Johanna Blakley: Social media and the end of gender

I'm going to make an argument today

that may seem a little bit crazy:

social media and the end of gender.

Let me connect the dots.

I'm going to argue today

that the social media applications

that we all know and love, or love to hate,

are actually going to help free us

from some of the absurd assumptions

that we have as a society about gender.

I think that social media

is actually going to help us dismantle

some of the silly and demeaning stereotypes

that we see in media and advertising

about gender.

If you hadn't noticed,

our media climate generally provides

a very distorted mirror

of our lives and of our gender,

and I think that's going to change.

Now most media companies --

television, radio, publishing, games, you name it --

they use very rigid segmentation methods

in order to understand their audiences.

It's old-school demographics.

They come up with these very restrictive labels to define us.

Now the crazy thing

is that media companies believe

that if you fall within a certain demographic category

then you are predictable in certain ways --

you have certain taste,

that you like certain things.

And so the bizarre result of this

is that most of our popular culture

is actually based on these presumptions

about our demographics.

Age demographics:

the 18 to 49 demo

has had a huge impact

on all mass media programming in this country

since the 1960s,

when the baby boomers were still young.

Now they've aged out of that demographic,

but it's still the case

that powerful ratings companies like Nielson

don't even take into account

viewers of television shows over age 54.

In our media environment,

it's as if they don't even exist.

Now, if you watch "Mad Men," like I do --

it's a popular TV show in the States --

Dr. Faye Miller does something called psychographics,

which first came about in the 1960s,

where you create these complex psychological profiles

of consumers.

But psychographics really haven't had a huge impact on the media business.

It's really just been basic demographics.

So I'm at the Norman Lear Center at USC,

and we've done a lot of research over the last seven, eight years

on demographics

and how they affect media and entertainment

in this country and abroad.

And in the last three years,

we've been looking specifically at social media to see what has changed,

and we've discovered some very interesting things.

All the people who participate in social media networks

belong to the same old demographic categories

that media companies and advertisers

have used in order to understand them.

But those categories mean even less now

than they did before,

because with online networking tools,

it's much easier for us

to escape some of our demographic boxes.

We're able to connect with people quite freely

and to redefine ourselves online.

And we can lie about our age online, too, pretty easily.

We can also connect with people

based on our very specific interests.

We don't need a media company

to help do this for us.

So the traditional media companies, of course,

are paying very close attention to these online communities.

They know this is the mass audience of the future;

they need to figure it out.

But they're having a hard time doing it

because they're still trying to use demographics in order to understand them,

because that's how ad rates are still determined.

When they're monitoring your clickstream --

and you know they are --

they have a really hard time

figuring out your age, your gender and your income.

They can make some educated guesses.

But they get a lot more information

about what you do online,

what you like, what interests you.

That's easier for them to find out than who you are.

And even though that's still sort of creepy,

there is an upside

to having your taste monitored.

Suddenly our taste is being respected

in a way that it hasn't been before.

It had been presumed before.

So when you look online at the way people aggregate,

they don't aggregate

around age, gender and income.

They aggregate around the things they love,

the things that they like,

and if you think about it, shared interests and values

are a far more powerful aggregator of human beings

than demographic categories.

I'd much rather know

whether you like "Buffy the Vampire Slayer"

rather than how old you are.

That would tell me something more substantial about you.

Now there's something else that we've discovered about social media

that's actually quite surprising.

It turns out that women

are really driving the social media revolution.

If you look at the statistics --

these are worldwide statistics --

in every single age category,

women actually outnumber men

in their use of social networking technologies.

And then if you look at the amount of time

that they spend on these sites,

they truly dominate the social media space,

which is a space that's having a huge impact

on old media.

The question is: what sort of impact

is this going to have on our culture,

and what's it going to mean for women?

If the case is that social media

is dominating old media

and women are dominating social media,

then does that mean that women

are going to take over global media?

Are we suddenly going to see

a lot more female characters in cartoons

and in games and on TV shows?

Will the next big-budget blockbuster movies

actually be chick flicks?

Could this be possible,

that suddenly our media landscape

will become a feminist landscape?

Well, I actually don't think that's going to be the case.

I think that media companies are going to hire a lot more women,

because they realize this is important for their business,

and I think that women

are also going to continue to dominate

the social media sphere.

But I think women are actually going to be -- ironically enough --

responsible for driving a stake through the heart

of cheesy genre categories

like the "chick flick"

and all these other genre categories

that presume that certain demographic groups

like certain things --

that Hispanics like certain things,

that young people like certain things.

This is far too simplistic.

The future entertainment media that we're going to see

is going to be very data-driven,

and it's going to be based on the information

that we ascertain from taste communities online,

where women are really driving the action.

So you may be asking, well why is it important

that I know what entertains people?

Why should I know this?

Of course, old media companies and advertisers

need to know this.

But my argument is that,

if you want to understand the global village,

it's probably a good idea that you figure out

what they're passionate about, what amuses them,

what they choose to do in their free time.

This is a very important thing to know about people.

I've spent most of my professional life

researching media and entertainment

and its impact on people's lives.

And I do it not just because it's fun --

though actually, it is really fun --

but also because

our research has shown over and over again

that entertainment and play

have a huge impact on people's lives --

for instance, on their political beliefs

and on their health.

And so, if you have any interest in understanding the world,

looking at how people amuse themselves

is a really good way to start.

So imagine a media atmosphere

that isn't dominated by lame stereotypes

about gender

and other demographic characteristics.

Can you even imagine what that looks like?

I can't wait to find out what it looks like.

Thank you so much.

(Applause)