This morning, I came across a user-submitted article on WomenCo from Associated Press, entitled, Men and Women View Web Pages Differently.

I'm never quite sure how to react to information like this. On the one hand, it isn't bad. It probably won't make too big of a difference if women and men really do read web pages differently, regardless of whether it's due to hard-wiring, genetic interpretation, or socialization. But on the other hand, it isn't good. It's not good journalism, it contributes very little to our understanding of the way humans interact with one another, and it lets a bunch of lame people look impressive at lamer (relatively speaking) cocktail parties.

This time, I started thinking about the process by which an article like this appears on a site like WomenCo.
It's actually more complex than it would seem.

Let's take a step-by-step look:

1. Funding Is Granted to Scientists 'Somewhere' (in this case, at the Glamorgan University Business School in Wales)

Just look at all of the assumptions I'm making here. First of all, a quick visit to the home-site of the Business School quickly shows me that the institution is clearly not interested in hard science - it is interested in job placement and promotional marketing.

Are 'scientists' conducting these experiments anymore? Or is it too difficult to get funding when you're constantly competing with a bunch of entrepreneurs for research dollars? Which epitome is worse, when it comes to research: Darwin, or Vanna White?

The worse-case scenario is probably some morbid combination of the two. Which seems to be what we're dealing with, here. After a quick Google keyword search, it looks like the study was published by Glamorgan's Department of Psychology under The Journal of Brand Management.

2. Findings from Study Are Extrapolated, Dumbed Down, Stripped of Analytical Information, and Summarized

To be perfectly honest, I'm not even sure who is in charge of this step - the dumb scientists or the dumber journalists.

I'm guessing it's the scientists who extrapolate from original findings, because most journalists could never make it far enough into your typical article from an academic quarterly to actually learn anything They probably stop after the introductory paragraph and the experiment synopsis. This is really too bad. Did The Sokal Hoax teach you nothing, sociologists??

3. Aggressive Media Contributors Rip Article From Already Decaying Epistemological Carcus

With the original information already packaged in such a way that it is very easily digested by mainstream media editors, the article is quickly abstracted from its original context, given absurdist headlines (in order to inspire a resounding "huh" by users of social media websites and news feeds), and conjoined with images which may or may not have anything to do with the actual story at hand.

4. Readers and Web Producers Respond to Article in a Number of Predictable Ways

That's right - we are not merely the victims here. We must be responsible for the way in which we interpret the information that we read. You know what's particularly self-contradictory about the constant gripes one hears about how "a media empire controls the world's information", "the media only fuels corporate interest", and so on? The fact that our very demand for ethical, 'objective' media coverage already betrays that we do not take responsibility for our own processes of becoming informed.

Not only do we usually not respond to media objects in an engaged manner - we usually respond with incredibly predictable patterns of behavior. We are very unlikely to formally respond to an article, in an engaged manner, because we are very cynical ("Who would read my response, anyways?") We usually quickly express a passing sentiment about an article (StumbleUpon thumb-up, a Digg, a quick IM to a friend, or an e-mail to the mom). Best case scenario, we use the article as fodder for a cocktail conversation.

5. Articles Are Archived With an Extremely Short Life Span

The reason why certain questions, observations, and sentiments seem so universally prominent ("What is the Greater Good?" "Is there an afterlife?" "Why are so many people starving and dying?" "Is there life outside of planet Earth?" is because they are true. They express certain un-answerable sentiments which have been around for thousands of years, and probably aren't going anywhere anytime, soon.

Returning to the study of sex/gender difference on web pages - we probably won't ever read about this again months from now. Most notably, because the question of whythose differences manifest is always backgrounded, presumed, or occluded. The social/ cultural theorists assume that manifestations are socialized, and the biologists assume that they are hard-wired.

5. Sequence is Repeated

But without enough substantial content to actually generate a real debate, who gives a damn?

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Doesn't anybody else see a problem with this process? Look at the wealth of resources we have available to us. Social media sites (such as BlogHer) give us a unique chance to challenge social media objects, and shape the future of the media world forever. Let's start taking advantage of that.

Kylie,
WomenCo.