Gay Marriage Goes Prime-Time

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Leigh Moscowitz
Keyword(s):  
Media Coverage ◽  
Gay Rights ◽  
Gay Marriage ◽  
Prime Time ◽  
Single Issue ◽  
Discursive Strategies ◽  
Mainstream Media ◽  
News Stories ◽  
Playing Field ◽  
Time News

This chapter examines the storytelling techniques that were used by journalists to produce the gay marriage issue for prime-time news audiences in 2003–2004, including labeling, framing, sourcing, imagery, and graphics. It discusses the discursive strategies employed by mainstream media to create conflict in the news; how sensationalist labels and descriptive language were used in news stories to validate historic homophobic discourses; and how privileging dominant political and religious sources worked to dichotomize the debate and silence moderate perspectives. It also explores how standard journalistic frames organized the same-sex marriage debate within “official” institutions of power. The chapter argues that journalistic definitions of authority, expertise, and “balance” created an uneven playing field, often pitting gay and lesbian spokespersons against unequal sources of influence from legal, medical, religious, and political authorities. It also shows how media coverage reduced the broader gay rights agenda to a single-issue movement and rarely gave gays and lesbians—almost always shown as couples—the opportunity to offer their own perspectives on this important issue.

The Battle over Marriage

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Leigh Moscowitz
Keyword(s):  
San Francisco ◽  
News Media ◽  
Media Coverage ◽  
Gay Rights ◽  
News Coverage ◽  
Gay Marriage ◽  
Public Image ◽  
Gay And Lesbian ◽  
Ballot Initiatives ◽  
News Stories

Over the past decade, the controversial issue of gay marriage has emerged as a primary battle in the culture wars and a definitive social issue of our time. The subject moved to the forefront of mainstream public debate in 2004, when San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom began authorizing same-sex marriage licenses, and it has remained in the forefront through three presidential campaigns and numerous state ballot initiatives. This book examines how prominent news outlets presented this issue from 2003 to 2012, a time when intense news coverage focused unprecedented attention on gay and lesbian life. During this time, gay rights leaders sought to harness the power of news media to advocate for marriage equality and to reform their community's public image. Building on in-depth interviews with gay rights activists and a comprehensive, longitudinal study of news stories, this book investigates these leaders' aims and how their frames, tactics, and messages evolved over time. In the end, media coverage of the gay marriage debate both aided and undermined the cause. Media exposure gave activists a platform to discuss gay and lesbian families. But it also triggered an upsurge in opposing responses and pressured activists to depict gay life in a way calculated to appeal to heterosexual audiences. Ultimately, this book reveals both the promises and the limitations of commercial media as a route to social change.

Speaking Out

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Leigh Moscowitz
Keyword(s):  
Gay Rights ◽  
Married Couples ◽  
Gay Marriage ◽  
Mainstream Media ◽  
News Stories ◽  
Internal Conflicts ◽  
News Discourse ◽  
Moving Images ◽  
Lgbt Community ◽  
Media Narratives

This chapter examines how media narratives and activist strategies for representing gay perspectives in news discourse evolved over time. Drawing on activist interviews conducted in 2010 and 2011 as well as sample of news stories from 2008 through 2010, the chapter considers the journalistic devices that produced dominant meanings of the gay marriage issue, including the prevalent frames, sourcing patterns, photographic and graphic images, moving images, voice-over narration, and visual representations of married couples and the LGBT community more generally. It shows that, despite an overall more favorable tone and nuanced coverage of the debate, gay rights activists struggled in dealing with journalistic frames that resorted to the “God vs. gays” argument and played the race card. Mainstream media outlets continued to look to religious leaders as “obvious” oppositional sources on gay rights, while the movent's leaders faced internal conflicts over how best to represent pro-gay perspectives in media discourse and gain support from the “moveable middle.”

scholarly journals WeThe15, Leveraging Sport to Advance Disability Rights and Sustainable Development

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (21) ◽  
pp. 11738
Author(s):  
Catherine Carty ◽  
Daniel Mont ◽  
Daniel Sebastian Restrepo ◽  
Juan Pablo Salazar
Keyword(s):  
Sustainable Development ◽  
Human Rights ◽  
Latin America ◽  
School Environment ◽  
Media Coverage ◽  
Public Perception ◽  
Disability Rights ◽  
Mainstream Media ◽  
Playing Field ◽  
The Us

