Description
This paper wants to shed some light on the way journalists have represented the figure of Hillary Clinton in the written press in the pre-election period of 2016. While the majority of the political journalists did not foresee her failure, they may have contributed to it by their portrayal of her persona. As Lawrence & Rose (2010: 5) contend: ‘In presidential elections in particular, the media have become the central conduit connecting voters with the candidates, and media coverage is one of three essential factors (along with money and organization) that shapes the fate of presidential campaigns.’ We have compared the framing of Clinton in the American and European press (taking the Flemish press as a representative of the European). Within the limited scope of this first analysis, we have selected all articles mentioning Clinton in the period of the official campaign (July 26 - November 8, 2016) from four newspapers: The New York Times and USA Today for the US and De Standaard and Het Laatste Nieuws for Flanders. Earlier research has shown that women politicians often get a coverage based on gender stereotypes and emotional and trivial issues (Garcia-Blanco & Wahl-Jorgensen 2012; Curnalia & Mermer 2014). Based on a framing and discourse analysis, it will be shown that also in this corpus, topics like physical appearance, feminine roles and emotion often have gained the upper hand over topics concerning the political programme and that the approach of the American and of the European newspapers was very similar. References Curnalia, R. M. & Mermer, D. L. (2014). The “Ice Queen” Melted and It Won Her the Primary: Evidence of Gender Stereotypes and the Double Bind in News Frames of Hillary Clinton's “Emotional Moment”. Qualitative Research Reports in Communication, 15 (1), 26-32. Garcia-Blanco, I. & Wahl-Jorgensen, K. (2012). The discursive construction of women politicians in the European press. Feminist Media Studies, 12 (3), 422-441. Lawrence, R. G. & Rose, Melody (2010). Hillary Clinton’s Race for the White House: Gender Politics and the Media on the Campaign Trail. Boulder, CO: Rienner.| Period | 14 Sept 2017 |
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| Event title | The Future of Journalism 2017: Journalism in a Post-Truth Age? |
| Event type | Conference |
| Location | Cardiff, United KingdomShow on map |
| Degree of Recognition | International |