Commission on the Status of Women
2021 Abstracts
Research Paper • Framing Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: Intersectionality and News Frames in Local and National Press Coverage • Bashri, Maha • Minority female politicians receive less frequent media coverage than their counterparts. Even when they do receive media coverage it tends to be negatively framed. The following study analyzes patterns of congruence (or lack of) in news frames and intersectional categories in local and national media coverage of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a politician affiliated with the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA). The Washington Post has been selected for this study because it is the most circulated newspaper in the Washington metropolitan area, home to many power brokers in the U.S. government. The local newspaper selected for the analysis was the Bronx Times-Reporter, a weekly newspaper covering news from the Bronx, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s district. The findings point to the prevalence of thematic frames and class as an intersectional category in local news coverage more than in national news coverage. The shift in coverage patterns has significant implications for both minority women politicians and the DSA in American politics.
Research Paper • An Analysis of Memes and Misinformation about Kamala Harris’s Rise to U.S. Vice President • Bland, Dorothy, University of North Texas • “Kamala Harris made political history in the United States and around the globe when she was elected vice president of the United States in November 2020. She is the first Black female and person of South Asian descent to hold that position. She has been the subject of a variety of memes and misinformation. Using Facebook’s CrowdTangle, a content discovery and social monitoring platform, this study employed framing, feminist and critical race theories to analyze memes and (mis)information that circulated on Facebook during the 2021 U.S. Presidential campaign. Specifically, we analyze Harris-themed memes disseminated over a four-month window between October 1, the month before the November 3, 2020 election, through Jan. 31, 2021. This time frame includes the most heated part of the campaign and Inauguration Day. This study shows that memes ranged from celebrating racial/ethnic pride to misogynistic attacks on Harris.
Extended Abstract • #JusticeForBreonnaTaylor: A Case Study of the Evolution of the Black Lives Matter Movement • Clark, Meredith • In this study, we use complementing quantitative and qualitative methods in an effort to track and trace the efficacy of hashtag activism participants’ engagement in Black Lives Matter related content, while focusing on the subtheme of police brutality toward Black women in the United States.
Research Paper • It was all consensual: The news, sexual assault, and student athletes • Couto, Leticia, Washington State University • This content analysis of 179 newspaper articles investigates the portrayal of college athletes that are involved in sexual assault cases as alleged perpetrator and the presence of rape myths in these stories. Results showed that intoxication might be used as a technique to either blame alleged victims or protect alleged perpetrators. In conclusion, rape myths are still very present in newspaper articles that discuss college athletes as alleged perpetrators of sexual assault.
Research Paper • Covering the Second Wave: Grace Lichtenstein, The New York Times, and the Legacy of Liberal Feminism • Dabek, Dana, Temple University • This paper explores the intersections of journalism, memory, and liberal feminism through a critical textual analysis of New York Times journalist Grace Lichtenstein’s coverage of the Second Wave feminist movement in the United States from 1968-1981. Themes of liberalist ideologies, upholding hegemonic power structures, and women as newsworthy for their “firsts” are analyzed within her coverage. This analysis adds to existing scholarship of how journalistic constraints bound how memory of a social movement is constructed.
Research Paper • Vlogging pregnancy and laboring during the pandemic: Narratives of Chinese pregnant women in diasporas • Dai, Zehui, Radford University • In early 2020, COVID-19 spread nationwide in China and later became a global pandemic. The rapid changing context of the situation may lead to unforeseeable challenges and questions for pregnant women. Through a textual analysis of personal narratives told via pregnancy and/or laboring vlogs during COVID-19, the present study aims to understand how pregnant women in Chinese diasporas utilizes YouTube (a digital media platform) to construct a digital identity as they convey their pregnancy and/or laboring experiences to during the pandemic to a particular audience—the transnational, Mandarin-speaking diaspora. Through the analysis, we identified various challenges that pregnant women in Chinese diasporas experienced in pregnancy and/or laboring. The COVID-19 pandemic exasperated the normal difficulties of these issues, as well as created additional problems for this group of women, including regular pregnancy tests, choice of birthing locations, and the support and caring that was normal during this time period. We also believe narrative creation, in the form of vlogging, helps this cohort to gain a sense of agency and empowerment of their diaspora experience by examining and reimagining their experience.
