More Than Just Gender: Exploring Contextual Influences on Media Bias of Political Candidates

Abstract

Gender bias in the media coverage of political elections has long been theorized as a major obstacle to women’s success in elections and their institutional representation. However, this view of persistent media bias against women politicians is increasingly subject to pressure by inconsistent evidence of size and patterns of gender bias. This paper argues that some of these inconsistencies derive from a lack of attention to contextual influences of electoral coverage. This study analyzes gender bias in the amount and content of media coverage in the run-up to Swiss federal elections in 2015 by means of a quantitative content analysis. Drawing on an extensive sample of print, online and audiovisual election coverage from the most important tabloid and broadsheet media of three different language regions, the results reveal mixed evidence of gender bias: On the one hand, women candidates remain underrepresented in Swiss media. On the other hand, however, once they are covered by the media, candidates are overwhelmingly presented in a gender-neutral way. Several differences emerge between language regions and media type. Extending the traditional gender bias hypothesis to account for contextual influences, the study illustrates that the geo-cultural and media-specific contextual influences of election coverage impinge on the gendered mediation of candidates together with known drivers of political communication, such as incumbency, the electoral system, and party ideology.

Gendering in the electoral run: A media monitoring study of women politicians’ representation in Belgian news

“…Additionally, mixed findings can be understood by different research contexts. First, television broadcasts have been linked to lesser female presence than newspapers (Rohrbach et al, 2020; Van der Pas and Aaldering, 2020), whilst research on radio and online news has remained limited. The latter has mainly analysed online versions of traditional news sources, reporting – not surprisingly – similar findings (Humprecht and Esser, 2017; Rohrbach et al, 2020).…”

“…First, television broadcasts have been linked to lesser female presence than newspapers (Rohrbach et al, 2020; Van der Pas and Aaldering, 2020), whilst research on radio and online news has remained limited. The latter has mainly analysed online versions of traditional news sources, reporting – not surprisingly – similar findings (Humprecht and Esser, 2017; Rohrbach et al, 2020). Despite the field’s focus on traditional media, Harp and Bachman (2018) have called for greater attention to the ways alternative voices are heard within the digital media environment, where ‘ counter-hegemonic ideologies are provided a space ’ (p. 188).…”

“…Country-specific cases that reflect on their particular political and journalistic landscape, as well as on other contextual factors, have furthered understandings of the various ways in which gendered coverage can manifest (e.g. Rohrbach et al, 2020). This study investigates gendered mediation of politicians in the Belgian case, by using a comparative methodological approach that explores the role of media and political factors.…”

“…We instead opted for an in-depth study of the Belgian case, analysing multiple media as distinctive contexts (cf. Rohrbach et al, 2020).…”

Das Potenzial offener Listen für die Wahl von Frauen zum Bundestag. Ergebnisse eines Survey-Experiments

“…systemen ebenfalls substanziell benachteiligen (Wauters et al 2010;Lühiste 2015;Bauer 2020;Rohrbach et al 2020). Daher wird die Quotenfrage auch in solchen Systemen nicht obsolet (Jones und Navia 1999;Górecki und Kukołowicz 2014).…”