The transgender community in India, commonly known as hijras, consists of people who were born as males but address themselves as females. They have been considered as the third gender in India for millennia and have had specific religious and sociocultural values and roles, but are forced to live in shadows in this day and age. Isolation of this community is also reflected in the way transgender characters are represented in Indian entertainment media. The study analyses two transgender themed films semiotically and the audience reception of those representations by 20 members of the transgender community. Semiotics is a helpful tool to understand the ways signs communicate ideas to viewers. This study applies syntagmatic and paradigmatic analyses to understand how images are used to represent and relay information to the audience. Reception theory along with double colonization has been incorporated in this study to analyse the ways in which the transgender community interprets the representations in entertainment media.

As with women journalists in other male-dominated fields, female music writers have long endured gendered harassment. In the newsroom, this sexist treatment is foisted upon female music journalists by their male editors and colleagues; in the outside world, it often occurs at the hands of male sources, readers, and online trolls. Unfortunately, the victims of such abuse are frequently left to cope with it alone, and many report that their mental health suffers in the process. Some may even ultimately decide to quit pursuing music journalism entirely. These women report wanting to feel more supported within their work environment, as well as through informal means, such as via a network of fellow female writers. Feminist media theory, utilitarianism, and ethics of care will serve as the study's theoretical bases. This research, based on in-depth interviews with women music journalists, suggests that the vast majority of participants had faced sexism and/or gendered harassment during their time as a female music journalist, experiences that left many of them feeling frustrated and devalued. Based on the research, I offer recommendations on how to make the industry more inclusive for women writers.

Purity culture was a movement created by evangelical Christian organizations in the United States and backed by marketing campaigns, media, churches, and sex education beginning in the 1990s. This movement was founded on the idea that young men and women should remain abstinent before marriage, thereby remaining in a state of "purity" for their future spouse. In purity culture messaging, women were positioned as sexual gatekeepers while men were framed as having little or no control over their sexual impulses, causing most of the purity expectation to fall on women. While the concept of remaining "pure" is not new, purity culture taught a new generation of women to feel ashamed and fearful of their sexuality and existed alongside an increasingly sexualized media landscape. This study analyzes purity culture and anti-purity culture themes that exist within television shows as well as how women perceive purity culture messaging and the effects this messaging had on their lives.