Marion Dalibert

The Representational Intertwinement of Gender, Age and Uses of Information and Communication Technology: A Comparison Between German and French Preteen Magazines

Gender, preadolescence and the use of information and communication technology are not stable and static entities in the field of media. Rather, they are constantly shaped by images and texts. This chapter aims to examine their representational intertwinement and to cross-analyse gender and age imaging with ICT use. The primary issue treated in this paper concerns the way preteen magazine imagery ‘marks’ ICT use according to gender and age (and vice versa). Are certain technologies and their usage patterns associated with a particular gender? How does media imagery participate in the mutual shaping of gender, technology and age group? In different national contexts, to what extent does imagery of computers and video game use contribute to modelling preadolescence, an age category that did not exist even a few decades ago? This text seeks to respond to these questions by drawing on the results of an exploratory research on ICT imagery found in German and French preteen magazines over the last 30 years.