Abstract
Several studies conducted in Western democracies have indicated that men continue to be overrepresented and women underrepresented as experts in the media. This article explores the situation in Finland, a progressive and ‘female-friendly’ Nordic country with highly educated women who are widely present in the job market. The analysis is based on three sets of research data featuring a wide set of media data, a survey and interviews. This study reveals that public expertise continues to be male dominated in Finland: less than 30% of the experts interviewed in the news media are women. While the distribution of work and power in the labour market may explain some of the observed gender gap, journalistic practices and a masculine tradition of public expertise are likely to play a role as well.
1. Introduction
The presence of academic and other experts in news journalism has increased notably over the last two decades. These experts, who interpret and explain contemporary events for the public in the media, enjoy considerable discursive power in Western democracies. When it comes to journalistic media, news organisations and individual journalists play a substantial role in selecting experts for the spotlight (Cross, 2010: 426–427). The selection of sources is, indeed, one of the major framing decisions. Who will be given a voice and who is invited to join the framing of the topic – producing interpretations, giving some aspects of the story presence at the expense of other possible views – alongside the journalist? In a researcher–journalist interaction, it is the journalist who takes the initiative (Wien, 2014: 441). Therefore, it is increasingly important to understand the process by which journalists and news organisations select their sources.
This article scrutinises the use of expert sources, especially academics, in Finnish journalism. Previous studies have indicated a gender gap in the process of source selection that determines, for example, how often male and female experts are interviewed and how they are covered by the media. Hence, this study has a specific interest in the use of male and female researchers as news sources. Are men and women used equally often as public experts in the Finnish news media? If not, what explains the gender gap – a lack of women in expert positions in society (and, especially, in academia), journalists’ sourcing practices and attitudes or male and female researchers’ differing stances concerning the public expert role?
In Finland, the media are distinctive in its goal of embracing ‘objectivity’ and ‘neutrality’. All major newspapers, both nationwide and local, consider themselves to be politically neutral. Finland is one of the leading countries in both rankings of the freedom of the press (first in the World Press Freedom Index, 2015) and narrowness of the gender gap (second in the Global Gender Gap Report, 2014). Finns are highly educated, and Finnish women are actually more educated than the men are. However, while Finnish women score high in full-time labour force participation and in political representation in parliament, they continue to earn less than men do and to obtain leadership positions far less frequently than men do (World Economic Forum Ranking, 2014).
As a generally progressive Nordic country, famous for its commitment to gender equality and high education, Finland represents an interesting case for research. Are Finnish women’s active participation in politics, notably high level of academic education and wide participation in the labour market, reflected in their visibility as experts in the media?
Gender equality matters in terms of the media’s choice of experts because those having a voice in public may have access to both actual and symbolic power. Individuals granted roles of opinion leadership and authority in terms of framing policies, pointing out problems and suggesting solutions in public may not only influence the direction of the debate but also decision-making processes and, ultimately, policy outcomes. Furthermore, according to our study, both social scientists and interviewed journalists (in particular) believe that appearing in the media can provide career benefits for a researcher (see also Wien, 2014: 436–437). With regard to equality, the fact that public expertise is generally so significantly skewed towards a relatively narrow group of male researchers also means that possible career benefits for researchers are divided unequally. Importantly, the media’s choice of experts is a weighty symbolic message about who in the society has – and does not have – the credibility and competence to act as ‘an expert’.
Although this article compares ‘male’ and ‘female’ researchers, it is important to recognise that public evaluations of experts and shared understandings of what constitutes a reliable, weighty and relevant expert may be more tightly linked to masculine stereotypes than to actual gender and can therefore discriminate also against those men who do not fit traditional expectations. Furthermore, other individual qualities, such as age, ethnic background and sexual orientation, may play a role as well.
