Meredith Conroy
Biographic Data
| ID | 4122288 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Meredith Conroy |
| GIVEN NAMES | Meredith |
| FAMILY NAME | Conroy |
| SIGNATURE | CONROY M |
| AFFILIATIONS | California State University, San Bernardino |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-4006-2612 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 24 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 181 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 24 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2012 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 8 |
Mayor Pete is Smart and Elizabeth Warren is Unlikable? Coverage of Warmth and Competence Traits in the 2020 Democratic Presidential Primary
Past work on media coverage of candidates for political office has explored gender differences in quantity, substance, and tone with mixed results depending on the office, race, and context. We draw on the stereotype content model (SCM) to examine gendered patterns of media coverage of candidates on the trait dimensions of warmth and competence in the 2020 U.S. Democratic presidential primary. Combining Natural Language Processing and manual anal…
Where Do Women Win Primaries? Asymmetric Opportunity Theory in Congressional Nominations
Female Candidates’ Incumbency and Quality (Dis)Advantage in Local Elections
As springboards to higher office we need to better understand women's electoral success at lower-level offices to eliminate the gender gap among elected officials in the United States. To help understand women's success as local candidates, we ask: is there a difference in electoral performance between men and women with political experience who run for local office? We use an aggregate dataset of mayoral and city council elections in California …
Something to Run for: Stated Motives as Indicators of Candidate Emergence
Patterns in candidate emergence affect who voters can choose from, and thus the quality of representative democracy. Despite extensive work considering factors that contribute to political ambition and factors that contribute to candidate emergence separately, we know less about the transition from the former to the latter. We investigate the role of motives using a novel dataset of over 10,000 open-ended statements of interest collected by Run f…
Who Gets Flagged? An Experiment on Censorship and Bias in Social Media Reporting
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
Exploring the effects of algorithm-driven news sources on political behavior and polarization
Media Coverage of Female Candidates’ Traits in the 2020 Democratic Presidential Primary
The 2020 Democratic presidential primary featured more female candidates than any prior race of its kind, presenting a unique opportunity to analyze media coverage of women running for this distinctively masculine office. In this article, we explore themes in trait coverage for female candidates in 2020. Using a natural language processing (NLP) approach, we analyze a sample of print and online media coverage of the Democratic primary field just …
Gender, Sex, and the Role of Stereotypes in Evaluations of Hillary Clinton and the 2016 Presidential Candidates
The prevalence of gender stereotypes in US politics is well documented, yet questions remain: do voters think of presidential candidates in gendered terms and, if so, is there a connection to support? To answer these questions, we analyze survey respondent descriptions of 2016 primary and general election presidential candidates. We assess whether descriptions are gendered, if gender slurs are applied more to the female candidate, and whether the…
It Takes a Motive: Communal and Agentic Articulated Interest and Candidate Emergence
More women ran for office in 2018 than any previous election year. This represents progress toward parity, but it remains unclear whether this surge in women’s political ambition signals an easing of the candidate emergence path, which has typically favored men. We leverage over ten thousand intake forms of prospective candidates provided by Run for Something, a candidate recruitment nonprofit founded in 2017, to examine patterns in candidate eme…
Strength, Stamina, and Sexism in the 2016 Presidential Race
On September 11, 2016, less than two months before Election Day, Hillary Clinton attended the 9/11 memorial service in New York City. Reportedly, Clinton left the event early, and as she was getting into her SUV, she fainted. A bystander caught on camera a wobbly Clinton needing assistance getting into her vehicle, which he posted to Twitter, where it immediately circulated (Kafka 2016). News media outlets soon picked it up and were quick to air …
Tough Enough for the Job? How Masculinity Predicts Recruitment of City Council Members
Does an individual’s gender help to explain if he or she is more or less likely to be recruited to run for political office? While the effects of sex differences on the candidate emergence process have been studied extensively, the influence of masculinity and femininity is less understood. To uncover if gender influences whether an individual is recruited to run for political office, this article relies on data from an original survey of a natio…
Women on the Run: Gender, Media, and Political Campaigns in a Polarized Era
Women continue to be underrepresented in U.S. politics. Today, women make up less than 20% of Congress, and only about one-quarter of state legislatures (CAWP, 2017). What can explain this? Past sc
Internet use and political participation: Engaging citizenship norms through online activities
Research on the relationship between Internet use and political participation has identified numerous effects that result from various online activities, though the mechanisms of influence often remain unclear. In response, we develop a theory of Internet effects and citizenship norms, wherein specific uses of the Internet influence political participation by fostering dutiful or actualizing norms of citizenship. Using a longitudinal research des…
Introduction: Man Enough?
