Double-Edged Sword of Mediated Visibility: How Visual Framing Undermines Congresswomen's Perceived Competence
Women's presence in Congress has stalled below 30%. That institutional underrepresentation is mirrored by their limited visibility on televised news, where visual presentation can shape perceived competence and authority. Yet research tells us more about whether congresswomen appear than how they are visually framed. Facial recognition analysis of 695,464 image-text segments from CNN and Fox News (2011-2021) reveals that congresswomen appear disproportionately in split-screen rather than solo shots. Two pre-registered experiments with 6,220 participants show that, in static frames, split-screen framing reduces congresswomen's perceived political competence, but not congressmen's. In dynamic videos, the competence penalty disappears; instead, outraged language reduces a congresswoman's perceived warmth roughly three times as much as a congressman's. Suggestive evidence (p = .057) indicates that women viewers report greater external political efficacy after watching a congresswoman appear alone. We conclude that visual framing shapes both congresswomen's mediated visibility and their perceived capabilities.