Abstract
The women issue is important not only in Western but also in Eastern cultures. Positioned in between the East and West, Turkey always provides an interesting collection of cases and data. Apart from the daily consumption of the women images and realities, the image of the women is also mobile when it comes to the press, and thus, this mobility is extended worldwide through the new media possibilities in the age of information. However, the contradictory images of the different cultures were displayed in the history of media as well. This chapter aims to put forward how the positioning of women in the past took place specifically in the case of Titanic news on the press of the time. The chapter questions the similarities and differences of handling women in news comparing and contrasting the Western journalism of the time and Ottoman press coverage.
TopNowadays, women issues are considered more than ever with the impact of the new media, the increasing number of violence against females, the identity issues, and the reaction to the traditional structure of the society. A diachronic and synchronic analysis of the women's issues provides that it took a long way for different societies to understand the value of women and position them in the society. Due to cultural, economical, social, educational or political reasons the women's issue has always been kept behind the other issues. Let it be urbanization or agriculture, raising domestic animals or growing up children, but especially kitchen work and housework were attributed to the women’s responsibility areas in society. Yet, males were only responsible for the managerial issues. Throughout history, many voices were upraised or silenced yet in the 21st century women's issues are still hot topics to be discussed.
Regarding the acknowledgment of women's rights, many people prefer to point out the human rights would be enough, and even naming the issue with the feminine words sound ‘weak’ enough. Yet, to some others, women are more equal than men, having some special rights gained by birth. The mobility of the women, marrying or not, giving birth to children or not, women in arts, women in politics, women in history, women in the field of entrepreneurship gain many different perspectives in current times. With all the identities women carry and all the cultures they might be originated from, the languages, customs, and traditions the women issues would be discussed more and more. That’s because the women are discovered again and again in the new era, and they are questioned more than ever.
The relationship of women with the media was a complex one. When the first daily newspapers begin to appear, the journalists or the media owners had no idea about the differences between the male and female audiences. The aim was just to deliver news, the press never had a concept such as the women image or female vs. male images in the media. Throughout the time, first, the press discovered the women as the audience and then the cinema and television. Nowadays, there are even television channels broadcasting mainly for the female audience and the media industry is dwelling on gender differences more than ever. There are more and more Women's TV Channels all over the world they all make use of the latest substructure and modern technology to reach their audiences. Today, more than 30 television channels operate throughout the world. 9Gem, 10 Peach in Australia, Colours Lifestyle, Metro Channel in the Philippines, Cosmopolitan TV, MOI&cie, OWN, Slice, W Network, Twist TV in Canada, Diva Universal, STAR World in Asia, Divinity in Spain, Escape, Lifetime, Oxygen, VH1, WE TV in the USA, Estil 9 in Catalonia, ETC, Eve in Southeast Asia, La5, Mya in Italy, Living in the UK, Nova in Spain, OnStyle in South Korea, Passion, Sixx in Germany, RTL 8 in the Netherlands, SIC Mulher in Portugal, Sony Channel in Southeast Asia, Téva in France reach a wide range of both male and female viewers. All these television channels cope up with the difficulties yet they seem to be doing fine because, they prefer differentiating the male and female as two different, distinct categories requiring completely different communication and marketing strategies.
Daalmans et.al, state that regardless of the genre as well as the country of origin of the program, women were underrepresented on men’s channels, while gender distribution on women’s channels was more equal. The representation of women in terms of age and occupation was more stereotypical on men’s channels than on women’s channels, whereas men were represented in more contra-stereotypical ways (e.g., performing household tasks) on women’s channels. Since television viewing contributes to the learning and maintenance of stereotyped perceptions, the results imply that it is important to strengthen viewers’ defenses against the effects of gender stereotyping when watching gendered television channels, for instance through media literacy programs in schools. (Daalmans, Kleemans & Sadza, 2017).
As seen in the distribution of the channels, women issue is important not only in Western but also in Eastern cultures. Positioned in between the East and West, Turkey always provides an interesting collection of cases and data. Apart from the daily consumption of the women's images and realities, the image of the women is also mobile when it comes to the press. Thus, this mobility is much more extended worldwide through the new media possibilities in the age of information. However, the contradictory images of the different cultures were displayed in the history of media as well.
Key Terms in this Chapter
Balance: In its artistic or aesthetic sense, balance is the feeling of the layout being evenly distributed across the page. It is analogous to the physics sense of balance, in which each of the page elements can be thought of as having weight (virtually identical to its weight in the visual hierarchy), and the “torque” created by each weight and its distance from the center of the page should sum to zero. Balance can be achieved passively, through symmetry and the even arrangement of elements (which is easier but often seen as dull), or dynamically, by arranging very different elements in different spacing, but still arriving at balance. In journalism, the rate of the information and interpretation or the proportion of the written part and the visual part are expected to be in balance.
Victimization: It is the process of being victimized or becoming a victim. The field that studies the process, rates, incidence, effects, and prevalence of victimization is called victimology.
Tolerance: It is the state of understanding and tolerating, or putting up with, conditionally.
Titanic: RMS Titanic was a British passenger liner operated by the White Star Line that sank in the North Atlantic Ocean on 15 April 1912, after striking an iceberg during her maiden voyage from Southampton to New York City. Of the estimated 2,224 passengers and crew aboard, exactly 1496 died, making the sinking at the time the deadliest of a single ship in the West.
Women Television Channels: These channels aim to broadcast music videos and films specifically for women.
Representation: It is the use of signs that stand in for and take the place of something else. It is through representation that people organize the world and reality through the act of naming its elements. Signs are arranged in order to form semantic constructions and express relations.
Niche: It is a specialized segment of the market for a particular kind of product or service. It implies a specific placement or positioning of the consumer and rates those as high valued ones.
Headline/Heading: It is the text indicating the nature of the article below it. A headline's purpose is to quickly and briefly draw attention to the story. It is generally written by a copy editor, but may also be written by the writer, the page layout designer, or other editors.
Depiction: It is reference conveyed through pictures. What the image yields as a part of the message carried by the visual.