In 2012, Barack Obama won the reelection, marking the 44th consecutive time a man would assume that office. At no point in America’s history has a major political party nominated a woman to be its presidential candidate. In contemporary elections, two women, Elizabeth Dole in 2000 and Hillary Clinton in 2008, were formidable contenders in primary races, but neither woman was able to clutch their parties’ nominations. Each of the two major parties…
The Difference Women Make? The Difference Femininity Makes
This final chapter reviews the major findings of this study and also contemplates on their potential long-term and indirect consequences. I suggest that the negative consequences of the media’s use of gendered language in presidential elections extend far beyond the candidate whose image is feminized. I argue that consequences influence our general perceptions of women, their capacity for leadership, and their representation in our government. Th…
Masculinity and Femininity in Politics: Expectations and Implications
What does it mean to be “presidential”? When asked this question, a person may draw from past presidents they esteem, such as Lincoln or Kennedy, or from abstract qualities they find admirable, such as trustworthiness or intelligence. They may even consider fictional representations of presidents to inform their notion of what it means to be “presidential,” such as Martin Sheen’s portrayal of president Jeb Bartlett in the seven season series, The…
Gender Conflict Framing Theory
To what degree is gendered language employed in political discourse, for what purpose, and to what effect? A major premise of gender conflict framing is that political discourse is gendered, especially in instances of evaluations of candidates’ and politicians’ leadership. Furthermore, gender conflict framing recognizes the use of gendered language to communicate candidate quality, irrespective of candidate sex. For example, following the March 2…
Gendered Character in Presidential Elections: A Descriptive Analysis
How often do news media describe presidential candidates in gendered terms? Are articles like The New York Times’ “How Kerry Became a Girlie-Man 1 ” the exception? Or do media commonly and consistently invoke gendered language in their coverage of presidential candidates? I argue that media commonly use gendered language to describe presidential candidates irrespective of candidate sex and that the use of gendered language by media is done in a m…
Gender Conflict Framing in Election Coverage
Are media guilty of framing candidates in terms of gender conflict? In this chapter, I argue that gender conflict is a primary way in which political candidates are framed, regardless of their sex. For example, in the article, “Word Pictures Display a Strong Bush, a Weak Kerry,” 1 Bush is described as “strong,” “determined,” and as wanting “to grab terrorists by the throat,” while Kerry is described as “sensitive,” “indecisive,” and “a serial fli…
Gender Bias and Mainstream Media
To what degree do media perpetuate the reverence to which we afford masculinity in our politics and the coinciding disregard for femininity? In October of 1987, a week before George H. W. Bush declared his candidacy for president, Newsweek magazine ran a cover story entitled, “Bush Battles the ‘Wimp Factor.’” Although Bush stood tall at 6 feet 2 inches, played on the baseball team at Yale, was a prisoner of war during World War II, and had been d…
From Ferraro to Palin: Sexism in coverage of vice presidential candidates in old and new media
An analysis of news coverage of vice presidential candidates finds the previously observed media biases for women who run for other political positions to be present for women vice presidential nominees, and especially in the arena of new media, where editorial filters are mostly absent. Using content analysis of major print news and online blogs, we find sex inequalities in coverage tone, type, and hard sexism (overtly gendered insults). Coverag…
Masculinity, Media, and the American Presidency
This book analyzes the way media describe presidential candidates' character and the degree to which this discourse maintains a preference for masculinity in our politics, using content analysis of ma
Facebook and political engagement: A study of online political group membership and offline political engagement
Dissertations
APSA is pleased to include here the names of individuals who have completed their doctoral dissertations at political science departments in the United States during 2010 and 2011. The list is based on data collected in the APSA member database and includes information reported by both individuals and departments. Dissertations are listed by fields of interest as labeled by APSA: American politics, comparative politics, international relations, m…
Masculinity, Media, and the American Presidency
This book analyzes the way media describe presidential candidates' character and the degree to which this discourse maintains a preference for masculinity in our politics, using content analysis of ma
It Takes a Motive: Communal and Agentic Articulated Interest and Candidate Emergence
