ABSTRACT

The Internet serves as a media source to communicate information about modern societal perceptions and cultural attitudes regarding gender stereotypes. The current study evaluated sex-typed electronic birth congratulatory cards aimed at parents of newborns, to determine the extent the text and images in these cards communicated sex roles and gender stereotypes. In this quantitative content analysis of electronic cards (k= 200), coded variables included visual (e.g. dominant colour, presence of human baby or animals, presence of baby clothing/accessories, toy type, and decorations) and verbal (e.g. message style, message tone, physical and non-physical descriptors, and number of words) characteristics. Interrater reliability indices across the two coders were fair to excellent. Chi-square and t-tests found that the dominant colour of the images (pink and blue), decorations (frills/lace/ribbon), and the extent of interaction, independence, play, and gender stereotypes depicted differed significantly between boy and girl typed cards. A logistic regression model explained a substantial proportion of variance in the website gender-typed classification of boy versus girl cards. The findings provide insights regarding current societal attitudes towards social and gender roles in families, with the implication that people transmit these messages by sending and receiving such online communications.

摘要

互联网作为一种媒体来源，传播有关现代社会观念和关于性别刻板印象的文化态度的信息。目前的研究评估了针对新生儿父母的性别类型电子出生祝贺卡，以确定这些卡片中的文字和图像传达性别角色和性别刻板印象的程度。在本次电子卡的定量内容分析中（k= 200），编码变量包括视觉（例如主要颜色、人类婴儿或动物的存在、婴儿服装/配件的存在、玩具类型和装饰）和语言（例如信息风格、信息语气、物理和非物理描述符，和字数）特征。两位编码员的评分者间可靠性指数相当出色。卡方检验和 t 检验发现，男孩和女孩的图像的主要颜色（粉色和蓝色）、装饰（褶边/蕾丝/丝带）以及互动程度、独立性、玩耍和性别刻板印象显着不同打字卡。逻辑回归模型解释了网站性别类型的男孩与女孩卡分类中的很大一部分差异。