Gendered media coverage and electoral consequences in East Asia: A comparative analysis of male and female legislators in newspapers

This paper examines the electoral consequences of media coverage when it comes to legislators’ representation efforts concerning women’s issues such as sexual harassment, abortion, domestic violence reduction, or maternity leave. A wide range of empirical evidence drawn from multiple world regions demonstrate that, insofar as women’s issues are concerned, female legislators are more likely to prioritize in the legislature and receive more media attention. At the same time, research shows that strong emphasis on women’s issues can be stigmatizing since the corresponding legislators can be labelled as “angry feminists” by the public. Moreover, it can also be detrimental to legislators’ career within their parties since many feminist platforms tend to challenge entrenched interests—such as the patriarchal, religious, and class status quo—and demand the equal distribution of political power. Based on two underexplored cases in the gender and media scholarship—South Korea and Taiwan—the paper investigates whether and to what extent legislators receiving media coverage related to women’s issues promotion affect their re-election chances. For this goal, the paper first examines 30,000 articles from four major newspapers which include all elected legislators between 2012 and 2020 in both countries. Then, regression analysis is applied to investigate the effect of media coverage on re-election by examining how far specific incumbent legislator went in relation to the next election, i.e. aspirant, applicant, candidate, and elected (Norris and Lovenduski, 1995), by distinguishing whether specific incumbent legislators applied to their party to run for re-election, successfully received nomination, and got re-elected. Preliminary results demonstrate that, in general, media’s portrayal of women’s issue promotion have a negative effect on legislator’s re-election chance and the effect was stronger at the party-nomination stage than at the voter selection stage. Moreover, this patten tended to be particularly pronounced for female legislators pointing that the media effect is gendered. By focusing on women’s issues, the paper demonstrates an important conditionality behind the media’s electoral effect—that more media coverage is not necessarily electorally advantageous for legislators in certain areas—and calls for a more policy-specific approach to be taken in future research.