More women ran for office in 2018 than any previous election year. This represents progress toward parity, but it remains unclear whether this surge in women’s political ambition signals an easing of the candidate emergence path, which has typically favored men. We leverage over ten thousand intake forms of prospective candidates provided by Run for Something, a candidate recruitment nonprofit founded in 2017, to examine patterns in candidate eme…
Strength, Stamina, and Sexism in the 2016 Presidential Race
On September 11, 2016, less than two months before Election Day, Hillary Clinton attended the 9/11 memorial service in New York City. Reportedly, Clinton left the event early, and as she was getting into her SUV, she fainted. A bystander caught on camera a wobbly Clinton needing assistance getting into her vehicle, which he posted to Twitter, where it immediately circulated (Kafka 2016). News media outlets soon picked it up and were quick to air …
Gender, Sex, and the Role of Stereotypes in Evaluations of Hillary Clinton and the 2016 Presidential Candidates
The prevalence of gender stereotypes in US politics is well documented, yet questions remain: do voters think of presidential candidates in gendered terms and, if so, is there a connection to support? To answer these questions, we analyze survey respondent descriptions of 2016 primary and general election presidential candidates. We assess whether descriptions are gendered, if gender slurs are applied more to the female candidate, and whether the…
From Ferraro to Palin: Sexism in coverage of vice presidential candidates in old and new media
An analysis of news coverage of vice presidential candidates finds the previously observed media biases for women who run for other political positions to be present for women vice presidential nominees, and especially in the arena of new media, where editorial filters are mostly absent. Using content analysis of major print news and online blogs, we find sex inequalities in coverage tone, type, and hard sexism (overtly gendered insults). Coverag…
Tough Enough for the Job? How Masculinity Predicts Recruitment of City Council Members
Does an individual’s gender help to explain if he or she is more or less likely to be recruited to run for political office? While the effects of sex differences on the candidate emergence process have been studied extensively, the influence of masculinity and femininity is less understood. To uncover if gender influences whether an individual is recruited to run for political office, this article relies on data from an original survey of a natio…
Media Coverage of Female Candidates’ Traits in the 2020 Democratic Presidential Primary
The 2020 Democratic presidential primary featured more female candidates than any prior race of its kind, presenting a unique opportunity to analyze media coverage of women running for this distinctively masculine office. In this article, we explore themes in trait coverage for female candidates in 2020. Using a natural language processing (NLP) approach, we analyze a sample of print and online media coverage of the Democratic primary field just …
Internet use and political participation: Engaging citizenship norms through online activities
Research on the relationship between Internet use and political participation has identified numerous effects that result from various online activities, though the mechanisms of influence often remain unclear. In response, we develop a theory of Internet effects and citizenship norms, wherein specific uses of the Internet influence political participation by fostering dutiful or actualizing norms of citizenship. Using a longitudinal research des…
Female Candidates’ Incumbency and Quality (Dis)Advantage in Local Elections
As springboards to higher office we need to better understand women's electoral success at lower-level offices to eliminate the gender gap among elected officials in the United States. To help understand women's success as local candidates, we ask: is there a difference in electoral performance between men and women with political experience who run for local office? We use an aggregate dataset of mayoral and city council elections in California …
Something to Run for: Stated Motives as Indicators of Candidate Emergence
Patterns in candidate emergence affect who voters can choose from, and thus the quality of representative democracy. Despite extensive work considering factors that contribute to political ambition and factors that contribute to candidate emergence separately, we know less about the transition from the former to the latter. We investigate the role of motives using a novel dataset of over 10,000 open-ended statements of interest collected by Run f…
Where Do Women Win Primaries? Asymmetric Opportunity Theory in Congressional Nominations
Facebook and political engagement: A study of online political group membership and offline political engagement
Dissertations
APSA is pleased to include here the names of individuals who have completed their doctoral dissertations at political science departments in the United States during 2010 and 2011. The list is based on data collected in the APSA member database and includes information reported by both individuals and departments. Dissertations are listed by fields of interest as labeled by APSA: American politics, comparative politics, international relations, m…
Introduction: Man Enough?
