Gaye Tuchman defined the term symbolic annihilation in her introduction to the 1978 book Hearth and Home: Images of Women in Mass Media. She argued that symbolic annihilation is “brought about by either condemnation, trivialization or absence of women in media content.” (Turk, 1987, p. 631). The discussion of symbolic annihilation is used to describe the treatment of women by both news and entertainment media, but this blog is focused singularly on women in the news.

Several scholars have studied how and when women appear in news coverage and they find significantly more men are quoted than women, more men are featured as the central focus of stories than women, and more men are trusted as expert sources than women (e.g. Armstrong, 2004). There is a pattern of underrepresentation and misrepresentation that continually fails to reflect the reality of women’s growing prominence in politics, the workplace, and as social advocates in the United States.

I do not mean to argue that news stories must have equal gender representation – that isn’t logical. Rather I am joining with other scholars who study symbolic annihilation in trying to make the public recognize that it does matter who is included and who is left out of news reporting. Media are a key element in gender socialization and the way gender is covered helps “create a social reality that can contribute to gender stereotyping or categorization” (Armstrong, 2002, p. 81). For example, if men are consistently portrayed as the main newsmakers, then men may be perceived as more important than women. (Armstrong & Nelson, 2005).

In addition to the news media’s influence on people’s perception of social reality, more equal representation of women in the news might prove good for business. People want to see themselves represented in the news, so fair and diverse gender portrayal “is likely to appeal to a wider range of audiences” (Gallagher, 2001, p. 192).

Throughout this blog you will find analysis of the literature on the use of female sources, and findings on the roles female journalists and editors play in increasing the visibility of women in the news. I have also included a discussion of the growing role of female war correspondents in bringing the voices of foreign women to Americans and an examination of public perception of the credibility of female journalists. Additionally, I encourage you to check out the My Research page which contains an original study I conducted to examine the representation of women in one week of local coverage in The Washington Post.

Your insight, comments and suggestions for additional resources are welcome. Let’s talk about women, and more importantly let’s let women talk for and about themselves in the news media.

References

Armstrong, C. L. (2004). The influence of reporter gender on source selection in newspaper stories. Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, 81(1), 139-154.

Armstrong, C. L., & Nelson, M. R. (2005). How newspaper sources trigger gender stereotypes. Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, 82(4), 820-837.

Gallagher, M. (2001). Gender setting: New agendas for media monitoring and advocacy. London: Zed Books.

Turk, J. V. (1987). Sex-role stereotyping in writing the news. Journalism Quarterly, 64(2), 613-617.