A Comparative Discursive News Values Analysis of Liz Truss' and Rishi Sunak's representation in the British Press

Nowadays the number of women in relevant political roles on the international stage is growing (Zamfirache 2010). However, politics still seems a public sphere dominated by men (Liu 2019). The presence of women in politics and their participation in the decision-making processes have always been highly influenced and constrained by gender stereotypes (Liu 2019); it is well known that specific gender stereotypes could influence the representation of women as unfit leaders (Liu 2019). As a result, not only gender stereotypes could affect women’s participation in politics, but they could also influence the way media represent them as political leaders. Media can play a significant role in the reiteration of gender stereotypes in the representation of female politicians foregrounding their appearance or family role rather than other important aspects such as their political agenda (Zamfirache 2010). Within the frameworks of Discursive News Values Analysis and Multimodal Critical Discourse Analysis, this paper focuses on journalistic discourse concerning Liz Truss’ and Rishi Sunak’s representation in the British press. The main aim is to understand if and to what extent Truss and Sunak are represented similarly or differently through the employment of specific gender stereotypes. Moreover, the comparative analysis investigates if particular news values are intertwined with the representation of Truss and Sunak as gendered social actors.