#WeThe15 launched at the Tokyo Paralympic Games. It aims to mobilize global partners to level the playing field for the 15% of the global population living with disabilities. This paper examines how current policy, human rights and development objectives seek this inclusive change. It explores how sport and the media, both popular components of culture globally, are vehicles for impacting positive change for individuals and society. Researchers conducted analyses of mainstream media coverage across the US, UK, Latin America, and the Caribbean (LAC) of the 2016 Summer Paralympics. This was taken as a proxy to popular culture or public perception of disability. Results found considerable use of inspiration porn and non-inclusive language across media outlets. The US media led in raising awareness and promoting a cultural shift. Focus groups in Latin America examined athletes’ use of their platforms to identify and overcome barriers and promote disability rights. Athletes reported access barriers to sport across infrastructure, culture, school, environment, and sport itself. They are willing to use their voice to advance inclusion. While work is needed, para-sport has potential in the policy context and culturally significant media platforms to promote human rights and sustainable development for all people with disabilities.

Argentine Media Regulation, Fake News, and the Election of Mauricio Macri

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mariana De Maio
Keyword(s):  
Prime Time ◽  
Fake News ◽  
National Elections ◽  
Radio Stations ◽  
Mainstream Media ◽  
News Stories ◽  
Media Regulation ◽  
News Organizations ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Right

November 2015 became a key date in the history of Argentina as former president Cristina Fernandez’ party lost the national elections by the narrowest of margins, less than 700,000 votes, to the right-wing candidate Mauricio Macri, ending a twelve-year run of one of the most progressive governments in the history of Argentina. Many analysts argue that large media conglomerates, especially the Clarín Group, played a significant role in the process leading to political change. Macri supporters in the city of Buenos Aires provided some reasons for their decision to vote for Macri and against Daniel Scioli, who ran on Fernandez’ party ticket. Their answers seem to be influenced by a series of fake news (misleading news articles) published by Clarín and La Nación, two leading news organizations in Argentina, during the months before the national elections. These misleading news stories were published in the front pages of those newspapers and at prime time in their affiliate TV and radio stations. Corrections and retractions rarely appeared in the front pages or prime time. Macri voters came to accept the initial news as legitimate and were influenced by them during the 2015 presidential election. Considering the insignificant margin of votes deciding the election, it can be argued that the two news organizations may have been instrumental in shaping the perceptions of just enough voters to swing the results in Macri’s favor. This suggests that dominant mainstream media have had a significant influence on voters’ attitudes and that this may explain in part the election’s outcome.

“The Marrying Kind”

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Leigh Moscowitz
Keyword(s):  
News Media ◽  
Gay Rights ◽  
Gay Marriage ◽  
Gay And Lesbian ◽  
Human Face ◽  
Lesbian Couples ◽  
News Stories

This chapter examines the extent of gay rights activists' success in framing the gay marriage debate and in producing their preferred images for the news media. It first describes the linguistic and visual devices that news entities relied upon to represent gay and lesbian couples as “deserving” of marriage. It then explores how markers of gender, class, race, lifestyle, and sexuality were deployed to construct the human face of gay marriage and goes on to discuss the ways in which gay marriage ceremonies were ritualized and symbolized in news narratives. It also shows how “poster couples” selected by news producers and gay rights activists were legitimated in news narratives, but were also cast as “different” from the more “radical” community of non-married gays, relegating particular LGBT and queer identities to the margins. The chapter concludes by considering how news stories and images work together to produce new forms of gay desire.

Fighting the “Battle to Be Boring”

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Leigh Moscowitz
Keyword(s):  
Gay Rights ◽  
Gay Marriage ◽  
Media Audiences ◽  
Mainstream Media ◽  
Gay Community ◽  
The Media ◽  
Gay Rights Movement ◽  
Internal Struggle ◽  
Mainstream Press ◽  
The U.S

This chapter examines how leading gay rights activists staged the issue of gay marriage for mainstream media audiences, and particularly how they developed narratives about same-sex marriage as well as gay and lesbian life. It first puts the U.S. gay rights movement and the media in perspective before looking at the internal struggle over marriage that has been at the center of debate within the gay community. More specifically, it explores how the movement split over competing definitional strategies—whether to define marriage as a package of rights and responsibilities or as the ultimate expression of love and commitment. It also considers how activists crafted their strategies to “do battle” over marriage in the mainstream press and concludes by explaining how the gay marriage debate increased the visibility of a number of LGBT concerns, provided a space for new, “reformed” images of the community, and boosted mobilization efforts of the gay rights movement.

