Informed by the pioneering work of Erving Goffman, subsequent studies by Mee-Eun Kang, recent innovations in the Geena Davis Institute, and local approaches by Philippine scholars, this study sought to determine the portrayal of gender in Philippine advertising across various media. Specifically, it located gender across products, storylines, characters, pitch, and setting. It provided the baseline data for the depiction of gender immediately before the pandemic, and served as the benchmark against how gender may be portrayed differently in ads in the next normal.
The population of TV, print, and radio advertisements was based on a database maintained by Aries Insights and Media Solutions (AIMS), access to which was facilitated by Kantar Media. The study covered two TV stations, three broadsheets, two tabloids, two FM stations, and two AM stations. The researchers constructed two weeks from January – December 2018 for TV and print, while one week was constructed from October to December 2018 for radio.
Across platforms, the most advertised products were food and non-alcoholic beverages, pharmaceutical/health/herbal products, and restaurants, retail outlets, and malls. Ads focused on product/brand prestige, appealed to any of the five human senses, or concentrated on health. Certain ad pitches showed noticeable gendered differences. Women rather than men were associated with beauty, youth, and value for money. Print and radio ads featured more men than women, while TV featured more women than men.
The study found that while overt objectification was no longer prevalent in advertisements, stereotypically gendered portrayals remain in subtle forms across platforms.
This paper reviews the literature in academic journals and books and asserts the importance of studying opinion journalism as a genre of emergent and oppositional journalism and a form of public engagement. Using Raymond Williams’s Marxist cultural theory of base and superstructure, this writer takes the perspective that newspaper columns are a genre that contributes to residual and emergent forms of alternative and oppositional culture which counters the texts and values in the dominant culture of journalism. Exercising traditional public scholarship, op-ed writers utilize columns, essays, and other forms of creative nonfiction to address issues that concern women, the working class, and other vulnerable groups that are kept at the periphery of public discourse.
Many studies have examined crisis management in various business sectors. However, COVID-19 has presented unique and interesting challenges. Using an online survey (n = 224 participants) and in-depth interviews, profiling public relations professionals’ communication strategies in responding to the COVID-19 pandemic based on gender was investigated. The findings reveal that male and female public relations practitioners have specific understandings of the COVID-19 pandemic, ways in facing the crisis, and differing public relations activities during the pandemic. They regard this pandemic as a challenge to be adoptive, innovative, and creative, enhance technology competencies, and build relationships with publics by providing up to date information. Female public relations practitioners use social media more than males and give more attention to communication programs dealing with customers, while male counterparts focus on capturing the market by strengthening the organization’s image and reputation through publicity in conventional media.
Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games (MMORPG), one of the most popular Internet cyberspace forms in the world, is regarded as a male-dominated space, constituting over 90 percent of participants, according to statistics collected by Nick Yee (2005). Most players participate in war games, which comprise the main theme for most MMORPG, and grow with their avatar through a series of battles. However, according to theorists like Sadie Plant (1997), cyberspace itself is feminine rather than masculine and, consequently, male identities are inevitably dispersed in this matrix. This assertion seems quite different from what we can perceive on the surface. To apply Plant’s study to the current cyberspace situation, this paper will use MMORPG as a model of cyberspace. Also, to verify Plant’s assertion, this paper will look at the narrative structure of MMORPG by adapting apparatus theory from film studies. This study will also take a critical look at the result of the interviews with Filipino and South Korean players to see how theories and reality match when comparing two different cultures.
