Lesson 2.2: Media Effects & Public Attitudes

Site:	OpenLearn Create
Course:	Solidarity and Struggle: Resisting Anti-Gender Politics
Book:	Lesson 2.2: Media Effects & Public Attitudes

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Date:	Friday, 21 August 2026, 8:33 PM

Description

In this topic, you will examine how sustained negative media coverage impacts public perceptions of feminist, queer, and trans movements. You'll consider how media frames these groups – as dangerous, illegitimate, or foreign – and how such narratives contribute to hostility, marginalisation, funding difficulties, or policy backlash. This topic also highlights how selective visibility and misrepresentation affect the legitimacy and safety of queer, feminist, and trans movements.

1. How media shape social attitudes
2. How framing produces hostility
3. Key takeaways

1. How media shape social attitudes

‘Anti-gender’ media discourses do more than provoke short-lived outrage - they gradually reshape how societies see feminist, queer, and trans movements. By repeatedly framing queer-feminist resistance as dangerous, illegitimate, or foreign, the media normalises suspicion and hostility. Over time, these portrayals erode public trust, silence activists, and make discrimination appear rational or even necessary.

In this topic, you will explore how media representation shapes social attitudes and political outcomes. We’ll examine how sustained negative coverage influences legitimacy, vulnerability, and access to resources for gender and sexual rights movements across Europe and beyond.

2. How framing produces hostility

Media stories about gender and sexuality are rarely neutral. The selection of words, images, and ‘experts’ determines not only what is said but who is seen as credible. ‘Anti-gender’ discourses thrive on a set of recurring strategies.

Drawing on framing theory (e.g. Lecheler & de Vreese 2019) and cultural studies perspectives (e.g. Stuart Hall’s representation theory), common strategies in ‘anti-gender’ media discourses could be categorised as:

Personalisation: Emphasising individual actors over systemic issues
Conflict framing: Highlighting outrage and division
Decontextualisation: Removing structural or historical contexts
Moralisation: Casting gender/queer issues in terms of right/wrong or virtue/malpractice

These framing techniques, as contemporary media scholars note, construct preferred interpretations that guide audiences toward emotional and moral judgments, fear, scepticism, or outrage, rather than critical understanding. Once circulated repeatedly, such frames help define who is seen as a threat and who is worthy of protection (Entman, 2010; Lecheler & de Vreese, 2019; Wodak, 2021).

Across the RESIST Project’s case studies, participants repeatedly described the media as a key amplifier of everyday hostility, with the media not simply informing audiences, but shaping environments of exclusion and fear.

2.1. IRELAND: Erosion of trust and fear of public misrepresentation

In Ireland, this erosion of trust was deeply personal. Most participants reported moderating or limiting their social media and other media interactions because they feared being set up for ‘debates’ in which their words could be twisted or taken out of context. As the report shows:

“People feared being set up for a debate in which their words could be twisted; they felt that they would be pressured to speak on areas they were not equipped to address. This left a void that meant anti-trans rhetoric, in particular, was left unchallenged.” (RESIST Ireland Report, p. 14)

An atmosphere of mistrust and fatigue silences public advocacy. As activists withdraw, the public space becomes dominated by more aggressive ‘anti-gender’ voices. For those who remain online, ‘immunity’ to attacks develops over time, but the sense of exposure and risk persists, especially as allies leave these spaces, making the hostility feel even more isolating.

2.2. SWITZERLAND: Selective visibility and amplification

In Switzerland, hostile discourses have been confidently growing in professional environments, not only shaping public debate, but altering how equality work is valued within institutions. The media often frames gender-inclusive initiatives through the lens of protecting children and families. Coverage of drag story hours or gender education workshops frequently deploys moral-panic imagery such as representations of shocked parents and words such as ‘indoctrination’ or ‘sexualisation.’

These stories amplify fringe controversies while ignoring everyday advocacy and education work, and drifting attention from more urgent problems, such as the growing influence of far-right extremists.

