Dr Robyn Muir

This paper examines how girls aged 9-15 engage with online influencer culture, focusing on interplays between digital and non-digital normative ecologies. Drawing on school-based workshops, we explore tensions between authenticity, normative ideals and self-presentation in girls' interactions with influencers. Participants expressed agency in content consumption alongside pressures to conform, shaped by social interactions online and offline. We argue that influencer culture perpetuates dominant femininity norms through reciprocal dynamics between influencers and audiences. Girls navigated this terrain ambivalently, often endorsing authenticity and diversity while feeling constrained by normative expectations. We propose a post-digital literacy framework to conceptualise girls' critically engagements with influence as part of everyday life, highlighting implications for education and digital practice.

In this editorial for the first issue of the International Journal of Disney Studies ( IJDS ), the founding editors map the field of Disney Studies as it currently stands and then place this new journal within it. In particular, we explain the need for such a Disney Studies journal at this specific moment in time. The editorial ends with an introduction to this issue and thanks and welcomes to our editorial team, both at Intellect and on the journal team specifically.

This book critically engages with the Walt Disney Company as a global media conglomerate as they mark their 100th year of business. It reflects on and looks forward to the past, present and future of the company and the scholarly engagement surrounding it through three key areas: Disney as a Company, Disney's Representations, and Relating to Disney. 'Disney as a Company' identifies the corporate and management cultural changes over Disney's 100-year history, with contributors examining Disney's transnational media influence, changes in management strategy, and Disney's recent transmedia venture: Disney+. 'Disney's Representations' features chapters critically engaging with gender, disability, and iconic characters that imply cultural change. 'Relating to Disney' embodies the crucial work examining how audiences engage with Disney, with contributors exploring fashion, Disney Fandom and identity, and how people engage with the space of the Parks. This edited collection explores the newer additions to the company, but also reflects on the company's past over its 100 years. The chapters provide a diverse examination of the many facets of one of the most successful global media conglomerates, providing scholars, students, and interested audiences a global and interdisciplinary snapshot of the Walt Disney Company at 100 years.

The Disney Princesses are 18 royal characters featured in Disney and Pixar animated films, merchandise, marketing, and consumer experiences, marketed towards young consumers. Whilst much research has focussed on the representation of gender in Disney Princess films, there has been little focus on the rest of princess culture. This article argues that to understand the Disney Princess Phenomenon in its entirety, a new methodology must be introduced to the field. The article introduces Mason’s facet methodology as a methodological innovation to the fields of Disney and feminist media studies. A creative and innovative approach that allows researchers to ‘play’ with different methods to explore cultural phenomenon. Facet methodology imagines the selected phenomenon as a gemstone, where each ‘element’ or ‘part’ of the phenomenon is a facet of the overall gem. By using different methods to explore each facet, researchers can use findings to refract and reflect ‘light’ on each of the different elements of the phenomenon, demonstrating its entwined nature. The paper firstly outlines Jennifer Mason’s facet methodology. Secondly, it introduces the facets identified in the Disney Princess Phenomenon: films, merchandising and marketing, and consumer experiences. The article then focuses on how facet methodology enabled a creative and holistic approach to studying each facet of the princess phenomenon through a variety of research methods: textual analysis, interviews, content analysis, and autoethnography. The paper then reflects on the approach of facet methodology for research on the Disney Princess Phenomenon and in feminist media studies and media and communication, arguing that facet methodology provides researchers with insights to phenomena we would otherwise not uncover due to its holistic approach.

To analyse the Disney Princess films I created a new film analysis framework to produce a thick description (Geertz 1973) of the film facet of the Disney Princess Phenomenon. Not only will this help scholars in Disney Studies who wish to analyse and create a typology to identify the changes in representation within the Disney Princess Phenomenon or in wider Disney animation/franchises, but due to the transferable nature of the film framework it can be used to explore a variety of popular culture from a feminist media studies perspective. It can also help princess and popular culture fans, parents, and students to critically engage with the media they consume.Taking a feminist media studies approach to my analysis, I firstly contextualized the princesses, exploring the cultural context each princess film was produced in. Then, I conducted textual analysis of each princess film, examining: plot points; how the princesses are described by other characters; dialogue between princesses and others; who is speaking; how other characters behave towards the princess; what behaviours does the princess display herself; what activities does the princess take part in? Through this I identified patterns within each film where princesses were displaying significant traits through their actions or behaviours and labelled these as ‘character traits’. This allowed me to identify and compare different depictions of femininity, which revealed five clusters or ‘waves’, each of which embodies a significantly different model of femininity. To reflect this, there are five separate chapters in the film section. Although the Disney Princesses have been analysed from a feminist and chronological perspective before (Davis 2006; Mollet 2020), this research provides an analytical framework that helps researchers to situate the Disney Princess Phenomenon into waves based of the models of femininity presented by princesses, tracking the micro changes in their development, and identifying catalysts for behavioural and narrative changes within the phenomenon.I argue this framework is a transferable structure that can be used to analyse a wide range of franchises and cultural phenomenon within Disney Studies, across popular culture, and can be used to examine different demographics such as ethnicity, sexuality, and disability.

The Disney Princesses are a billion-dollar industry, known and loved by children across the globe. Robyn Muir provides an exploratory and holistic examination of this worldwide commercial and cultural phenomenon in its key representations: films, merchandising and marketing, and park experiences. Muir highlights the messages and images of femininity found within the Disney Princess canon and provides a rigorous and innovative methodology for analysing gender in media. Including an in-depth examination of each princess film from the last 83 years, the book provides a lens through which to view and understand how Disney Princesses have contributed to the depiction of femininity within popular culture.

Robyn Muir provides an examination of the worldwide Disney Princess commercial and cultural phenomenon in its key representations: films, merchandising and marketing, and park experiences. The book provides a lens through which to view and understand how this franchise has contributed to the depiction of femininity within popular culture.

"Evil women, who are they really? What are their motives, and how are they remembered and constructed within our culture? Evil Women: Representations within Literature, Culture and Film seeks to interrogate the nature and construction of evil women in the above fields. Through literature, poetry, history, ballads, film and real-life culture, scholars explore how the evil woman has been constructed and, in some cases, erased; the punishment and treatment of evil women; and the way evil women have been portrayed on and off screen through character, narrative and behind the camera development"

https://www.cambridgescholars.com/product/978-1-5275-4935-7

https://www.cambridgescholars.com/product/978-1-5275-4935-7

https://www.peterlang.com/document/1059212