Meet the Press: Gendered Conversational Norms in Televised Political Discussion

Abstract

Televised political commentary offers a prominent venue for elites to interact with one another, modeling political talk for large numbers of viewers. When do televised discussions between political pundits reproduce or mitigate gender inequality? Extending prior work on descriptive representation and decision rules in formal deliberative settings, we examine the participatory consequences of gender composition and conversational norms on over 6,000 informal, panel-style discussions that aired on American television news between 2000 and 2017. We find that on “debate-style” programs that foster majoritarian conversational norms, women speak more and are shown greater respect as their share of the discussion group increases. These relationships are attenuated on shows with consensus-oriented conversational norms. Our findings highlight how certain features of political television programming—namely a lack of descriptive representation and a focus on conflict—may contribute to gender inequality, setting problematic behavioral norms for the public to emulate.