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A Case Study of Media Representation and Framing on the Abortion Issue by Portuguese Mps (1996-1998)

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A Case Study of Media Representation and Framing on the Abortion Issue by Portuguese Mps (1996-1998) LOOK WHo’s Talking – A CASE STUDY OF MEDIA REPRESENTATION AND FRAMING ON THE ABORTION ISSUE BY PORTUGUESE MPS (1996-1998) ANA PRATA CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY, NORTHRIDGE Abstract The media representation of Members of Parliament on an issue as gendered and as controversial as abortion liberalization allows us a window into the degree to which the print media represents female MPs vis-à-vis their male counterparts. I analyze both the standing and framing of political and civil society actors over the 1997-1998 parliamentary abortion debate. The print media discourse on abortion provides standing mostly to state and political party actors. Parliamentary members and political leaders account for roughly three-quarters of all standing, and the only civil society actors with some representation in the media discourse are the Catholic Church and Pro-Life organizations. Women’s move- ment organizations are almost invisible in the print media, demonstrating that the public media discourse excludes a plurality of points of view and it is clearly tilted towards the pro-life side. In terms of the gender representativeness, the findings show that women MPs tend to have less standing compared to male MPs. Key words Media Representation; Framing; Parliamentary Members,;Gender. Overview The media representation of Members of Parliament on an issue as gendered and as con- troversial as abortion liberalization allows us a window into the degree to which the print media represents female MPs vis-à-vis their male counterparts, and both incorporates and excludes a plurality of viewpoints. What does an analysis of the media coverage re- veal about which parliamentary members do the talking on the abortion issue? How does the media portray MPs and the parliamentary discourse on abortion? Are female MPs’ underrepresented even in the debate on a ‘women’s issue’? These questions derive from a larger project entitled, “Female politics – gender policies and visibility strategies of fe- male MPs (1975-2002)”.1 Within this project, Mata and Flores (2012) address how female MPs have been visually represented in the media by looking at the photos of parliamentary 1 This project was coordinated by Ana Cabrera at Media and Journalism Research Center (College of Social and Human Sciences at the New University of Lisbon) and funded by the Portuguese Science Foundation. ARTIGOS | 129 ANA PRATA members.2 In contrast, the current article takes complementary approach, focusing instead on the textual content of news articles. Female MPs are actively involved in many debates that would fall within the realm of “women’s issues”, but because abortion debates are highly divisive and contentious in nature, they are particularly informative of what voices prevail both in Parliament and in the media. There is also considerable variation in the number of seats women hold in Parliament. Therefore, it is important to concentrate our analysis on a time-period when women’s representation in Parliament was higher than usual. While in the mid-1980s there was an important debate on abortion (law n.6/84), the proportion of women in Par- liament was only 8.5%, but increased during the abortion debates of the late 1990’s to around 13%. I focus on the latter period because when women MPs have more parliamen- tary presence their chances for the media exposure should also be greater. In the late 1990s, most of the abortion parliamentary debates concerned law proposals on the decriminalization of abortion, abortion on demand, and the abortion referendum of June 1998. In this article, I analyze the coverage in the print media of the abortion parlia- mentary debates that stem from 1997 to 1998. By the late 1990s, we see that the increase in the numbers of female MPs in Parliament also brought an increase in the number of ini- tiatives that they proposed on the abortion issue. However, we know little about the media coverage of female parliamentary members and their proposals. The media forum is the major site of political contestation (Ferree et al, 2002), and all collective actors, including parliamentary members, want their messages to shape the public discourse on abortion. Standing and Framing in the Media The media influences our understanding of public life, the agenda-setting of policy is- sues, and the overall political process (Keane, 1991; Sreberny-Mohammadi and Ross, 1996). Previous research on the intersection of women, media, and politics has suggested that women politicians tend to be more invisible (relative to men) in news coverage, an idea famously summarized by the term “symbolic annihilation” (Norris, 1997; Tuchman et al, 1978; Gingras, 1995). Research evidence has also suggested a focus on stereotyping, “tabloidization”, and gender-imbalance in the amount of coverage given to male and fe- male political leaders (Kahn and Goldenberg, 1991; Megyery, 1991; Sreberny-Mohammadi