Sixth International Conference on Communication & Media Studies

Abstract

In Lebanon, only 13% of people mentioned in the press on a given day are women. This is not a small, harmless, isolated detail. It is a daily fact affecting hundreds of thousands of people each week. While reading the news, one has the impression that there are no women in the public spheres, no women achievers, no women inventors, no women economists, and no women researchers. This could not be further from the truth. Despite their best professional and ethical intentions, journalists and reporters in Lebanon, male and female, share with their readers daily unconscious (or maybe sometimes conscious) biases and stereotypical views about gender-based roles and identities. It is not an understatement to say that Media is a powerful tool exercising a symbolic power. Without any apparent form of violence, through the words employed, the notions used, the categories of thought summoned, it can influence individuals and their way of interpreting the world. Media’s role in building perceptions and shaping opinions is crucial. The representations and the norms they produce are not a mere reflection of reality since they are actualized in a performative way. The asymmetric image of the gender binary that the press reports has an impact on the structural and formal aspects of social thought, introducing versions of reality that are widely shared.