Notes 3/5

“Prime-Time Television’s Portrayal of Women and the World of Work: A Demographic Profile”

Vande Berg, Leah R., and Diane Streckfuss. ” Prime‐time televisions portrayal of women and the world of work: A demographic profile.” Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media 36, no. 2 (April 1, 1992): 195-208.

Reading Notes

“Previous Research on Working Women in Prime-Time Television”

  • Has been focused on three areas: “representation, employment status, and sex-typed behavior and psychological traits”
    • Representation
      • Since 1950s, studies have shown that women are underrepresented on TV
      • Virtually no change between 1950s and 1970s
      • 1989 study found that women are still underrepresented
        • (Do I need to read all of these previous studies? Or just take her word for it?)
      • Employment status
        • Women portrayed in “a much narrower range of roles – primarily as wives and parents – than are men, and that men are more often portrayed as being employed and as holding higher status occupations compared to women (196)
      • Sex-typed behavioral and psychological traits
        • Women more likely to be portrayed as emotional, in need of emotional support, sympathetic, nurturing, reinforcing, lacking interpersonal and occupational power (196)
        • Vande Berg and Trujillo (1989)
          • Organizational actions composed of five categories of behavior:
            • Interpersonal function – development and cultivation of interpersonal activities in the organization, which includes counseling, motivating, and general sociabilities
            • Informational function – disseminating information to or receiving information from organizational insiders and outsiders
            • Decisional function – problem solving and conflict resolution
            • Political function – display, development, or use of power to accomplish individual or group self-interests
            • Operational function – directly resulting in manufacturing products, delivering services, or everyday work tasks being done
          • Quoted from pp. 196-197
        • Analysis will focus on “equality of representation across industries, occupational roles, hierarchical position, depictions, genre, and dramatic tone” (197)
          • Focus on activity, instead of mere presence

 

“METHODS”

  • Sample: 116 prime-time TV program episodes from 2 weeks of programming (NBC, CBS, ABC)
    • 115 of these included a character w/ identifiable occupation, performing an organizational action in at least one scene
      • 115 prime-time episodes, 1944 characters, 7601 actions coded
        • Article only reports findings for the 986 foreground characters (character whose speaking/action role “served as an important plot function”)
      • 2 separate analyses performed (197)
        • Analysis of 986 foreground characters
        • Analysis of 6087 organizational actions performed by the characters
          • For both, 6 contextual variables:
            • Industry
            • Occupational role
            • Hierarchical position
            • Depiction
            • Genre
            • Dramatic tone
          • Vande Berg and Trujillo five-category schema used for coding characters and actions (198)
            • “Action” – verbal or behavioral work-related activity performed in a single scene by a character in an organizational context (198)
            • Each action that corresponded to one of VB & T’s 5 categories was coded

 

“Contextual Variables”

  • Contextual variables were coded for characters and actions
    • Variables:
      • Industry: coded according to 11 major categories of US Department of Labor’s Standard Industrial Classification schema (service; public administration; retail trade; finance; transportation and communication; no industry; other (agriculture, mining, construction, manufacturing, wholesale trade (all of these occurred very infrequently))
      • Occupational role: professionals; managers; service; household; military; other (clerical, sales, crafts, operatives, workers/laborers); student; customer/patient; no occupation; lawbreaker
      • Hierarchical position: “character’s position w/in an organization’s formal power hierarchy” (198); CEO/Board Exec/Top Manager; middle manager; first line manager; upper level professional staff; lower level professional staff; staff; workers/laborers; customer/patient; small business owner; other (position where hierarchy was not identifiable)
      • Depiction: coded according to plot function (positive, negative, or neutral) (199)
        • Positive: “benefitted the organization and its members or the broader society of which the individual or organization was a part”
          • Charitable/philanthropic
          • Sympathetic/helpful
          • Socially or economically productive
          • Friendly
        • Neutral: “displaying mere civility or general politeness with no discernable positive or negative plot function”
        • Negative: “hurt the organization, its members, clients, and/or relevant outsiders, or which harmed the broader society”
          • Unfriendly
          • Greedy/selfish
          • Foolish
          • Malevolent
          • Illegal
        • Genre: comedy; drama; action-adventure; other (including sci-fi, dramedy)
        • Dramatic tone: “the literary backdrop against which the attitude of the ‘author(s)’ toward their characters and their actions was presented”
          • Comedic, serious, combined comedy and serious (irony, dramedy)
            • These classifications will be HUGE when looking at these shows, esp. the Office

“Reliability”

  • 2 coders coded character and action data for the different contextual variables (199)
    • Each coder produced a character analysis for each episode (overall summary coding judgement for each variable)
    • Action analysis – scene-by-scene coding of organizational actions
  • Then there’s some numbers I don’t understand

“RESULTS”

  • I don’t think this study’s results are necessarily relevant to my project. What is important are the methods of collecting this data. The methods may be useful in my own coding projects.

“DISCUSSION”

  • Again, I don’t find this section relevant