Abstract

This study investigates how CBC frames feminism in their online news content. Two research questions guide this inquiry. First, when does feminism become newsworthy to CBC? Second, how is feminism framed in online news articles from CBC? Both content analysis and critical discourse analysis are employed to answer these questions. The analysis is conducted using framing theory as the primary theoretical approach. This research builds upon the foundational work of Kaitlynn Mendes on the framing of feminism in print newspapers that largely assessed whether coverage was positive or negative in nature. While drawing inspiration from this literature, this project adds a novel perspective by examining both an online and Canadian context. One hundred and fifty news articles relating to feminism were collected from CBC’s website for analysis. Results reveal the overall theme of complexity and the frames of controversy/containment and diversity/intersectionality which define how CBC represents feminism. These results demonstrate the positive-negative binary does not accurately summarize how feminism fares in CBC News content. Instead, we are left with both a complex image of feminism as a social movement and a complex framing of feminism by CBC organised around the frames of controversy/containment and intersectionality/diversity. This framing characterises the manner in which CBC supports feminism but also contains it within certain boundaries. Overall, this work adds to the existing literature on feminism in the news and augments our understanding of how feminism is not only viewed by, but fashioned, shaped, and moulded in our society by trusted and powerful media sources.