Chapter 1: Conceptualising Participation as Representation, Interaction, and Engagement

This chapter presents central concepts in the study of women’s participation in public life, a well-researched topic that includes studies focussed on the interconnection between women, politics, and power, (Hughes et al., 2017), women and power in postcolonial Africa, and African women in politics and policymaking (Goetz & Hassim, 2003). Much research has been done to investigate how women are represented in the media from content analysis of women’s portrayal in media and gender responsiveness in media products (Litho et al., 2012) to when and how they are sources (UMWA, 2016) and why women leave the newsroom (Kaija, 2013), to name only some of the research foci. The centrality of politics and power has captured the attention of researchers using various frameworks, but the participation of women in public life, more generally, through the lens of media, has been in short supply. Research shows that there is underrepresentation and misrepresentation of women through mediated platforms, especially in a Sub-Saharan context (Tamale, 1999) where fewer women contribute to the ‘hard stories’ like politics, economics, and security in national news (UMWA, 2016) and much fewer women are engaged in public affairs talk shows (Maractho, 2019; Mwesige, 2009). This chapter begins by asking whether there are additional or complementary approaches to understanding and getting more accurate insight into how women are represented by and participate in media and public life. By combining a focus on representation, interaction, and engagement (RIE) and introducing the RIE model, we hope to offer a more comprehensive approach to understanding women’s participation in public life. We presume that research on women’s participation that does not sufficiently engage with the ideas of RIE collectively may result in an incomplete valuation. Each of these aspects is necessary but insufficient to fully understand the depth and extent of participation in any area of public life.

The model builds on doctoral work using grounded theory to investigate not only the frequency of women’s participation in media and public life but also the substance of their participation in a Ugandan context (Maractho, 2017). The three-phase research project comprised interviews with producers and presenters of 10 broadcast news media organisations, observation and content analysis of programmes run by the 10 media houses, and unstructured interviews targeting the life history of 25 women in public life, analysed using a grounded theory approach. The collected data for the development of the model focussed on six areas of women in public life: women in politics, public administration, medicine and public health, education and sports, business and economics, and law and advocacy. This rich data set helped expand the concept of participation while redefining the indicators of RIE.

This chapter further sharpens the RIE model and adds to the conversation on what it means to participate in public life and how it is often reflected through the media. The RIE model may present a fresh look at women’s participation in public life and give meaning to some of the valuable concepts and how they may be utilised for the study of gender and media and, broadly, for other areas of participation. It attempts to answer questions about who participates, how they participate, and why, where, and when they may participate. The chapter offers a redefinition of participation encompassing three other broad concepts – representation, interaction, and engagement – all as forms of participation to provide a more accurate understanding of and a more holistic framework for studying women’s participation in media and public life. This supplements existing contributions and is not intended as a comprehensive approach. We will first define the concept of participation and then demonstrate the value of the three concepts of the three-legged stool approach. Although the model emerged from research in a Ugandan context, we argue for its transferability to other contexts and foci of research.

Participation is a politically ambivalent and definitionally vague buzzword that, despite being ‘irrevocably contaminated’ by its mainstreaming, has ‘been critical for decades in animating struggles for equality, rights and social justice’ (Cornwall & Brock, 2005, pp. 1056–1057). Participation means being able to speak ‘in one’s own voice, thereby simultaneously constructing and expressing one’s cultural identity through idiom and style’ (Fraser, 1990, p. 69). A perspective on participation from development studies we find helpful is the concept of ‘invited’ and ‘claimed’ spaces (Cornwall, 2002). Whereas invited space refers to a more formal event where development agents create events for stakeholders to contribute, claimed space involves the poor taking control of political processes without being invited in. For instance, women may mobilise votes to participate in politics (claimed space) or get appointed into public office (invited). These concepts help us understand women’s participation not only in public affairs programmes and public life but also in media. This chapter argues that participation is more than a manifestation of women’s voice and visibility in media (representation). It also includes women in public life through consultation and conversation on media (interaction) and their quest for equal rights and political agency through the involvement and influence of the state and society using the media (engagement).

Women’s participation in media is a multifaceted phenomenon. Roughly speaking, one can talk about two main areas of participation in media related to the kind of role that a woman plays, whether working in the media or contributing to media content (Maractho, 2017). Women in the media are professionals who contribute to media production and presentation in various ways, such as journalists, editors, researchers, managers, owners, and technical personnel. Women on the media describe those who are not employed by the media but contribute to setting the agenda on media through their work in public life and engagement in public debates. Utilising these non-exhausting categorisations might contribute to understanding their RIE (Fig. 1.1).

