The bits and bytes of gender bias in online news: a quantitative content analysis of the representation of women in Vice.com

Abstract

Research has repeatedly found an unequal representation of women compared to men in the news. Yet most research until now has focused on traditional news media including newspapers, radio, and television even though the arrival of the Internet has often been linked with democratization of news production and news distribution. This study intends to fill this gap by investigating the representation of men and women in the global online news platform Vice by means of quantitative content analysis (N = 450). We focus on and compare three channels that each have their focus: Vice Broadly (channel for women), Vice News (channel for hard news), and Vice Belgium (country channel). The findings reveal that Vice provides a more equal representation of women compared to previous studies of traditional media, although some stereotypical patterns remain intact, with some important differences between the three channels.