Media and gender: A Nordic perspective

Who is afraid of gender? Judith Butler provocatively asks in her latest book addressing the polarised controversies stirred by the concept of gender in recent years. Her question is posed amid a surge of conservative and far-right movements that have significantly fuelled antagonism around gender debates far beyond the relatively niche circles that have traditionally been preoccupied with its conceptualisation and implications. In these debates, what Butler (2024) dubs “the phantasm of gender” is invoked as a threat to Western civilisation, a denial of nature, an attack on masculinity and “traditional family values”, or an effacement of the differences between sexes. Across Europe, such ideas have been propagated, in particular by actors within the so-called anti-gender ideology movement that leverages various forms of activism to undermine the rights of women and queer and trans people in areas from reproductive justice to protections against gendered violence. But even beyond these highly politicised circles, gender does indeed seem to have become a source of division in public discourse to the extent that the toxicity which increasingly surrounds the notion has been reported to discourage scholars and journalists alike from even engaging with the issue in public debate (Bladini, 2020; Møller Hartley & Askanius, 2021; Paternotte, 2019).

Media scholars from across the Nordics and beyond seem to remain undeterred, however. They continue to delve into critical analysis of the persistent disparities in media production, representation, and power related to gender. For this issue of Nordic Journal of Media Studies, we wanted to update insights on longstanding issues at the core of our discipline on the nexus between media and gender in relation to contemporary developments in politics, culture, and technology. Our call was met with a resounding response, and this year's issue of Nordic Journal of Media Studies features the ten selected articles that emerged from this call, showcasing the latest insights and advancements in the field.

Gender imbalances persist in the fields of media production and journalism. The articles in this issue present new empirical evidence highlighting the ongoing disparity in the portrayal of men and women in news media, as well as in the film industry, where men are significantly more likely than women to write, direct, and produce movies. However, there are also encouraging developments that suggest potential for positive change. Magin, Haßler, Larsson, and Skogerbø, for example, find that top politicians in both Germany and Norway are breaking away from traditional gender roles in political communication, refusing to restrict their self-representations on social media to certain stereotypical or preconceived notions of gender. The articles in this issue also showcase new kinds of media that require new approaches; for example, an analysis of Icelandic TikTok activists uses multimodal analysis to understand the embodied communication of this genre, and another study explores how Swedish Instagram posts about Muslim women's use of veils both enforce hegemonic structures and allow women to challenge the dominant discourse. With global communication networks, the idea of what it means to be Nordic is not only shaped in the Nordic countries. Lee and Abidin illustrate this by analysing vlogs by Japanese and South Korean influencers living in Nordic countries, showing how their romanticised visions of peaceful and harmonious Nordic life feature domesticity and nature, neither acknowledging nor criticising the implicit gender segregation in their videos.

This issue also offers new research on activism and rights, examining both historical and contemporary experiences. One study explores the Swedish Women's Association's Radio Committee in the 1930s and its efforts to increase women's representation. Another brings attention to contemporary experiences in newsrooms, where sexism and precarity continue to present challenges to women journalists. Finally, one article looks at anti-gender activists and their social media campaigns against LGBTIQ+ rights, finding that despite the intense social media activity, campaigns on Twitter (now X) specifically did not have much uptake in audience engagement.

The study of the intersections of media and gender is a bourgeoning area of research with a long history in the Nordic research community; yet only rarely are these dispersed studies brought together and into conversation with one another across the region. One of the most recent comprehensive inventories of media research on gender in the Nordic countries was edited by Anja Hirdman and Madeleine Kleberg (2015) a little less than a decade ago. In Mediers känsla för kön [Media's sense of gender] published by Nordicom, a centre for Nordic media research at the University of Gothenburg, the authors included scholars in media and communication studies working on gender or with feminist perspectives. They raised questions of the implications of significant technological developments and the entry of, at the time, relatively new tech giants like Google and Facebook to the gendered aspects of media production and consumption. Building on the foundations of pioneering international research, the contributions of previous scholars in the Nordics, and the efforts at Nordicom to integrate critical perspectives on gender and media, particularly the work of Ulla Carlsson (1993), the volume demonstrates the strengths and analytical capabilities of combining gender and media studies. It highlights theoretical perspectives such as intersectionality and the affective turn for understanding topics such as the construction of masculinities in talent shows, gender dynamics in sports blogs, queer femininity in gaming, or female journalists' use of new media technologies. Much has happened to academic and public debate on these issues since the release of this volume. Yet a lot of the key concerns raised by previous generations of scholars persist, as evidenced by the themes and questions raised by the authors.

