I had the privilege of serving as discussant for a panel titled "Digital and Social Media Presentations of Women's Rights Internationally" on Tuesday at the annual AEJMC conference. Here are some of my comments:

"What makes this panel so special is the focus
on women’s issues in non-Western countries and those in the Global South. We
know that there is a lack of research on gender and journalism outside of the
Global North, so all of these papers have the potential to make important
contributions.
" Looking at the papers presented here, we have
two papers about women in Iran, one on women in Ghana, one on women in Uganda, and one
on women in Saudi Arabia. At least three were presented by students, which is
very encouraging. I think several of the authors are also 'from' one of these
countries, which gives them great advantage in terms of positionality. But I
also want to acknowledge the difficulty of moving in between spaces and
adjusting to academic life in the United States. Please know that you have
valuable contributions to make.
"Methods used here vary from a visual
rhetorical analysis of 520 tweets, to a quantitative analysis of 600 news
articles in both Arabic and English, and in-depth interviews. For interview
papers, we see the importance of an intersectional approach, where we look not
just at gender but also nationality...."