Doctoral Dissertation
Gendering in Political Journalism
A Comparative Study of Russia and Sweden
LIUDMILA VORONOVA
Media and Communication Studies
Örebro Studies in Media and Communication 18 and
Södertörn Doctoral Dissertations 97 I
ÖREBRO 2014ÖREBRO STUDIES IN MEDIA AND COMMUNICATION 18 2014
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liudmila voronova (born 1987) works as researcher and part-time lecturer at the Department of Media and Communication Studies, Södertörn University, Stockholm. During her PhD studies she has been enrolled in Baltic and East European Graduate School (BEEGS).
The news media are expected to provide equal space to female and male political actors. They should promote the idea of equal access to political power as they are recognized as a holder of power with a social responsibility to respect gender equality. Previous research shows the political news is often far from this idealized vision. News coverage of politicians and politics is characterized by so-called ‘gendered mediation’, i.e., gender imbalance, stereotypes, and a lack of discussions regarding the issue of gender inequality. Scholars point to media logic, organization, and the individual characteristics of journalists as the main reasons for this pattern, but still very little is known about how and why gendered mediation is practiced and processed in political news. This book addresses the processes of gendering whereby gendered representations in political journalism come about, as they are perceived and experienced by journalists working for ‘quality’ media organisations in two countries: Russia and Sweden. By applying a perspective of comparative journalism culture studies the following will be answered: How is gendering conceptualized, experienced and contextualized by political journalists in the two countries? What are the modes of origin of gendering as defined by the journalists? And which modes of origin of gendering in political journalism can be considered to be common for the different contexts, and which ones are context-specific? issn 1651-4785 issn 1652-7399 isbn 978-91-7529-033-1
