When Race, Gender, and the Media Intersect: Campaign News Coverage of Minority Congresswomen

Abstract

The news media often serves as an intermediary between elected officials and constituents, informing voters of the ways in which they are being represented. While the media plays a critical role in allowing representatives to communicate with constituents, previous research indicates that coverage of women and minority members of Congress may be unfavorable. Contrary to previous research, I find that being either a woman or a minority alone does not negatively impact coverage. However, faced with the "double barrier" of race and gender, minority congresswomen often receive more negative and less frequent media coverage than all other representatives.

“France's (Kinder, Gentler) Extremist”: Marine Le Pen, Intersectionality, and Media Framing of Female Populist Radical Right Leaders

“…Research on intersectionality in media coverage of political candidates mostly focuses on the combined effects of gender and race, often finding that minority women receive the most negative and infrequent media coverage compared with both white women and minority men (Tolley 2015;Ward 2017). In her article examining media coverage of female representatives in the U.S. House of Representatives, Gershon (2012) confirms previous studies, concluding that the tone and content of minority women's coverage was more negative than that of their white female counterparts. Additionally, Latina congresswomen diverged from their colleagues in the extent of their ethnicity-related issue coverage, specifically receiving significantly more coverage on immigration issues.…”

Intersectionality and Press Coverage of Political Campaigns

“…Thirdly, building on Gershon's (2012) design, the candidate matching strategy employed here demonstrates the importance of controlling for additional politically relevant factors in order to account for alternative explanations of variation in press coverage of political actors. This is especially important for analyses of representations of minority women, given that their historical underrepresentation results in substantial differences in, for example, rates of incumbency, when compared to candidates from other intersectional groups.…”

“…This article investigates effects of British parliamentary candidates' race and gender four key aspects of the campaign coverage they receive: its quantity, overall tone, and the degree to which it highlights female candidates' gender and BAME candidates' race. While existing intersectional analyses provide important methodological precedents, they are extremely scarce (Gershon 2012;Tolley 2015b). Additionally, the relevant single axis literature is somewhat asymmetric.…”

Where Are All of the Women? Untangling the Effects of Representation, Participation, and Preferences on Gender Differences in Political Press Coverage

“…Research shows that journalists from national and local newspapers rely heavily on press releases when writing articles (Blyskal and Blyskal 1985;Walters and Walters 1992) and increasingly on social media platforms for news content (Hayes and Lawless 2016;Peterson 2012). Paradoxically, although bypassing traditional media may benefit marginalized groups that face inequities in traditional media (Evans and Hayes Clark 2016;Gershon 2012;Loiseau and Nowacka 2015;Vergeer 2015), women may limit their online communication because of gendered communication expectations related to how much women talk and what they talk about (Fridkin and Kenney 2010). The persistence of gender inequality in how men and women are expected to communicate is well documented.…”