Skip to main content

Advertisement

Log in

“She” and “He” in News Media Messages: Pronoun Use Reflects Gender Biases in Semantic Contexts

  • Original Article
  • Published:
Sex Roles Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Previous research has shown a male bias in the media. This study tests this statement by examining how the pronouns She and He are used in a news media context. More specifically, the study tests whether He occurs more often and in more positive semantic contexts than She, as well as whether She is associated with more stereotypically and essential labels than He is. Latent semantic analysis (LSA) was applied to 400 000 Reuters’ news messages, written in English, published in 1996–1997. LSA is a completely data-driven method, extracting statistics of words from how they are used throughout a corpus. As such, no human coders are involved in the assessment of how pronouns occur in their contexts. The results showed that He pronouns were about 9 times more frequent than She pronouns. In addition, the semantic contexts of He were more positive than the contexts of She. Moreover, words associated with She-contexts included more words denoting gender, and were more homogeneous than the words associated with He-contexts. Altogether, these results indicate that men are represented as the norm in these media. Since these news messages are distributed on a daily basis all over the world, in printed newspapers, and on the internet, it seems likely that this presentation maintains, and reinforces prevalent gender stereotypes, hence contributing to gender inequities.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  • Armstrong, C. L. (2004). The influence of reporter gender on source selection in newspaper stories. Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly, 81, 139–154. doi:10.1177/107769900408100110.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Armstrong, C. L. (2006). Story genre influences whether women are sources. Newspaper Research Journal, 27, 66–81.

    Google Scholar 

  • Benesch, C. (2012). An empirical analysis of the gender gap in news consumption. Journal of Media Economics, 25, 147–167. doi:10.1080/08997764.2012.700976.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bradley, M. M., & Lang, P. J. (1999). Affective norms for English words (ANEW): Stimuli, instruction manual and affective ratings. Gainesville: The NIMH center for the study of emotion and attention, University of Florida.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bruckmüller, S., Hegarty, P., & Abele, A. E. (2012). Framing gender differences: Linguistic normativity affects perceptions of power and gender stereotypes. European Journal of Social Psychology, 42, 210–218. doi:10.1002/ejsp.858.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Campbell, R. S., & Pennebaker, J. W. (2003). The secret life of pronouns: Flexibility in writing style and physical health. Psychological Science, 14, 60–65. doi:10.1111/1467-9280.01419.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Carnaghi, A., Maass, A., Gresta, S., Bianchi, M., Cadinu, M., & Arcuri, L. (2008). Nomina sunt omina: On the inductive potential of nouns and adjectives in person perception. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 94, 839–859. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.94.5.839.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Center for American Woman and Politics. (2012). Fact sheet. Retrieved from http://www.cawp.rutgers.edu/fast_facts/levels_of_office/documents/elective12.pdf

  • Collins, R. L. (2011). Content analysis of gender roles in media: Where are we now and where should we go? Sex Roles, 64, 290–298. doi:10.1007/s11199-010-9929-5.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • David, D. L., Yiming, Y., Tony, G. R., & Fan, L. (2004). RCV1: A new benchmark collection for text categorization research. Journal of Machine Learning Research, 5, 361–397.

    Google Scholar 

  • Desmond, R., & Danilewicz, A. (2010). Women are on, but not in, the news: Gender roles in local television news. Sex Roles, 62, 822–829. doi:10.1007/s11199-009-9686-5.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Diekman, A. B., & Eagly, A. H. (2000). Stereotypes as dynamic constructs: Women and men of the past, present, and future. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 26, 1171–1188. doi:10.1177/0146167200262001.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Eagly, A. H., & Mladinic, A. (1994). Are people prejudiced against women? Some answers from research on attitudes, gender stereotypes, and judgments of competence. European Review of Social Psychology, 5, 1–35. doi:10.1080/14792779543000002.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Eagly, A. H., & Steffen, V. J. (1984). Gender stereotypes stem from the distribution of women and men into social roles. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 46, 735–754. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.46.4.735.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Evans, M. G. (1985). A Monte-Carlo study of the effects of correlated method variance in moderated multiple-regression analysis. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 36, 305–323. doi:10.1016/0749-5978(85)90002-0.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Foltz, W., Kintsch, W., & Landauer, K. (1998). The measurement of textual coherence with latent semantic analysis. Discourse Processes, 25, 285–307. doi:10.1080/01638539809545029.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Freedman, E., Fico, F., & Love, B. (2007). Male and female sources in newspaper coverage of male and female candidates in US Senate Races in 2004. Journal of Women Politics & Policy, 29, 57–76. doi:10.1300/J501v29n01_04.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Garcia, D., & Sikstrom, S. (2013). A collective theory of Happiness: Words related to the word “Happiness” in Swedish online newspapers. Cyberpsycholology, Behavior and Social Networking, 469–472 doi: 10.1089/cyber.2012.0535.

