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Social media and the end of gender

1,623,674 views | Johanna Blakley • TEDWomen 2010

Media and advertising companies still use the same old demographics to understand audiences, but they're becoming increasingly harder to track online, says media researcher Johanna Blakley. As social media outgrows traditional media, and women users outnumber men, Blakley explains what changes are in store for the future of media.

Media and advertising companies still use the same old demographics to understand audiences, but they're becoming increasingly harder to track online, says media researcher Johanna Blakley. As social media outgrows traditional media, and women users outnumber men, Blakley explains what changes are in store for the future of media.

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About the speaker

Johanna Blakley

Johanna Blakley

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Johanna Blakley studies the impact of mass media and entertainment on our world.

Johanna Blakley | Women's Studies Quarterly, Spring/Summer 2012 | Article

Media in Our Image

This academic article, which builds on the TED Talk, includes a multimedia component that lives on Tumblr and Pinterest. Our goal was to reimagine self-representation, and portraiture in particular, in the age of social media.

Andrea Vollman et al. | ComScore, June 30, 2010 | Article

Women on the web: How women are shaping the Internet

This comScore report looks at female Internet users all around the world. (It can be difficult to find global reports like this that look at gender.)

Martin Kaplan and Johanna Blakley | Barcelona Media Center, June 26, 2009 | Article

The Business and Culture of Social Media

Martin Kaplan and I produced this report which explores the 'three economies' that govern the era of social media.

Maeve Duggan | Pew Research Center, September 12, 2013 | Article

It’s a Woman’s (Social Media) World

Pew research consistently finds that women outnumber men on social media networks in the US.

This talk was presented at an official TED conference. TED's editors chose to feature it for you.

Join the Media in Our Image social media campaign.