Findings and Statistics

December’s New Media Index count results in low female bylines, sources

Jasmine R. LinabaryLeave a comment

Editor’s note: In January 2011, we set out to examine the ways in which women are represented in online news both as sources and as authors. To mark our first year here at The Gender Report, we’re revealing our findings from our year-long studies as well as other statistics and commentaries in a series of posts. View other coverage of our one-year anniversary here.

—–

A low article count in December’s monitoring of the New Media Index resulted in few female bylines and sources.

December’s monitoring marked a full year of monitoring the top articles of the web based on links provided in the Project for Excellence in Journalism‘s weekly New Media Index roundups. Findings from the year will be released later this week.

For some background, the New Media Index reports the top five news stories and opinion pieces around the web in a Monday to Friday week based on commentary on blogs and social media sites. For the purposes of our study, we’ve focused on the top five in the blogosphere. When more than one link was provided on the topic, we’ve tried to monitor the first mentioned or the one that appears based on the writing to be more dominant, unless it is mentioned that articles shared the attention for that particular subject.

Here’s what we found in the 12th month:

December 2011

PEJ New Media Index: December 26-30, 2011
Between Dec. 5 and Dec. 30, the New Media Index included only 11 articles that could be checked. No report was released for the week of Dec. 12-16. The same review of the Asus Transformer Prime appeared in all three weeks in which there were reports. In the week of Dec. 5-9, no link was provided for the No. 5 topic of the 2012 presidential race. Likewise, no link was offered for the No. 5 story of drunk history humor video in the week of Dec. 19-23.

In the stories we monitored, here’s what we found:

  • Women were 15 percent of sources in December’s articles. The articles contained 17 male sources and 3 female sources.
  • Only 3 of the 11 articles contained human sources. Two of those three had only male sources. The vast majority of the sources came from one article, the only by a female author.
  • One post was written or produced by a woman while nine articles were by a man. One company post did not identify a specific author.

This low number of sources overall and small percentage of female bylines has been a trend since the New Media Index’s methodology underwent changes in August. As we’ve mentioned previously, these changes included the use of more sites to track the top stories as well as a larger sample size and range of sources. (Read more about those change and the process here.) As a result, we’ve also continued to notice changes in link diversity (particularly from blogs) and in topics, with more technology topics making it into the top five.

Up next

Check back later this week for the results of our year-long study of the New Media Index. We’ll be comparing the findings from August forward to those for the earlier part of the year to more clearly see the differences as a result of the change in the New Media Index’s methodology.

To look at past months’ findings as well as other statistics on gender and the online news, visit our findings and statistics page.

New Media Index: Findings from October, November show slight increase in female sources, bylines

Jasmine R. LinabaryLeave a comment

Catching up from October and November, our monitoring saw slight gains in the percentage of female sources and bylines in the News Media Index after all-time lows in September and August.

Since January 2011, the Gender Report has been monitoring the top articles of the web based on links provided in the Project for Excellence in Journalism‘s weekly New Media Index roundups. The New Media Index reports the top five news stories and opinion pieces around the web in a Monday to Friday week based on commentary on blogs and social media sites. We’ve opted to focus on the top five in the blogosphere for the purpose of our study. When more than one link was provided on the topic, we’ve tried to monitor the first mentioned or the one that appears based on the writing to be more dominant, unless it is mentioned that articles shared the attention for that particular subject.

Here’s what we found for the months of October and November:

October 2011

Between Oct. 3 and Oct. 28, the New Media Index included 22 articles that could be checked. No specific link was provided for the No. 2 story on the 2012 presidential election in week four. The No. 3 story of week three on Occupy Wall Street was done as a special report, and therefore had no link provided. Similar to what was seen in September, news about the new iPhone appeared every week in the top five, though different stories or blog posts were referenced.

In the stories we monitored, here’s what we found:

  • Women were 25 percent of sources in October’s articles. The articles contained 18 male sources and 6 female sources.
  • Thirteen of the 22 articles contained no human sources. Nearly all of those links were to blog posts or posts from companies. In addition, five articles featured only male sources and one article featured only a female source.
  • Three articles or posts were written or produced by a woman while 17 articles were by one or more man. That means women wrote 15 percent of articles or posts by authors of one gender or the other. One article was by a male and female and one was by staff.

November 2011

PEJ New Media Index: Nov. 28-Dec. 2, 2011
Between Oct. 31 and Dec. 2, the New Media Index included 23 articles that could be checked. No New Media Index report was released for the week of Nov. 14 to 18. Again the new iPhone or Apple products were in the news every week.

Here’s what we found in the stories that we monitored:

  • In this month’s articles, women were 27.2 percent of sources. The articles contained 16 male sources and 6 female sources.
  • Seventeen of the 23 articles, or 73.9 percent, contained no human sources. As has been found previously, all of those links were either to blog posts or posts from companies. Also, two articles featured only male sources.
  • This month only two articles or posts were written or produced by a woman while 17 articles were by one or more man. In other words, women wrote 10.5 percent of articles or posts by authors of one gender or the other. Two articles had shared bylines between multiple males and females, one was by staff and one article’s author was not identified.

