Mediatization Of Gender Politics:The American Media Fights On Abortion Right

Alabama new abortion bill,considered the strictest in the U.S.,causes hard debates among American.As the related reports spreading over the media space,the discussions about abortion rights are hitting the headlines time and again.The New York Times,The Washington Post,The Wall Street Journal&Los Angeles Times are the most active four mainstream media.Mainstream media play not only platform or information spreader in the discussions,their reporting choices about abortion issues can,sometimes,hint their places in these debates.Based on the Framework Theory and Gender Politics Theory,this research combines the content analysis and the textual analysis to study 89 articles chosen from the four media mentioned above.Conducting the research by focusing on the amount of the reports,reporting forms and their attitudes toward gender politics.This paper finds that mainstream media in America are not as neutral as they claimed but influenced by Party,s positions.The New York Times and Los Angeles Times speak for the Democrats,both of them have a strong position in gender politics.They agree with that the Alabama new abortion bill raised by the conservative Republicans is a conspiracy which violate the body autonomy right for women;The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal support Republicans,their positions in gender politics are relative moderate.The Washington Post believes that men do not have the right to interfere with women’s body autonomy,but the media shouldn’t take advantage of Alabama new abortion bill to create gender binary and partisan conflict deliberately as well;The Wall Street Journal emphasizes that the basic contradiction of Alabama new abortion bill is the conflict between "Pro-life" and "Pro-choice" rather than gender oppression.