A Critical Examination of Online News Media Representations of Bisexual Women Who Use Cannabis

Abstract

ABSTRACTIn spring 2015, Robinson's article entitled, “The role of anxiety in bisexual women's use of cannabis in Canada,” was published in Psychology of Sexual Orientation and Gender Diversity, presenting findings from a mixed-methods study of bisexual women's cannabis use. The study found that 33.6% of bisexual women in the province of Ontario, Canada, had used cannabis in the past year; 5 times greater than that for Canadian women in general (Bauer et al., 2010; Trocki et al., 2009). Robinson (2015) explored possible causes for this pattern, and found that bisexual women report using cannabis to cope with anxiety, pain, stress, and biphobia. In the weeks after Robinson's (2015) study was published, Samantha Allen (2015) interviewed her about the findings. On May 4, 2015, Allen published an article in The Daily Beast entitled “Why do bi women smoke so much weed?” Soon other online news media were publishing stories referencing Robinson's (2015) findings, with most sources picking up the story from Allen's (2015) article. Robinson noticed that a larger than usual quantity of online news media articles had been published referencing her study. For the present study, we identified 19 online news media articles. We critically analyzed the content of those articles and their associated images, focusing on how bisexual women and bisexuality were represented. In this paper, we present our content analysis to better understand how bisexual women and bisexuality are portrayed in online news media, as well as consider the impact that these representations of bisexual women and bisexuality may have on the health and well-being of bisexual women.