2. Previous research on expertise in the media
Studies focusing on the media’s use of expert sources have analysed, among other things, the interaction between scientists and journalists and the news routines of the media. How do journalists find their interviewees, what kinds of roles are expert sources given, how do scientists communicate with the media and whose voices get to be heard? (Albæk, 2011; Allgaier, 2011; Cross, 2010; Dimitrova and Strömbäck, 2009; Fenton et al., 1998; Maillé et al., 2010, Myer Valenti, 1999; Nielsen and Autzen 2011; Wien, 2014).
Previous studies have focused on journalistic practices and the activities of researchers themselves. According to Kruvand (2012: 585–586), factors like researchers’ accessibility, knowledge and eloquence, combined with a genuine interest in public engagement and a willingness to follow news routines, may explain why some experts gain more visibility in the media than others do.
In the context of Nordic countries, particularly interesting is a study by Albæk et al. (2003) that focused on longitudinal changes in Denmark. According to their study, instead of communicating the results of their own studies, academics now increasingly comment on political and other issues that are part of the public agenda (Albæk et al., 2003: 941–944; see also Wien, 2014: 431).
These and several other studies are fruitful from the standpoint of expert sources and media source practices. However, it is surprising how often gender is still excluded from the research framework (e.g., Albæk, 2011; Allgaier, 2011; Conrad, 1999; Cross, 2010; Dimitrova and Strömbäck, 2009; Strömbäck and Nord, 2006; Weigold, 2001) or, even when it is coded as a variable, not mentioned in discussions of the results (Albæk et al., 2003).
This is unfortunate because the research framework of Albæk et al. (2003), for example, would have offered an enlightening perspective on the topic. This study proved that hard scientists, who historically have made the majority of appearances in the Danish daily press, have been overtaken by social scientists as go-to sources (Albæk et al., 2003: 941, 944–946). With regard to gender, an interesting question would have been this: Has the shift in media focus towards fields in which women are typically better represented (i.e. as opposed to the hard sciences) increased female scholars’ visibility as public experts?
Although many studies have ignored gender, studies do exist that discuss the role of gender in expert source selection. These studies have asked, for example, whether male and female experts are used equally often, whether there are differences in the roles that female and male experts are allocated in reporting and whether the gender and ethnic background of the journalist makes any difference in his or her use of sources. Are female reporters more likely to interview women? How does the news represent female and male scientists? These questions, among others, have been explored in a subset of studies of the media (see Armstrong, 2004; Cann, 2001; Freedman et al., 2007; Kitzinger et al., 2008; Zeldes et al., 2007, 2012; Zoch and VanSlyke Turk, 1998).
Previous research has proven that gender affects the ways in which male and female researchers and other experts are used as sources (Armstrong, 2004; Freedman et al., 2007; Kitzinger et al., 2008; Zoch and VanSlyke Turk, 1999). A British study examining representations of gender and science in 12 national newspapers over a 6-month period showed clear differences in representations of male and female scientists 1 and their uses as sources. Men were cited far more often than women were (men: 84%; women: 16%). The study also considered the number of male and female researchers in different fields of science, with no change to the results; women still were relatively underrepresented. It was also found that men were much more likely to be quoted first, leaving women the role of secondary source. Moreover, journalists were more likely to comment on female scientists’ appearances than on those of male scientists (Kitzinger et al., 2008: 6–7, 17, 28–29). Similar findings were also presented in studies analysing the use of expert sources in the United States (Desmond and Danilewicz, 2010: 827; see also Women’s Media Center 2014; Liebler and Smith, 1997).
According to some studies, the reporter’s gender may also play a role in source representation: in the research by Zeldes et al. (2007: 359), although women were significantly underrepresented as sources across the board, female reporters were much more likely to use female sources and to give them airtime than their male colleagues were.