Maractho (2017) presented three categories applicable to navigating the landscape of women in media: (a) journalists and artists (e.g. hosting guests, reporting, presenting, anchoring, and producing current and public affairs programmes); (b) media managers (e.g. editors and programme managers); and (c) media owners. Women on media are not employed by media and are not media professionals but may be analysts (commentators) consulted by the media to provide their expert views or opinions on matters of public affairs in areas where they may be involved, featured as subjects (or part of a story in which they have no voice), and sources (eyewitnesses and those in possession of information relevant for a story). They are women in public life. Both women in the media and on the media are important indicators of representation. This approach allows for representation beyond image or the portrayal of women, which has been given much research focus. Therefore, women’s representation in the mass media comprises women’s access to and presence in the mass media, as well as their contribution to the production and consumption of the mass media.

Women’s participation in public life is a broad term that refers to their engagement in politics and policymaking. Fraser (1990, p. 70) argues that ‘the concept of a public presupposes a plurality of perspectives among those who participate within it, thereby allowing for internal differences and antagonisms, and likewise discouraging reified blocs’. However, Thompson (1995, p. 55) sees public life as founded on the recognition of mutual interests and networks of association and emphasises its hegemonic basis of public life. In categorising women in public life, the idea of interests and networks were crucial.

From a Ugandan perspective, it is interesting to note that many strategies have been implemented in Uganda to increase women’s participation in public life, for example, affirmative action and gender mainstreaming. Nevertheless, it remains unclear how this integration is reflected in the media. Maractho’s (2017) analysis explored women’s participation in public life through extensive interviews and a life history approach to inform the reconceptualisation of participation as RIE.

Although limited, media coverage can indicate women’s participation in public life by highlighting their issues and roles as analysts and sources in public affairs. The absence of such representation suggests barriers for both women and the media despite the growing number of women in public life in Uganda. Six distinct areas were examined to assess women’s participation in public life, namely women in politics (both national and local), civil service, education and sports, business and economics, medicine and public health, and law and advocacy. These are not the only areas of public life but are indicative of a broader realm beyond politics that has dominated research on African women in general and Ugandan women in particular. This categorical framework is an analytical tool that disaggregates the women on media and helps identify which women are in and on media.

The data suggest that women’s participation in public life is better understood through the study of RIE, the three elements of the RIE model, each of which is a necessary but insufficient condition for an adequate analysis of participation in public life. We argue that this ‘three-legged stool’ anchored in the grounded theory work in a Ugandan context (Maractho, 2017) can contribute to further research and analysis of women’s participation in public life. This builds from Houle’s (2000) demonstration that ‘participation in public debate which challenges the expectations of women’s and men’s roles in society therefore offers an alternative route by which women can participate in redefining their social status’ (p. 149). As such, access to media that allows for participation becomes a gateway through which the media can play a meaningful role in changing the status of women. Participation is central for democratisation, development and public life. Because the modern media brings in a new kind of publicness beyond the traditional model (Thompson, 1995), it follows that our conception of participation should also change, to accommodate this new media.

The focus on negative portrayal of women politicians by female journalists (Tamale, 1999) relies on the assumption that women only weakly participate in media and public life, therefore victims of a male-dominated press, without recognising how much the mediated space has changed and affords better models of participation for women, beyond representation or stereotypical portrayal and symbolic annihilation, through interaction and engagement with the public now a common occurrence.

In cultural studies, representation is interpreted as discourse, or in other words, the process by which meaning is produced and exchanged between members of a culture (Foucault, 1980). Hall is best known for his work on ideology and representation which shaped cultural and media studies. In the politics of signification Hall (1980, p. 138) presents representation as a complex way in which the mass media present images and also engage in re-representing images with multiple meanings regarding race and ethnicity. Representation is further used to explain the gender gap in the media and why it matters by appreciating the differences in coverage of men and women. The concept and forms of political representation are greatly explored in the seminal work of political theorist Pitkin (1967), who describes it as the ‘continuing tension between ideal and achievement’ and argues that it behoves democracies to ‘construct institutions and train individuals in such a way that they engage in the pursuit of the public interest, the genuine representation of the public; and at the same time, to remain critical of those institutions and that training’ (p. 240). Pitkin proposes four distinct categories of representation: formalistic (authorisation and accountability), symbolic, descriptive, and substantive representation.

The marginalisation of women in media has long been debated and researched, and in an American context, the question of whether media coverage of women reinforces rather than challenges the dominant culture; their research showed that the representation contributed towards women’s marginalisation in public life (Norris, 1997). Sreberny-Mohammadi and Ross (1996) note that there has been a significant lacuna in the analysis of how media presentations of politics are gendered and impact not only democracy at large but also the best strategies to increase women’s political participation.

