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This article examines the extent to which differences in educational attainment produce unequal political representation. The lowest educated have almost disappeared from political office-holding, and some scholars argue that, subsequently, their preferences are underrepresented. However, the substantive underrepresentation of the least educated has yet to be empirically established. Based on data of the Dutch Parliamentary Election Studies 1994–2010, this study finds that the preferences of least educated citizens are worse represented than the preferences of higher educated citizens, indicating that political representation is biased towards the highest educated. This unequal representation is found on moral, socio-economic and cultural issues. However, the underrepresentation of the lowest educated is not continually present. This study shows that successful right-wing populist parties enhanced the substantive representation of the least educated in certain policy areas.

Do the media cover men and women politicians and candidates differently? This article performs a systematic analysis of 90 studies covering over 25,000 politicians in over 750,000 media stories, and presents the accumulated knowledge in a comprehensive theoretical framework. The paper shows that there is a gender bias in the amount of coverage of politicians in proportional electoral systems, where women politicians lag behind men in media attention, but that, surprisingly, this gender bias is absent in majoritarian electoral systems. In addition, we systematically review gender differences in the content of media reports on political candidates, such as differences in attention to private life and family, viability and horse-race coverage, issue coverage, and gender stereotypes. Overall, women politicians receive more attention to their appearance and personal life, more negative viability coverage, and, to some extent, stereotypical issue and trait coverage. We conclude by pointing out promising avenues for future research.

Framing research has predominantly revealed detrimental effects of episodic news frames, including individualist blame attributions and political cynicism. However, such frames may also discourage group biases and impede motivated reasoning regarding identity politics. In two experiments ( N = 815; N = 1,019), we test the effect of episodic frames on group-consonant attitudes through identity-motivated reasoning. The two studies produce mixed results. Episodic frames might decrease gender-motivated reasoning for women with weaker gender identities when news threatens their identity, but not for men or for women with stronger gender identities. The implications for journalism and democracy are discussed.

Abstract
A growing literature on the impact of "fake news" accusations on legacy news outlets suggests that the use of this
term is part of a much larger trend of increased and delegitimizing media criticism by political actors. However, so far, there is
very little empirical evidence on how prevailing politicians' delegitimizing media criticism really is and under which conditions
it occurs. To fill these gaps, we present results of a content analysis of media-related Facebook postings by Austrian and German
politicians in 2017 (N = 2,921). The results suggest that media criticism, in general, is actually rare and that
about half of it can be described as delegitimizing (i.e., characterized by incivility or absence of argumentation). Most often,
media criticism is used by populist politicians, who accuse "the media" in general of bias and falsehoods.

Western democracies are increasingly defined by identity politics, where politics appeals to both political and other social identities. Consequently, political information processing should depend not just on political identity, but also on other identities, such as gender, race, or sexuality. For any given issue, we argue that the extent to which reasoning is motivated by one's political identity depends on citizens' group status in other relevant identities, that is, that political identity more strongly motivates high-status group members than low-status group members for issues of identity politics. A survey experiment (N = 1012) concerning a gender quota policy shows that political identity motivates men more strongly than women, leading to political polarization between left-wing and right-wing men, but not women. This suggests that political motivated reasoning should be addressed differently in situations of identity politics, and urges the consideration of group status as a conditional factor of motivated reasoning.

This article studies gender differences in media portrayals of political leadership, starting with the expectation that male politicians are evaluated more often on traits belonging to the male leader stereotype, and that female politicians have no such advantage. These gender differences are expected to be especially pronounced during non-campaign periods. To test these expectations, a large-scale automated content analysis of all Dutch national newspapers from September 2006 to September 2012 was conducted. The results show that male politicians received more media coverage on leadership traits in general, although the male and female leader stereotypes explain most of the variation in gender bias between leadership traits. These gender effects are found during seldom-studied routine periods but not during campaigns. As leadership trait coverage has electoral consequences, this gender-differentiated coverage likely contributes to the under-representation of women in politics.

