Women and visual depictions of the U.S.-Iraq war in print and online media

Both American and Iraqi women were affected by the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq by coalition forces in March 2003. Yet women were shown in less than one-fifth of the 480 war-related photographs in a sample from 18 U.S. daily newspapers, three U.S. news magazines, and those publications' websites. In addition, Iraqi women were less likely to appear than U.S. women, partly because of the news media's intense focus on injured American soldier Jessica Lynch during the early weeks of the war. This study suggests that these findings may have been the result of both media routines, as described by Shoemaker and Reese, and the tendency of the U.S. media to engage in Orientalism, as described by Said.