Project Two Instructions
What are YOU looking at?
Creating Critical Media Literacy
(Approx. 200 words each)
Average magazine readership among women is up. It climbed from 4.3 million in 1998 to 4.5 million and 2002 . What role do women's magazines play in shaping our ideas about gender?
Visit your local library or bookstore and sit down with 3 different magazines—two women's magazines (Cosmopolitan, Vogue, Mirabella, Elle, Glamour, Redbook, Good Housekeeping, Oprah, Women's Day, etc) and one gender-neutral magazine (Time, Newsweek, etc) Do a content analysis: for each magazine, count the number of articles and ads that fall into categories such as makeup, clothes, hair, sex and dating, dieting and exercise, food and recipes, home decoration, self help, work, politics and current events,. Evaluate your analysis—what messages about gender are these women's magazines presenting? How do these messages differ for the gender-neutral mags?
Find one ad that you found especially problematic. Use your content analysis to draft two letters, one to a company advertising in the women's magazine and one to the editor of the magazine. Offer a critique of the messages that are being sent to women via the advertising and magazine itself. You are not required to send these letters, though I do encourage all of you to do so. All final letters must include the links you would use for submission. [i.e. letters@glamour.com or the address/website of the company contact form i.e. http://www.babyphat.com/custi
Logistics: Post your final letters and web addresses to our course website by NOON on Wednesday.
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• Course Project: Project Two
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NOTICE: You will not be able to see your letters until after NOON, when all of the letters have been submitted.