Commission on the Status of Women 2010 Abstracts
A Comparison of Gender Portrayals in News Content across Platforms and Coverage Areas • Cory Armstrong, University of Florida; Fangfang Gao, University of Florida • With the continuing disparity between male and female mentions in news content, this study seeks to compare how news organizations employ men and women in Twitter feeds and how that connects to portrayals in news stories. In particular, researchers examine how mentions in tweets of men and women may influence mentions in news stories that were linked from tweets. The study employed a content analysis of national, regional and local newspaper and television tweets, along with their accompanying news stories to compare media platforms and coverage areas. Results indicated a positive relationship between male and female portrayals in tweets and portrayals in news content. Further, male mentions were more likely to appear in national news stories than other regions and more frequently than female mentions in print media than in television. Implications were discussed.
More of the same old story?: Women, war and news in Time magazine • Dustin Harp, University of Texas at Austin; Jaime Loke, University of Texas at Austin; Ingrid Bachmann, University of Texas at Austin • Feminist media scholarship has long examined the role of women in journalism and criticized the gendered nature of news in general and war coverage in particular. This content analysis of 406 stories from Time magazine explores the intersection of war reporting and gender in the coverage of the war in Iraq. The results show than in war news, women are still scarce. Female reporters accounted for a fifth of the bylines, but tended to cite more diverse sources, including more women. Female sources were mostly private individuals without affiliation, and represented less than a tenth of the subjects cited. These findings indicate that when it comes to war, women are still symbolically annihilated through omission.
Mammy Revisited: How Media Portrayals Of Overweight Black Women Affect How Black Women Feel About Themselves • Gina Chen, Syracuse University; Sherri Williams, Syracuse University; Nicole Hendrickson, Syracuse University; Li Chen, Syracuse University • In-depth interviews with 36 black women, ages 18 to 59, reveal that exaggeratedly overweight depictions of black women in television and film had a strong effect on their identity. The women reported portrayals, such as Rasputia in Eddie Murphy’s Norbit, were mammy-like and made them feel conflicted over their own identity because of the disconnect between the dominant white ideal of thinness and media portrayals of black women. Social comparison theory is used for interpretation.
Plugging old-media values into ‘new media’: Social identity and the attitudes of sports bloggers toward issues of gender in sport • Marie Hardin, John Curley Center for Sports Journalism, Penn State University; Bu Zhong, Pennsylvania State University; Thomas Corrigan, College of Communications, Penn State University • This research suggests that individual-level, social identity factors in gatekeeping by sports bloggers present a critical dilemma for the exposure and promotion of women’s sports. Using a survey of independent bloggers linking their social identities to their attitudes toward women’s sports and Title IX, this research suggests that the sports blogosphere will not become an egalitarian space for sports commentary without more participation from female bloggers who cover female athletes and advocate for women’s sports.
Silent No More: Regan Hofmann and POZ Magazine • Robin Donovan, Ohio University • During the emergence of the HIV/AIDS pandemic in the 1980s, AIDS was largely seen as a problem faced by gay men and intravenous drug users. POZ magazine was founded to educate people with HIV and AIDS and provide a way to live positively despite these illnesses. With the addition of Regan Hofmann as editor-in-chief in 2006, that mission was well on its way. Hofmann was such an unlikely face of HIV in the 1990s that she hid her identity from all but her family and closest friends for a decade. This study examines the anonymous columns she wrote for the magazine from 2002 to 2006. In each column, she shared her status with someone, documenting both the reactions she received and the process of becoming more comfortable with disclosure. The columns exemplify her personal and professional transformation from hiding her HIV status with shame to publicly announcing her identity on POZ’s cover in April 2006.
Gender violence in the Twilight phenomenon: A feminist analysis of blood, lust and love • Meenakshi Durham, University of Iowa • This paper seeks to interrogate the tensions in the construction of masculinity in the Twilight books and films, vis-à-vis issues of implicit and overt gender violence. The analysis addresses the overarching research question, How is gender implicated in the vampire mythology of Twilight? A combination of feminist rhetorical analysis and semiology are used to examine the verbal and visual texts at work in the Twilight books and films. The analysis identifies four dominant themes in these texts: (1) the representation of violence as an inherent and presumptive characteristic of masculinity; (2) the portrayal of male violence as an acceptable and justifiable by-product of male-female relationships; (3) the continual imperilment of girls in situations from which they were rescued by boys; and (4) the definition of masculinity in terms of a dualism wherein good boys recognized and repudiated their own instinctive predilection for violence and bad boys allowed it to go unchecked. I conclude that Twilight works rhetorically and visually to coax audiences to expect boys to be violent and girls to be compliant in regard to that violence.
