The media coverage of elections has been the object of both media and politics research from the perspective of fairness. However, the concept of fairness has not taken gender equality into consideration. This study attempted to integrate gender equality in investigating fairness of election coverage by analyzing it in terms of its representation of female and male candidates both quantitatively and qualitatively. We analyzed the newspaper and television coverage of the 18th general election between 26th of March and 8th of April, 2008, One thousand four hundred forty six newspaper articles and 652 television news items were analyzed. The number of reports of each female and male candidates was 7,368 in newspaper and 2,536 in television news.
The result of the analysis was as follows. In terms of quantity of media coverage, male candidates received significantly more coverage than female counterparts both on newspaper and television news. The coverage rate(number of candidates mentioned in articles at least once out of number of candidates registered) of men was 76.4% on newspaper and 46.6% on television while that of women was 64.1% and 33.5% respectively. The frequency of coverage of male candidates was 7.85 on newspaper and 4.40 on television while that of female candidates was 6.15 and 4.19 respectively. The difference in frequency became more striking when the most frequently covered group were excluded.*Also, more male candidates had highly focused coverage than female candidates and more female candidates had low focused coverage than male candidates.
In terms of presenting issues, more male candidates were reported with issues than female candidates. There was statistically significant gender difference in presenting images of the candidates. There was more emphasis on gender and more frequent mention of gender stereotyping, gender role and personal traits for female candidates than male candidates.
As shown above, it turned out that female candidates have disadvantage in both having themselves known to the voters and presenting an image conducive to being elected. We conducted a survey on voters to find out what kinds of impact the media coverage of candidates has on voters' exposure to and their choice of the candidates and interviews on several female candidates of the 18th general election to develop media strategies for female candidates. As a conclusion, we presented strategies to improve media coverage of female candidates and to maximize their use of media.
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