Does Gender Influence Media Engagement? Attitudes and Experiences of Australian Media Sources

Abstract

The news media’s reliance on official sources for interviews tends to privilege male voices and perspectives. To date, most of the research in this area has focused on news content analysis which consistently finds that women voices are marginalized, comprising only around 30 per cent of people quoted, heard, and seen in the news. In this study, we extend this work to examine whether potential gender differences in sources’ attitudes toward, and experiences of, media engagement can explain the over-representation of male sources. We outline the key findings from an online survey of Australian subject experts and spokespeople (N = 220). The findings are encouraging, both for journalists and sources. Significantly, men and women perceived the interview experience as generally positive and there was no evidence that women are less willing than men to agree to interview requests. However, there were gendered factors that could deter prospective sources, including fear of being misquoted, mistrust of journalists and concerns about harassment and negative evaluations of appearance. These findings provide valuable insights for journalists and journalism educators about how to improve interviewing practices and develop strategies to increase the diversity of voices in news coverage.