ABSTRACT
Research on race and gender in the media finds that stereotypes often influence the type of coverage that women and minority candidates receive during campaigns. However, much less is known about the specific stereotypes that women candidates of color face in the media. To understand the challenges and opportunities that women candidates of color encounter, political scientists must take a closer look at the way they are portrayed in the news. As a first step, I conduct a content analysis of Georgia’s 2018 Democratic gubernatorial primary, comparing the stereotypes used in campaign coverage of the two candidates – Stacey Abrams and Stacey Evans. I find that newspaper coverage of Stacey Abrams contained many more references to agentic stereotypes, like assertiveness, than coverage of Stacey Evans. Moreover, I find that agentic traits are more likely to be negative when applied to Stacey Abrams than to Stacey Evans.
