Gender and Human-Machine Communication: Where Are We?

In this introduction to the fifth volume of the journal Human-Machine Communication, we present and discuss the five articles focusing on gender and human-machine communication. In this essay, we will analyze the theme of gender, including how this notion has historically and politically been set up, and for what reasons. We will start by considering gender in in-person communication, then we will progress to consider what happens to gender when it is mediated by the most important ICTs that preceded HMC: the telephone, mobile phone, and computer-mediated communication (CMC). We outline the historical framework necessary to analyze the last section of the essay, which focuses on gender in HMC. In the conclusion, we will set up some final sociological and political reflections on the social meaning of these technologies for gender and specifically for women.