Media capital or media deficit? : representations of women in leadership roles in old and new media
Authors
Walsh, ClareAffiliation
University of BedfordshireIssue Date
2015-11-05
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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. IntroductionCitation
Walsh C (2015) 'Media capital or media deficit? : representations of women in leadership roles in old and new media', Feminist Media Studies, 15 (6), pp.1025-1034.Publisher
Routledge Taylor & FrancisJournal
Feminist Media StudiesAdditional Links
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14680777.2015.1087415Type
ArticleLanguage
enISSN
1468-0777ae974a485f413a2113503eed53cd6c53
10.1080/14680777.2015.1087415
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