and Ross, 1996, p.103). Beyond differences in the extent of coverage, women MPs often have to deal with unwanted kinds of coverage, namely when the media portrays them for their ‘novelty value’, their ‘fashion sense’, or either their ‘over-sexualization’ or ‘masculi- nization’ (Childs, 2006; Norris, 1997; Ibroscheva and Raicheva-Stover, 2009; Lundell and Eckström, 2008). Findings have shown how women MPs are aware of the consequences of not conforming to what the media wants, acknowledging that in order for less known 2 In the article “Politique au feminine – Représentations visuelles des femmes parlamentaires pendant le débat de l’avortement au Portugal”, Mata and Flores address the discrepancy between male and female MP media representation , where women are often portrayed in a limited and stereotypical way, as objects more than subjects. Specifically, they are portrayed as isolated from the context of their political interventions, and not actively engaging in the decision-making process. 130 | Media&Jornalismo – Nº 21, Nº ESPECIAL ONLINE 2012 LOOK WHo’s talking – a case study oF MEDIA REPRESENTATION AND FRAMING ON THE ABORTION ISSUE BY PORTUGUESE MPS (1996-1998) politicians to get any kind media coverage they must engage in controversial statements (Sreberny-Mohammadi and Ross, 1996, p.107).3 According to Ferree et al (2002), success in the media forum can be measured by two criteria: standing and framing. When the media voices an actor’s positioning or interpre- tation in a direct quote the actor gains standing. Being simply mentioned in the news or being object of discussion does not provide standing. Framing, on the other hand, implies that the actor’s preferred frames4 are presented in the news. Therefore, a political actor might have standing without the media portraying the actor’s discourse in a favorable way (metatalk) or publishing what the actor wants, but when there is an alignment between what the media portrays and the frames valued by the actor, the actor gains both standing and framing. While women are significantly underrepresented in parliament, they are also looking “beyond the numbers to focus on what they can actually do” (Lovenduski and Karam, 1998, p.1). Making inroads in the media is a way to evaluate how female MPs might be making an impact beyond their presence in Parliament. Women MPs can maximize their impact in the legislative process by strategically gaining standing and framing in the media. There- fore, this research sheds light into the visibility of female parliamentary members, which has implications on gender representation and inclusiveness of the media forum. Data and Methods The analysis focuses on coverage of a purposive sample of articles from five main Por- tuguese newspapers three dailies, two weeklies: Diário de Noticias, Público, Correio da Manhã, Independente, and Expresso.5 Articles were selected based on the following cri- teria: reference to both the abortion issue and parliamentary member(s) during the period of the parliamentary abortion debates (1997 to 1998). A total of sixty-two articles were analyzed and their text coded according to the follo- wing categories: mentions in the text of female and/or male deputies, political parties, social movement organizations, and “other” actors.6 For all of these categories, I assess the number of times any of these categories appear (quantitative data) and do a content analysis of the correspondent descriptive information on each (qualitative data). This allo- ws for an assessment of each of the actors’ standing. Another set of categories are coded in the text in order to analyze how MPs and their discourse are framed by the media as a way to get at how the media pubic discourse frames the role of parliamentary members. 3 This is connected to the argument about how politics in the news media is being turned into an entertainment (Sreberny- Mohammadi and Ross, 1996). 4 Frames are the interpretive schemata that simplify and condense “the world out there" to a designated set of idea elements. Framing, as a system of meaning, identifies causes of injustice linking them to specific goals (Snow et al., 1986). 5 Dailies have a higher representation in the data compared to the weekly newspapers. 6 This category makes reference to the standing of actors that are not MPs, political party members or representatives, or movement activists. This category includes both individual and collective actors (e.g., a Catholic organization spokesperson, the leader of the Professional Doctor’s Association, etc). ARTIGOS | 131 ANA PRATA The Abortion Law Debates It was clear by the early 1990’s that the restrictive abortion legislation that had passed in the previous decade (law n.6/84) lacked real methods for implementation. This law allowed decriminalization on three grounds: rape, eugenic, and therapeutic reasons. No- netheless, legal abortion procedures were rare and stigmatized in hospitals, therefore, abortion remained mostly underground.7 While women and family planning organizations voiced their concerns early on (Tavares 2003), the center-right government of the Social Democrats avoided the issue altogether.
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