Research Paper • #MeToo academia: Media coverage of academic sexual misconduct at U.S. universities • Eckert, Stine, Wayne State University • We conducted a systematic textual analysis of media coverage of 201 academic sexual misconduct cases in the United States between 2017 and 2019 in which a university employee was named as perpetrator. In 97 cases media did not mention the #MeToo movement, indicating that cases were treated as “bad behavior” of a single person rather than as a systemic problem in society linked to rape culture. Four of five cases (80%) were broken to the public by a journalistic news medium demonstrating that journalism, especially local journalism, remains the main path to expose academic sexual misconduct of university employees in the wake of the viral #MeToo hashtag. Student journalists especially broke cases that led to news coverage linking individual cases to broader systemic issues in society, recognizing and contributing to a shift in public discourse on sexual misconduct.
Research Paper • Rebel! Rebel! How Megan Rapinoe’s Celebrity Activism Forges New Paths for Athletes • Everbach, Tracy, University of North Texas • After the USA won the 2019 Women’s FIFA World Cup, Megan Rapinoe captured the world’s attention with her lavender hair, athletic build, quick moves on the field, eye for style, and outspoken advocacy for equality. This study employs a feminist standpoint and queer theory approach to examine Rapinoe’s activism, advocacy, and celebrity as an influencer and role model for sports fans as well as LGBTQ+ people, and those fighting for racial and gender equality.
Research Paper • #freebritney, #freekesha, #freemelania: Hashtag Activism and Notions of Feminism in Online Communities • Friedman, Jodi, University of Maryland, Philip Merrill School of Journalism • Britney Spears, Kesha and Melania Trump are Twitter causes célèbres. Disparate discourses of the hashtag campaigns #freebritney, #freekesha, and #freemelania move users from the personal to the collective, presuming these powerful women are prisoners in gilded cages. Users rally around a central White, female figure who largely does not join discussion of her supposed entrapment. An ethnographic field site of 77,435 tweets is thematically analyzed regarding online fan identity and women’s need for rescue.
Research Paper • Femvertising and postfeminist discourse: Advertising to break menstrual taboos in China • Guo, Jingyi • This paper investigates Libresse sanitary napkins commercials in China. Employing feminist critical discourse analysis, we interpret the narration of Libresse’s efforts in China as exemplary of the appropriation of femvertising—women empowerment advertising—to challenge menstrual taboos. Our findings indicate that Libresse creates a postfeminist discourse that has generated contradictions regarding gender issues, both liberating and constraining women in an elaborate dance. Our study thus situates a broader discussion of postfeminism, advertising, and global capitalism.
Extended Abstract • Building the Gender Beat: U.S. Journalists Refocus the News in the Aftermath of #MeToo • Heckman, Meg, Northeastern University • Beats focused on gender have become more common at U.S. news organizations in the last four years—a phenomenon this exploratory study documents in an effort to gauge the prevalence of gender beats and understand the experiences of the journalists (n=66) covering them. Based on semi-structured interviews analyzed using grounded theory, I argue that gender beats are necessary—but ideally temporary—stepping stones to help news organizations move beyond hegemonic masculinity.
Extended Abstract • Momala and Willie Brown’s Mistress: A computational analysis of gendered news coverage of Kamala Harris. • Heckman, Meg, Northeastern University • It’s well documented that female political candidates face systemic bias in news coverage. There is, however, scant research as to how this phenomenon plays out in the modern hyper-polarized digital media ecosystem. We aim to fill that gap by using computational content analysis to explore recent coverage of Vice President Kamala Harris. We find a perpetuation of sexist tropes and stark differences in the news narratives gaining traction among voters of different political persuasions.
Research Paper • An Intersectional Examination of Representations of Muslim Women in Television Series • Jariullah, Sharmeen • The interpretive study analyzes the long-standing impact of the Orientalist gaze on representations of Muslim women in the media, resulting in restrictive tropes and archetypes in contemporary television series from the United States and the United Kingdom. The paper proposes how an intersectional framework can be utilized to dismantle preexisting stereotyped and monolithic representations of Muslim women in the news and entertainment media, to favor holistic representations of Muslim women characters.
Extended Abstract • Women in Communication: Assessing and Advancing Gender Equality • Kim, Solyee, University of Georgia • This study addresses the persistent gender discrepancies in the communication profession at three levels (i.e., the micro level with individual communication professionals, the meso level with communication department and/or agency, and the macro level with the communication profession itself). By conducting an online survey of 1,046 communication professionals in the United States and Canada in the year of 2020-2021, this study provides some of the latest analyses on perceptions and experiences related to women and gender equality in the communication profession. Several key issues are investigated, including the perceptions of women’s leadership status within the organization, the perceived improvement of gender equality, contributing factors to gender inequality, the glass ceiling issue, and the barrier for women’s leadership advancement. Research and practical implications are discussed.
