Gendered News Coverage at the Apex of Political Leadership: Validating and Applying a Visual Character Frame Instrument to the Campaigns of Merkel, Clinton, and Their Male Opponents

IF 4.9 1区文学 Q1 COMMUNICATION

Communication Research Pub Date : 2025-12-01 DOI:10.1177/00936502251389039

Dennis Steffan, Maria Elizabeth Grabe

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引用次数: 0

Abstract

This cross-national, two-study project examines leadership at the intersection of gender, politics, and visual framing. In Study 1, an online experiment, we used AI-generated images of synthetic women and men candidates ( N = 996) to validate an existing visual character frame instrument and examine if voters associate gender with these frames. We found strong consistency between German and US voters in attributing gender-variant leadership qualities to synthetic politicians. Study 2 applied the validated instrument in a comparative content analysis of TV election stories ( N = 318) about Angela Merkel (2017) and Hillary Clinton (2016) and their male opponents. Both women received more masculine framing than men, either signaling strategic success in side-stepping femininity or journalists were over-compensating for decades of gender role stereotyping. Merkel’s visual masculinity was part of a winning campaign while Clinton’s was associated with a loss, underscoring the complexities of visual masculinity for women in politics.

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政治领导力顶点的性别新闻报道：在默克尔、克林顿及其男性对手的竞选活动中验证和应用视觉人物框架工具

这个跨国家的两项研究项目考察了性别、政治和视觉框架交叉的领导力。在一项在线实验研究1中，我们使用人工智能生成的合成女性和男性候选人的图像（N = 996）来验证现有的视觉特征框架工具，并检查选民是否将性别与这些框架联系起来。我们发现，德国和美国选民在将性别差异的领导品质归因于合成政治家方面有着很强的一致性。研究2应用验证工具对安格拉·默克尔（2017年）和希拉里·克林顿（2016年）及其男性对手的电视选举故事（N = 318）进行了比较内容分析。这两名女性都比男性获得了更多的男性化框架，这要么表明她们在回避女性特质方面取得了战略上的成功，要么表明记者们过度补偿了几十年来的性别角色刻板印象。默克尔在视觉上的男子气概是赢得竞选的一部分，而克林顿则与失败联系在一起，这突显了政治女性在视觉上的男子气概的复杂性。

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来源期刊

Communication Research COMMUNICATION-

CiteScore

17.10

自引率

0.00%

发文量

期刊介绍： Empirical research in communication began in the 20th century, and there are more researchers pursuing answers to communication questions today than at any other time. The editorial goal of Communication Research is to offer a special opportunity for reflection and change in the new millennium. To qualify for publication, research should, first, be explicitly tied to some form of communication; second, be theoretically driven with results that inform theory; third, use the most rigorous empirical methods; and fourth, be directly linked to the most important problems and issues facing humankind. Critieria do not privilege any particular context; indeed, we believe that the key problems facing humankind occur in close relationships, groups, organiations, and cultures.