Until death do us part: gendered media coverage of the deaths of Israeli male and female public figures

ABSTRACT

This study examines the coverage of the deaths of Israeli male and female public figures. It aims to identify the central gender-related narratives and themes reflected in the coverage of death in the Israeli print news via a qualitative analysis of 354 news stories regarding the deaths of twenty Israeli public figures who died between 2000 and 2020. Three recurring themes revealing gender differences in the coverage were found: (1) references to appearance; (2) references to family relations and parenting; and (3) plot promoters of the lives of the deceased. The findings both reinforce and challenge those from previous studies, suggesting a more complex contemporary journalistic discourse on gender roles.

KEYWORDS:

• Gender bias
• gender roles
• death coverage
• mediatized rituals

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Nitza Berkovitch (2001) claimed that this discourse completely excludes non-Jewish minority groups, such as Palestinian women who are citizens of Israel. I do not expand on this point due to a lack of space and the fact that this study focuses on Jewish-Israeli deceased women and men. One of the main reasons for this focus was to reduce, as much as possible, ethnicity as an intervening variable.

2. All the quotations in this paper were translated from Hebrew to English by the author.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Moran Avital-BenAtar

Moran Avital-BenAtar has a PhD from the Department of Communication and Journalism, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Her research interests are collective memory, mediatized rituals and journalistic discourse.