Volume offers a critical examination of the portrayals of relationships in the various media and debunks the myths perpetuated there. For courses in media criticism/media literacy, mass communication, & interpersonal communication.

This distinctive volume explores how romantic coupleship is represented in books, magazines, popular music, movies, television, and the Internet within entertainment, advertising, and news/information. This reader offers diverse theoretical perspectives and methodological approaches on the representation of romantic relationships across the media spectrum. Filling a void in existing media scholarship, this collection explores the media’s influence on perceptions and expectations in relationships, including the myths, stereotypes, and prescriptions manifested throughout the press. Featuring fresh voices, as well as the perspectives of seasoned veterans, contributions include quantitative and qualitative studies along with cultural/critical, feminist, and descriptive analyses. This anthology has been developed for use in courses on mass media and society, media studies, and media literacy. In addition to its use in coursework, it is highly relevant for scholars, researchers, and others interested in how the media influence the personal lives of individuals.

In this timely, insightful, and darkly funny investigation, the acclaimed author of Against Love asks: what does living in dystopic times do to our ability to love each other and the world? COVID-19 has produced new taxonomies of love, intimacy, and vulnerability. Will its cultural afterlife be as lasting as that of HIV, which reshaped consciousness about sex and love even after AIDS itself had been beaten back by medical science? Will COVID end up making us more relationally conservative, as some think HIV did within gay culture? Will it send us fleeing into emotional silos or coupled cocoons, despite the fact that, pre-COVID, domestic coupledom had been steadily losing fans? Just as COVID revealed our nation to itself, so did it hold a mirror up to our relationships. In Love in the Time of Contagion, Laura Kipnis weaves (often hilariously) her own (ambivalent) coupled lockdown experiences together with those of others and sets them against a larger backdrop: the politics of the virus, economic disparities, changing gender relations, and the ongoing institutional crack-ups prompted by #MeToo and Black Lives Matter, mapping their effects on the everyday routines and occasional solaces of love and sex.

This accessible yet research-based text offers both foundational theories and practical applications of analysis and criticism of mass media portrayals of sex, love, and romance in a wide variety of mass media, from entertainment to advertising to news. The multidisciplinary methodological perspective comes out of a media literacy approach and embraces a variety of traditions along the quantitative-qualitative continuum. Focused on portrayals of male-female coupleship, the book is centered around the 12 major myths and stereotypes of Galician's Dr. FUN!'s Mass Media Love Quiz©, each of which has a corresponding Dr. Galician Prescription(R) that encapsulates healthy strategies--rarely found in the mass media--to counteract that myth or stereotype. Readers learn how to identify, illustrate, deconstruct, evaluate, and reframe the mass media's mythic and stereotypic portrayals of sex, love, and romance. They also learn how to use their own formal critical evaluations to clarify their own values and--as media consumers or mass communication creators--to share their insights with others. Thus, the learning objectives encompass all three major educational domains: cognitive, affective, and behavioral. Part I of this book covers the five foundations: *myths and stereotypes of love and coupleship; *models of realistic and constructive love and coupleship; *mass media storytelling approaches, techniques, and devices; *research and theories of mass media effects; and *strategies and skills of media literacy. Part II is devoted to exploring the myths and stereotypes identified in the Quiz. Following several brief case studies and a summary of related research and commentary, each chapter focuses on analyses and criticisms of portrayals of sex, love, and romance in the content of news and advertising, as well as entertainment using Galician's Seven-Step Dis-illusioning Directions. Each chapter concludes with a "Dis-illusion Digest." While critical of unrealistic portrayals and the damage they can cause unsuspecting media consumers, Galician--a media literacy advocate--is not anti-media. Rather, her goal is to empower consumers to use these portrayals with more awareness of their possible consequences, to resist adopting them as models for actual behavior, and to consciously reframe them into more realistic, productive scenarios. This unique text is an engaging classroom resource for media literacy, media and relationships, and media and society coursework.

This work explores, through case studies and critical analyses, how media depictions affect the social construction of gender, sexuality, and identity. Through a combination of historical and contemporary topics, scholars examine the stereotypical portrayal of women and men and the contexts within which these stereotypes are illustrated. The studies also discuss the sociopolitical implications of symbols and images associated with these gender representations. Concrete references to particular media support both the methodological and theoretical approaches of the different essays. These quantitative and qualitative studies expose the myriad ways in which the media intervenes in our perception of popular culture. Media and mass communication scholars will appreciate the many different media forms these essays encompass. The multicultural and gendered perspectives that comprise these writings will also appeal to students and educators of gender studies and contemporary rhetoric. Chapters are grouped in subsections that include newspaper, visual image in media, magazine, television, video, film, and cyberspace.

Grounded in recent, cutting edge feminist anthropological theory, these essays discuss how women and men do courtship, intimacy, and marriage around the world

Originally published: Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1986.