Analysis of issue and strategic game frames in women’s political campaigns (Mexico 2021)

Abstract

Derived from the reform to the Mexican Political Constitution of 2019, all political parties nominated a similar number of men and women for the 15 governorships in competition in 2021. The article presents a quantitative content analysis carried out on N=2450 news from 18 media of written press about the campaigns of these elections. The purpose was to record if there were differences in the journalistic approach of male and female candidates. For this, the analysis included: the presence of the issue and strategic game frames related to the gender of the candidate, the differences between feminine and masculine topics, and the differences between the types of strategic game frames (horse-race, strategic, conflict, and human interest). The findings show that the women candidates had less coverage in the issue frame, but without significant differences in terms of the type of issue. Concerning the strategic game, the conflict frame was linked to men, and the horse-race frame to women. It is concluded that the proposals of the female candidates had less projection than those of the male candidates, which translates into less opportunity to offer inputs to the citizens to vote for a woman. Likewise, it was registered that the candidacies of the women were at constant risk due to the judicial complaints of an electoral nature that were presented. Finally, the journalistic pieces narrated the women accompanied by someone else, which seems to give the intention that their candidacies were of co-responsibility.