In 2012, Barack Obama won the reelection, marking the 44th consecutive time a man would assume that office. At no point in America’s history has a major political party nominated a woman to be its presidential candidate. In contemporary elections, two women, Elizabeth Dole in 2000 and Hillary Clinton in 2008, were formidable contenders in primary races, but neither woman was able to clutch their parties’ nominations. Each of the two major parties…
The Difference Women Make? The Difference Femininity Makes
This final chapter reviews the major findings of this study and also contemplates on their potential long-term and indirect consequences. I suggest that the negative consequences of the media’s use of gendered language in presidential elections extend far beyond the candidate whose image is feminized. I argue that consequences influence our general perceptions of women, their capacity for leadership, and their representation in our government. Th…
Masculinity and Femininity in Politics: Expectations and Implications
What does it mean to be “presidential”? When asked this question, a person may draw from past presidents they esteem, such as Lincoln or Kennedy, or from abstract qualities they find admirable, such as trustworthiness or intelligence. They may even consider fictional representations of presidents to inform their notion of what it means to be “presidential,” such as Martin Sheen’s portrayal of president Jeb Bartlett in the seven season series, The…
Gender Conflict Framing Theory
To what degree is gendered language employed in political discourse, for what purpose, and to what effect? A major premise of gender conflict framing is that political discourse is gendered, especially in instances of evaluations of candidates’ and politicians’ leadership. Furthermore, gender conflict framing recognizes the use of gendered language to communicate candidate quality, irrespective of candidate sex. For example, following the March 2…
Gendered Character in Presidential Elections: A Descriptive Analysis
How often do news media describe presidential candidates in gendered terms? Are articles like The New York Times’ “How Kerry Became a Girlie-Man 1 ” the exception? Or do media commonly and consistently invoke gendered language in their coverage of presidential candidates? I argue that media commonly use gendered language to describe presidential candidates irrespective of candidate sex and that the use of gendered language by media is done in a m…
Gender Conflict Framing in Election Coverage
Are media guilty of framing candidates in terms of gender conflict? In this chapter, I argue that gender conflict is a primary way in which political candidates are framed, regardless of their sex. For example, in the article, “Word Pictures Display a Strong Bush, a Weak Kerry,” 1 Bush is described as “strong,” “determined,” and as wanting “to grab terrorists by the throat,” while Kerry is described as “sensitive,” “indecisive,” and “a serial fli…
Gender Bias and Mainstream Media
To what degree do media perpetuate the reverence to which we afford masculinity in our politics and the coinciding disregard for femininity? In October of 1987, a week before George H. W. Bush declared his candidacy for president, Newsweek magazine ran a cover story entitled, “Bush Battles the ‘Wimp Factor.’” Although Bush stood tall at 6 feet 2 inches, played on the baseball team at Yale, was a prisoner of war during World War II, and had been d…
From Ferraro to Palin: Sexism in coverage of vice presidential candidates in old and new media
An analysis of news coverage of vice presidential candidates finds the previously observed media biases for women who run for other political positions to be present for women vice presidential nominees, and especially in the arena of new media, where editorial filters are mostly absent. Using content analysis of major print news and online blogs, we find sex inequalities in coverage tone, type, and hard sexism (overtly gendered insults). Coverag…
Masculinity, Media, and the American Presidency
This book analyzes the way media describe presidential candidates' character and the degree to which this discourse maintains a preference for masculinity in our politics, using content analysis of ma
Internet use and political participation: Engaging citizenship norms through online activities
Research on the relationship between Internet use and political participation has identified numerous effects that result from various online activities, though the mechanisms of influence often remain unclear. In response, we develop a theory of Internet effects and citizenship norms, wherein specific uses of the Internet influence political participation by fostering dutiful or actualizing norms of citizenship. Using a longitudinal research des…
Women on the Run: Gender, Media, and Political Campaigns in a Polarized Era
Women continue to be underrepresented in U.S. politics. Today, women make up less than 20% of Congress, and only about one-quarter of state legislatures (CAWP, 2017). What can explain this? Past sc
