Feminized Convergence: Bravo TV and Interactivity for Women

Abstract

This dissertation analyzes the convergence of television and digital technologies in the context of media that is designed for and marketed specifically to women. Taking the female-targeted Bravo TV network and its interactive platforms as a case study, I show how Bravo organizes its participatory, new media initiates around its brand of stylized, melodramatic docu-soap series. My dissertation argues that Bravo draws women into interactivity through the gendered conventions of mass women’s culture, setting a template for addressing women as digital media users through the socially-constructed skills of femininity. I refer to the gendered strategies, practices, and content used to integrate women into convergence culture as “feminized convergence.” My analysis of feminized convergence suggests a reversion to traditional approaches for attracting female audiences popularized in the twentieth century formats like the soap opera and melodramatic woman’s film. Despite the hope that media convergence will “democratize the media,” feminized convergence reveals a turning back to the stereotypical conventions of mass women’s culture and the intensification of gender stereotypes in the digital realm.