Distinct information ecologies? Gender knowledge production in German digital legacy and counterpublic media

ABSTRACT

This article studies the epistemic dimension of current struggles over gender and sexual equality issues by analyzing digital media as epistemic systems transferring and producing gender knowledge. The analysis compares the representation and production of gender knowledge in German legacy and counterpublic media discourses on four dimensions related to the article-content level: media’s issue focus and their positioning toward gender issues; media’s referencing practices through hyperlinks, a unique affordance particular to digital spaces; and finally, the digital information ecologies created through these referencing practices. I conduct a quantitative content analysis and social network analysis of article content and hyperlink references in articles featuring gender issues, published in 16 German digital news outlets of legacy media and feminist, radical right, antifeminist men’s rights activist, and Christian fundamentalist counterpublic media between December 2018 and November 2019. The results show that different types of media employ different modes of gender knowledge production. Anti-egalitarian counterpublic media show a rather reactive mode of gender knowledge production, while feminist media’s mode of gender knowledge production is more autonomous. The digital information ecologies created through the references display varying levels of integration and fragmentation in relation to the mainstream public sphere, indicative of the underlying epistemic conflicts.

KEYWORDS:

• Gender knowledge
• counterpublics
• legacy media
• referencing
• information ecology

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/14680777.2023.2272056.

Notes

1. In this paper, the term “radical right” is defined as a combination of nativism and authoritarianism (Cas Mudde 2007, 24–26), while the term far-right is used as an umbrella term for all groups sharing the minimal defining characteristic of nativism as a common feature (ibid.).

2. Alexa.com is a company measuring and providing website audiences data by country.

Additional information

Funding

This work was funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research, funding codes 16DII114 and 16DII125, and by the German Federal Ministry for Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth, funding code 3922DEZIMI.

Notes on contributors

Susanne Reinhardt

Susanne Reinhardt is a researcher at the German Center for Integration and Migration Research, an associate researcher at the Weizenbaum Institute for the Networked Society, and a Ph.D. candidate at Freie Universität Berlin. Her research focuses on strategies and contexts of opposition to gender and sexual equality. In this context, she researches the framing of gender and sexual equality in counterpublics and mainstream public spheres, and how gendered opportunity structures shape populist radical right parties’ antigenderism. Methodologically, she is interested in computational social science and combines social network analysis, automated text analysis, and manual content analysis in her work.