Audience Sense-Making of Relational Aggression in the Film Mean Girls: Bridging Conversations in Critical Media Studies and Interpersonal Communication

• Michaela D. E. Meyer ^[1]
  1. [1] Christopher Newport University

     Christopher Newport University

     Estados Unidos

     
• Localización: Southern communication journal, ISSN 1041-794X, Vol. 90, nº 3, 2025, págs. 189-200
• Idioma: inglés
• Texto completo no disponible (Saber más ...)
• Resumen

  • Utilizing a critical approach to media studies, this essay presents data from focus groups with emerging adults about the film Mean Girls (2004). Participants were asked to interrogate the representation of “mean girls” behavior in the film as well as account for their own sense-making of interpersonal experiences with relational aggression. Ultimately, audiences produced complicated and complex responses to relational aggression, identifying the behavior as universally stigmatized both problematizing and normalizing relational aggression. Participants also provided commentary on how aspects of the mediated representations of relational aggression in the film manifest in day-to-day experiences with relational aggression. Implications for the intersections of critical media studies and interpersonal communication are explored.