Her Husband, His Policies: Gender, Framing and Issue Attribution in Campaign Coverage in Political Satire and Traditional News Media

In recent election cycles, American voters have been more likely to regularly watch satirical television programs than many of the well-known traditional news programs (ANES, 2021). In the contemporary media environment of infotainment and rapid digital information networks, it is essential to understand how such non-traditional media formats compare to traditional news media. While previous research has found similarities in partisan framing, little attention has been given to other potential mediators for candidate representations such as gender and related biases. Addressing these current limitations of the literature, this study explores how gender affected framing and theme attribution in coverage of the candidates in the 2016 and 2020 US Democratic Primaries. Using the cases of Saturday Night Live (SNL) impressionist sketch comedy and NBC Nightly News coverage, I examine how comparable political satire and broadcast network news are in terms of gendered biases in their political coverage. Framing analysis and thematic content analysis of the segments shows that coverage of these two media formats does not differ significantly on the presence of gendered biases and thematic focuses, suggesting a shift toward more infotainment in political media coverage. Comparing the coverage of both formats to candidates’ campaign platforms, I further find that candidates’ policies are stronger predictors for thematic issue coverage than gender, and results of the study underline recent scholarship on a decrease in gendered biases in media coverage, suggesting positive developments for democratic representation of women.