Responding To Media Coverage Of Gender-Based Violence In Argentina And The United States: A Mixed Methods Study Of The Intersecting Roles Of Gender, Class, And Racialized Ethnicity Among General And Activist Publics

Years after the emergence of anti-violence feminist movements in the Americas—the Ni Una Menos in Argentina and the #MeToo in the United States—how do feminist expert publics and ordinary citizens evaluate and respond to the media coverage of gender-based violence (GBV) in their countries? Have feminist activists been successful in promoting a gender equality framework among their citizenries? Do audiences care and react to news about sexual harassment—as a case of GBV—equally, regardless of the class and ethnoracial background of the women harmed by it? To respond to this, I draw from three mixed methods, comparative case studies: Study 1 is an interview-based study with 52 feminist expert publics in Argentina (N=29) and in the U.S. (N=23); Study 2 are comparative survey experiments in Argentina (N=1,003) and the U.S. (N=1,004); Study 3 is an interview-based study with 55 survey respondents in Argentina (N=30) and the U.S. (N=25). In Study 1, I analyze how cross-country feminist expert publics evaluate media representations of GBV and develop their own feminist media interventions and practices to help shape how the media and society writ large talk and think of GBV. In Study 2, I explore how diverse audiences in terms of age, gender, racialization, ideology, socioeconomic status, and region in both countries respond to news about sexual harassment depending on the intersectional identity of the woman harassed. In Study 3, I interview a subset of these survey respondents in both countries to explore causal mechanisms, their evaluations of issues related to media, class and race/ethnicity, and their convergences and divergences with feminist expert publics. Based on the analysis of these mixed methods, comparative findings, I conclude by offering a framework of what are some of the factors that help explain how media and communication representations and practices can help promote, or hinder, gender equality frameworks of GBV among the citizenries