This cutting-edge work critiques today's global mediascape through feminist perspectives, highlighting concerns of policy, power, labor, and technology. Starting with the general state of international communications, the book uses feminist political-economic and policy analyses to explore the globalization of media industries, including questions about women's employment and media content that is globally produced and consumed. A top-notch group of authors covers cases on online news, pornography and explicit material, political participation and democracy, policies for women's development, violence against women, labor practices and information workers, print media and publishing, public 'telecentres,' media coverage of HIV/AIDS, and more. Providing fresh feminist insights into international communication, this essential book shows the important strides taken toward women's justice in these areas and how far there is yet to go.

This cutting-edge work critiques today's global mediascape through feminist perspectives, highlighting concerns of policy, power, labor, and technology. Starting with the general state of international communications, the book uses feminist political-economic and policy analyses to explore the globalization of media industries, including questions about women's employment and media content that is globally produced and consumed. A top-notch group of authors covers cases on online news, pornography and explicit material, political participation and democracy, policies for women's development, violence against women, labor practices and information workers, print media and publishing, public 'telecentres,' media coverage of HIV/AIDS, and more. Providing fresh feminist insights into international communication, this essential book shows the important strides taken toward women's justice in these areas and how far there is yet to go.

In an age of global information structures, what scope exists for independent citizen action in media and cultural policy formation? How can audiences effectively voice critiques of media content? In an increasingly market-centred and consumer-oriented media world, what is the potential for monitoring, lobbying and advocacy?
This book argues that despite the breakdown of traditional patterns of regulation, there is a role for local action to promote diversity in the media. Focusing on media portrayals of gender, more particularly the media's role in reproducing and reinforcing patterns of discrimination against women in society, the book aims to unify the hitherto disparate strands of academic research and feminist activism in the form of gender media monitoring aimed at policy critique and practical change.
Research findings and monitoring experiences from both North and South are brought together to demonstrate how, with varying levels of resources and expertise, women's groups have developed monitoring models that can be effective in widely different media contexts. Drawn from countries as diverse as Canada, India, Spain, Jamaica, Australia and South Africa, these approaches will have lessons for everyone concerned about media democracy and diversity in the new information age.