“France's (Kinder, Gentler) Extremist”: Marine Le Pen, Intersectionality, and Media Framing of Female Populist Radical Right Leaders

Abstract

Although the populist radical right is generally seen as a particularly masculine and misogynist phenomenon, several of its parties have female leaders. The most prominent is Marine Le Pen, president of the French National Rally (formerly the National Front) and unofficial leader of the European populist radical right. Using insights from intersectionality theory, we posit that Marine Le Pen, as a female populist radical right politician, faces qualitatively different media coverage than both her female and her radical right counterparts. In this study, we analyze her media framing in two French (Le Figaro and Le Monde) and two U.S. (New York Times and Wall Street Journal) newspapers, focusing on the application of gender and populist radical right frames. We find that the “harder” populist radical right frame dominates the “softer” gender frame in all four newspapers, but, paradoxically, the combination of the two frames leads to overall less biased coverage of Marine Le Pen compared with both other female and other populist radical right politicians. In the conclusion, we discuss some of the consequences of the findings for the broader study of female politicians, most notably, theories of intersectionality and the double bind for women in leadership.

(De)Stigmatization of Political Leadership: The Case of a Right-Wing Populist Presidential Candidate in the Finnish Media

“…Yle's TV channels were ranked the second most reliable media source, with Yle's digital services ranking fifth (IRO Research, 2017). Both Helsingin Sanomat and Yle are examples of liberal media outlets in Finland; in the French national context, liberal media has been found to be more negative in their reporting of female right-wing leaders than conservative news press (Snipes & Mudde, 2019). The articles were taken from the newspaper's online archives and Yle's website, using "Laura Huhtasaari" as the search term.…”

“…Helsingin Sanomat (Silfverberg, 2017) Huhtasaari's strength is emphasized by using military metaphors (controlling the "air space"). The media often describe right-wing female leaders using traits that emphasize their masculinity and power (see Snipes & Mudde, 2019). An image of a militant character who stops at nothing is established in the stories that describe how Huhtasaari has "fired full front both those who have resigned from the party, as well as the president of the Republic of Finland" (Niilola, 2017).…”

Interseccionalidad raza-género en las noticias digitales mexicanas sobre Kamala Harris

“…En la cuestión de visibilidad, se ha encontrado que el número de piezas periodísticas acerca de candidatas interseccionales es aún menor que el de mujeres blancas (Evans, 2015;Gershon, 2012;Ward, 2016aWard, y 2016b. Únicamente las mujeres con identidad interseccional postuladas por partidos conservadores tienen un mayor espacio en los mensajes informativos por la novedad que suponen (Snipes y Mudde, 2019;Ward, 2016b).…”

“…El análisis de contenido resultó relevante para esta investigación porque fue la misma técnica que se usó en estudios precedentes sobre candidatas políticas en la prensa mexicana (Flores Márquez, 2020; Rodelo, 2016 y 2020; Vidal Correa, 2020a, 2020b y 2020c), latinoamericana (García Beaudoux et al, 2020;Mitchelstein et al, 2019), norteamericana (Wagner et al, 2019;Waters et al, 2018) y europea (Humprecht y Esser, 2017;Lachover, 2017;Sensales et al, 2016), así como en comparativas internacionales de cobertura (Álvarez-Monsiváis, 2020;García Beaudoux et al, 2018;Haraldsson y Wängnerud, 2019). De igual forma, es una técnica probada en los análisis sobre políticas con identidades interseccionales (Bashri, 2019;Snipes y Mudde, 2019;Tolley, 2015;Ward, 2016aWard, y 2016b. Además, la elección del análisis de contenido se sustenta por ser el método más empleado en los estudios de comunicación política (Piñeiro-Naval y Morais, 2020).…”

“…La base del modelo consiste en que los periodistas seleccionan aspectos de una realidad percibida para reproducir un mensaje con conceptos e interpretaciones específicas (Ardèvol-Abreu, 2015;Piñeiro-Naval y Mangana, 2018). Los encuadres han sido utilizados para analizar noticias sobre candidatas políticas (Álvarez-Monsiváis, 2019 y 2020; Quevedo Redondo y Suárez Romero, 2017; Rista, 2020;Vidal Correa, 2020a, 2020by 2020cWaters et al, 2018) y con identidades interseccionales (Snipes y Mudde, 2019;Ward, 2016aWard, , 2016b, lo que vuelve al framing pertinente para el estudio. También se han encontrado trabajos de meta-investigación en los que se evidencia la relevancia del estudio de los encuadres a partir del análisis de contenido (Matthes, 2009;Carrasco-Campos y Saperas, 2015).…”