Do women write more about women?

The effect of journalists’ gender on media visibility of US politicians

Marko Bachl, Aliya Andrich & Emese Domahidi

Freie Universität Berlin | TU Ilmenau

13. 09. 2024

Motivation

• Women underrepresented in political journalism
• Women underrepresented in political news
• Women underrepresented in politics

Research Question

Does the gender of journalists affect the media visibility of male and female politicians in the news coverage?

Conceptual model

(Shoemaker & Reese, 2014)

Prior research (selection)

Qualitative differences:
Female journalists are

• more likely to focus on women’s policy positions (Kahn & Goldenberg, 1991)
• more likely to focus on women’s qualifications (Bauer, 2024)
• less likely to use gender stereotypes (Rodgers & Thorson, 2003)

Quantitative differences:
Female journalists are

• more likely to (prominently) include female sources (Armstrong, 2004; Shor et al., 2015)
• more likely to cover races with female candidates (Kahn & Goldenberg, 1991)
• less likely to mention male parliamentarians (Bastin, 2022)

• But also conflicting evidence and null results (e.g., Freedman et al., 2007, 2010; Vos, 2013) (and all the unpublished ones)

Methods & data

• All articles that mention 1,087 (originally 1,095) national-level US politicians (219 [20%] women) from LexisNexis
• 513,539 articles (de-duplicated, single-authored articles only)
• 17 media outlets
• 11 years (2010-2020), 132 months
• 2,315 journalists with at least 50 articles;
  • manual binary gender classification: 967 (42%) women
• 3 measures of media visibility

Statistical model

\[ \begin{aligned} \operatorname{mention\_female}_{i} &\sim \operatorname{Binomial}(n = 1, \operatorname{prob}_{\operatorname{mention\_female} = 1} = \widehat{P}) \\ \log\left[\frac{\hat{P}}{1 - \hat{P}} \right] &=\alpha_{j[i],k[i],l[i]} \\ \alpha_{j} &\sim N \left(\beta_{0}^{\alpha} + \beta_{1k[i],l[i]}^{\alpha}(\operatorname{journ\_gender}_{\operatorname{female}}), \sigma^2_{\alpha_{j}} \right) \text{, for authors j = 1,} \dots \text{, 2315} \\ \left( \begin{array}{c} \begin{aligned} &\alpha_{k} \\ &\beta_{1k} \end{aligned} \end{array} \right) &\sim N \left( \left( \begin{array}{c} \begin{aligned} &\mu_{\alpha_{k}} \\ &\mu_{\beta_{1k}} \end{aligned} \end{array} \right) , \left( \begin{array}{cc} \sigma^2_{\alpha_{k}} & \rho_{\alpha_{k}\beta_{1k}} \\ \rho_{\beta_{1k}\alpha_{k}} & \sigma^2_{\beta_{1k}} \end{array} \right) \right) \text{, for year_month k = 1,} \dots \text{, 132} \\ \left( \begin{array}{c} \begin{aligned} &\alpha_{l} \\ &\beta_{1l} \end{aligned} \end{array} \right) &\sim N \left( \left( \begin{array}{c} \begin{aligned} &\mu_{\alpha_{l}} \\ &\mu_{\beta_{1l}} \end{aligned} \end{array} \right) , \left( \begin{array}{cc} \sigma^2_{\alpha_{l}} & \rho_{\alpha_{l}\beta_{1l}} \\ \rho_{\beta_{1l}\alpha_{l}} & \sigma^2_{\beta_{1l}} \end{array} \right) \right) \text{, for outlet l = 1,} \dots \text{, 17} \end{aligned} \]

Example: Binomial model for binary outcomes (mentioned at all, main actor). Negative binomial model for count outcomes (number of mentions) with identical random effects structure. Notation following Gelman & Hill (2006).

Key results

Variation in differences: Outlets

Variation in differences: Over time

Summary & conclusion

• Women write more about women on average

• Considerable variation across outlets, also in sign

• Considerable variation over time, but consistent in sign

Conclusion

Inequalities in newsrooms can contribute to imbalances in media content

Comments are welcome - thank you!

Marko Bachl, Aliya Andrich & Emese Domahidi

marko.bachl@fu-berlin.de

References

Armstrong, C. L. (2004). The influence of reporter gender on source selection in newspaper stories. Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, 81(1), 139–154. https://doi.org/c4c63p

Bastin, G. (2022). Gender imbalance in the media: Time lag or hysteresis? — French newspapers, gender parity shocks, and the long and winding road to the demasculinization of political reporting (1990–2020). The International Journal of Press/Politics, 19401612221143074. https://doi.org/gvm6z2

Bauer, N. M. (2024). Who covers the qualifications of female candidates? Examining gender bias in news coverage across national and local newspapers. Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, 101(3), 657–678. https://doi.org/gvm6zj

Freedman, E., Fico, F., & Durisin, M. (2010). Gender diversity absent in expert sources for elections. Newspaper Research Journal, 31(2), 20–33. https://doi.org/gvm62n

Freedman, E., Fico, F., & Love, B. (2007). Male and female sources in newspaper coverage of male and female candidates in US senate races in 2004. Journal of Women, Politics & Policy, 29(1), 57–76. https://doi.org/dqj845

Gelman, A., & Hill, J. (2006). Data analysis using regression and multilevel/hierarchical models. Cambridge University Press.

Kahn, K. F., & Goldenberg, E. N. (1991). Women candidates in the news: An examination of gender differences in U.S. Senate campaign coverage. Public Opinion Quarterly, 55(2), 180–199. https://doi.org/dc2d2z

Rodgers, S., & Thorson, E. (2003). A socialization perspective on male and female reporting. Journal of Communication, 53(4), 658–675. https://doi.org/bg86tk

Shoemaker, P. J., & Reese, S. D. (2014). Mediating the message in the 21st century: A media sociology perspective (Third edition). Routledge/Taylor & Francis Group.

Shor, E., Rijt, A. van de, Miltsov, A., Kulkarni, V., & Skiena, S. (2015). A paper ceiling: Explaining the persistent underrepresentation of women in printed news. American Sociological Review, 80(5), 960–984. https://doi.org/f7tzps

Vos, D. (2013). The vertical glass ceiling: Explaining female politicians’ underrepresentation in television news. Communications, 38(4), 389–410. https://doi.org/ghm7r5