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Connecting women and opportunity

Womanthology is a digital magazine and professional community powered by female energy and ingenuity.

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Observing the political observers: Monitoring gender balance in UK general election coverage – Dr. Emily Harmer, Lecturer in Media at the University of Liverpool

Theresa May

Dr. Emily Harmer is a lecturer in media with the Department of Communications and Media at the University of Liverpool. Her research interests include gender and media, as well as political communication. Emily is the co-convenor of Political Studies Association Media and Politics Group.

Dr. Emily Harmer
Dr. Emily Harmer

“…This election will be particularly interesting from my perspective because for the first time since 1987, the election is being contested by a female Prime Minister…”

Analysing news coverage of every election since 1918

I am a lecturer in media at the Department of Communications and Media at the University of Liverpool. My research analyses the relationship between gender, media and politics and throughout my career so far I have analysed news coverage of every election since 1918. This election will be particularly interesting from my perspective because for the first time since 1987, the election is being contested by a female Prime Minister.

In the previous general election and during the EU referendum campaign, myself and colleagues at Loughborough University carried out a content analysis of the television and newspaper coverage of the campaign.

Who gets to speak?

This year, alongside my University of Liverpool colleague, Rosalynd Southern, I will be carrying out a quantitative content analysis of the four most visited news websites in order to see if online sources have a different agenda or different reporting styles. This involves counting key features in the coverage like what policy themes are focused on and who gets to speak.

There has been a lot of commentary already about the extent to which this might become a ‘Brexit’ election. For my part, I will be interested to see how perceptions of Theresa May develops over the campaign period.

Beyond Legs-it

It will be interesting to see if the Daily Mail’s now infamous ‘Legs-it-gate’ front page, where they chose to focus on the physical attributes of the two most powerful women in the country, May and Nicola Sturgeon, rather than the substance of their significant meeting will set the tone for this election. I am hoping that the seriousness of the issues at stake in this election will mean there is not much room for sexualised or otherwise gendered coverage, but that remains to be seen.

Nicola Sturgeon
Nicola Sturgeon

I am also hoping that the coverage does not just focus on these prominent women politicians so that a wider range of different women also get to have a voice in this campaign. According to my previous research, Nicola Sturgeon was the most prominent woman in news coverage of the 2015 election, accounting for around a third of all appearances of women in the coverage. Last time round, wives and partners of male party leaders were given more exposure than most women candidates. Clearly, this needs to change.

Now that the incumbent Prime Minister is also a woman, I’m hoping that this sets the scene for more gender balanced coverage. Women have been completely side-lined in previous coverage, but we need to monitor it and call it out to ensure things improve. Please keep a look out for our analysis.

 

https://www.liverpool.ac.uk/communication-and-media/staff/emily-harmer/

https://twitter.com/harm365


 

Theresa May image credit: Photo by Jay Allen. © Crown Copyright

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