Abstract

The popularity of media and the specific engagement of users cannot be explained solely on the basis of analyses of media but also requires investigations of the actual handling of media (content). A central insight of feminist, queer, and gender-theoretical engagement with the reception and use of (mass) media is that suggested gender-related meanings can both be adopted and criticized and questioned. The theoretical approaches with which the interplay of the structural power of the media and the agency of the users is conceived have shifted over time. Initially, the focus was on the meanings attributed to professionally produced popular media and the associated question of the politics of entertainment, with media use increasingly understood as part of the everyday practices of “doing gender.” Recently, social media platforms have brought into focus the ever-accelerating circulation and emotional investment of user-produced, user-rated and user-edited media content.