However, there are also studies that argue there is no gender gap in place in this regard. According to Fenton et al. (1998), the media are not so much creating a sexist agenda as expressing it. According to their study on how social science and social scientists are presented in the media in the United Kingdom, gender was not a significant variable when ‘age’ and ‘seniority’ were also taken into account. Interestingly, however, their study also suggested that gender was a significant predictor of media coverage when researchers did not use public relations (PR) services. This perhaps implies that when journalists contacted researchers (rather than researchers contacting journalists to get publicity for their research, for example), men were contacted far more often and gender was a significant predictor of representation.
In addition, Wien (2014) came to the conclusion that there was no gender gap in the media coverage of researchers in Denmark because the numbers of researchers in the media reflected the gender distribution of researchers at Danish universities (p. 434). This finding was based on the average gender distribution at Danish universities, taking into account both natural scientists and social scientists. In the news, however, 75% of cited researchers were from the fields of social sciences and the humanities (Wien, 2014: 435, 437). Since the humanities and social sciences tend to have more equal numbers of men and women than the hard sciences do and since humanists and social scientists are the researchers most often interviewed in contemporary media (see also Albæk et al., 2003), it would have been interesting to compare these figures. It is possible that a comparison of the gender distribution of social scientists appearing in the media to the numbers of male and female social scientists working in academia would have yielded a different result.
In conclusion, one might say that although several (but not all) studies have concluded that men are used as expert sources far more often than women are, comparisons of results across studies remain difficult because of the variety of research frames utilised. Moreover, there is no clear evidence regarding whether these differences stem from institutional and social barriers that women face or whether there is also a level of distortion in the practices of journalists and the media. In either case, it can be argued that challenging the gendered patterns and traditions of masculine expertise in the media may require extra effort from all involved. Because there is no similar tradition of women’s expertise in public to that of men and because women continue to form a minority of public experts and receive different, typically more personal, coverage in the media than their male colleagues do, the risks and costs of participating in public debate may seem higher from the perspective of a female scientist. Compared to men, women experts have fewer encouraging role models to follow, but a greater likelihood to be evaluated in terms other than the relevance of their commentary and research.
3. Research data
Our extensive, threefold research data consist of (1) news material gathered from television and print media (N = 4773), (2) a survey that was targeted at social scientists in three Finnish universities (N = 293) and (3) a set of semi-structured interviews with journalists and editors working in print media, radio and television (N = 11). While the news material gives us an overall picture of the use of experts (i.e. who, how often, in what roles and so on), the survey targeted at social scientists and the interviews of journalists shed light on the process of supply and demand taking place behind the scenes of the news.
The first data set consists of news material gathered from the newspaper Helsingin Sanomat (HS), the largest subscription newspaper in Finland; the electronic archives of the Finnish News Agency (STT); and the main newscast of the Finnish Broadcasting Company, Yleisradio (YLE). These data include six sampling weeks from 2013 (weeks 2, 10, 19, 29, 36 and 45), resulting in a total of 4773 news articles in domestic, foreign and economic categories. Of these stories, 870 were assigned expert codes on the basis of their respective sources’ institutional affiliations or other indicators of expertise. This means that approximately 18% of the stories included at least one identified expert source.
The second data set consists of survey results. The Internet-based survey was targeted at social science researchers and lecturers working in the three biggest Finnish universities. The survey was sent to 1125 respondents, of whom 293 (26%) took part. Responses were received evenly from female (N = 146) and male (N = 147) respondents, as well as from senior scholars (i.e. senior researchers, professors and so on) and researchers at the early stages of their careers (i.e. PhD candidates, lecturers and so on). The survey mapped concrete examples of researchers’ cooperation with journalists and the media, as well as the researchers’ experiences, opinions and impressions of their cooperation.
