This assignment asks you to investigate gender representations in the digisphere. As you complete the assignment, remember to assess the full panoply of digital information at your disposal. (Think of text, color, graphics, photographs, video, audio, animation and the melding of these elements.) Remember that digital information's signal difference to printed information lies in the complexity of the relationships creators and users can establish via the link between many different types of information. 

Learning Objectives

• analyze how the multiple kinds of digital information are used to represent gender
• investigate how digital representations perpetuate social and cultural structures
• investigate how digital representations challenge social and cultural structures 
• explore the relationship between form and content in digital media

Guidelines

I
Look for a web site targeted towards someone of the opposite gender. (Yes, opposite. Watch your preconceptions leap into play and then resist them.) Choose carefully. You need a site complex enough to sustain serious analysis. if you choose too simple a site, your grade will plummet.

Explain why you chose your particular site. At this point you should define your terms exactly. What do you mean by male or female? Masculine or feminine? From where are you drawing your standards and definitions? Now explore. What image of the male or female is your site offering? How would you describe the gender targeted in your site to someone else using only the information on that site?

II
Now draw on your experience in other cultural areas. How does reading magazines, watching TV and movie advertising, watching TV shows, attending live performances, meeting in classes, etc., create sets of 'codes' for marking gender? How would you describe those codes? How are they reproduced in the digisphere? 

To what extent do you see the footprints of these legacy genres (print, TV, advertising) in your site? To what extent does your collection of digital elements and relationships break free from/subvert/make fun of those socially accepted codes?

III
Look at the relationships between the many 'bits' of content and construction data on your site. What kind of relationships between information elements do you notice? Do you see/hear more detail? Do you find a wider range of viewpoints? To what extent are you trapped within the content you are investigating? Or are you linked to content outwith the main site you are investigating? How does the external linking emphasize or challenge the representation of gender in your site?

IV
Now investigate the relationship between the form of the site you are investigating and its content? Have you found conventional content encoded in a conventional form? For example, the Oxygen site reproduces many of the same elements as a mainstream woman's magazine - beauty, fashion, emotional stories about life crises, family-oriented health and money features, chat (think about those letters pages), shopping, etc. And the layout also mimics that of a mainstream magazine. Plus, it includes all the talk show staples of sex, family relationships and betrayal, traditionally coded as female as they are most often aired during the day when women still dominate viewing.. Have you found unconventional representations married to unconventional style. Or are the conventions mixed?

V
Now attempt a wider conclusion. Based on your research, how might the multiplying sources and kinds of digital information challenge the status quo on gender roles, responsibilities, employment & status.