GENDER PERSPECTIVE IN INFORMATION SOURCES IN DAILY NEWSPAPERS IN SERBIA
Text topic: Women's Expertise Potential in Cultural Activities
Text author: Дубравка Валић Недељковић
In the text the author discusses the theoretical approach of critical discourse studies and applies it in interpretation of the data gathered through quantitative and qualitative content analysis of leading daily newspapers in Serbia with the focus on culture sections. The period analyzed is November 2010. The total of 180 text accompanied with 79 photographs was sampled. The actors of the selected events which the sampled media covered were dominantly men (62), and sporadically women (8). Media genre analysis showed that the culture columns nurture interview as the main journalistic technique to promote the artists and their work. The analyzed culture pages during the observed period, contained the total of 17 interviews. The ratio of the interviewed men and interviewed women in the corpus was 88,57% : 11,42%. Therefore, women as creators, not selected as the interviewees, remained invisible for the wider audiences. In this context, women have not earned media attention in terms of being relevant creators of cultural offer in Serbia. The women have been left out in the visual graphics of the text as well. The photos following the texts did not portray any examples of myzogynia, nor discrimination, but a visible disbalance has been noted. In the photos, there were 4 times less women portraits, compared to men’s (37). In short, after the analysis of selection of events, media genres, quotations, visuals, patterns of professional language use and author signatures, it is concluded that the media image of Serbian culture is fully masculinized. Although there are improvements in, for example, language usage that is most of the time gender sensitive, and in the employment of female journalists who outnumber men in culture sections, both as content producers and editors who make decisions, the dominant discourse of culture sections of newspapers reflects masculine pattern that clearly demonstrates that position of power is occupied by men in Serbian society.