The third data set comprised semi-structured interviews conducted with journalists and duty editors or managing editors working in the domestic news, foreign news or economic news departments of newspapers, television channels and radio (N = 11). The media taking part in the interviews included YLE (radio, TV and online), commercial TV station MTV3, STT news agency, HS newspaper and two tabloids/evening papers, Ilta-Sanomat and Iltalehti. The interviews took place in March and April 2014. Seven of the interviewees were women, and four were men. Six of the interviewees were duty editors or managing editors and five were journalists. At the time of the interviews, the interviewees were aged between 33 and 59 years, with experience in the media field ranging from approximately 10 to over 30 years. The interviews lasted approximately 1 hour and produced 9–15 transcribed pages each (see Online Appendix available atavailable at: http://pus.sagepub.com/content/by/supplemental-data).
The main outline of the interviews remained the same; however, for the semi-structured interviews, additional questions were allowed and the interaction with the interviewees was relatively free. Accordingly, for example, the order of the questions sometimes changed, particularly if an interviewee spontaneously brought up topics before being asked about them.
4. Findings and discussion
Expertise in the news
As discussed above, several previous studies have confirmed that male expert sources are far more commonly used than their female counterparts are. Next, we take a closer look at the gender distribution of experts appearing in Finnish media. The figures in Table 1 are well in line with the results of previous studies indicating that experts featured in the media are male far more often than they are female. The figures are very similar for YLE and HS, whereas STT uses female sources slightly more often than the other two. The percentages for male and female representation are relatively similar across all expert categories (i.e. among academic researchers, economists, civil servants and so on).
Gender distribution of experts (N = 1237).
HS: Helsingin Sanomat; YLE: Yleisradio, National Broadcasting Company; STT: Finnish News Agency.
The expert sources used in Table 1 include, for example, academic researchers, researchers from a research institutes, civil servants, economists, representatives of non-governmental organisations (NGOs), representatives of labour market organisations, representatives of corporations and medical doctors. The sources mentioned in the news stories received their respective expert codes whenever they matched certain criteria. First, the sources provided the stories with information, analyses or opinions that were based on their professional or academic expertise. Second, the sources were not directly connected to the news, that is, presented no conflict of interest.
One important question concerning the source practices of news media involves the backgrounds of the informants with regard to the kinds of people considered ‘experts’ by news media. Our study confirms that in Finland, the expert sources used have varying professional backgrounds. Individuals appearing as experts in Finnish news media are most often domestic academic researchers (22%) and civil servants (22%); however, researchers from research institutes (11%) and foreign academic researchers (8%) are also used as experts relatively often. When domestic and foreign academic researchers are combined, they comprise almost one-third of the expert sources used. Besides these main categories, journalists also regularly contact economists, representatives of non-governmental organisations and representatives of labour market organisations. Professionals such as medical doctors and police representatives are also interviewed regularly. Generally, the diversity in the backgrounds of expert sources illustrates how the media use a broad array of professionals to provide the public with background information, analyses, interpretations and explanations for contemporary issues.
Although the highest positions of leadership in Finnish society continue to be male dominated and although the choice of research fields is still sometimes gendered by nature, there is no lack of female experts across society and in academia. The question that remains to be answered is whether the difference in representation is a sign of gender bias in journalistic practices or whether the type of expert information required by journalists simply tends to be in the possession of men.
Previous studies conducted in other countries have revealed contrasting findings regarding, for example, the influence of journalists’ gender on source selection. For example, while Armstrong (2004) argued that the gender of the reporter has a bearing on the gender of the sources used, Freedman et al. (2007) found that reporters of both sexes cite female sources equally rarely.
Because the interviewed experts have varying backgrounds, it is difficult to evaluate whether the results can be explained by the job distribution of labour markets or by media bias. It is likely that both play a role. One way to shed light on this question is to analyse the situation within the context of the most-often-used experts: academic researchers.
