Are byline biases an issue of the past? The effect of author’s gender and emotion norm prescriptions on the evaluation of news articles on gender equality

Autor(en)

Leyla Dogruel, Sven Joeckel, Claudia Wilhelm

Abstrakt

When female journalists write about issues of gender equality, they often become the target of incivility and their work is devaluated. Research has investigated such devaluations based on journalists’ gender under the scope of byline biases, analysing if it matters to readers whether a news piece is authored by a male or female journalist. In this paper, we set out to study if gender byline biases occur when journalists write about gender equality. As gender attributions become particularly salient through the presentation of gendered emotion norms, we also inquire in how it matters for readers’ interest in reading such an article and the attributed credibility of the author when an article prescribes gender-specific emotions. We report findings from two consecutive experimental studies, manipulating gender bylines and emotion norm prescriptions and include reader gender as a quasi-experimental factor. Our findings show that gender byline biases against female authors are depending on content and context characteristics and only become activated when gender cues are clearly visible. At the same time, we found a tendency to judge female authors as more credible for topics on gender equality, which (partly) mitigated negative effects on reading intention for female authors. The prescription of emotion norms did not further strengthen biases against female authors. Our study opens the path for further investigations into the question when gender bylines are activated and underlines the challenges for female journalists’ visibility when they address controversial issues such as gender equality.

Organisation(en)

Institut für Publizistik- und Kommunikationswissenschaft

Externe Organisation(en)

Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz, Universität Erfurt

Journal

Journalism

Band

24

Seiten

560-579

Anzahl der Seiten

20

ISSN

1464-8849

DOI

https://doi.org/10.1177/14648849211012176

Publikationsdatum

04-2021

Peer-reviewed

Ja

ÖFOS 2012

508007 Kommunikationswissenschaft

Schlagwörter

ASJC Scopus Sachgebiete

Communication, Arts and Humanities (miscellaneous)

Sustainable Development Goals

SDG 5 – Geschlechtergleichheit

Link zum Portal

https://ucrisportal.univie.ac.at/de/publications/511cc243-1615-4410-8757-6cb53a62db1f