  • Geschke, D., Sassenberg, K., Ruhrmann, G., & Sommer, D. (2010). Effects of linguistic abstractness in the mass media: How newspaper articles shape readers’ attitudes toward migrants. Journal of Media Psychology: Theories Methods and Applications, 22, 99–104. doi:10.1027/1864-1105/a000014.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Graf, S., Bilewicz, M., Finell, E., & Geschke, D. (2012). Nouns cut slices: Effects of linguistic forms on intergroup bias. Journal of Language and Social Psychology, 32, 62–83. doi:10.1177/0261927x12463209.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Gustafsson Sendén, M., Lindholm, T., & Sikstrom, S. (2014a). Biases in news media as reflected by personal pronouns in evaluative contexts. Social Psychology, 45, 103–111.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Gustafsson Sendén, M., Lindholm, T., & Sikstrom, S. (2014b). Selection bias in choice of words: Evaluations of “I” and “We” differ between contexts, but “They” are always worse. Journal of Language and Social Psychology, 33, 49–67. doi:10.1177/0261927X13495856.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hegarty, P., & Buechel, C. (2006). Androcentric reporting of gender differences in APA journals: 1965–2004. Review of General Psychology, 10, 377–389. doi:10.1037/1089-2680.10.4.377.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hegarty, P., & Pratto, F. (2001). The effects of social category norms and stereotypes on explanations for intergroup differences. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 80, 723–735. doi:10.1037//0022-3514.80.5.723.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Inter-parliamentary Union (2010). Is parliament open to women? An appraisal. Retrieved from http://www.ipu.org/english/surveys.htm

  • Kahneman, D., & Miller, D. T. (1986). Norm theory - Comparing reality to its alternatives. Psychological Review, 93, 136–153. doi:10.1037/0033-295x.93.2.136.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kanter, R. M. (1977). Men and women of the corporation. New York: Basic Books.

    Google Scholar 

  • Karlsson, K., Sikström, S., & Willander, J. (2013). The semantic representation of event information depends on the cue modality: An instance of meaning-based retrieval. PLoS ONE, 8, e73378. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0073378.

  • Koivula, N. (1999). Gender stereotyping in televised media sport coverage. Sex Roles, 41, 589–604. doi:10.1023/a:1018899522353.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Landauer, T. K. (1998). Learning and representing verbal meaning: The latent semantic analysis theory. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 7, 161–164. doi:10.1111/1467-8721.ep10836862.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Landauer, T. K. (1999). Latent semantic analysis: A theory of the psychology of language and mind. Discourse Processes, 27, 303–310. doi:10.1080/01638539909545065.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Landauer, T. K., & Dumais, S. T. (1997). A solution to Plato's problem: The latent semantic analysis theory of acquisition, induction, and representation of knowledge. Psychological Review, 104, 211–240. doi:10.1037/0033-295X.104.2.211.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Landauer, T. K., Foltz, P. W., & Laham, D. (1998). An introduction to latent semantic analysis. Discourse Processes, 25, 259–284. doi:10.1080/01638539809545028.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Landauer, T. K., McNamara, D. S., Dennis, S., & Kintsch, W. (2007). Handbook of latent semantic analysis. Mahwah: Lawrence Erlbaum.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lauzen, M. M., Dozier, D. M., & Horan, N. (2008). Constructing gender stereotypes through social roles in prime-time television. Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media, 52, 200–214. doi:10.1080/08838150801991971.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lenton, A., Sedikides, C., & Bruder, M. (2009). A latent semantic analysis of gender stereotype-consistency and narrowness in American English. Sex Roles, 60, 269–278. doi:10.1007/s11199-008-9534-z.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Linville, P. W. (1982). The complexity-extremity effect and age-based stereotyping. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 42, 193–211. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.42.2.193.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lämsä, A., & Tiensuu, T. (2002). Representations of the woman leader in Finnish business media articles. Business Ethics: A European Review, 11, 363–374. doi:10.1111/1467-8608.00296.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Maass, A., Suitner, C., & Merkel, A. (2013). Does political correctness make (social) sense? In J. P. Forgas, O. Vincze, & J. László (Eds.), Social Cognition and communication (pp. 331–346). New York: Psychology Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Matud, M. P., Rodríguez, C., & Espinosa, I. (2011). Gender in Spanish daily newspapers. Sex Roles, 64, 253–264. doi:10.1007/s11199-010-9874-3.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • McClelland, G. H., & Judd, C. M. (1993). Statistical difficulties of detecting interactions and moderator effects. Psychological Bulletin, 114, 376–390. doi:10.1037/0033-2909.114.2.376.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Miller, D. T., Taylor, B., & Buck, M. L. (1991). Gender gaps: Who needs to be explained? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 61, 5–12. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.61.1.5.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Neuendorf, K. A. (2011). Content analysis—A methodological primer for gender research. Sex Roles, 64, 276–289. doi:10.1007/s11199-010-9893-0.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Pennebaker, J. W., Mehl, M. R., & Niederhoffer, K. G. (2003). Psychological aspects of natural language use: Our words, our selves. Annual Review of Psychology, 54, 547–577. doi:10.1146/annurev.psych.54.101601.145041.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Picard, R. R., & Cook, R. D. (1984). Cross-validation of regression models. Journal of the American Statistical Association, 79, 575–583. doi:10.2307/2288403.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Pitts, M. J., & Nussbaum, J. F. (2006). Integrating the past and paving the future - Examining current trends and extending boundaries of language and social psychology research. Journal of Language and Social Psychology, 25, 197–202. doi:10.1177/0261927x06289421.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Reuters handbook of journalism. (2014). Writing: Discriminatory language. Retrieved from http://handbook.reuters.com/?title=W#discriminatory_language

