Abstract

SANTOS, Anabela; CABECINHAS, Rosa  and  CERQUEIRA, Carla. Where’s Wally? (In)visibilities about women and politics in journalistic reception practices. OBS* [online]. 2015, vol.9, n.1, pp.17-42. ISSN 1646-5954.

This paper examines the way in which young audiences understand, interpret and position themselves in relation to media representations of women politicians. Based on the analysis of focus group data, this paper shows that the existence of gender asymmetries in the news media is not considered by (young) audiences as a relevant issue. Most participants adopted reassuring attitudes towards qualitative representation of women politicians, having shown a lack of critical awareness about the consequences of the maintenance of unequal power relations in the media context. Moreover, in an attempt to explain the causes of the representational paradigms identified, participants rarely questioned the economic, socio-cultural and political factors that exert influence on the news production. Informed by a feminist perspective, this study therefore asserts the ned to promote critical media literacy projects to deconstruct hegemonic gender assumptions, as well as to reflect about the impact of the media representations on the (re)configuration of the political/public sphere.

Keywords : reception studies; women and politics; media representations; feminist media studies.

        · abstract in Portuguese     · text in Portuguese     · Portuguese ( pdf )