This article studies gender differences in media portrayals of political leadership, starting with the expectation that male politicians are evaluated more often on traits belonging to the male leader stereotype, and that female politicians have no such advantage. These gender differences are expected to be especially pronounced during non-campaign periods. To test these expectations, a large-scale automated content analysis of all Dutch national newspapers from September 2006 to September 2012 was conducted. The results show that male politicians received more media coverage on leadership traits in general, although the male and female leader stereotypes explain most of the variation in gender bias between leadership traits. These gender effects are found during seldom-studied routine periods but not during campaigns. As leadership trait coverage has electoral consequences, this gender-differentiated coverage likely contributes to the under-representation of women in politics.

AbstractPrevious research showed that the stereotype of women politicians is incongruent with the general politician stereotype, which can be disadvantageous for women seeking political office. Based on the strong influx of women politicians in US politics, and the increased familiarity of the electorate with women in political leadership positions, we expect that voters now have a clearer picture of women politicians and that their stereotype is more congruent with the traits desired in political leaders. In testing this, we make a methodological contribution to the study of stereotyping by adapting a large-N list experiment as an effective and innovative measurement of stereotype endorsement. The results show important changes in gendered political stereotypes over the last ten years. The evolution of the women politician stereotype is encouraging: the traits that people associate with women politicians are more positive than ten years ago and more congruent to desirable traits for politicians. However, the findings also underscore the continuing masculinity of the political domain, by the strong overlap between the stereotype of men politicians and politicians in general. Even more pronounced than the positive trend for women politicians is the unfavorable evolution of the stereotypes of men politicians and politicians generally, which shows a strong downfall compared to a decade ago.

To explain women's underrepresentation in politics, supply-side factors receive much empirical support, emphasizing the low numbers of women on the ballot. Whether demand from voters also contributes to the problem is less clear, however, as both observational and experimental research shows that average voters are not less likely to vote for women candidates. We argue that voters actually do play a role, although not all voters to an equal extent. More precisely, we expect the gender bias in the electorate to be conditional upon partisanship and propose two mechanisms through which this materializes: political gender attitudes and/or gender stereotypes. Although the conditionality of voters' gender bias based upon partisanship is convincingly shown to exist in the US, much less is known about it in the European context, while its multi-party political systems lend themselves well for a more detailed differentiation between party families. We expect that right, and especially populist radical right, voters are biased in favor of men politicians, while left, and especially green left, voters are biased in favor of women politicians. We test our hypotheses with a large-scale vignette experiment (N = 13,489) in the Netherlands, and show that there is indeed a (slight) preference for women representatives among Green party voters, and a clear preference for men candidates among voters of populist radical right parties. Moderate left-wing or right-wing voters, however, show no gender bias. Thus, although right-wing populist parties have electoral incentives to be hesitant about promoting women politicians, most other parties face no electoral risk in putting forth women politicians.

Conventional wisdom holds that party leaders matter in democratic elections. As very few voters have direct contact with party leaders, media are voters' primary source of information about these leaders and, thus, the likely origin of leader effects on party support. Our study focuses on these supposed electoral effects of the media coverage of party leaders. We examine the positive and negative effects of specific leadership images in Dutch newspapers on vote intentions. To this end, we combine an extensive automated content analysis of leadership images in the media with a panel data set, the Dutch 1Vandaag Opinion Panel (1VOP), consisting of more than fifty thousand unique respondents and 110 waves of interviews conducted between September 2006 and September 2012. The results confirm that media coverage of party leaders' character traits affects voters: Positive mediated leadership images increase support for the leader's party, while negative images decrease this support. However, this influence is not unconditional: During campaign periods, positive leadership images have a stronger effect, while negative images no longer have an impact on subsequent vote intentions.

Conventional wisdom holds that party leaders matter in democratic elections. As very few voters have direct contact with party leaders, media are voters' primary source of information about these leaders and, thus, the likely origin of leader effects on party support. Our study focuses on these supposed electoral effects of the media coverage of party leaders. We examine the positive and negative effects of specific leadership images in Dutch newspapers on vote intentions. To this end, we combine an extensive automated content analysis of leadership images in the media with a panel data set, the Dutch 1Vandaag Opinion Panel (1VOP), consisting of more than fifty thousand unique respondents and 110 waves of interviews conducted between September 2006 and September 2012. The results confirm that media coverage of party leaders' character traits affects voters: Positive mediated leadership images increase support for the leader's party, while negative images decrease this support. However, this influence is not unconditional: During campaign periods, positive leadership images have a stronger effect, while negative images no longer have an impact on subsequent vote intentions.