Feminine sexuality representations: appraising the nexus between media literacy and social media use

Abstract

Issues on sexuality raises concerns especially on social media. This is because, sexuality involves interests in sexual activities, appeals and orientations. Social media users often react favourably to messages or visuals of sexual depictions even when messages and visuals are presented subjectively. The subjective approach is dependent on the degree of media literacy of social media users. The study examines how media literacy influences social media representations of feminine sexuality. The study adopted online survey of 235 Facebook users using purposive sampling technique. The findings revealed significant negative sexual representations of women on social media than through (online) mainstream media. This is attributed to citizen journalism which is more user-generated than media-generated. Based on the findings of the study, it is recommended that social media representations of women should be fair and objective as biased representations create stereotypes and prejudices against women and concept of citizen journalism should be revisited with newer interpretations to educate non-professional media users on how to use media efficiently.