| Studies on gender and mass media have lasted for half a century, particularly about women as the receiver and communication target of mass media message. Results of these studies have reached consensus that compared with men, women are less presented and furthermore, stereotyped.Previous studies have found significant gender difference when media present pictures of man and woman. Media tends to portray man’s face and head, while portray woman’s body. American social psychologist Dane Archer conceptualized this phenomenon as face-ism. Face-ism is one of the theories that study gender stereotype, offering us one way to examine media sexism.Nevertheless, research on face-ism is mainly focused on mass media and countries in the west. In China, there is only one research dealing with mass media, and no research on we media. Therefore, this research about we media in China will broaden the width and depth of face-ism research. What’s more, traditional media and we media are different in essence, in that people are being represented in mass media and self-represent in we media. The research about whether face-ism has extended to we media will be a useful complement to previous studies, especially when face-ism is proved to be existent in newspaper, magazine and television.The research analyzed551profile pictures of Sina Weibo users, using content analysis method. Results show that face-ism does not exist in we media, but users of different occupations display significant face-to body ratio difference. The face-to-body ratio of users working in intellectually focused occupations is significantly higher than that of users working in physically focused occupations. In addition, the research has explored the influence of age and number of fans on face-ism, which shows that age significantly influences users’face-to-body ratio, but the number of fans doesn’t. The research has discussed the implications and possible explanations. |
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