Table 2 shows that, as was the case for the full sample, among university researchers, men are interviewed more often than women are. This is interesting because, according to recent reports, male and female employees are evenly distributed among university lecturers and researchers. In fact, in the three major universities taking part in our survey, women constitute a majority (University of Turku, 2011: 5; University of Helsinki, 2012; University of Tampere, 2013: 13). Since these universities are located in large cities in the southern part of Finland, where the major media houses are also located, their researchers are also best positioned to serve the media. Thus, the findings presented in Table 2 may suggest a gender bias in the media’s source practices. On the other hand, approximately 75% of university professors and research directors are still men (Ministry of Education and Culture, 2011). It may be argued that since professors are expected to possess the highest levels of knowledge in their fields, journalists are most likely to interview them. Some previous studies have shown that the seniority of a researcher is an important indicator of potential media exposure (Fenton et al., 1998). However, a more recent study from Denmark (Wien, 2014, p. 437) revealed that researchers contributing to news media were typically male academics with 5–15 years of academic experience.
Gender distribution of the interviewed expert sources among domestic researchers (N = 270).
HS: Helsingin Sanomat; YLE: Yleisradio, National Broadcasting Company; STT: Finnish News Agency.
Table 3 illustrates the positions of the researchers interviewed in the media. Its main point of interest is the finding that journalists do not rely solely on professors or research directors; instead, they also regularly interview researchers in other positions within academia. As stated above, in some Finnish universities, the majority of lecturers and researchers are women and, as Table 3 shows, STT mentions other researchers almost as often as they do professors, while HS and YLE place more value on high academic rank. These results add additional weight to the argument of media bias because the gender gap cannot be explained merely by sources’ professional experience or seniority.
Academic positions of interviewed researchers (N = 270).
HS: Helsingin Sanomat; YLE: Yleisradio, National Broadcasting Company; STT: Finnish News Agency.
As Table 3 indicates, there are differences across media sources with regard to their use of experts. According to previous studies, the roles of sources in news stories vary by media and individual story. Commonly used roles include providing context, legitimising the journalist’s story, explaining things and providing balance (in cases of contradictory views) (Conrad, 1999: 296–297; Wien, 2014: 441).
Table 4 illustrates the roles allocated to researchers in the Finnish news. 2 As the table shows, STT regularly publishes news stories that depict research results. These stories are typically based on press releases about doctoral dissertations. Unlike STT, HS and YLE use experts mostly to comment on contemporary issues and to provide background information for topical events, whereas they rarely use researchers to publicise results.
Roles given to the researchers in the media (N = 270).
HS: Helsingin Sanomat; YLE: Yleisradio, National Broadcasting Company; STT: Finnish News Agency.
These findings suggest that the gender gap between male and female researchers as expert sources can, to a certain degree, be explained by the academic seniority of male researchers; however, this does not account for the entirety of the phenomenon. Although the majority of professors are men and professors are clearly favoured as experts by some media, men also represent a majority of the interviewed experts among academics other than professors, even though women represent the majority of researchers and lecturers in such major Finnish universities as Helsinki, Turku and Tampere.
Survey
Next, we shift focus onto the researchers. How do the academics in three large Finnish universities – the University of Helsinki, the University of Turku and the University of Tampere – perceive the roles of academics as public experts? Furthermore, what are their personal experiences and attitudes regarding this topic? From the perspective of this article, an important question is whether the attitudes of academics can explain some of the gender gap in representation. For example, does the survey indicate differences between male and female academics in terms of their willingness to appear as experts in the media? Because of the relatively limited number of respondents, these results need to be seen as suggestive in nature.
In the survey, the respondents were asked to estimate how frequently they were contacted by the media. The results show that the vast majority of respondents were approached by the media only rarely. Approximately 80% of the respondents were contacted only a couple of times a year, once a year or even less frequently. However, when this result was analysed according to gender, the differences were considerable: 69% of men and 92% of women belonged to this rarely interviewed group.
Perhaps even more importantly, similar gender differences were visible among those respondents who were contacted regularly (i.e. weekly or monthly). Nearly one-third of male respondents (31%) belonged to this group, whereas only 9% of female respondents accompanied them. These findings indicate that journalists do, indeed, contact men more frequently than they contact women.
