The failure effect: why you think she can't win
Date
2023
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Abstract
This dissertation analyzes how modern media coverage and framing of women political candidates reinforces and sustains what I term the Failure Effect. The Failure Effect is a complex combination of gender-based expectancies and cognitive processes including cultural cognition, motivated reasoning, and pragmatic bias, which are amplified and reinforced by media framing techniques that ultimately disadvantage women candidates. I argue the Failure Effect causes voters to doubt a woman candidate's electability even when she is an otherwise qualified candidate, resulting in voters choosing a man candidate at the ballot box because they believe She Can't Win. Despite progress toward gender parity in politics, women continue to hold a significantly smaller portion of political offices than men, particularly at the executive level. Investigating this issue, I examine the history of women candidates in the U.S., gender-based social role expectations, journalistic norms, the attention cycle model, and symbolic annihilation in connection with women political candidates. The study conducted considers the impact of commonly used media framing techniques, specifically strategic game frames, on political outcomes and the notions voters may hold about the electability of a woman candidate. This dissertation argues that despite progress, gender parity in politics remains a distant goal. The research question posed in this study yielded results that both supported the argument of the dissertation as well as surprising results that are ripe for future investigation and potentially the future success of women political candidates. This study asks: How do media frame ideas about executive-level women candidates' electability? To investigate this question, I examined the framing of news stories in four major national newspapers in the United States and the coverage generated about the six women presidential candidates who ran during the 2020 Democratic Presidential Primary. This qualitative thematic analysis found eight primary strategic game frames and several additional sub-frames that were applied to the women candidates. The results of this analysis provide support for the primary argument of this dissertation – the Failure Effect, and how media framing of these candidates causes voters to believe that She Can't Win.
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Subject
cognition
media
women
election
candidates
newspaper