Framing Gender Amid Crisis: A Woman University President Faces the Press • Frank Durham, CCS • Women in positions of leadership are more likely than men to be framed according to dominant, gendered themes, in ways, which limit their access to power. This text analysis of the role of gender in the framing process that is evident in coverage by the Iowa City Press-Citizen takes the case of University of Iowa President Sally Mason as she faced two crises in 2007-08. In the first, she was confronted with an alleged rape by two football players of a woman athlete in the Hillcrest dormitory on campus. In the second, she was called to respond to the floods, which inundated the University campus, as well as much of Cedar Rapids and Iowa City. As it finds that Mason was framed differently in each case, the study theoretically interrogates how dominant gender ideology played a role in the framing process.
Agency, Activism or Both? Feminism and Mothering in the Pubic Sphere • Katherine Eaves, University of Oklahoma • Until fairly recently mothers and issues relating to motherhood have been relegated to the private. In the late 1960s, however, the personal became political, giving women and mothers the freedom to talk about elements of their lives that were previously deemed inappropriate for public discourse. This new found freedom, coupled with the proliferation of electronic media, particularly niche media geared toward women and mothers, has led to a considerable amount of public political discourse about motherhood issues. This paper specifically examines the concepts of agency and activism as they relate to mothering in feminist public spheres, and examines the ways in which feminist Web sites about motherhood promote agency and activism.
Mother as Mother and Mother as Citizen: Mothers of Combat Soldiers on National Network News • Karen Slattery, Marquette University; Ana Garner, Marquette University • This study examines national television news images of mothers of U. S. combat soldiers during the first seven years of the Iraq War. News stories presented mothers as archetypal good mothers engaged in maternal work long after their childrens’ deployment. Mothers were depicted as vocal vis a vis their position on the Iraq war, a contrast to the historical depiction of archetypal patriotic mother who is stoic and silent. The resulting image is more complex suggesting the archetype may be shifting.
Building bias: Media portrayals of postpartum disorders and mental illness stereotypes • Lynette Holman, UNC-Chapel Hill • Postpartum depression (PPD) is a disorder that affects one in 10 new mothers. Symptoms include fatigue, anxiety, and excessive concerns about the baby or alternatively, feeling detached from the baby. Only about one in 1,000 new mothers develops postpartum psychosis. Only 4% of these women commit infanticide; however, they make the news. Through a content analysis of 11 years of print media coverage of postpartum disorders, this study illuminates the media’s misrepresentation of these disorders.
From Social Control to Post-Feminism: A Longitudinal Analysis of Reporting on Title IX by Journalist Gender • Kent Kaiser, Northwestern College, University of Minnesota Tucker Center for Research on Girls and Women in Sport • This longitudinal study uses quantitative content analysis of frames to investigate differences in newspaper coverage, by journalist gender, on Title IX as it relates to women in sports. The investigation seeks to discern whether female journalists, when given an explicit opportunity to advocate for women’s rights and advancement in a traditionally male domain, a) succumb to social control and therefore conform to the male hegemonic dynamics of newsrooms, b) embrace a feminist predisposition to advocate for women and promote equality or c) distance themselves from the feminist view in post-feminist fashion. The study’s findings suggest that female journalists may have succumbed to social control in the earliest years of Title IX, as their use of frames was similar to that of their male colleagues. Later, female journalists asserted more advocacy frames than their male colleagues, consistent with a feminist style. Yet in the most recent years analyzed, female journalists returned to using frames more like their male colleagues. The findings suggest that, rather than the lack of a critical mass of female journalists, a transformation from social control, to a feminist style, to a post-feminist style is operative in the assertion of Title IX advocacy and opposition frames over time.
Sex & Glamour in the Hillbilly Field: The Objectification of Women in Country Music Videos • Ann McClane-Bunn, Middle Tennessee State University • Despite its rich history as an authentic American art form, country music remains a largely untapped area of scholarly research, especially where women in music videos are concerned. This has been particularly true since 2000, when Viacom, Inc., the parent company of MTV Networks, purchased Country Music Television (CMT). Applying framing theory, objectification theory and the male gaze theory, this thesis employs textual analysis to examine country music videos’ portrayal of women before and since the Viacom purchase. The findings indicate three prevalent frames: Focus on Women’s Bodies, Women’s Gratuitous Presence and Scantily Clad Women. This research identifies parallels between women in country music videos and women in advertisements, suggesting that a musical genre once called the heart of America has become an industry that uses women as sexual objects. Furthermore, this study briefly discusses the implications that such reckless and needless use of women may have on society.
