SOC 0851 Chapter Notes - Chapter 10: Sex Segregation, Glass Ceiling, Amy Pascal
• Media as an institution
o Gendered nature of institutions
o Institutions are basic building block of society and of sociology as a discipline
because they help us explain how society works as a whole
o Like marriage, courting, and friendship, media is also a set of behaviors
▪ Having a television in your household or not is a behavior
▪ Using the Internet is a behavior
o Media as an institution is made up of many formal organizations
▪ Formal organization is a group of people who interact on a regular basis
and have a set of explicit, written rules
▪ There are formal organizations that are involved in marriage as an
institution, including churches and government bodies that make
decisions about the legal definitions of marriage
▪ Formal organizations are a central component of the media as an
institution
▪ Media is supported by the Individual behaviors or millions of people
buying and turning on their televisions as well as going to the movies,
browsing the Internet, and playing video games, but without all the
organizations that produce the content that comes out of the television,
film projector, Internet, or video game, those behaviors would not take
place
o Examining the structure of the formal organizations involved in the creation and
produtio of all the stuff e all the media
▪ Taking a look at what goes on at television and cable networks, movie
studios, publishing firms, advertising firms, and Internet content
providers
▪ Most of the formal organizations involved in the media are also
businesses and corporations in the United States
▪ In some cases, media organizations are government owned or controlled
▪ Media corporations are concerned with making a profit, while media
organizations that are owned or controlled by the government may be
invested in educating the public or serving the interests of the
government itself
▪ Revealing how gender is a part of these behind-the-scenes activities is an
important part of understanding the gendered content that these
organizations produce
o Focusing bot on the actual media content that gets produced and on what
exactly people do with that content
▪ Shifting from behind-the-sees to the atual stuff that’s o the
television, the movie screen, magazine page, or the computer screen
▪ Once media content is created, it takes on a life of its own
▪ The originally intended meaning of media may or may not be successfully
conveyed
• Gender of Media Organizations
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