No abstract

A review of the history of the concept of sexual differences and the types of communication research it has encouraged suggests that "gender is a verb," created b y and creating communication.The presunied biological and psychological differences between women and men have long been the subject of intellectual speculation and pronouncement. They have been the basis upon which customs, manners, arid laws have been constructed and justified and research conceptualized and executed. The social sciences, from the time of their origins in the nineteenth century, have at historical niomerits shared this interest in explaining the differences between "the sexes." In the l970s, against the backdrop of the contemporary women's movement, this interest manifested itself' in studies of "gender" rather than "sex," reflecting the success of feminists' distinction hetween social and biological differences.Communication research, like that of the other social sciences, incorporated the study of gender into the standard research approaches and methodologies of the fields of speech, interpersonal, and m a s s communication. Gender has been operationalized as a pregiven category that can account for measurable differences i n women's and men's speech, interaction, and mass communication behavior, often leading to Lana F.

Taking as its startingpdnt tbe gendered nahcre of news as a musdim nurrdw, an a d y & sbows tbat wben women do appear as sources and subjects in news, tbey mpvsem 'Wnnen" in a ritualized mle, and f m i n i s t voices are d y maimtmam &dgnees of a seemingly homogeneous female Yiaupdn.The New York Tribune of September 3 headed its report of the meeting of the Working Woman 's Association as 'The Wars of the Women. " Beside that report thus designated stood the report of the Twenty-third Street Union Republican General Committee without a heading, though that might have appropriately been called the "wars of the men.". . . The only way in which I can account for the omission of headings to these reports of the wars of the men is that these captions are written by some masculine wit, who is decidedly partial to jokes on women (25).This excerpt from the nineteenth-century women's rights periodical The Revolution attests that, even in 1869, women in the United States noted and resented the news coverage they received. Contemporary feminists, of course, have been no less immune to such double standards and no less concerned about them.Tuchman (26) and Robinson ( 2 2 ) have both documented stages in early news coverage of the women's movement, from trivialization and ridicule to institutionalization and cooptation. A national study (1 1) found that newspapers gave inadequate coverage to six issues of importance to women-domestic relations, enforcement of Title IX, the legal impact of the Equal Rights

No abstract

Interviews and focus groups are valuable methods that share an important place in qualitative research in many disciplines, including journalism and mass communication. A wise use of these methods, however, requires that a researcher be well versed in the critical and cultural scholarship that enables an assessment of their use and results. The author proposes that researchers be intentional, self-reflexive, and transparent in decisions about the purpose, design, execution, and interpretation of results of their projects. If provided with this information, a reviewer or reader will have the grounds to assess the value of work using these qualitative strategies.