Social Representations of Foreign & Turkish Women on the New Turkish Media: A Thematic Discourse Analysis Through Masculinity Ideology/ Türkiye Yeni Medyasında Yabancı ve Türk Kadınların Sosyal Temsilleri: Erkeklik İdeolojisi Üzerinden Bir Tematik Söylem Analizi

Abstract

Past research has laid bare the determining role of media content on people’s gender stereotypic beliefs. In this article, we aimed to examine social media content, which is one of the most influential causal factors in producing social representations in terms of masculinity ideology. We collected the written materials about women in various online collaborative dictionaries written by anonymous writers. We analyzed the entries using thematic discourse analysis, and obtained four themes consisting of (1) the woman as a body, (2) the woman as a persona, (3) the woman as a sexual partner, and (4) the woman as a wife. We discussed these themes in the frames of social representations and masculinity ideology, and the analysis clearly shows the new media’s role in reproducing traditional gender representations via masculinity ideology. This study extends the knowledge about the mechanism between stereotypic representations of women and masculinity ideology in Turkey. The paper contributes to the growing literature on the discursive construction of feminine identity by exploring the dictionary writers’ use of language and how these are complicit in the reproduction of masculinity ideology.

Keywords

• sosyal temsiller
• erkeklik
• toplumsal cinsiyet
• tematik söylem analizi
• yeni medya
• social representations
• masculinity
• gender
• thematic discourse analysis
• new media