International Journal of Women's Research
Volume:2 Issue: 1, Winter & Spring 2013

Virtual Colonialism (Ameli, 2011) is reflecting a new trend of colonialismin the virtual space parallel to the physical space. According to Ameli(2007), withthe “Dual Spacization” of life,the imperial powers like the United States of Americatake the advantage of the synchronization and translocality of the virtual space toexpand their realm of imperial power through the “attraction” and “persuasion”strategies with the least costs and losses.The present paper analyzes the user-based website “YouTube” exploiting thecritical discourse analysis method to examine the strategies through which it representsthe Muslim/Iranian women whose identity arehighlighted by Hijab. Theresults indicate that the Americanization by “YouTube” is implemented inauser-based in a pluralist context. This is while the American discourse includingthe liberal democracy values and its politics ofIslamophobic and Iranophobicimages of Muslims are prevalent in the “YouTube”.The paper depicts how the representation of Muslim woman and her hijab isdemonized through the “YouTube” result videos.Furthermore, it shows thisdemonization is duplicated in the case of the Iranian Muslim women particularlybecause of the formal American politics of Iranophobia and regime change in Iran.Taking into account the high rank of “YouTube” as the third globally-viewed Americanwebsite and its discursive advantage in the virtual space, the significance of thepresent study can be considerable.

Lebanon has been considered a sample of Europe in the Middle East, and it is surprising to have an Islamic resistance against Israel in this small modern country. The Islamic Resistance was, at the beginning, portrayed as having a very different ideology from that of the neighboring countries of the Middle East. This Resistance was established on the basis of being a resistance model for the free world, especially the Palestinians; women were the main partners in the resistance especially in the media. Therefore, the resistance established three media forms: radio, television, and newspaper, to work simultaneously with military resistance operations. This could not have been achieved without the Lebanese women’s support. Women in resistance media had a role of sustaining the resistance when no one could help. In this article the focus is on this role after it has being found out that there is not much study done about it, so we chose this topic to highlight the importance of women in this field. In a country like Lebanon, the appearance of veiled women on TV, was an opportunity to show that the veil is not an obstacle to be active. The article goes back to the history of Lebanon and has spoken about the many resistance movements experienced in the Arab world showing the role of women in these movements, with details about the role of women in the Lebanese resistance and its media. Women’s participation in the Islamic resistance was an important step forward in facing the Israeli aggressions against Lebanon to reach victory. Developing a specialized media for the resistance was an important step forward; first, in facing the Israeli as well as international media in which women were the role models, and second, in showing the people of the region with different ideologies the right side of the resistance, therefore winning acceptance and respect for Islam and for Hijab.

Female genital mutilation in different parts of the African continent isconsidered as one of the vast territory’s social problems. This social problem whichis accounted as an old tradition in different countries of the African continent hashad so many unpleasant physical and mental effects on urban and rural Africanwomen during recent centuries. Throughout recent decades, considerable effortshave been made by United Nations and its dependent organizations and privateinstitutes in order to stop or reduce the young girls circumcision rate in Africancontinent; however, most of the indigenous population insist on this wrong traditionand proclaim that this tradition is a part of their old traditions remaining from theirancestors and its safeguard is quite important for them.In this article, the way this old tradition is conducted and the reasons underlyingthe action have been studied. Furthermore, the activities taking place by organizationsrelated to United Nations and African politicians in order to confront female genitalmutilation in different countries of Western Africa and their reflection in urban andrural regions have been studied through existing documents and witnesses.

Providing analytical and social tools, critical discourse analysis (henceforthCDA) can be used to unravel the hidden ideologiesas well as biases in the websof discursive practices involved in texts. In this paper, the van Leeuwen’s (1996)CDA framework is used to analyze an article from a British broadsheet newspaper,the Guardian. To have a more detailed analysis, eleven elements are chosen fromthe comprehensive framework of van Leeuwen. The focus of the study is onthe representation of Muslim women in non-Islamic media, and the reason forwhich this British newspaper is used is that usually European countries have beenaccused of undemocratic behavior towards other ethnics and nationalities, andthe reflection of this behavior is more observable in their media. Besides Muslimwomen, the representation of three other social actors has been analyzed so thata more comprehensive assessment can be achieved. The findings of this studyindicate that Muslim women are depicted as active actors of Muslim community,remarkably determined in their beliefs, and as independent individuals who arein search of the resurrection of women’s identity. Although the Guardian author’stotal depiction of Muslim women is a positive one, she finally concludes that theprevalence of the lack of critical thinking among them is the clearest drawback ofall Muslim women. This last statement shows that although western media by themeans of strategic tools try to depict minorities positively, in adopting such strategiesthey are not completely neutral.

This article discusses how the Extreme Makeover: HomeEditionUStelevision reality program, which focuses on rebuilding houses for those in need,sets unrealistic boundaries for the American Dream’s standard of living oflow-income homeowners in the United States. Passing through economic hardshipin the past several years, it is important to study how this program can meet thereal expectations of the deserved families and viewers in a way that it doesnotlead to more economic pressure for the selected family who is having theirhouse reconstructed. Based on Gerbner’s Cultivation theory, the media shapesthe peoples’ reality and view on the world around them and in this case,it shapes the expectations of an American dream home. This article analyzeshow homeownership has become an American Dream and how the low-incomefamilies participating in Extreme Makeover: HomeEdition had struggled to becomehomeowners. It will do so by looking at five examples of families who have faceddifficulty in maintaining the lavish homes that have been rebuilt for them byExtreme Makeover reality program team, with the use of a multidisciplinary frameand discourse analysis methodology. Hencit will describe how this program has setboundaries and raised expectations for the target families and viewers accordingto the Cultivation theory.

This paper studies the image of Latinos in the United States of Americathrough the Hollywood films production by the well-known Mexican director,AlejandroGonz?lez I??rritu. Using content analysis of the Latinos characters in the threefilms directed by him and in collaboration with screenwriter Guillermo Arriaga, thepresent paper examines the masculinity frame to see whether the Latinos areportrayed positively or negatively in Hollywood movies. Semiotics in films and theCharacter theory are used as the theoretical framework. The reason for choosingthis director is to control the research for the racializationthat might exist if we picka non-Latino director. The hypothesis is that the portrayal of the main characters isa violent masculinity and a negative one. Regardless of the intentional orunintentional reasons behind it, the effect of such portrayal on the overall pictureof Latinos is a negative one in the sense that according to the representationtheory, using Goffman Character and Christian Metz’s Semiotics theories, peopletend to accept something that is repeated enough for them as the reality andtherefore act upon it.