This paper reports the results of a content analysis of election–related headlines in Canada's two English–language national newspapers, The Globe and Mail and The National Post, over the course of the 36–day 2000 federal election campaign. We found that the two national newspapers' headlines revealed differences in issue emphasis, leader portrayals and party assessment. Yet both newspapers embraced a game frame for election coverage–by focusing on the horse–race, leader personalities and campaign strategies–to the neglect of campaign issues and ideological distinctions between parties. These findings suggest that media game framing can result in troublesome consequences for constructive citizen engagement in election activities.

. When women seek the leadership of competitive political parties, does their sex influence their news visibility throughout the campaign? By conducting a content analysis of all Globe and Mail coverage of each of the three Conservative Party of Canada leadership races featuring competitive female contenders—Flora MacDonald in 1976, Kim Campbell in 1993 and Belinda Stronach in 2004—I measured the news visibility of each of the leading male and female candidates. The findings show a relationship between the sex of the leadership candidate and news prominence, as the female contenders were, on the whole, more visible than similarly situated male candidates. However, as the analysis reveals, sex is not the only factor shaping news coverage. I argue that the news value of the party, the nature of the leadership competition, and gendered mediation of individual leadership candidates intersect to determine the amount and prominence of news coverage accorded male and female candidates for party leadership positions.I would like to thank Ph.D. student Laura Way for her diligent work to test intercoder reliability and for collecting the news articles from the 1976 PC leadership race from the Globe and Mail's digital archive.Résumé. Lorsque les femmes se présentent à la chefferie d'un parti politique important, leur sexe a-t-il une influence, durant la campagne, sur la place qu'on leur accorde dans l'actualité ? J'ai mesuré la présence dans l'actualité des meneurs des trois courses à la chefferie du Parti conservateur du Canada où une femme était candidate – Flora MacDonald en 1976, Kim Campbell en 1993 et Belinda Stronach en 2004 – à partir d'une analyse du contenu de toute la couverture du Globe and Mail pour chacune des campagnes. Les résultats permettent d'établir un lien entre le sexe des candidats et leur présence dans l'actualité, les candidates étant, dans l'ensemble, plus visibles que les candidats dont la situation était par ailleurs comparable. Cependant, l'analyse démontre également que le sexe n'est pas le seul facteur déterminant de la couverture médiatique. Je soutiens que l'importance du parti même dans l'actualité, le style propre à la campagne, ainsi que la représentation genrée de chaque candidat par les médias se recoupent pour déterminer la fréquence et la visibilité de la couverture accordée aux candidats et candidates à la direction d'un parti politique.

Our study examines the phenomenon of personalization in news coverage of candidates for the leadership of Canadian national political parties. Because the politicization of the personal through newspaper coverage of bodies and intimate lives has different meanings for women and men politicians, we argue that it is important to account for gender differences in levels of personalization. Our analysis of the Globe and Mail newspaper reporting of thirteen party leadership races held between 1975 and 2012 includes eleven competitive women candidates, four of whom won the leadership contest. Conducting a content analysis of 2,463 newspaper articles published over the course of this thirty-seven-year period facilitates comparison of the levels of personalized coverage over time, by leadership contest, and by candidate gender and success. Findings reveal that the amount of personal coverage did not increase over time, as the personalization literature hypothesizes. However, reporting was significantly more likely to "make it personal" for women candidates, as suggested by the literature on media coverage of women politicians. We argue that gendered mediation is largely driving the personalization of political reporting in the Canadian national context

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Are women politicians who mount competitive campaigns for high political office as visible and prominent in news coverage of their candidacies as their male competitors? Few studies have systematically or longitudinally investigated the relationship between candidate gender, competitiveness, and media visibility during election or party leadership campaigns. Moreover, studies of media visibility tend to focus exclusively on the presence of candidates in news stories, as measured by one or more mentions per story. Examining six textual and visual elements in Globe and Mail reporting of eleven Canadian national leadership campaigns held between 1975 and 2012, we discover that it is candidate competitiveness and novelty and not candidate gender that influences the media visibility of party leadership hopefuls. Canada provides a useful case study when exploring the relationship between gender and media visibility because many women have sought, and four have won, the leadership of national parties.