We only have one month to go in our year-long study of the New Media Index. We’ll be comparing the findings from August forward to those for the earlier part of the year to more clearly see the differences as a result of the change in the New Media Index’s methodology.

As we’ve discussed previously, August marked some changes to the New Media Index’s methodology, including the use of more sites to track the top stories as well as using a larger sample size and range of sources. (Read more about those change and the process here.) As a result, we’ve continued to notice changes in link diversity (particularly from blogs) and in topics, with more technology topics making it into the top five. So far this has meant a decrease in the number of sources and the percentage of female bylines.

For past months’ findings as well as other statistics on gender and the online news, visit our findings and statistics page or view our six-month recap of all of our projects and studies here.

Highest percentage of female sources yet in 11th month of Gender Check project

Jasmine R. LinabaryLeave a comment

The 11th month of our Gender Check monitoring project brought our highest percentage of female sources in a given month to date, with women as 34.7 percent of sources.

Here’s our breakdown of this month’s findings:

Eleventh Month: Nov. 21 – Dec. 22, 2011

During our 11th month, we reviewed 26 articles, two in each Gender Check. That included five Gender Checks from the West and Midwest regions, three from the South and none from the Northeast. This lack of Gender Checks from the Northeast may have been the cause of the higher female source count in this month’s findings. The websites we check in the Northeast have typically had the lowest counts of female bylines and authors.

For each Gender Check, we looked at two websites from that region — one connected with a newspaper and one that is online-only. We selected the top or lead articles on their websites at the time of the check and collect information on the author’s (or authors’) gender and the genders of the human sources referenced among other details. (For more on what Gender Checks are, read our introductory post here.)

Sourcing

The articles from this month contained 34 female sources and 65 male sources, making women 34.4 percent of human sources whose gender could be identified. This is the highest percentage of female sources we’ve had in a given month yet. The previous high was 30.4 percent in our fourth month. That month also had fewer Gender Checks from the Northeast.

Of the articles we examined this month, five contained no identified sources. Four of the 26 articles had only male sources. One article had only female sources.

Here’s how sourcing broke down by geographic region:

  • West: 30 males, 16 female (Women at 34.8 percent)
  • Northeast: N/a
  • Midwest: 31 males, 14 females (Women at 31.1 percent)
  • South: 4 male, 4 female (Women at 50 percent)

We’ve also broken down our findings by news sites associated with a traditional newspaper and those that are not. Here are this month’s results:

  • Newspaper website: 32 males, 16 females (Women at 33.3 percent)
  • Online-only: 33 males, 18 females (Women at 35.3 percent)

Authorship

In the 11th month, seven articles were written by a woman and 15 by one or more man. That gave women 31.8 percent of bylines of one gender or another. Two articles had a shared byline between a man and a woman and another two articles were written by staff.

Here’s the break down of bylines by geographic region:

  • West: 1 story by a woman, 6 by men, 2 by a man and a woman, 1 by staff
  • Northeast: N/a
  • Midwest: 5 by a woman, 4 by a man, 1 by staff
  • South: 1 by a woman, 5 by a man

Here’s how women did in bylines between newspaper sites and online-only sites this month:

  • Newspaper website: 3 by a woman, 7 by men, 2 shared, 1 by staff
  • Online-only: 4 by a woman, 8 by a man, 1 by staff

As a reminder to our readers, these findings stated above reflect a limited amount of data from our simple Gender Checks. We hope you recognize the limitations of this data, since we’ve only sampled a few articles from eight news sites. Further research and time is needed to verify any validity across the board.

In October, we released our findings to date at the nine-month mark. At that point, women were 25.3 percent of sources and 38.2 percent of authors overall. Read more of the findings here. Next month will mark a year of our Gender Check monitoring project. Be sure to check back for our analysis and findings.

To look at past month breakdowns and other data on gender representations in online news, check out our “Findings and Statistics” category.

Female authors rebound to 29 percent in Gender Check study’s 10th month

Jasmine R. LinabaryLeave a comment

During the 10th month of our Gender Check monitoring project, women made up 25.5 percent of sources and 29 percent of authors of one gender or the other. This marked a higher showing of female authors than the previous month, which resulted in an all-time low in our study thus far at 25 percent.

Here’s the breakdown of our findings:

Tenth Month: Oct. 24 – Nov. 17, 2011

We reviewed 32 articles, two in each Gender Check, during our 10th month. That included four Gender Checks from each of our geographic regions.

For each Gender Check, we looked at two websites from that region — one connected with a newspaper and one that is online-only. We then selected the top or lead articles on their websites at the time of the check and collect information on the author’s (or authors’) gender and the genders of the human sources referenced among other details. (For more on what Gender Checks are, read our introductory post here.)

Sourcing

This month’s articles contained 23 female sources and 67 male sources, making women 25.5 percent of human sources whose gender could be identified. Eight articles this month contained no identified sources. Twelve of 32 articles, or 37.5 percent, contained only male sources. Only two had only female sources.