When the analysis was restricted to professors, the gender differences remained. In our survey, 34% of respondents who were professors were women and 66% were men. The survey showed that only 14% of female professors belonged to the group that was contacted regularly, while 86% were contacted a couple of times a year or even less frequently. The comparable figures for male professors were somewhat different: 59% were contacted monthly or weekly, and only 31% were contacted just a couple of times a year or less frequently. These findings indicate that gender differences are persistent even among professors, which supports the interpretation that the differences between male and female experts as sources cannot be explained merely by the positions held by men and women in the labour market.
However, the question that remains is whether the gender gap exists because journalists prefer to interview men as experts or because women are less likely to agree to give interviews and, in consequence, are contacted less frequently.
The first interpretation, suggesting that the media have a gendered appetite when it comes to choice of experts, is supported by our survey. According to the survey, male and female researchers were equally eager to cooperate with the media: 99% of respondents said that they would be willing to give interviews based on their research topics, and as many as 83% would also be willing to analyse topics that were more generally associated with their research field. When these answers were scrutinised on the basis of gender, the differences between the sexes were rather small. Researchers’ overall readiness to give interviews was practically identical for both sexes, but there was a slight difference between men and women with regard to their readiness to analyse more general issues related to their research fields (75% female, 90% male). These results indicate that men may be slightly more willing to analyse topics not directly connected to their own research. This result may be partly explained by the fact that among doctoral students there were more women respondents than male respondents (63% female, 37% male), and doctoral candidates are understandably more timid (than, for example, professors are) about giving interviews on topics not directly related to their own research.
Interviews
As discussed above, women scholars are used far less frequently as experts in the media, although the survey suggested that they are approximately as willing as their male counterparts are to occupy expert roles in public. Therefore, the question that arises is whether the answer can be found in the journalistic practices and the preferences of the media.
With that in mind, we shift our focus, finally, to journalists. The interviews conducted for this study confirmed that the primary gatekeepers of news story subjects are individual reporters. Media houses or editorial offices do not have written rules regarding source selection because such activities are learned by journalists during their experiences in journalistic education and during workplace socialisation. According to the interviewees, practices concerning source selection are sometimes discussed among the news desk personnel. At some news desks, the importance of interviewing more female experts in order to tackle the gender gap has been addressed, but individual reporters are typically responsible for making the decisions about whom to contact.
The following examples from the interviews illustrate the interviewees’ perspectives on the role of gender in the source selection process.
Female, 39 years, print media
Does the gender of an expert source matter in your work? No, it does not; there has never been a situation, like, ‘now we need a woman to comment on this’. That really does not matter. What is your estimation: Who are more often interviewed as experts, men or women? I do not know. Naturally, if one thinks of the most often interviewed ones, many political scientists are men or many whom we call. However, I do not know if there are any other than men …
Male, 55 years, electronic media
In your opinion, from the perspective of news reporting, does the gender of an expert source matter? It does not matter. Not in the slightest. What do you think: Does your news desk use more male or female experts? Is there any difference there? Unfortunately, well, it now comes to my mind that our political scientists appear to be men.
Male, 55 years, print media
Does the gender of an expert matter? No. It does not. What do you think, personally – which do you use more often: female or male experts? Men, clearly. Why do you think that is? They just happen to be working in the fields I follow.
Female, 47 years, electronic media
Does gender play any role in your choice of experts? It should not matter; however, quite often, we have a premise: We need to have a woman. We have had this [premise] for several years already; we need to get women into our broadcasts.
Female, 36 years, print media
Does the gender of an expert matter? Well, I can say personally, it does not. In my opinion, it doesn’t matter these days. These days, if you are a good expert, it makes no difference whatsoever. What is your estimation … which does your news desk use more: men or women? I guess we use more men, but my argument is that certain expert positions are … there is just an over-representation of men there.
