Girl's Audience in an Era of New Media Technologies
Dr. Sigal Barak-Brandes

The course will focus on the attributes and uniqueness of the young feminine audience as an audience which uses and creates culture in 'web 2.0' era. We will start with an understanding of the connection between media, popular culture and identity construction (including gender identity).
We will continue into the discourse about girls in the western media and popular culture, while acknowledging their popular and common images.
The course will introduce the students to the main changes of thought and research regarding media audiences while focusing on the unique contribution of Feminism to the study of gender audiences of film and culture.
We will focus on the development of Girls' studies and their contribution to the knowledge about that audience and its cultural pleasures. The course will also provide a discussion about the unique place of girls as both cultural consumers and producers (prosumers) in the Twenty-first century and in the intriguing cultural-technological environment which web 2.0 enables.
The seminar papers will research interpretation patterns used by Israeli teenage girls regarding different media contents and images, or alternatively, the papers will try to analyse the texts which girls self-produce.