Negative media coverage has also had concrete professional consequences, as Swiss data shows. Participants described a wave of initial interest in equality and diversity trainings among professionals, followed by a backlash framed through ‘anti-woke’ discourse:

“There were professionals who came to us, who wanted to be trained, to understand better, to do better. And now, there’s a bit of a turnaround. Because people are saying to themselves, this is woke stuff, it’s going too far, they want to replace us all. But not at all!” (RESIST Report, Switzerland, p. 11)

Activists and trainers reported that their work is now frequently described as ‘too radical,’ ‘too militant,’ or ‘unprofessional.’ They find themselves constantly having to justify the legitimacy of equality work, even within institutions that previously supported it. Such discursive shifts show how media narratives migrate into workplaces and policy spaces, eroding professional credibility and narrowing opportunities for sustained advocacy.

For many participants, being mentioned or pictured in hostile media stories led to waves of online abuse, threats, and professional retaliation.

Drag Queen Story Time
In Switzerland, Drag Story Time events have become a visible target of organised ‘anti-gender’ mobilisation. The RESIST Switzerland Report describes how in October 2020 far-right extremist groups have disrupted these and other queer events. They framed drag story time events as a threat to children.

These disruptions included coordinated protests, online mobilisation by masculinist/incel groups, and threats that required police presence to ensure safety. As participants reported, hostility surrounding Drag Story Time symbolises a broader moral panic about gender diversity and queer visibility, reinforcing fear within LGBTIQ+ communities and requiring higher security measures for events.

A clear shift in atmosphere was noted, due to such targeting of queer events by the right wing extremist groups:

“At events where I had no fear at all in Switzerland […] I now go with an uncomfortable feeling, e.g. at Drag Story Time. A few years ago, I never had the feeling that something would happen when I went to a queer event.”

2.3. ROMA LGBTIQ+ Communities: Shifting targets and intersectional harms

Intersectional harms:

The case of Roma LGBTIQ+ communities

A clearer intersectional lens also requires recognising how ‘anti-gender’ discourses compound pre-existing forms of racism and marginalisation. Roma communities, who already face widespread anti-Roma prejudice, surveillance, and exclusion across Europe, are often further targeted when media deploys ‘anti-gender’ narratives. Negative coverage of Roma people regularly uses tropes of criminality, backwardness, or hypersexuality.

When combined with anti-LGBTIQ+ rhetoric, these stereotypes harden into powerful moral panic frames: Roma queer and trans people become simultaneously depicted as culturally ‘deviant’, socially dangerous, and incompatible with the imagined moral nation.

In several Central and Eastern European contexts, Roma queer activists report that hostile media coverage amplifies stigma not only within majority society but also within their own communities, making public visibility risky. Sensationalist reporting on issues such as sex education or ‘protecting children’ often draws on anti-Roma racism — implicitly or explicitly suggesting that Roma families are ‘irresponsible,’ ‘non-traditional,’ or ‘threatened’ by Western values. These narratives erase the diversity of Roma identities and render Roma feminist, queer, and trans voices almost invisible in mainstream debates.

The Roma case exemplifies how gender, sexuality, and race get entangled in the production of moral panic and how representational violence contributes to structural marginalisation.

‘Anti-gender’ hostility is not static. It adapts to local contexts, shifting its focus and targets according to what resonates with existing fears and cultural norms.

In one moment, feminist scholars are denounced as corrupting academia; in another, trans youth are framed as victims of ‘ideological manipulation’. In yet another, migrant women are cast as threats to national identity.

This intersectional silencing shows how ‘anti-gender’ discourse operates unevenly: it attaches itself to existing racial hierarchies, strengthening boundaries of belonging.

2.4. GERMANY: Uneven vulnerabilities

This shifting focus of ‘anti-gender’ mobilisations produces uneven vulnerabilities within queer and feminist communities. In Germany, trans and non-binary participants consistently reported being positioned as the primary objects of public hostility.

Trans visibility was experienced as ambivalent by the participants. On the one hand, it was characterised as unprecedented and hopeful, but on the other hand, it was associated with fear of being targeted, as GERFG1.2 explained:

“So, I do know that fear as well, but I do believe that lots of it is connected to the increasing visibility, which can absolutely have something positive, like it can be hard and frightening to be so visible right now, but there are also a lot of new possibilities that haven’t been there before.” (RESIST Project Report, Germany, p. 13)

Cornelia, a trans activist and a public figure in Germany, recounted that she was shot, in addition to other physical attacks on her home. During her interview she noted that “the violence, especially for visible people, is highly complex and very diverse and very active, the rise of the far-right is definitely notable”.