Gender biases in the social networks of regional public media: the case of @CSurNoticias' Twitter

Abstract

Introduction: Public media are essential to offer a service of general interest to the population to have equitable access to information, culture, democratic participation, and equal opportunities. However, they continue to transmit biases and gender stereotypes that can have a great social scope, also in its digital editions, where a large part of the imbalances presents in traditional media have been transferred and adapted. Methodology: This paper analyzes the representation of gender on the Twitter profile of the regional channel Canal Sur Noticias. For this, a content analysis of a total of N=754 tweets published in September and October 2022 is carried out to find out if there is an underrepresentation of women in news coverage and if gender biases and stereotypes are perceived in the sections, spheres of action, authorship, external sources and in the audiovisual content. Results: The findings reveal that women are clearly underrepresented in this social network, not only as protagonists, but also as authors and external sources, and a relegation to the background, in sections and areas of lesser weight, in addition, biases persist, and stereotypes such as gender markings, traditional roles, or sexist language in text and images. Discussion and Conclusions: This paper show an imbalance in the representation of gender on Twitter as a public channel, which adapts the same biases present in its traditional format, hindering the social advancement of women in the digital space.