“Minimal” and “Biased”: An Intersectional Analysis of Female Candidates’ Perceptions of Their Local News Coverage

Abstract

This qualitative study analyzes the perceptions of US women political candidates about their local news coverage at a pivotal moment of change in both journalism and electoral politics. Through an intersectional approach, in-depth interviews with thirty-seven women who recently ran for office from 2016 to 2020 revealed findings in two areas of news research: local news declines and gender bias in political news. First, massive declines in local news capacities have trickled into local political communication, which, along with affordances of social media, point to a decline in relevance of local media to local campaigns. Second, participants perceived bias in their news coverage based on an identity intersecting with their gender, partisan affiliation, or both. Their experiences offered two potential ways forward for local news to reattain relevancy in local elections in countries of local news declines: through accountability journalism, and by diversifying staff to meet the needs of a diversifying electoral slate of candidates.