The onset of the COVID pandemic and the numerous months of uncertainty, anxiousness and push for scientific breakthroughs despatched journalists everywhere in the world on the hunt for professional voices. They wished sources who might clarify to audiences what was occurring and why.
Research has shown that when journalists search for sources, they typically deal with already seen – and accessible – consultants related to prestigious establishments. These establishments are favoured as a result of they have a tendency to have a demonstrable monitor file of cooperating and interesting with the media’s calls for by way of time pressures and the necessity for dependable quotes to get their story revealed.
One of the issues with this method is that the seen scientists in query, as analysis has proven, are mostly men. Also, it’s been discovered that when feminine consultants are interviewed, they’re typically judged on their appearance slightly than their experience. They are seen as uncommon inside aggressive analysis environments. This dovetails with what’s extra broadly recognized about gender gaps in analysis areas. Men dominate high-level academia and feminine scientists’ contributions are under-recognised.
For many scientists, responding to journalists’ calls for is a natural part of a modern scientist’s role. It can also be a method to have interaction with public audiences, obtain coverage affect and entice curiosity from funders and collaborators.
Therefore, by underplaying ladies’s experience, the media limits their energy and affect. Journalists could unwittingly perpetuate the notion that males are the one consultants value listening to. This additionally limits the visibility of ladies in science as position fashions and dampens younger ladies’s skilled aspirations in the event that they’re contemplating changing into scientists.
So, how did the South African media fare in that includes each male and feminine voices in protection in regards to the COVID-19 pandemic? We got down to discover the reply. We investigated the South African media’s use of professional sources throughout the first six months of the pandemic. Our findings, revealed in a particular COVID-themed situation of the South African Journal of Science, present that male teachers dominated as featured and quoted consultants. Women accounted for under 30% of quoted professors, though 2019 data show that, throughout all larger schooling establishments in South Africa, 48% of all workers accountable for instruction and analysis have been ladies. These findings echo what’s been reported globally about ladies consultants’ voices in COVID protection.
Key findings
As a part of the examine we additionally recognized the highest 10 most seen professional sources within the South African media. Only two of those have been ladies:
- Glenda Gray, the president and CEO of the South African Medical Research Council.
- Cheryl Cohen, professor in epidemiology on the University of the Witwatersrand, and co-head of the Centre for Respiratory Disease and Meningitis on the National Institute for Communicable Diseases in South Africa.
We acknowledge that ladies are underrepresented in academia, particularly at senior ranges, however there are lots of professional feminine sources throughout analysis fields accessible in South Africa. Data from the South African Knowledgebase present that feminine professors produced 40% of the publication outputs in 2020.
We additionally discovered a skewed illustration of consultants by way of their analysis area: 51% of quoted consultants got here from well being and drugs. Experts from social sciences accounted for under 21% of the professors featured within the media. That’s regardless of recognition that social science expertise is crucial in understanding and influencing human behaviour throughout a pandemic. Social scientists will help policymakers from well being sciences to develop solutions that persons are ready and, crucially, prepared to comply with.
So, how can the South African media do higher?
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Promising initiatives
We have ample proof that media organisations and individual science journalists are eager to assist treatment gender imbalances in media protection.
Around the world, main publishers and science organisations are rolling out remedial initiatives. For instance, the BBC introduced that it was becoming a member of different media organisations in striving for a goal of equal gender representation throughout all its programmes and websites. This included an equal cut up in what number of women and men have been interviewed on digicam and quoted in tales.
In June 2021, the top-tier scientific journal Nature introduced that it will work tougher to beat gender inequalities. It was responding to research exhibiting that males have been quoted twice as typically as ladies basically information media and in Nature information stories.
Globally, a number of initiatives have been set as much as assist journalists who’re looking for out feminine consultants to interview. Among them are the Women’s Media Center, WomenAlsoKnowStuff and an organisation known as 500 Women Scientists.
In South Africa, a non-profit firm, Quote This Woman+, is rising a database of feminine consultants to advertise the inclusion of ladies’s voices within the mass media. The Association of South African Women in Science and Engineering goals to strengthen the position of ladies in science and engineering in South Africa. It additionally seeks to boost the profile of ladies scientists and engineers.
During Women’s Month in August, the South African Department of Science and Innovation organises occasions to have a good time and profile feminine scientists. One of the important thing initiatives is the South African Women in Science Awards.
In the long term, initiatives working in the direction of gender fairness in educational management positions will enhance the presence of feminine voices within the mass media. But within the meantime, college media places of work, editors and journalists – in addition to scientists themselves – can contribute to a extra balanced illustration of scientists’ experience within the mass media.
Marina Joubert, Science Communication Researcher, Stellenbosch University; Lars Guenther, Postdoc in Science Communication at University of Hamburg; Extraordinary Associate Professor at Stellenbosch University, Stellenbosch University, and Lili Rademan, PhD candidate in Science and Technology Studies, Stellenbosch University
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