‘Micromachism’ and digital press: Eldiario.es as a study case

Abstract

The Spanish term micromachismos (sexist microaggressions) is present in our daily life. The fact that eldiario.es, a successful newspaper in the country, has its own thematic section since 2014, illustrates the growing importance of the topic in the public arena. This article proposes an analysis of the evolution of the posts published in this section, from 2014 to 2017, with a total of 125 entries, in order to verify which kind of topics are included in this blog and how to classify them. By using content analysis, we tackle the typology of the microaggressions, the environment in which they occur, the primary sources that generate them, and the number of comments they raise. Our starting hypothesis understands that the concept, and in this case the specialized journalistic section, is used as a sort of “tailor’s box” where to fix all kinds of patriarchal and chauvinist claims which would not exactly be considered as microaggressions. It is noted that the topic generates a growing interest, since both the number of posts and associated comments has progressively increased, from only 21 entries in 2014 to 47 in 2017, and 330 comments in 2014 to 764 in 2017. The results show that most of the entries are created by personal testimonies, depicting events that occur in the workplace and mainly describing issues related to gender roles.