Women are being marginalised by news websites, study finds

[HuckleB]

Research of more than two million articles finds outlets prefer to use pictures of women while quoting men as experts
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/media/press/women-are-being-marginalised-by-news-websites-study-finds-a6851586.html

"Women are being marginalised by news websites which prefer to use pictures of them while quoting men as sources or experts, a study of more than two million online articles has found.

Men’s views and voices tend to dominate the text of most news articles published online, while women appear proportionally more in images, according to the research conducted by the Universities of Bristol and Cardiff.

Women were also found to feature more in articles about fashion, entertainment and art but were much less present in those involving sport and politics, which researchers said provided “empirical evidence” that they were being marginalised by the media.

The study, which is the largest undertaken to date in this area, used facial and name recognition technology to analyse more than 2.3 million news articles, collected over a period of six months from more than 950 different news outlets.

..."

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There is still a long, long way to go.

[Mass]

1. This should be no surprise to anybody who watches TVnt

[HuckleB]

2. I'm not surprised, though I don't watch TV. Still...

One would think things wouldn't still be so out of whack.

[davidn3600]

3. Well for sports I'm not sure if that gap will ever be bridged

Right now, men's sports generates absolutely enormous amounts of money compared to women's sports. That area of journalism will never be equal until the viewers start viewing women's competitions with the same numbers and intensity as men's competitions.

As for other areas...a lot of it may be based on how the genders align on those topics. Men still dominate politics. There are far more women "experts" involved in the fashion and arts industries than men. Business is the same thing.. how many fortune 500 CEOs are women? So in each of these areas, there are still a lot of gender polarization going on concerning who does what in our society. And the root of it is on the social level. It starts with our upbringing.

Ultimately, the results of the study isn't surprising.

[librechik]

4. and apparently we'll have to do it over and over as the generations pass into history.

treating women as second class citizens just can't be erased.

[HuckleB]

5. Indeed.