Gay Marriage in an Era of Media Visibility

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Leigh Moscowitz
Keyword(s):  
News Media ◽  
Media Coverage ◽  
Gay Rights ◽  
The United States ◽  
Gay Marriage ◽  
Gay And Lesbian ◽  
Research Approach ◽  
Same Sex ◽  
Same Sex Marriage ◽  
Gay Rights Movement

This book examines how media coverage helped to define and shape the gay marriage debate as well as gay rights activism during the period 2003–2012. Through an analysis of media reports and in-depth interviews with leaders of the modern gay rights movement, it investigates how media frames and activist discourses evolved surrounding the issue of same-sex marriage. It looks at the aims and challenges of leading gay rights activists who sought to harness the power of mainstream news media to advocate for their cause and reform images of their community. It also considers how gay and lesbian rights groups attempted to shape coverage of the same-sex marriage debate, and what images and narratives about gay and lesbian life activists foregrounded. Finally, it discusses ways in which media attention surrounding the gay-marriage issue reshaped the structure, organization, and goals of the contemporary gay rights movement. This introduction provides an overview of the legal and political contexts of gay marriage in the United States, the rise of gay-themed media, and the research approach and plan of the book.

Sourcing Pandemic News: A Cross-National Computational Analysis of Mainstream Media Coverage of COVID-19 on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-25
Author(s):  
Claudia Mellado ◽  
Daniel Hallin ◽  
Luis Cárcamo ◽  
Rodrigo Alfaro ◽  
Daniel Jackson ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Media Coverage ◽  
Computational Analysis ◽  
Mainstream Media ◽  
Cross National

The COVID-19 Pandemic

Glimpse ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 131-144
Author(s):  
Duygu Onay-Coker ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Hegemonic Discourse ◽  
Health Politics ◽  
Mainstream Media ◽  
Representation Of Women ◽  
News Stories ◽  
Unequal Treatment ◽  
Traditional Gender Roles ◽  
The Media ◽  
The Government ◽  
Media Channels

The COVID-19 pandemic both highlighted and exacerbated deep societal inequalities. Vulnerable and disadvantaged groups, especially women, faced even more unequal treatment. During the lockdown, women at home performed more childcare, and shouldered more cooking and cleaning duties, while husbands spent most of their time in virtual meetings. The media played a crucial role during this situation through its representation of women. An analysis of the reportage of two bestseller print mainstream media, Sabah and Hürriyet, compared to two alternative media channels on the internet, GazeteDuvar and T24, highlighted a serious difference in perspective in news stories about women. Bestseller mainstream Turkish media ignored the difficulties faced by women and followed dominant hegemonic discourse emphasizing women as wives and mothers who sacrifice themselves for their children and families. They ignored the plight of women victims subjected to violence during the lockdown and reproduced the idea of traditional gender roles through their news items. However, alternative newspapers provided a voice to the women, as well as to the voiceless, disadvantageous groups. They were critical of the government, local authorities, related powers, and their health politics. They did not prefer to ignore women and their voices but instead announced them in detail.

From Ni putes ni soumises to #metoo in the French press: Between the hegemony of Whiteness and the Otherness of Muslims

2021 ◽  
pp. 095715582110217
Author(s):  
Marion Dalibert
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
News Media ◽  
Media Coverage ◽  
White Women ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
Mainstream Media ◽  
The Media ◽  
Cultural Power ◽  
Majority Groups ◽  
Feminist Movements

By questioning the media coverage of the seven feminist movements that have received most publicity in the French mainstream media since the 2000s, this article shows that the media narrative regarding feminism perpetuates the national metanarrative produced in generalist newspapers. This metanarrative reinforces the power of majority groups by portraying them as inherently egalitarian, while those with the least economic, social, political and cultural power, such as Muslim men, are portrayed as the most sexist. It also highlights that racialised collectives are still socially invisible or limited to a visibility that is framed by representations rooted in a (post) colonial imaginary. Non-white women are in fact presented as fundamentally submissive, while (upper)-middle-class white women are the only ones associated with emancipation, which is significant of white and bourgeois hegemony at work in the French news media.

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