"Live From New York, It's Saturday Night!": How Gender Bias on Saturday Night Live Impacts Young Voters' Preferences

Abstract

In recent decades, women have become increasingly politically engaged, yet the social and political forces that constitute the “glass ceiling” continue to prevent a woman from becoming President of the United States. Media studies are a central point of discussion in debates about the ways in which gender differences on the presidential campaign trail minimize the chances of women obtaining the Oval Office. Recent consensus has been that there is no real difference in the amount and tone of hard news coverage male and female candidates receive, yet scholars agree female candidates do receive more superficial, personality-based coverage than male candidates. One particularly relevant yet understudied type of gendered media coverage is political satire. Existing studies of soft news have shown that poking fun at political figures results in more negative attitudes toward featured candidates among young adults. If female candidates are not at an electoral disadvantage due to hard news coverage, could they be at a disadvantage as a result of the influence of soft news coverage on young adults, many of whom are young voters? In this thesis, I seek to fill the gap between these two areas of research by examining the coverage of female candidates for president and vice president on one of the most historic and popular political satire shows, Saturday Night Live (SNL). I hypothesize that the portrayals of female presidential and vice- presidential candidates for these offices on SNL perpetuate gender stereotypes rather than challenge them. To accomplish this study, I conduct a careful content analysis of the audiovisual portrayals of six women — Geraldine Ferraro, Carol Moseley Braun, Hillary Clinton, Sarah Palin, Michele Bachmann, and Carly Fiorina — and their male opponents — George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, John Kerry, Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Mitt Romney, and Donald Trump. A novel survey of Princeton University students is used to assess the effects these portrayals have on young voters’ perceptions of the candidates. I find that gender bias is an important component of candidate portrayals on SNL that negatively influences how young voters evaluate female candidates, especially when respondents lack prior knowledge of the candidates.