In the years following Hirdman and Kleberg's publication, the #metoo movement dramatically upended many of the deep-seated conceptions of the Nordic region as a gender-equal utopia. In the wake of the consequent waves of the global movement that swept across the world in 2017 and onwards, we have seen heated and rapidly shifting public conversations around gender inequality and injustices in the Nordic countries. As such, the #metoo movement poked holes in the longstanding myths of gender equality as a closed case or fait accompli that are often rehearsed in and about the Nordic countries, and Sweden in particular (Dahlerup, 2018; Møller Hartley & Askanius, 2022). The global movement has brought widespread conversations on systemic sexism and gender-based harassment and violence, far beyond the narrow circles of activists and scholars, about the role of social media in gender(ed) struggles, gender (mis)representations, and power structures in media organisations and cultural industries. In many regards, there is a renewed interest in issues related to the entrenched and persistent structures of gender inequality permeating society and the role of the media in reproducing or challenging these structures.

At the face of it, the #metoo movement and adjacent campaigns have helped moved the conversation beyond post-feminist narratives and into discussions about systemic power and intersecting forms of oppression. At the same time, a considerable anti-feminist backlash and transnational resistance against gender equality discourse and gender mainstreaming tools have followed in the wake of this global movement. In Sweden, the backlash has mainly been orchestrated by non-institutional actors involved in the extensive web of alternative news media in the country who have been pushing anti-feminist ideas onto the agenda as part of a larger campaign presenting “gender ideology” and “excessive feminism” as the root cause of mass immigration, and in extension, an alleged societal collapse of Nordic welfare states. A recent study from the University of Gothenburg showed that young men across Europe feel increasingly threatened by advances in women's rights and gender parity and place Sweden among the top-ten countries in which these attitudes of “modern sexism” are on the rise among younger generations (Off et al., 2022). In Denmark, on the other hand, the backlash against gender research and policy has partly come from within institutional politics led by members of parliament from the Liberal Alliance and Danish People's Party who have been ardently campaigning against institutions, programmes, and individual researchers in the area of gender studies and postcolonial and migration studies, many of whom have been singled out in the media and accused of being partisan or “activist”, and who have consequently experienced online harassment and trolling (see, e.g., Baggersgaard, 2022; Thorup & Andreassen, 2021). In Norway and Finland, similar controversies have saturated public and academic debate on these issues. However, we have yet to see the same kind of harsh attacks on gender studies in academic institutions from political parties or organised interests. Still, increasing public attention has been given to the tendency that boys and young men struggle to keep up with girls and young women in education and social life, prompting criticism of existing gender equality policies and their impacts. Additionally, gendered and sexualised violence, misogyny, and hate remain recurring themes in research politics, and social life in Norway and Finland as well (see, e.g., Gjerstad et al., 2023).

Indeed, gender has become controversial and politically polarising to the extent that it has reached the top of the agenda in terrorism and extremism research. In fact, in the Nordic Conference on Violent Extremism held at Oslo University in June 2024 (University of Oslo, 2024), a considerable share of the programme was dedicated to discussions of a growing gender(ed) extremism. Security services and extremism scholars are raising concerns about the proliferation of violent misogyny in online spaces. Research has shown that mainstream social media facilitates the spread of harmful ideologies, including misogyny and transphobia (Banet Weiser, 2018; Zuckerberg, 2018). The Oslo Pride shooting in 2022 is a stark and tragic illustration of the growing problem of transphobia in online spaces and society at large, providing evidence that the proliferation of harmful and dehumanising language targeting transgender communities can incite real-world violence. Further, the impact of misogynistic online influencers operating on platforms like TikTok or YouTube on gender norms among adolescents is similarly a growing concern. In the Nordic context specifically, several reports have documented a rise in misogyny and ideas of male supremacy in mainstream online spaces and the emergence of a distinctly “Nordic manosphere” (Cybernauterne, 2020; Hansson et al., 2024; Mogensen & Helding Rand, 2020), where online interactions and discussions coalesce around anti-feminist, homophobic, and misogynist ideas (Fernquist et al., 2020; Mogensen & Helding Rand, 2019; Langeland et al., 2022; Prøitz et al., 2022). Such online environments can contribute to real-world violence, reinforcing harmful stereotypes and perpetuating a culture of misogyny. Women who speak out in public and challenge these ideas are often shamed, ridiculed, or harassed online (Ging & Siapera, 2018; Sundén & Paasonen, 2018). This highlights the need for further research on how both online communities and networks of social media influencers shape young people's attitudes and the role of digital platforms in either reinforcing or challenging these harmful narratives.

With this issue of Nordic Journal of Media Studies, we invited scholars to address these and neighbouring developments, bringing us up to speed with the state of the art in the field. What new ideas, discussions, concepts, and methods are emerging in studies at the intersection of media and gender in the Nordic countries and beyond? The articles included in the issue cover a broad range of empirical and conceptual contributions reflecting both longstanding issues and emerging trends in the discussion on media and gender falling under three broad thematic areas.