Núria araüNa rovira i Virgili universityFrederik dheaNeNs aNd soFie VaN Bauwel Ghent university
historical, temporal and contemporary trends on gender and mediaResearch on media and gender has proliferated during the last decades, both quantitatively and geographically across different regions of the world. This generous development has come either from feminist approaches that have focused on the reproduction of inequality between men and women in media products and in production structures, or from sociocultural and critical approaches within academia that consider gender a category that transcends binary divides and encompasses sexualities and sexual identities, with an increased attention to LGBTQI people. The proliferation has resulted in more intensified debates and the questioning and/or fortifying of concepts to better study issues within the broad field of gender and media. The field has particularly witnessed an increase in an intersectional approach, demonstrating how people have multiple identities that interact with one another and therefore gender identities and roles should not be studied in isolation but rather in relation to other axes such as class, race, and ethnicity, sexuality, age, disability or nationality.It has been acknowledged that broader ideological contexts do have an extraordinary impact on shaping the ideas that we share about ourselves as 01_CJCS_9.2_Introduction_177-184.indd 177