Gender differences in political media coverage: A meta-analysis

Autor(en)
Daphne van der Pas, Loes Aaldering
Abstrakt

Do the media cover men and women politicians and candidates differently? This article performs a systematic analysis of 90 studies covering over 25,000 politicians in over 750,000 media stories, and presents the accumulated knowledge in a comprehensive theoretical framework. The paper shows that there is a gender bias in the amount of coverage of politicians in proportional electoral systems, where women politicians lag behind men in media attention, but that, surprisingly, this gender bias is absent in majoritarian electoral systems. In addition, we systematically review gender differences in the content of media reports on political candidates, such as differences in attention to private life and family, viability and horse-race coverage, issue coverage, and gender stereotypes. Overall, women politicians receive more attention to their appearance and personal life, more negative viability coverage, and, to some extent, stereotypical issue and trait coverage. We conclude by pointing out promising avenues for future research.

Organisation(en)
Institut für Publizistik- und Kommunikationswissenschaft
Externe Organisation(en)
University of Amsterdam (UvA)
Journal
Journal of Communication
Band
70
Seiten
114-143
Anzahl der Seiten
30
ISSN
0021-9916
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1093/joc/jqz046
Publikationsdatum
02-2020
Peer-reviewed
Ja
ÖFOS 2012
508020 Politische Kommunikation
Schlagwörter
ASJC Scopus Sachgebiete
Communication, Language and Linguistics, Linguistics and Language
Link zum Portal
https://ucris.univie.ac.at/portal/de/publications/gender-differences-in-political-media-coverage-a-metaanalysis(aa4254e6-ef2c-4d8b-b0fb-ddfbb05923c3).html