Some studies of women and media focus on the media’s portrayal of women, especially women in politics (Tamale, 1999). This research examines women’s representation in the media in terms of their visibility and voice. Instead of a singular focus on mass media, the study critically looks at women and how they negotiate for space ‘in’ and ‘on’ media. Studies from the Middle East provide rich examples of how women have used media to reconstruct feminism and gender issues and foster constitutional change (Sakr, 2004). In Uganda, women have relied more heavily on politics than media to advance their causes. This study assumes that such negotiations in public politics should be reflected in the media, yet women are underrepresented in media content in Uganda (Maractho, 2018). What emerged from Maractho’s (2017) data reconceptualised and addressed women’s participation from two angles: (a) access to and presence of women in broadcast media (visibility), and (b) the availability of women, gender, and women’s issues on media (voice). The determinants of women’s access to media, their presence, and which women are visible are crucial. For example, how many women are invited as guests and what range of public life do they represent? How many of the citizens who contribute to the talk shows are women and what areas of public life do they represent? What specific issues dominate the discussions related to women?

This chapter does not focus on any single form of representation but attempts to address the question of voice and visibility in analytical terms by integrating its different forms. Fig. 1.2 provides a conceptual measurement of representation using typological theory that can facilitate future research.

Pitkin (1967) asks interesting questions about representation: When should men feel represented? What counts as evidence that they are represented (p. 9)? This section applies these questions to women. Women’s representation on media refers to the proportion of women compared to men in and on media, particularly in current and public affairs programmes. This representation is assessed by their physical presence (visibility) or through their voice. Visibility reflects not only the extent to which women are physically present but also the range of issues covered in the media that are of specific interest to women in particular or related to gender, for example, women’s rights and the marginalisation of women in society. Voice describes the range of women’s perspective in and on the media, directly or indirectly, to hold decision-makers accountable or to amplify issues relevant to women’s advancement.

Women’s representation in the media can be categorised into four types that are determined by the relationship between visibility and voice: low visibility and voice (A), low visibility and high voice (B), high visibility and low voice (C), and high visibility and voice (D). Policy action should aim at moving women from categories A, B, and C to D using strategies that reflect each group’s specific barriers to representation. Media serves as a lens to examine women’s participation in public life and its influence on that participation.

If women in and on media use their presence to amplify and promote women’s issues, then they have voice. What is more, the presence of a woman on a programme does not guarantee voice unless the topics discussed are about women, although their presence adds value by bringing in women’s perspective. For instance, two women might be hosting a show on the civil service and not ‘women’s issues’ or discussions about gender and women in particular. While women’s issues are not clearly defined, the term refers to issues that affect or are important to women, what the media often calls ‘soft’ issues related to such social services as health and education as well as family and religion. While visibility portends presence, voice is agency.

Although the focus here is on women in the media and on media, women are not solely responsible for visibility. Stories about women covered by men also increase visibility. Men who ‘speak for’ women are giving voice to women, too. All issues are gendered, and training matters for women in the media (Dralega et al., 2016). The question is whether participants on these programmes recognise and address gendered issues.

Thompson (1995) identifies three types of interaction between people and media: (a) face-to-face interaction, which occurs in-person; (b) mediated interaction, which uses such technical mediums as letters and telephone; and (c) mediated quasi-interaction, which is unique to mass communication. Craig (2004) explores how politicians and the news media interact and the nature of the power of the media to flag the media’s value as a site for understanding participation in public life. This chapter presents interaction as adding value to representation through consultation and conversation and depicts who initiates contact. Interaction is crucial to capturing the ‘political interactivity or mediated real-time feedback between political actors and citizens’ that comprises both consultation and conversation. Indeed, as Davis and Owen (1998) argue:

New media enhances the public’s ability to become actors rather than merely spectators in media politics. This changes where we locate underrepresentation of women in the media because there are significant new opportunities available for women who had previously been excluded. Women can directly initiate and participate in media conversations through interactive affordances like text messages, call-in programmes, and social media chats that are embedded in programming. The RIE model emphasises ‘the interaction between women and media to explore how dominant meanings about gender are created and how audiences interpret what they see and hear’ (Sakr, 2004, p. 4). So which women are interacting with the mass media and in what ways (forms)?

Fig. 1.3 presents a typology of interaction that identifies four categories of how that women–media interaction plays out: low consultation and conversation (A); low consultation and high conversation (B); high consultation and low conversation (C); and high consultation and conversation (D). Communication is a form of interaction, and media interactivity is an increasingly salient feature of the media in question and other cultural trends as digital technology proliferates. This framework assumes that the programmes studied are interactive and use new media in a way that reflects media convergence. Fig. 1.4 illustrates the suggested typology of women–media interactions.

Women–media interaction is a function of both consultation (media-driven) and conversation (more often women-driven). In other words, interaction can redefine representation, enabling otherwise-excluded women to claim space in and on the media by joining the conversation in a variety of ways. This should demonstrate the pertinence to invited and claimed spaces (Cornwall, 2002) because women–media interaction addresses who initiates interaction. In consultation, the media include women by giving them a platform or covering women’s issues. It measures how often women are consulted and the range of women’s issues covered by the media, regardless of who is doing the actual reporting. Conversation refers to how and when women gain access to the media as citizens (analysts) and participants in public life (audiences) who use that access to increase their visibility and amplify their voices. Conversation is more dependent on women taking action (e.g. by either calling or engaging in newsworthy actions) that compel media to consult them.

