Popular culture and identity: an investigation in to the images of modern ethiopian muisc video clips in the orientation of gender identity of adolescent audiences of addis ababa.
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Date
2008-10
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Addis Ababa University
Abstract
With the growing popularity of music video clips since the 1960’s and afterwards in the Ethiopia media landscape, audiences have been able to be exposed to a substantial number of Ethiopian music video clips. A sizeable number of these audiences constitute of Adolescent audiences of Addis Ababa who actively absorb modern conceptual Ethiopian music video clips in their daily diet of media discourses. Popular Culture and Identity : An Investigation Into Images of Modern Ethiopian Music Video Clips in the Orientation of Gender Identity of Adolescent Audiences in Addis Ababa attempts to explore how the adolescent audiences of Addis Ababa, in the midst of their lived reality, make meaning about their gender identity out of the images of the modern Ethiopian music video clips. The study also attempts to investigate how the image makers depict femininity and masculinity in the modern music video clips they produce. Using a focus group discussion and in-depth individual interviews, this study make an effort to investigate how the specified audiences make meaning out of the sexual images of the modern Ethiopian music video clips. All the same, drawing on a qualitative content analysis on purposively selected music videos, the study attempts to investigate how the image makers represent the images of femininity and masculinity in their productions of conceptual music video clips.
The findings of the research demonstrate that most of the images of the modern Ethiopian music videos depict femininity and masculinity in stereotypical ways. The gender images, as presented by the modern Ethiopian music videos, witnessed symbolic annihilations that feature females less desirably than males both behaviorally and occupationally. All the same the music video clips appear to be fetishistic and depict females as sexual objects. The findings also exhibited that daily diet of stereotypical images enforces stereotypical beliefs on gender identity, specifically on sex-role stereotyping. Female audiences are witnessed to have experienced body dissatisfaction in their daily contact with music video images. Further more, female audiences of music video images revealed that they experience a dis- empowering feeling while males encounter an empowering experience afterwards. As in the premise of media cultivation theory, conception of gender identity of adolescent audiences of Addis Ababa has developed a ‘gendered subjectivity’ as presented by the modern Ethiopian music video clips.
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gender identity of adolescent