  • Ridgeway, C. L. (2001). Gender, status, and leadership. Journal of Social Issues, 57, 637–655. doi:10.1111/0022-4537.00233.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Rose, T., Stevenson, M., & Whitehead, M. (2002). The Reuters Corpus Volume 1 - from yesterday's news to tomorrow's language resources. Paper presented at the Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation.

  • Rudman, L. A., & Glick, P. (2001). Prescriptive gender stereotypes and backlash toward agentic women. Journal of Social Issues, 57, 743–762. doi:10.1111/0022-4537.00239.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Rudy, R. M., Popova, L., & Linz, D. G. (2010). The context of current content analysis of gender roles: An introduction to a special issue. Sex Roles, 62, 705–720. doi:10.1007/s11199-010-9807-1.

    Article  PubMed Central  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Rudy, R. M., Popova, L., & Linz, D. G. (2011). Contributions to the content analysis of gender roles: An introduction to a special issue. Sex Roles, 64, 151–159. doi:10.1007/s11199-011-9937-0.

    Article  PubMed Central  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Schwartz, J. (2011). Whose voices are heard? Gender, sexual orientation, and newspaper sources. Sex Roles, 64, 265–275. doi:10.1007/s11199-010-9825-z.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Signorielli, N., & Kahlenberg, S. (2001). Television's world of work in the nineties. Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media, 45, 4–22. doi:10.1207/S15506878jobem4501_2.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Stahlberg, D., Braun, F., Irmen, L., & Sczesny, S. (2007). Representation of the sexes in language. In K. Fiedler (Ed.), Social Communication (pp. 163–187). New York: Psychology Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Tepper, S. J. (2000). Fiction reading in America: Explaining the gender gap. Poetics, 27, 255–275. doi:10.1016/S0304-422X(00)00003-6.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Catalyst, T. (2013). Statistical overview of women in the workplace.

    Google Scholar 

  • Twenge, J. M., Campbell, W. K., & Gentile, B. (2012). Male and female pronoun use in US books reflects women's status, 1900–2008. Sex Roles, 67, 488–493. doi:10.1007/s11199-012-0194-7.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • UN (2009). Is parliament open to women? An appraisal conference for chairpersons and members of parliamentary bodies dealing with gender equality. Geneva: Inter-Parliamentary Union.

  • Whomakesthenews (2010). Who makes the news? The global media monitoring project. Retrieved from http://www.whomakesthenews.org

  • Zoch, L. M., & Turk, J. V. (1998). Women making news: Gender as a variable in source selection and use. Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly, 75, 762–775. doi:10.1177/107769909807500410.

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgments

This research was supported by grants to the author from the Alhströms and Terserus foundation and from the foundation in memory of Lars Hierta.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Marie Gustafsson Sendén.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Gustafsson Sendén, M., Sikström, S. & Lindholm, T. “She” and “He” in News Media Messages: Pronoun Use Reflects Gender Biases in Semantic Contexts. Sex Roles 72, 40–49 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11199-014-0437-x

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11199-014-0437-x

Keywords

Navigation