Le rappresentanze parlamentari femminili nei quotidiani: studio di un casoWomen's parliamentary representation in newspapers:a case study

Often the media, while positioning themselves as a medium for forming public opinion, they convey and reproduce stereotype and notions of common sense, uncritically reinforcing a traditional view of the world. Lippman (1922) argues that reality, precisely because of its complexity and dynamic factors, cannot be known in its purest sense. It can only be reconstructed through representation and interpretation processes that people create and negotiate within their social group. These representations tend to simplify the events giving rise to stereotypes and ideal types which allow to organize and articulate predictive and conformable attitudes that influence the collection and evaluation of data. The media select and reconstruct events according to interpretative matrices that predetermine the paradigmatic structure through which actors construct their knowledge and organize their social life. Therefore it is essential to scrutinise the social dynamics that are constructed and offered by the mass media. This research investigates the narrative repertoires describing the presence of women in the Italian parliamentary seats. The object of analysis focuses on the ideal-typical and desirable model proposed by the press as a means to induce and reproduce social stereotypes which offer people a portion of the world on which they construct a repersentation of reality and their behaviours. This investigation focuses on articles taken from two national newspapers containing information about women MPs from 1994 to 2009. Keywords: Women, Parliament, newspapers, narrative repertoires.