IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/jinfst/v71y2020i11p1281-1294.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Female librarians and male computer programmers? Gender bias in occupational images on digital media platforms

Author

Listed:
  • Vivek K. Singh
  • Mary Chayko
  • Raj Inamdar
  • Diana Floegel

Abstract

Media platforms, technological systems, and search engines act as conduits and gatekeepers for all kinds of information. They often influence, reflect, and reinforce gender stereotypes, including those that represent occupations. This study examines the prevalence of gender stereotypes on digital media platforms and considers how human efforts to create and curate messages directly may impact these stereotypes. While gender stereotyping in social media and algorithms has received some examination in the recent literature, its prevalence in different types of platforms (for example, wiki vs. news vs. social network) and under differing conditions (for example, degrees of human‐ and machine‐led content creation and curation) has yet to be studied. This research explores the extent to which stereotypes of certain strongly gendered professions (librarian, nurse, computer programmer, civil engineer) persist and may vary across digital platforms (Twitter, the New York Times online, Wikipedia, and Shutterstock). The results suggest that gender stereotypes are most likely to be challenged when human beings act directly to create and curate content in digital platforms, and that highly algorithmic approaches for curation showed little inclination towards breaking stereotypes. Implications for the more inclusive design and use of digital media platforms, particularly with regard to mediated occupational messaging, are discussed.

Suggested Citation

  • Vivek K. Singh & Mary Chayko & Raj Inamdar & Diana Floegel, 2020. "Female librarians and male computer programmers? Gender bias in occupational images on digital media platforms," Journal of the Association for Information Science & Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 71(11), pages 1281-1294, November.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:jinfst:v:71:y:2020:i:11:p:1281-1294
    DOI: 10.1002/asi.24335
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1002/asi.24335
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1002/asi.24335?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Mateos de Cabo, Ruth & Gimeno, Ricardo & Martínez, Miryam & López, Luis, 2011. "Perpetuating gender stereotypes via the internet? an analysis of the women’s presence in Spanish online newspapers," MPRA Paper 33557, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    2. Besiki Stvilia & Michael B. Twidale & Linda C. Smith & Les Gasser, 2008. "Information quality work organization in wikipedia," Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 59(6), pages 983-1001, April.
    3. Juris Dilevko & Roma M. Harris, 1997. "Information technology and social relations: Portrayals of gender roles in high tech product advertisements," Journal of the American Society for Information Science, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 48(8), pages 718-727, August.
    4. Amaç Herdağdelen & Marco Baroni, 2011. "Stereotypical gender actions can be extracted from web text," Journal of the Association for Information Science & Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 62(9), pages 1741-1749, September.
    5. Amaç Herdağdelen & Marco Baroni, 2011. "Stereotypical gender actions can be extracted from web text," Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 62(9), pages 1741-1749, September.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Sudeshna Das & Jiaul H. Paik, 2023. "Gender tagging of named entities using retrieval‐assisted multi‐context aggregation: An unsupervised approach," Journal of the Association for Information Science & Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 74(4), pages 461-475, April.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Rai, Rashmi & Rai, Ambarish Kumar, 2020. "Is sexual assault breaking women’s spatial confidence in cities of India? Some explorations from Varanasi city," Children and Youth Services Review, Elsevier, vol. 118(C).
    2. Li, Yung-Ming & Lee, Yi-Lin, 2010. "Pricing peer-produced services: Quality, capacity, and competition issues," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 207(3), pages 1658-1668, December.
    3. Pezoldt, Kerstin & Schliewe, Jana & Lotze, Verena, 2011. "Geschlechtsstereotype im Technikmarketing - Analyse der häufigsten Stereotype und deren Nutzung im Marketing," Ilmenauer Schriften zur Betriebswirtschaftslehre, Technische Universität Ilmenau, Institut für Betriebswirtschaftslehre, volume 4, number 42011.
    4. Nicolas Jullien, 2012. "What We Know About Wikipedia: A Review of the Literature Analyzing the Project(s)," Post-Print hal-00857208, HAL.
    5. Lee, Jung & Seo, DongBack, 2016. "Crowdsourcing not all sourced by the crowd: An observation on the behavior of Wikipedia participants," Technovation, Elsevier, vol. 55, pages 14-21.
    6. Loris Gaio & Alessandro Rossi & Matthijs den Besten & Jean-Michel Dalle, 2009. "Coordination, Division of Labor, and Open Content Communities: Template Messages in Wiki-Based Collections," DISA Working Papers 0903, Department of Computer and Management Sciences, University of Trento, Italy, revised 29 Jul 2009.
    7. Jaehun Joo & Ismatilla Normatov, 2013. "Determinants of collective intelligence quality: comparison between Wiki and Q&A services in English and Korean users," Service Business, Springer;Pan-Pacific Business Association, vol. 7(4), pages 687-711, December.
    8. Besiki Stvilia & Shuheng Wu & Dong Joon Lee, 2018. "Researchers’ participation in and motivations for engaging with research information management systems," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 13(2), pages 1-24, February.
    9. Shane Greenstein & Grace Gu & Feng Zhu, 2021. "Ideology and Composition Among an Online Crowd: Evidence from Wikipedians," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 67(5), pages 3067-3086, May.
    10. Arsev Umur Aydinoglu, 2013. "Toward a New Understanding of Virtual Research Collaborations," SAGE Open, , vol. 3(4), pages 21582440135, October.
    11. Gerald C. Kane & Sam Ransbotham, 2016. "Research Note—Content and Collaboration: An Affiliation Network Approach to Information Quality in Online Peer Production Communities," Information Systems Research, INFORMS, vol. 27(2), pages 424-439, June.
    12. Arnaud Gorgeon & E. Burton Swanson, 2011. "Web 2.0 according to Wikipedia: Capturing an organizing vision," Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 62(10), pages 1916-1932, October.
    13. Ofer Arazy & Johannes Daxenberger & Hila Lifshitz-Assaf & Oded Nov & Iryna Gurevych, 2016. "Turbulent Stability of Emergent Roles: The Dualistic Nature of Self-Organizing Knowledge Coproduction," Information Systems Research, INFORMS, vol. 27(4), pages 792-812, December.
    14. Stan Karanasios & Aljona Zorina, 2023. "From participation roles to socio‐emotional information roles: Insights from the closure of an online community," Journal of the Association for Information Science & Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 74(1), pages 33-49, January.
    15. Besiki Stvilia & Dong Joon Lee & Na‐eun Han, 2021. "“Striking out on your own”—A study of research information management problems on university campuses," Journal of the Association for Information Science & Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 72(8), pages 963-978, August.
    16. Neil Granitz & Dana Loewy, 2007. "Applying Ethical Theories: Interpreting and Responding to Student Plagiarism," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 72(3), pages 293-306, May.
    17. Grace Gimon Betancourt & Armando Segnini & Carlos Trabuco & Amira Rezgui & Nicolas Jullien, 2016. "Mining team characteristics to predict Wikipedia article quality," Post-Print hal-01354368, HAL.
    18. Kevin Crowston & Nicolas Jullien & Felipe Ortega, 2013. "Is Wikipedia Inefficient? Modelling Effort and Participation in Wikipedia," Post-Print hal-00947731, HAL.
    19. Maseeh, Haroon Iqbal & Jebarajakirthy, Charles & Pentecost, Robin & Ashaduzzaman, Md. & Arli, Denni & Weaven, Scott, 2021. "A meta-analytic review of mobile advertising research," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 136(C), pages 33-51.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bla:jinfst:v:71:y:2020:i:11:p:1281-1294. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.asis.org .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.