomerates.
“We find ourselves at a pivotal point in our technological evolution — our Gutenberg moment,” says Rina Fraticelli, the symposium’s lead organizer, an SFU adjunct professor of communication and Women in View executive director. “This is an opportune and critical moment to investigate questions that will determine the future of our image-making industries.”
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