Lindsey Meeks

All the Gender That's Fit to Print: How the New York Times Covered Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin in 2008

This study examines how the New York Times covered a culturally significant event: the 2008 presidential election. A content analysis of Hillary Clinton, Sarah Palin, and their male counterparts examined coverage of “masculinized” and “feminized” issues and traits, and explicit novelty references. Analysis revealed that the Times promulgated stereotypic trends by providing heavy emphasis on women’s novelty, and more attention on masculinized content. Furthermore, a time-frame analysis showed that the Times gave men more issue and trait coverage than women as the primary and general election came to an end.

He Wrote, She Wrote Journalist Gender, Political Office, and Campaign News

This study examines the intersection of journalist gender and campaign news coverage across legislative and executive political offices in a gender-prominent context: mixed-gender elections—those with at least one woman and one man. Based on a content analysis of U.S. newspaper coverage, this study focuses on “masculinized” and “feminized” political issues and character traits, and explicit references that highlight a candidate’s novelty. Results revealed no direct relationship between journalist gender and news coverage; however, when type of office was considered, there were significant shifts and differences in the focus of coverage by female and male journalists.

Gendered styles, gendered differences: Candidates’ use of personalization and interactivity on Twitter

ABSTRACT Historically, a “feminine communication style” has not been a welcomed addition to the masculinized arena of American campaigning. But this style’s personalized and interactive elements have started to gain a foothold in digital campaigning because it mimics the intimacy of retail politics and face-to-face campaigning. To examine whether candidates are incorporating a feminine communication style in a mediated campaign setting, this study features a content analysis of U.S. Senate candidates’ campaign Twitter feeds during the 2012 election cycle, and explores the differences across candidate gender and electoral success for personalization and interactivity. Results revealed that men and women were similar in their incorporation of personalization, and women were more interactive than men. Further, the type of personalization and interactivity contributed differently to electoral success for women and men.

When Politics Is a Woman’s Game Party and Gender Ownership in Woman-Versus-Woman Elections

Research on the interplay of gender and political party in voters’ candidate evaluations has long focused on all-male elections and more recently on mixed-gender elections. This study takes the next theoretical step and focuses on woman-versus-woman elections. Specifically, we examine political party- and gender-based “ownerships” of political issues and character traits in the context of female-only elections. With an experimental design, adult participants were randomly assigned to read news articles that presented either two Republican or two Democratic women competing for Governor. Candidates were presented as “owning” stereotypically masculine or feminine issues and traits. Findings show that self-identified Democrats and Republicans eschewed the so-called masculine candidate, and preferred instead a partisan woman who created a gender balance of masculinity and femininity.

Getting Personal: Effects of Twitter Personalization on Candidate Evaluations

Personalization has cultivated a bad reputation in politics. Initially, scholarship on the personalization of politics focused on what was often called “candidate-centered” voting: the idea that citizens would vote based on a candidates personality. Many scholars viewed this evaluative approach as irrational and heralded the value of issue stances over charisma (see Fenno 1978; Popkin 1991). Focusing on the personal, it seems, was problematic. Another iteration of the personalization in politics was also problematic and focused on the use of the “personal frame” in news coverage of women candidates. Such news coverage focused more on womens personalities and personal lives as compared to mens (e.g., Bystrom 1999; Devitt 1999). On its surface, such coverage does not appear detrimental. However, this framing would often emphasize womens roles as mothers and wives and use that framing to question womens experience, fitness for office, and whether they could juggle domestic and political responsibilities (Braden 1996). Personalization in both iterations elicited a sense of triviality: voters’ focus on persona was deemed as a trivial way to form an opinion, and women candidates were trivialized via a focus on their personal, not political, lives.

Tweeted, deleted: theoretical, methodological, and ethical considerations for examining politicians’ deleted tweets

ABSTRACT In an election, political candidates often slip up and want a do-over. On Twitter, they get this chance. Candidates can delete tweets and hope no one notices. But organizations such as Politwoops notice. Politwoops archives politicians’ deletions in the hopes of bringing more transparency and accountability to political discourse. This article discusses the theoretical value, methodological challenges, and ethical considerations of examining deleted tweets and using the Politwoops archive. Specifically, this article (a) discusses how analysis of deleted tweets can expand and deepen research on impression management and online self-presentations in elections, (b) proposes the use of an intertextual content analysis ‒ a hybrid approach that incorporates elements of a qualitative content analysis and an intertextual interpretative analysis ‒ when analyzing deletions, (c) investigates and exposes some of the limitations of the Politwoops archive, and (d) given the limitations of the Politwoops archive, discusses the potential ethical dilemmas of researchers creating their own datasets of deleted tweets. Overall, analyzing deletions can reveal what campaigns strategically present and hide from voters in order to create electable personas. To uncover the content of candidates’ deleted tweets and how they may contribute to impression management, researchers must first consider several methodological and ethical matters.

Questioning the president: Examining gender in the White House press corps

In 2014, President Barack Obama made history by only calling upon women journalists during a domestic news conference with the White House press corps. To capitalize on and examine this critical first in journalism, this study analyzed the potential influence of a journalist’s gender in White House press corps news conferences with President Obama a year before and a year after the all-female conference. The content analysis examined what political issues journalists emphasized in presidential news conferences and whether these issue emphases varied (a) by journalists’ gender and (b) before and after the all-female conference. Results revealed that, to some extent, men and women emphasized different issues. Furthermore, there were marked shifts after the all-female conference. First, women were called upon more often. Second, women emphasized several issues more than men. In particular, women became predominant on questions dealing with so-called ‘masculine’ or ‘hard news’ issues, for example, macroeconomics and foreign trade. This work suggests that gender, in all of its permutations – be it the journalist’s gender, the gendering of issues, or the gendering of occupational spaces – matters and may affect journalists’ lines of questioning.

Aligning and Trespassing Candidates’ Party-Based Issue and Trait Ownership on Twitter

This study examined how Republican and Democratic candidates utilized Twitter to manage their impressions during the 2012 U.S. Senate elections, and examined their discussion of political issues and character traits across three types of tweets: campaign tweets, campaign-selected retweets, and tweets that mentioned their respective opponent. Candidates aligned with and trespassed party-based ownership of issues and traits across the tweet types. In the aggregate, Republicans discussed Republican-owned issues and traits more than Democrats, and Democrats emphasized Democrat-owned issues more than Republicans. This party alignment broke down when examined across winning and losing candidates, yielding varying routes to electoral success.