Strength, Stamina, and Sexism in the 2016 Presidential Race
On September 11, 2016, less than two months before Election Day, Hillary Clinton attended the 9/11 memorial service in New York City. Reportedly, Clinton left the event early, and as she was getting into her SUV, she fainted. A bystander caught on camera a wobbly Clinton needing assistance getting into her vehicle, which he posted to Twitter, where it immediately circulated (Kafka 2016). News media outlets soon picked it up and were quick to air …
Tough Enough for the Job? How Masculinity Predicts Recruitment of City Council Members
Does an individual’s gender help to explain if he or she is more or less likely to be recruited to run for political office? While the effects of sex differences on the candidate emergence process have been studied extensively, the influence of masculinity and femininity is less understood. To uncover if gender influences whether an individual is recruited to run for political office, this article relies on data from an original survey of a natio…
Gender, Sex, and the Role of Stereotypes in Evaluations of Hillary Clinton and the 2016 Presidential Candidates
The prevalence of gender stereotypes in US politics is well documented, yet questions remain: do voters think of presidential candidates in gendered terms and, if so, is there a connection to support? To answer these questions, we analyze survey respondent descriptions of 2016 primary and general election presidential candidates. We assess whether descriptions are gendered, if gender slurs are applied more to the female candidate, and whether the…
It Takes a Motive: Communal and Agentic Articulated Interest and Candidate Emergence
More women ran for office in 2018 than any previous election year. This represents progress toward parity, but it remains unclear whether this surge in women’s political ambition signals an easing of the candidate emergence path, which has typically favored men. We leverage over ten thousand intake forms of prospective candidates provided by Run for Something, a candidate recruitment nonprofit founded in 2017, to examine patterns in candidate eme…
Exploring the effects of algorithm-driven news sources on political behavior and polarization
Media Coverage of Female Candidates’ Traits in the 2020 Democratic Presidential Primary
The 2020 Democratic presidential primary featured more female candidates than any prior race of its kind, presenting a unique opportunity to analyze media coverage of women running for this distinctively masculine office. In this article, we explore themes in trait coverage for female candidates in 2020. Using a natural language processing (NLP) approach, we analyze a sample of print and online media coverage of the Democratic primary field just …
Who Gets Flagged? An Experiment on Censorship and Bias in Social Media Reporting
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
Female Candidates’ Incumbency and Quality (Dis)Advantage in Local Elections
As springboards to higher office we need to better understand women's electoral success at lower-level offices to eliminate the gender gap among elected officials in the United States. To help understand women's success as local candidates, we ask: is there a difference in electoral performance between men and women with political experience who run for local office? We use an aggregate dataset of mayoral and city council elections in California …
Something to Run for: Stated Motives as Indicators of Candidate Emergence
Patterns in candidate emergence affect who voters can choose from, and thus the quality of representative democracy. Despite extensive work considering factors that contribute to political ambition and factors that contribute to candidate emergence separately, we know less about the transition from the former to the latter. We investigate the role of motives using a novel dataset of over 10,000 open-ended statements of interest collected by Run f…
Mayor Pete is Smart and Elizabeth Warren is Unlikable? Coverage of Warmth and Competence Traits in the 2020 Democratic Presidential Primary
Past work on media coverage of candidates for political office has explored gender differences in quantity, substance, and tone with mixed results depending on the office, race, and context. We draw on the stereotype content model (SCM) to examine gendered patterns of media coverage of candidates on the trait dimensions of warmth and competence in the 2020 U.S. Democratic presidential primary. Combining Natural Language Processing and manual anal…
Where Do Women Win Primaries? Asymmetric Opportunity Theory in Congressional Nominations
Political science (23 works) · Law (21 works) · Politics (20 works) · Gender Politics and Representation (17 works) · Sociology (16 works) · Psychology (13 works) · Law (12 works) · Presidential system (11 works) · Social Psychology (10 works) · Gender Studies (9 works)