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Media capital or media deficit? : representations of women in leadership roles in old and new media

  • Clare Walsh
Research Output: Contribution to journal Article Peer-review

Open access

Sustainable Development Goals

  • SDG 5 - Gender Equality
    SDG 5 Gender Equality

Abstract

This paper will focus primarily on how women in leadership roles are represented in the media using a feminist critical discourse approach (FCDA). There is a tendency amongst some feminist media analysts to homogenise all media as sexist, but contradictory tendencies are evident, especially with the rise of new media platforms. On the one hand, the news value of “unexpectedness” affords women in prominent leadership roles relatively high media capital. On the other hand, even ostensibly positive coverage can help to reinforce the limited and limiting perceptions of women that circulate in the mediatised public sphere. For instance, the hybridised gendered interactional and rhetorical styles favoured by many women in public sphere roles have led to them being evaluated as inauthentic by mainstream media institutions. This paper will investigate these contradictory tendencies through a focus on case study evidence of dominant media constructions of British, Irish, and US female political leaders. The paper will conclude by considering briefly the use of Twitter, blogs, and other new media platforms by high profile women in politics in order to bypass the persistent interpretative control exercised by some mainstream media institutions. Introduction

Publication Information

Output type

Research Output: Contribution to journal Article Peer-review

Original language

English

Pages from-to (Number of pages)

Pages 1025-1034

Journal (Volume, Issue Number)

Feminist Media Studies (Volume 15, Issue 6)

Publication milestones

  • Published - 05/11/2015

Publication status

Published - 05/11/2015

ISSN

1468-0777

External Publication IDs

  • handle.net: 10547/623016
  • Scopus: 84948576466

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