Abstract
Politics in Austria is still a male business. Even though in 2017, women occupied 34 percent of the seats in Austria’s Nationalrat, female MPs are still underrepresented. Moreover, previous studies have shown that women receive substantially less media coverage than men do and this, for instance, disadvantages female politicians to male politicians in election campaigns. Our study seeks to contribute to this debate by adding a longitudinal perspective and substantially underpinning it with empirical data. We use quantitative content analysis to examine whether the election coverage of female politicians in Austrian news media has changed between 2008 and 2017. Our findings show low visibility of female politicians in Austrian campaign coverage that is even decreasing over time; furthermore, the political role a female politician occupies plays a crucial role for her media visibility.
Highlights
In the context of today’s media-centered campaigns (Norris, 2000), politicians with higher media coverage are more visible to voters (Kahn, 1994; Lühiste and Banducci, Journalism 00(0)2016)
Following previous research in the field, this study argued that male politicians are likely to have greater visibility than female politicians in Austrian election coverage over time (H1)
Confirming H1, female politicians are almost invisible in campaign coverage in Austria over the past 10 years – and we assume female politicians were underrepresented in politics before that time
Summary
In the context of today’s media-centered campaigns (Norris, 2000), politicians with higher media coverage are more visible to voters (Kahn, 1994; Lühiste and Banducci, Journalism 00(0). It is essential for all politicians to be represented in the media and to be portrayed in an accurate way (Council of Europe, 2017: 5), because the amount and type of campaign coverage can influence voters’ perceptions of politicians (Lühiste and Banducci, 2016). Previous studies have shown that female politicians receive substantially less media coverage than male politicians do National parliaments in Western democracies as well as the European Parliament have adopted voluntary or mandatory quota systems (Celis and Lovenduski, 2018; Council of Europe, 2017). The media can break, and foster existing stereotypes such as the marginalization and trivialization of female politicians (Wolf, 2008)
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