“Un-Retiring a Grandma”: Gender and Age in News Media Representation During the 2015 Spanish Municipal Elections
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“UN-RETIRING A GRANDMA”: GENDER AND AGE IN NEWS MEDIA REPRESENTATION DURING THE 2015 SPANISH MUNICIPAL ELECTIONS Esther Isabel Veas Pérez de Tudela Rodríguez Master’s thesis University of Helsinki Department of Social Research Media and Communication Studies October 2018 Tiedekunta/Osasto Fakultet/Sektion – Faculty Laitos/Institution– Department Faculty of Social Sciences Department of Social Research Tekijä/Författare – Author Esther Isabel Veas Pérez de Tudela Rodríguez Työn nimi / Arbetets titel – Title ”Un-retiring a grandma”: Gender and Age in News Media Representation During the 2015 Spanish Municipal Elections Oppiaine /Läroämne – Subject Media and Global Communication Työn laji/Arbetets art – Level Aika/Datum – Month and year Sivumäärä/ Sidoantal – Number of pages Master’s Thesis October 2018 95 Tiivistelmä/Referat – Abstract This master’s thesis sought to fill in two gaps: the lack of studies of gendered media representation of women politicians in Spain, and the way older women politicians are represented in the media. The 2015 Spanish municipal elections provided the perfect ground to study these two phenomena, as Manuela Carmena, who was 71 years old at the time, was elected mayor of Madrid, the capital of Spain. This paper dealt with a corpus of 183 newspaper articles in total, belonging to the two most read newspapers in Spain, El País and El Mundo, which mentioned Manuela Carmena in some capacity. Through a mixed methodology consisting of Qualitative Content Analysis and Critical Discourse Analysis, the articles were analysed through a feminist prism. Manuela Carmena’s mediated representation was shown to draw heavily from gendered tropes usually ascribed to women politicians, and a discourse of grandmotherhood underlined the way her image was constructed. However, there were some instances where Carmena was represented with more typically masculine traits, such as power or assertiveness, signifying perhaps a small improvement in the representation of women politicians. Avainsanat – Nyckelord – Keywords Politics, representation, women politicians, Spain, municipal politics Säilytyspaikka – Förvaringställe – Where deposited Muita tietoja – Övriga uppgifter – Additional information 3 Acknowledgements Firstly, I would like to thank Dr Marko Ampuja and Tuula Lehtonen for your initial comments on the first drafts of this thesis, which helped steer it in the right direction. Thanks also to my supervisor Dr Mervi Pantti for your patience and invaluable feedback, and for ultimately motivating me to complete this piece of work. I thank my fellow classmates Emilee Jackson, Tia Oja, and Mariia Kukkakorpi for their comments and stimulating discussions while the thesis was starting to take shape. I would also like to thank my parents for letting me carve my own path in my university studies, and for being incredibly supportive despite the 3000 km between us. Thanks also to my brother for showing me that life goes on after completing a large academic paper. I am indebted to Anna, Kim, Son, Annu, and Shaun for your boundless encouragement in times of need. I am especially grateful to Heidi Tukiainen and Timo Smura for your support as I learned to combine my academic endeavours with the first steps of my professional career. Special thanks to Allison Rivers for reading over my manuscript and for your extremely insightful comments and corrections. And Antti: thank you ever so much for keeping our ship afloat during the past year and a half. Helsinki, October 2018 Esther Veas 4 Table of contents List of figures (tables and images) ................................................................................. 5 Chapter 1: Introduction ................................................................................................. 6 Chapter 2: Contextualisation of Spanish politics ....................................................... 10 2.1 Outline of Spain’s recent democratic history at an executive governmental level .... 10 2.2 The place of women in Spanish political history .......................................................... 13 2.3 Conclusion ........................................................................................................................ 15 Chapter 3: Literature Review ...................................................................................... 16 3.1 Constructing the woman: critical feminism as the lens of the study .......................... 16 3.1.1 The multiplicity of feminisms ..................................................................................... 16 3.1.2 Constructing the woman: critical feminism and the role of gender ........................... 18 3.1.3 Mediated representation of aged women ................................................................... 19 3.2 Mediated representation of women politicians ............................................................. 21 3.2.1 Layers of representation of women politicians .......................................................... 22 3.2.2 The stereotypical mediated representation of women politicians .............................. 24 3.3 Celebrity and the personalisation of politics ................................................................. 29 3.4. Conclusion ....................................................................................................................... 32 Chapter 4: Methodology ............................................................................................... 34 4.1 Research design ............................................................................................................... 34 4.2 Data collection .................................................................................................................. 36 4.2.1 Newspaper selection ................................................................................................... 36 4.2.2 Article selection ......................................................................................................... 37 4.3 Data analysis .................................................................................................................... 39 4.3.1 Qualitative Content Analysis ..................................................................................... 39 4.3.2 Critical Discourse Analysis ........................................................................................ 42 4.4 Validity and ethics ........................................................................................................... 45 Chapter 5: Analysis, Results, and Discussion ............................................................. 47 5.1 QCA: Varied, yet gendered representation .................................................................. 47 5.1.1. Most frequent characteristics .................................................................................... 48 5.1.2 How does Manuela Carmena’s representation draw from typically gendered traits or policies? ............................................................................................................................... 51 5.1.3 Evolution of Manuela Carmena’s media representation between March and July 2015 ..................................................................................................................................... 56 5.1.4 Conclusion .................................................................................................................. 58 5.2 CDA: the discourses of experience, difference, and grandmotherhood ..................... 59 5.2.1 An experienced judge, but inexperienced politician .................................................. 60 5.2.2 A different politician .................................................................................................. 62 5.2.3 A ‘grandma’ politician ............................................................................................... 66 5.3. Conclusion: a gendered politician ................................................................................. 72 Chapter 6: Discussion and Conclusion ....................................................................... 74 6.1. Gendered construction of Manuela Carmena: the politics of grandmotherhood .... 74 6.2 Limitations and final remarks ........................................................................................ 78 Bibliography .................................................................................................................. 80 Appendix 1: Newspaper articles cited ................................................................................. 90 5 List of figures (tables and images) • Figure 1. Daily newspapers: readers (thousands) per day (Asociación de Investigación de los Medios de Comunicación 2016) • Figure 2. Articles chosen per newspaper • Figure 3. Coding frame trees • Figure 4. Number of articles per newspaper chosen for Critical Discourse Analysis • Figure 5. Most frequent characteristics per newspaper • Figure 6. 12 most frequent traits typically associated with women politicians per newspaper • Figure 7. Traits typically associated with men politicians per newspaper • Figure. 8. Policies typically associated with women politicians per newspaper • Figure 9. Policies typically associated with men politicians per newspaper • Figure 10. Evolution of Carmena’s representation in El Mundo • Figure 11. Evolution of Carmena’s representation in El País • Figure 12. Carmena in the Madrid book fair (EP 2.6.2015) • Figure 13. Carmena goes