Gender Framing in the 2008 Presidential Election • Erin O’Gara, University of Iowa • This study examines newspaper coverage of the Democratic and Republican presidential and vice presidential candidates in the 2008 U.S. election through the lens of framing theory. The study especially focused on the ways in which gender was framed in newspaper coverage of the election. A total of 225 newspaper articles randomly collected from The New York Times, the Chicago Tribune and USA Today were content and textually analyzed. The results show that the media continued to cover male and female candidates in very different ways. The discussion of gender and the one female candidate was stereotypical and used harsher and more negative language than that used for the male candidates. This suggests that contrary to what some believed were improving conditions for female political candidates, the media still put a much greater emphasis on their gender. In doing so, the media are sending a message to potential voters that they are somehow less qualified than their male counterpart: women first, politicians second.
Examining Effects of Romance Consumption on Feminism and Social Media Use • Kristin Russell, Kansas State University; Ruochen Qiu, Kansas State University • Previous research has analyzed feminist themes in romance media mainly through content analysis. The present study attempts to examine the association among romance consumption, feminism and social media use through a cross-sectional survey method. Multiple regression analyses indicated that the more females consumed romance, the less feminist ideas they maintained and that the more females consumed romance, the more they participated in romance-based social media. However, no relationship between romance-oriented social media and feminist ideas was found.
Newspaper Coverage of Cindy McCain and Michelle Obama during the Presidential Election • Tiffany Shoop, Shenandoah University • This research project examined a sample of three prominent newspapers’ coverage of Cindy McCain and Michelle Obama during the 2008 presidential election. One of the major findings of this research project was the common reference made in the newspaper articles to controversies related to McCain and Obama, raising the question of if increased coverage of controversies is one of the prices paid for having it all, both personally and professionally, as a presidential candidates’ spouse.
Navigating the Invisible Nets: Challenges and Opportunities for Women in Traditionally Male-Dominated South Asian Newsrooms • Elanie Steyn, Gaylord College of Journalism and Mass Communication, University of Oklahoma; Kathryn Jenson White, Gaylord College of Journalism and Mass Communication, University of Oklahoma • Invisible nets, labyrinths, glass ceilings and other obstacles create obstructions along women’s paths toward leadership positions, including those in media settings. Expanding on exploratory research, this paper investigates newsroom management expectations and experiences related to communication and teamwork as managerial competencies among a sample of female journalists in Nepal, Bangladesh and Pakistan. Using a quantitative research design, the researchers outline opportunities and challenges for women in navigating these obstacles in traditionally male-dominated South Asian newsrooms.
Gender Framing on the Covers of Media Guides • Lacey Duffy, Ackerman McQueen; Natalie Tindall, Georgia State University • Past research on women, sports, and the media has produced two consistent themes: Female athletes are not given equal media attention compared to men, and when portrayed, women are more often framed in traditionally feminine and passive roles compared to men. This exploratory study explored gender framing of 2006-2007 Big 12 Conference intercollegiate athletic media guides through a content analysis of 97 athletic media guide covers from sports having both male and female versions. Overall, the majority of male and female athletes on all of the guides examined were portrayed on court, in uniforms, in action, and with sporting equipment. Male and female athletes were not portrayed in sexually suggestive poses. The majority of these athletes were also pictured from eye level and from close or medium range.
Examining New-technology-related Content in Women’s and Men’s Magazines: 2007- 2009 • Wei-Chun Wang, Ohio University • Women are often marginalized in discussions of new technology as portrayed in the media. To examine whether traditional gender biases exist in magazines, this study explored new-technology-related content in popular magazines intended for three groups: men, women and general interest readership. Different from previous research which analyzes the image and advertisements in magazines, this research analyzed the content of magazines, and thus, can be seen as an exploratory study in the field. Through the content analysis approach, this study examined a total of 216 issues of popular magazines from 2007 to 2009. Results indicate that from the 2,967 women’s magazines’ articles sampled, only one article (0.034%) was found that related to technology. Also, among all magazines, news magazines whose readership includes more men than women provided more content oriented to new technology. Results reveal that traditional social roles are reinforced, with males being considered to have more knowledge of IT and new technological subjects.
What is Sexy? How Young Women Ages 19-26 Define Sexiness in the Media and in Real Life • Meng Zhang, University of Florida • Women ages 19-26 participated in a qualitative research on the topic of what is sexy. The study revealed that these women defined sexy broadly as attractive for both men and women, yet their personal ideals of sexiness tended to diverge from what they believe represented in the media. The women in general considered sexy a compliment although there were mix feelings about being sexy. Media were both direct and indirect sources of their feelings and thoughts about sexiness.
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