In summary, while the majority of the interviewed reporters thought that the gender of an expert did not play a role in the source selection process, they all shared the view confirmed by our media data: men dominate the media as expert sources. Men’s general overrepresentation in the top positions of academia and other expert organisations – and, more precisely, in the particular field in which a reporter worked (e.g. economics, politics) – was offered as an explanation for the prevailing situation.
Generally, journalists shared the view that male and female academics were just as willing to be interviewed. As one of the interviewees stated, ‘If you leave a message, a woman is as likely to phone you back as is a man’ (Male, 55 years, print media). However, two reporters suggested that women may be less willing to appear on live radio or TV programmes.
Journalists also justified the source selection process by referring to the demands of journalists’ everyday work. According to several of the interviewed journalists, there was very little time to pay attention to the gender of the sources: ‘… it would take an enormous amount of time to find a woman to say something particular’ (Female, 35 years, print media).
Both the journalists who took part in the interviews and the academics who completed the survey generally shared the view that a visible expert role in the media is beneficial for a researcher’s career. Journalists held this opinion even more strongly. However, when discussing the impacts of male dominance among public experts, the benefits of public expertise for researchers were not mentioned. Instead, one interviewee suggested the possibility of audience criticism: letting only male experts get their voices heard ‘does not look good’ and may lead to a backlash from viewers or readers. Another interviewee noted that an overly masculine selection of public experts gives a false picture of the world: that is, the view that all experts in society are men (Female, 47 years, electronic media).
In order to shed more light on the source selection practices and principles of the media, we asked what the journalists expected of their expert sources. When the topic was discussed with the interviewees at a general level, factors such as a researcher’s strong and reliable expertise, a well-known background institution and a strong personal position in the academic hierarchy were typically mentioned as signals of a researcher’s usability from the media’s perspective (cf. Conrad, 1999: 290–291).
Besides these general characterisations, many interviewees also mentioned factors related to their own and their media house’s day-to-day practices. Such factors as being reachable and flexible, being a skilled communicator and being a confident and courageous commentator were considered important when deciding on an interviewee. Perhaps the most interesting finding with regard to gender concerned the idea of the established expertise of the source. Many journalists felt that the best experts were those who were already well known and had already been used by the media – and, more often than not, these experts just happened to be men.
The findings of our interviews seem to reflect the realities of expert use in the Finnish media. However, the habit of favouring already well-known experts in particular raises the question of whether the prevailing journalistic practices actually further a situation in which a few well-known and ‘tested’ male experts are dominating public discussions. Such a situation may make it surprisingly difficult for new experts to get their voices heard in the media.
This interpretation is supported by a recent study that analysed the use of expert sources in Finnish media reporting about the ongoing economic crisis (Parviainen, 2014). According to the study, economic expertise in the news was drawn from only a few professionals, mostly from the banking sector. Of the top 70 expert sources, there were only five women, and they were not among the most-used experts. Similar findings have been reported in other studies; researchers who have been used by the media before are more likely to be used again (Albæk, 2011: 340).
Many professors and directors of research centres are widely used as experts; however, this is not the whole picture. While several professors remain relatively invisible in public, some academics from a variety of positions appear time and time again as experts in the media. As a result, in some cases, a few individual experts dominate the field.
In sum, the interviews reveal that journalists generally feel that gender is not an issue with regard to deciding whom to interview. However, some journalistic practices may further the current situation of male dominance. On the basis of these findings, we argue that only by actively raising the question of gender in the day-to-day journalistic work of deciding whom to interview can inequitable practices be changed.
5. Conclusion
Our study confirms that in Finland, as in other countries, expert sources appearing in the news media continue to be overwhelmingly male. One of the primary implications of this study is that the progressive nature of a country (e.g. women’s wide participation in society, women’s high education level and a general ‘female-friendliness’ within the society) does not necessarily lead to public visibility of women as knowledgeable experts.
