Abstract

The Internet allows us to build a side-world where we invent and re-invent ourselves, relate to the world and face reality through a screen. The new generations are being socialized in virtual surroundings. Which will the consequences be? The step forward from the atom to the bit has determined a new form to see the outside. It has extended the capacity of memory and storage of the human being, but mainly it allows people to relate in a way which will change the idiosyncracy of the man. New technologies are shaping the man. They have already made his body infinite and free, marked by virtual processes that we do not even know. Young people of XXIth century are the digital generation.

Abstract

In this paper we analyze the transmission of stereotyped characteristics of men and women through audiovisual products for children. With this aim, we employ a sample of programs and advertisements forecasted in 2004 in the Spanish television. In this sense, we analyze the presence of men and women, the elements associated with different characters, and the principal features of advertisements targeted at girls and boys.

Abstract

This article presents the results of a quantitative and qualitative analysis of adolescent selfpresentations in Fotolog. The images which these adolescents create and share through the Net focus on the construction of the Self. Here gender and sexuality become the main structuring factors of representation. Results point to the fact adolescents selfpresentations mirror some of the categories defined by Goffman in his study of gender hyperritualization in advertising. Moreover, other gender expressions are found in the sample, such as the lesbian pose or the erotization of bodies which Gill also detects in advertising. Despite the fact that the images that adolescents upload in Social Networking Sites reproduce gender stereotypes and patriarchal patterns based in advertising, it must be said that they also elaborate a relatively varied repertoire of pictures and are able to conceive original creations. These creative selfrepresentations are the outcome of a process of negotiation of gender and sexual identity which occurs in these settings, as well as in other adolescent media practices. To avoid a thoughtless reproduction of gender stereotypes and contribute to a critical negotiation of these representations, media education is needed. This media education should take into account the way in which adolescent practices are shaped by other media consumption.