Extended Abstract • Mentorship as a Tool to Close the Leadership Gender Gap: Understanding How Professional Relationships Impact Women During Their First Five Years in the Strategic Communications Industry • Olsen, Katie, Kansas State University • The strategic communications industry is plagued with a lack of gender diversity among its leadership, and little is known about how early-career women (ECW) receive the support necessary to develop their professional identity–and ultimately, their rise to the top. Using in-depth interviews with 31 ECWs in their first five years of employment, this study seeks to understand how mentorship and professional relationships impact their experiences during the formative first five years in industry.
Research Paper • How to Connect: Sexual Assault Activists’ Reliance on Social Media • Pevac, Mikayla, Pennsylvania State University • From social media to smartphones, the 21st century has seen a lot of change. One area that has specifically undergone an extreme shift due to the digital age is the feminist movement in the United States. As Robert Putnam’s work in Bowling Alone (2000) suggested, people are adapting to the influx of technological advances and are responding by reshaping their social networks. The American feminist movement has arguably utilized digital tools, like the various social media platforms, to create and sustain online relationships between like-minded individuals and provide safe spaces for feminist ideas like never before. By analyzing the social media accounts of two American sexual assault activists, Kamillah Willingham and Chanel Miller, this paper will offer insight into different ways feminist activists are using social media to sustain awareness for their respective causes and also share their personal journeys with their followers. In the past, there has been contention over whether social capital theory is an ideal theory to use when studying phenomenon through a feminist lens this paper thus expands on social capital theory and exemplifies how the theory can be applied to the analysis of two female, persons of color, sexual assault activists’ respective social media accounts.
Research Paper • “What a nasty girl!” Incivility and gendered symbolic violence in news discussions • Proust, Valentina, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile • This study examines gender exchanges developed in the virtual public sphere to identify if gender affects incivility in news comment sections. By relying on a mixed-method analysis of 1,961 news comments, we observed uncivil speech and gendered symbolic violence traits. We found higher incivility levels in comments posted by men, especially comments mentioning females. Also, we identified hegemonic masculinity discourses in conversation referring to women and their gender roles.
Research Paper • An SEC soccer champion and a winless football team: Media framing and the self-representation of Sarah Fuller’s fall season as a Vanderbilt Commodore student-athlete • Scovel, Shannon, University of Maryland • This paper analyzes the representation of Sarah Fuller in traditional media and on her own social media platforms before and after her historic kick for Vanderbilt’s football team. Results of over 200 social media posts and nearly 400 articles suggest that traditional media focused almost exclusively on Fuller’s experiences as a football player, downplaying her accomplishments as an SEC soccer champion and instead comparing her football success to that of her male peers.
Research Paper • A Feminist New Materialism Analysis of Digital Pelvic Floor Health Messages • Vardeman, Jennifer, University of Houston • This interdisciplinary study examines digital communication strategies used by advocacy groups/social media influencers about a highly stigmatized women’s health issue. Pelvic floor disorders (PFDs) affect one in four women, but many women lack knowledge about them and do not discuss them. Women often report feeling isolation, shame, embarrassment, and dirtiness. Advocacy organizations have recently implemented campaigns to educate women of varying ages about PFDs. This thematic analysis considers digital messages from three PFD advocacy organizations as well as PFD influencers on TikTok. A feminist new materialism theory and shame resilience theory frame this analysis.
Research Paper • Incarcerating Successful Women? Affective Economies in Popular Chinese Television Series • Xu, Jun • Stemming from China’s neoliberal transition, a plethora of women take part in the workforce. In response, representations of ‘successful-yet-single’ women are emerging in China’s popular television series. Following Esther Peeren’s (2018) and Sara Ahmed’s (2004) work, we argue that affective economies that trigger particular feelings and cultural values related to the notion of single womanhood are constituted through these televisual shows. We therefore consider dominant media representations of ‘successful-yet-single’ women by delving into the mediated ways in which these women are ‘punished’ or ‘remunerated’ for their modern lifestyle—coined and developed in this paper as ‘a neoliberal urbanism with Chinese characteristics’. Through discourse analysis and the mobilization of Goffman’s study on stigma (1986 [1963]), we argue that these series epitomize the cultural reality and re-create a mediated ‘punitive society’, suggesting a successful woman’s happiness is only resolved through securing a romantic relationship—a caveat for all single female viewers.
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