Maractho (2017) showed that the women–media interaction most often involves women as sources, subjects, analysts, and audiences. Media-driven consultation of women depends on the media seeking women as sources and covering issues that make women the subjects of stories. Women who are not media workers may lack the opportunity to influence these choices. Conversation involves women participating in dialogue in or outside the media that shape their media presence. This can include active involvement in the discussion of politics, advocacy, and policy, so this approach allows for a deeper analysis than the assumptions in portrayal studies that only look at how women are re-represented in media text and images. As analysts, women often engage in activities outside the media that draw them into it. Women may buy airtime or produce advertisements to discuss issues. They can also get involved in the discussion through such other forms as calling into talk shows, using social media, and sending SMS text messages. The degree of media-driven versus women-driven interaction determines the extent and nature of interaction. Thus, conversation reflects women’s ability to use the media to shape gender and women’s issues and advocate for equal rights from both the state and society.

When women gain access to the media and are both represented and interacting, how they use this platform to benefit women is a matter of engagement. Engagement has ‘rich potential for illuminating ways in which women are empowered or disempowered’ (Sakr, 2004, p. 12). Women’s engagement with the media is the ability of women to use the media through the current and public affairs programmes to influence policy and initiate state and societal responses to women’s demands. For example, despite many challenges, Iranian women used the press to question gender constructions and gender relations and to call for a radical rethinking of law, policy, and the constitution, and similar trends of women’s struggle for engagement with the press were seen throughout the Middle East (Khiabany & Sreberny, 2004, p. 15). Research on the Ugandan context indicates that after 1986, when the National Resistance Movement came to power, women’s organisations began to engage with the media to address the negative portrayal of women and the underrepresentation of women’s issues (Mukama, 2002, p. 148). This led to improved media representation of women and coverage of women’s issues.

However, some questions remain unanswered in the literature. Based on the now-available data, we reconceptualise engagement as involvement and influence in shaping public debate and policy by critiquing state and societal structures that marginalise women through the media. This engagement promotes women’s rights in the media and on media when they use it to question negative gender constructions and gender relations. There are four potential scenarios: low involvement and influence (A); low involvement and high influence (B); high involvement and low influence (C); and high involvement and influence (D). Figs. 1.5 and 1.6 illustrate this typology of engagement and women’s engagement with the media in relation to the state, society and public life.

Involvement and influence are characterised by whether women’s representation and interaction with media are media- or women-driven. Involvement can occur without creating direct change, whereas influence creates change. What is critical here is that engagement is a product of representation (visibility and voice) and interaction (consultation and conversation). There are not only two points of involvement, that is, in mass media and public life, but also two areas of influence, that is, of the society through its practices and of the state through policy. An analysis of these two factors demonstrates the nature of women’s engagement with the media and the extent of their success.

Our aim for this chapter is to contribute perspectives and a model that illustrates the nature and extent of women’s participation in mass media as an independent variable that, in turn, impacts women’s participation in public life, the dependent variable. RIE are necessary but insufficient conditions for influencing women’s participation in public life. Such external issues as policy, legal, institutional, and regulatory frameworks for both the media and public spheres also influence women’s participation.

Study of representation without consideration of interactive media will overlook the new opportunities it affords women that, in turn, increase their representation on media. A study of interaction without consideration of who initiates a consultation or conversation may also miss crucial dynamics. And looking only at representation and interaction, we will likely overlook the variety of ways in which women are involved in and influence the public space that, in turn, lead to their representation and interaction with media. Participation conceptualised as RIE provides a more holistic picture of women’s participation.

We theorise that effective RIE in and on mass media facilitates women’s participation in public life. These three dimensions of participation intersect to function and complement each other. What is more, they represent levels of participation, starting with representation, moving through interaction, and culminating in engagement, the final stage that influences policy and drives change for women. The degree of influence of participation in public life depends on the quality of each of these three factors. Ultimately, women’s participation in the mass media increases women’s participation in public life (Fig. 1.7).

This conceptualisation of representation is a step towards creating an analytical tool for research on women’s participation in media and public life. Giving meaning to the many concepts used in this research is of paramount importance. The chapter unpacks several concepts and discusses the dimensions and also the indicators of the concepts as derived from data and refined by literature. A diagrammatical presentation of the conceptual framework that can be used for the analysis of participation as RIE is introduced. The relationships are clearly marked out with arrows. The key assumption, at this point, is that the mass media influences women’s participation in public life and that depends on the nature and extent of participation conceptualised as representation, interaction, and engagement.