The following is an excerpt from issue no. 1 of the December 2005 Asian Network of Women in Communication (ANWIC) journal. It was written by Media Studies professor and founding member of ANWIC, Midori Suzuki, following the success of GMMP 2005 in Japan…
"The GMMP is a concrete example of what active audiences can do. Focusing on news reporting in three mainstream media – TV, newspaper, and radio – it aims to monitor news worldwide from a gender perspective. While the findings are mainly quantitative and therefore have limitations, this project is important because it has been sustained for a long period of time and the empirical data was collected with [a] global participation.
The GMMP can be likened to a giant workshop where the participants are active audiences from all over the world. Those who join the GMMP realize for the first time that they are all seriously thinking about the same media issues at the same time. When they fill out the same monitoring sheets, they begin to reflect and share their thoughts on the differences and similarities between their findings and those of others, expanding their perspective on heir own media environment. The participants now look at the global media context, making the GMMP a practical media literacy activity."
Suzuki's article also highlights the Asia Pacific Forum on Active Audiences in Kyoto. If you are interested in its full text, email
CS@waccglobal.org
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