Here’s how sourcing broke down by geographic region:

  • West: 13 males, 6 female (Women at 31.6 percent)
  • Northeast: 23 males, 4 females (Women at 14.8 percent)
  • Midwest: 13 males, 6 females (Women at 31.6 percent)
  • South: 18 male, 7 female (Women at 28 percent)

We’ve also broken down our findings by news sites associated with a traditional newspaper and those that are not. Here are this month’s results:

  • Newspaper website: 53 males, 16 females (Women at 23.2 percent)
  • Online-only: 14 males, 7 females (Women at 33.3 percent)

Authorship

During this month, nine articles were written by a woman and 22 by one or more man. That gave women 29 percent of bylines of one gender or another. There was also one article written by staff.

Here’s the break down of bylines by geographic region:

  • West: 2 stories by a woman, 6 by a man
  • Northeast: 1 by a woman, 7 by one or more man
  • Midwest: 1 by a woman, 6 by a man, 1 by staff
  • South: 5 by a woman, 3 by a man

Here’s how women did in bylines between newspaper sites and online-only sites this month:

  • Newspaper website: 4 by a woman, 11 by men and 1 by staff
  • Online-only: 5 by a woman, 11 by a man

As a word of reminder to our readers, these findings reflect a limited amount of data from our simple Gender Checks. We hope you recognize the limitations of this data, since we’ve only sampled a few articles from eight news sites. Further research and time is needed to verify any validity across the board.

Last month, we released our findings to date at the nine-month mark. At that point, women were 25.3 percent of sources and 38.2 percent of authors overall. Read more of the findings here.

To look at past month breakdowns and other data on gender representations in online news, check out our “Findings and Statistics” category.

Nine months: Science and health articles showing high female sources, low female bylines

Jasmine R. LinabaryLeave a comment

At the nine-month mark of our Gender Check study, articles about science and health have the highest percentage of female sources and one of the lowest percentages of female bylines compared to other article subjects.

Last week, we unveiled our findings from the first nine months of our Gender Check project. Another way we’ve been looking at our data is by article subject, to see if there is a difference in the representation of women as sources and authors. We first explored this following our six-month mark and we did, in fact, find some differences. As a result, we’ve gone back through our most recent findings and looked at each of the 272 articles we gender checked by topic, in order to see if those same differences still hold.

We’ve opted to use (to the best of our ability) the Global Media Monitoring Project‘s news stories classification system (Click for a PDF of the system) to categorize stories. This system divides articles into eight categories with a numbering system for further breakdowns within each category. At this point, we are just looking at the larger categories. None of our articles have fallen under the categories of “Other” and ‘The Girl-Child” yet, so we’re sticking with the six remaining categories.

In the first nine months of our Gender Check project, the largest number of our articles still fell under “Crime and Violence” (84 out of 272). “Economy” with 60 articles narrowly passed “Politics and Government” with 58 to be the second highest. Thirty-five articles fell under “Social and Legal,” 20 under “Science and Health” and 15 under “Celebrity, Arts, Media and Sports.” We recognize that the sample of articles in some categories is still small, so please keep in mind that limitation when viewing our data.

Here’s what we found within those categories:

Sourcing

“Celebrity, Arts, Media and Sports” articles moved to the bottom of the pack by producing the lowest percentage of female sources at 19 percent. “Science and Health” has continued to hold the highest percentage of female sources with 31.4 percent. As we’ve seen in our overall findings to date, the total sample shows women as 25.3 percent of sources.

Here’s how it separated out by classification:

  • Politics and Government: 193 males, 53 females (Women as 21.5 percent)
  • Economy: 163 males, 48 females (Women as 25.4 percent)
  • Science and Health: 59 males, 27 females (Women as 31.4 percent)
  • Social and Legal: 89 males, 32 females (Women as 26.4 percent)
  • Crime and Violence: 224 males, 92 females (Women as 29.1 percent)
  • Celebrity, Arts, Media and Sports: 47 males, 11 females (Women as 19 percent)

Authorship

Even with the highest percentage of female sources, “Science and Health” articles still had one of the lowest percentages of female authors at 20 percent. This tied with “Celebrity, Arts, Media and Sports” articles. “Economy” articles continued to show the highest percentage of female authors at 40 percent. Overall, women are 38.2 percent of authors.

Here’s the breakdown by classification:

  • Politics and Government: 22 stories by women, 30 by men, 5 shared bylines between a man and a woman, 1 other/unidentified (Women as 37.9 percent)
  • Economy: 24 by women, 34 by men, 2 shared (Women as 40 percent)
  • Science and Health: 4 by women, 16 by men, 2 shared (Women as 20 percent)
  • Social and Legal: 13 by women, 20 by men, 2 shared (Women as 37.1 percent)
  • Crime and Violence: 26 by women, 47 by men, 9 shared, 2 other (Women as 31 percent)
  • Celebrity, Arts, Media and Sports: 3 by women, 11 by men, 1 shared (Women as 20 percent)

We’ll still be watching these findings to see what other trends emerge in certain subject areas over time. For more information on gender representations in online news, check out our “Findings and Statistics” and “Useful Resources” pages.