Gender stereotypes in the mediated personalization of politics: Empirical evidence from a lexical, syntactic and sentiment analysis
This research addresses gender bias in media coverage of politicians, highlighting persistent stereotypes that disadvantage women in politics, with incremental evidence from a specific context.
The study analyzed gender stereotypes in Italian political personalization from 2017-2020 using lexical, syntactic, and sentiment analysis, finding that personalization is more detrimental for women, with stereotypes like masculine leadership and negative tone in coverage, and online news contributed more to these differences.
The media attention to the personal sphere of famous and important individuals has become a key element of the gender narrative. Here we combine lexical, syntactic and sentiment analysis to investigate the role of gender in the personalization of a wide range of political office holders in Italy during the period 2017-2020. On the basis of a score for words that is introduced to account for gender unbalance in both representative and news coverage, we show that the political personalization in Italy is more detrimental for women than men, with the persistence of entrenched stereotypes including a masculine connotation of leadership, the resulting women's unsuitability to hold political functions, and a greater deal of focus on their attractiveness and body parts. In addition, women politicians are covered with a more negative tone than their men counterpart when personal details are reported. Further, the major contribution to the observed gender differences comes from online news rather than print news, suggesting that the expression of certain stereotypes may be better conveyed when click baiting and personal targeting have a major impact.