Demografische diversiteit in het Vlaamse perslandschap

Abstract

Demographic diversity in the Flemish press Demographic diversity in the Flemish press This study analyses the diversity of the Flemish news by looking at demographic diversity, i.e. the extent to which gender, age and ethnicity in society are proportionally represented in the news. In a constructed week (April-May 2012) (N = 4,800) 12,743 persons were mentioned, each of them were assigned to age groups, man or woman, ethnic minority or ethnic majority. The results indicate that youngsters, the elderly, women and ethnic minorities are underrepresented as news sources in the Flemish news. Especially in the case of elite sources, the news was strongly dominated by adult ‘white’ men. Women were systematically associated more often with ‘feminine’ topics such as welfare and culture, whereas news topics such as sports, politics or economics were strongly dominated by male actors. Ethnic minorities were predominantly (84,2%) connected to sport, crime and justice, and human rights including immigration.

A Long March Toward Equality: Predicting the Presence of Women in Television News

“…Overall, it can be concluded that women seem to be covered more in typical “soft” news topics (cfr. Reinemann et al, 2012), whereas they have much less chance to appear in hard news topics such as politics and economy (Global Media Monitoring Project, 2020; Sjøvaag & Pedersen, 2019; Vandenberghe et al, 2015). Based on these previous studies, we thus expect that news topic will be a predictor of the presence of women as speaking actors in the news.…”