Double-Edged Sword of Mediated Visibility: How Visual Framing Undermines Congresswomen's Perceived Competence
Women's presence in Congress has stalled below 30%. That institutional underrepresentation is mirrored by their limited visibility on televised news, where visual presentation can shape perceived competence and authority. Yet research tells us more about whether congresswomen appear than how they are visually framed. Facial recognition analysis of 695,464 image-text segments from CNN and Fox News (2011-2021) reveals that congresswomen appear disproportionately in split-screen rather than solo shots. Two pre-registered experiments with 6,220 participants show that, in static frames, split-screen framing reduces congresswomen's perceived political competence, but not congressmen's. In dynam...
| Authors | Bryce J. Dietrich, Hyein Ko, Myriam Shiran |
|---|---|
| Primary category | cs.CV |
| Published | 25 September 2026 |
| Last updated at source | 25 September 2026 |
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