“Wealthy Gay Couples Buying Babies Produced in India by Poor Womb-Women: Audience Interpretations of Transnational Surrogacy in TV News

ABSTRACT

Surrogacy is beginning to generate public debate, and the way the media approach it may have negative effects on social attitudes toward gay parenting. The news media play a key role in informing society, especially about topics such as surrogacy, of which most audiences have no direct experience. The aim of our research is to explore opinion formation of surrogacy and gay parenting by analyzing the audience interpretation of a TV news story in Spain. To do this we conducted four focus groups that were analyzed using a qualitative content analysis based on the discourse produced by the participants. The results show that the framing strategies used in the news story contribute to advocating an attitude of repudiation toward surrogacy, with an adverse sentiment also extending to homosexual couples who wish to become parents. This leads us to discuss the role of media in shaping public opinion and the resulting potential consequences in the case of surrogacy and gay parenting.

KEYWORDS:

• Surrogacy
• gay parenting
• women’s commodification
• outsourcing pregnancy
• media audience
• framing effects
• attitudes formation

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by a grant from the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación) for the research project “Analysis of Audiovisual Narratives on Civilizations and Cultures: Representations and Interpretations of Television News Narratives” (grant number CSO2011-23786).