In Finland, the generally progressive environment has not translated into the equal use of female experts in the media. According to our study, less than 30% of interviewed experts in the Finnish news media are women. We asked whether this was due to the preferences of journalists or whether it reflected the uneven distribution of men and women in the labour markets (especially with regard to the highest ranking positions in universities). Furthermore, we explored whether the answer could lie among the researchers themselves: Are male academics more willing to take on expert roles in public?
The journalists generally argued that their main interest was to find the ‘best’ expert for each news story and that the gender of the source was not a factor in source selection. However, the journalists also either knew or believed that they, personally, as well as their media outlets, were relying on more male experts than female experts. This was explained by the journalists’ hectic work schedules (i.e. no time to search for a wider range of experts) and the structure of society: men hold the majority of positions of expertise in society in the fields reported on.
A ‘mirror’ explanation, arguing that male expert sources dominate coverage because there is a lack of female experts, may explain the gender gap among public experts in some countries; however, it does not do a particularly good job of explaining the situation in Finland, as our study has demonstrated. Our survey indicated that female academics were as keen to appear as experts in the media as their male colleagues were; however, they were contacted much more rarely. If gender representations are expected to be proportionate to the number of women in powerful positions in society and in academia, Finnish women’s share of expert publicity should be more than 28%.
It is fair to say that Finnish women’s underrepresentation in the media as experts represents an inaccurate reflection of society. Importantly, as Armstrong (2004: 140–141) points out, the sources chosen to represent various views and opinions may influence social reality. When women appear less frequently as experts, the portrayed social reality reinforces women’s lower status in relation to men.
On the basis of a review of previous research and our own findings, we argue that although men still often possess the leading roles in expert organisations, the adopted journalistic practices are likely to strengthen the imbalance between men and women as public experts. Only by paying attention to and actively addressing these inequalities can women acquire a more visible role in the media as experts.
Discussing the relationship between journalists and scientists without including gender in the analysis results in overly vague findings. Just as politicians who appear in the media have gender, so do researchers, and their genders affect not only the ways in which they are represented but also their chances of having their voices heard in the first place.
In Finland, there is a commonly shared belief that gender equality has already been achieved (Holli, 2003: 16). The underlying assumption that the press is generally ‘fair’ and ‘objective’ and that the ‘best experts’ are interviewed, because gender does not generally play much of a role in an equal society, may actually contribute to widening the gender gap. If fairness and equality are regarded as already fulfilled, there may be a greater risk of failing to identify the practices that continue to contribute to the gender imbalance.
6. Future research and normative considerations
The first results of this study, showing a gender gap in the Finnish media, were revealed at an event in Helsinki in November 2014. The results astonished many journalists, and some of the media, including the biggest newspaper of the country, HS, promised to scrutinise their source practices in order to improve female experts’ chances of having their voices heard. 3
Although this study concentrates on the numerical gender gap between men and women, we acknowledge that the question of equality is wider than this division. Gendered stereotypes about what kind of personal qualities are seen to bring about authority may favour some individuals and discriminate against others regardless of their sex and expertise. In the case of evaluating experts, such traditionally masculine features as a low, even voice and a calm appearance may be favoured. Furthermore, other individual qualities, such as age and ethnic background, are also likely to play a role. In addition to how often male and female experts appear in the media, it is also important to scrutinise how they are represented. Are male scientists, for example, still represented as the norm, with women framed as somehow exceptional? (see Chimba and Kitzinger, 2010).
We do not argue that, as experts, women and men would necessarily offer differing perspectives or that interviewing more women would widen the scope of research discussed in the media, although that may be the case. What we do believe, however, is that widening the selection of public experts interviewed by the media would promote more equality of opportunity for academics and widen the public’s understanding of what constitutes ‘an expert’. Importantly, it would likely improve the quality of reporting as well. While acting as a public expert is a skill in itself, the current overuse of the same experts may have negative consequences in terms of the accuracy and depth of the commentary.
