Women of many “firsts”: novelty framing by news media of ethnic minority women politicians in Aotearoa New Zealand

There is a significant scholarship on media framing of women politicians in the context of western liberal democracies. However, much less academic attention has been directed at an intersectional analysis of the interface of race/ethnicity and gender media framing of ethnic minority women politicians (EWPs). This article undertakes a comparative analysis of mainstream and ethnic news media’s framing of EWPs in Aotearoa New Zealand (AoNZ) in terms of the news value of “novelty” and considers the implications of such framing on their legitimacy and credibility. Specifically, the article draws on qualitative content analysis to examine how the “novelty” framing – comprising identity framing and uniqueness framing – of 10 EWPs is deployed by mainstream and ethnic news media. The analysis reveals that unlike elsewhere, AoNZ news media tend to foreground the ethnic rather than gender identity of EWPs, with mainstream media framing them in ways that limit their legitimacy and credibility. In addition, the paper demonstrates that the use of identity and uniqueness framing, whether overtly positive or negative, can constrain the political agency of EWPs.