Festivals framed as unequal: piggybacking events to advance gender equality

ABSTRACT

Events are considered to be effective communication vehicles. Advocacy groups are increasingly using the event platform to communicate competitive messages. This study addresses advocacy groups’ efforts to advance a gender equality agenda by framing Swedish music festivals as biased against women in the news. Relevant news articles were collected and analysed, in which advocacy groups were identified and then interviewed. The findings are discussed in relation to framing theory. Advocacy groups saw a piggybacking opportunity emerging around music festivals, and via frame-building, they were able to influence festival-related publicity. The prominent use of statistics and ‘numbers’ in their framing is emphasized. Furthermore, it is suggested that the gender-framed publicity has contributed to a restructuring of the power relation between the dominant stakeholder and the advocacy groups. It is argued that this shift has contributed to reducing the disparity in the number of males and females performing at festivals.

KEYWORDS:

• Communication
• piggybacking
• advocacy
• framing theory
• gender equality
• publicity
• social leverage

Notes on contributor

Henrik Jutbring is Phd Candidate with research interest in marketing communication, social marketing in the context of public events.

Notes

1. In Swedish, the keywords were ‘festival’, ‘jämställdhet’, ‘kön’ and ‘könsfördelning’.

2. When a news agency’s material was published by several sources, only one source was selected for analysis. When a source published the same article in more than one format (e.g. print and web), only one version was analysed.

3. A, B and C represent 75% of all cases when an advocacy group was featured in the analysed articles.

4. The representatives held titles like Chapter Chairman, Press Contact, and Project and Social Community Manager.

5. Quotes in italics are directly excerpted from the interview transcripts and translated from Swedish to English by the author.

6. From a newspaper article published the July 23rd, 2013.

7. In 2013, the distribution of acts was 76% male dominated, 19% female dominated and 5% mixed.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Göteborg & Co Träffpunkt AB.