Stine Eckert, Ingrid Bachmann (eds.) (2021): Reflections on Feminist Communication and Media Scholarship

Reviewed by Claudia Wilhelm

Edited by Stine Eckert and Ingrid Bachmann, this volume brings together ten essays by big names in feminist communication and media research. All ten authors have won the Teresa Award for the Advancement of Feminist Scholarship, awarded by the Feminist Scholarship Division (FSD) of the International Communication Association (ICA). The Teresa Award honors work that makes an important contribution to the development, reach and influence of feminist research in communication and media studies. It is intended to increase the visibility of gender-related research among an expert audience.

The essays trace the lines of development of feminist research within media and communication research. At the same time, the volume has been shaped by the global pandemic. It is divided into three sections, framed by introductory and concluding chapters by the editors. The first section, »Reflecting the Past,« looks at political, ethical and theoretical achievements in specialist feminist communication research. In it, Dafna Lemish shares her experiences as editor of the Journal of Children and Media. Lemish sees her role as a feminist project because, as a high-ranking international communication research journal, the journal increases the visibility of media research relating to children and young people – a field of research that is often conducted by women.

In the next essay, Meenakshi Gigi Durham clearly demonstrates how media as institutions promote systemic discrimination, based on her field studies on female media cultures conducted in schools. The term she outlines – (mediatized) vulnerability – touches on fundamental ethical principles of feminist research practice. As well as vulnerability, resilience is also considered a central concept of feminist research. Referencing the COVID-19 pandemic and the protests surrounding the Black Lives Matter movement, Patrice M. Buzzanell discusses the feminist communication theory of resilience that she has developed.

The second section, entitled »Taking Stock of the Present,« brings together current, intersectional and post-colonial perspectives of feminist research. The essay by Lana F. Rakow highlights key current issues: reflecting on one’s own privilege combined with critique of the complicity that white women have in racist suppression, and the necessity of taking an intersectional perspective. Following on from this, Linda Steiner reflects on and addresses the problems with her own research on the suffragette movement. The suffragettes claimed to speak for all women. However, as Steiner shows in her retrospective analysis, the movement predominantly reflected the interests of white, middle-class women, while disregarding the interests of women of color. A case study on the mass rapes and murders at St. Kizito School in Kenya forms the jumping-off point for H. Leslie Steeves’s essay, which looks at the collective memory of this event of sexualized violence and the role that media reporting played in this. In her essay, Radha Sarma Hegde maps out the subject’s problematic categories and standards, dominated by Western, male perspectives, which feminist critique needs to address and scrutinize. She then links this to topical issues like data speed and datafication.

The third section, »Writing the Future,« looks at the theoretical and methodological perspective of the feminist media and communication research of the future. Karen Ross describes both her experience of interview research on media representation of women politicians and her own shift in focus towards new topics and methods. This includes the question of how women politicians use social media to increase their visibility. In an intersectional analysis, Angharad N. Valdivia uses examples of reverse racial passing – white people who pretend to be people of color – to illustrate the consequences of racial stereotypes that are still prevalent in media depictions, including in the form of phenomena like blackfacing and whitewashing. Women of color are disproportionately affected by this.

Finally, Radhika Parameswaran takes a critical look at her own global feminist positionality. In her essay, she highlights the gaps in research that arise under conditions shaped by globalization and unequal power structures. The final essay in the third section is based on a discussion panel held at the ICA conference in 2020, in which the award winners discussed the impact of the pandemic on society and academia, with a particular focus on feminist ideas and research desiderata.

In their essays, the authors describe their often very personal experiences from the last few decades of feminist media and communication research. The volume thus helps both to look back on and appraise the field’s history and to place feminist research within it. The critical view of the essays collected here is directed at the balance and accessibility of the field for non-Western, feminist and post-colonial perspectives. With a dose of self-criticism, the authors raise both their own and the reader’s awareness that their own research is conducted in an academic context dominated by Western, white, male perspectives.

The volume is aimed at students and academics in feminist media and communication research. In addition, the essays provide interesting and informative insights into the academic identification processes and career paths of women in academia and into their appropriation of a critical feminist view, both of their field and of their own research: insights that can be rewarding for young academics starting out, both within the field and outside it.

This review first appeared in rezensionen:kommunikation:medien, 12 April 2024, accessible at: https://www.rkm-journal.de/archives/24890

Translation: Sophie Costella

About the reviewer

Dr. Claudia Wilhelm is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Journalism and Communication Science at the University of Vienna.

About the book

Stine Eckert, Ingrid Bachmann (eds.) (2021): Reflections on Feminist Communication and Media Scholarship. New York, Abingdon: Routledge, 204 pages, £28.79.