Insular or influenced? An exploration of the representation of transgender issues in Irish mainstream newspapers

Abstract This mixed methods study examines the ways in which Irish newspapers represent transgender issues, focusing not only on the themes that newspapers employ, but analysing how these themes relate to the Irish cultural context and to narratives surrounding trans issues in the wider Western media. Keyword-assisted dynamic topic modelling was performed on 1360 articles about transgender issues from three prominent Irish newspapers between 2012 and 2023. The results of this topic model informed the 115 articles chosen for qualitative thematic analysis, with this analysis being situated in the context of developments for transgender people in Ireland as well as how similar topics were discussed in other Western media. This research discovered that the theme of threat was dominant in Irish media coverage of transgender issues, conforming with patterns of increased negativity towards transgender groups in media from the UK and US in recent years. This was significant as the media tended to focus on these negative Western arguments of threat in spite of evidence in the Irish context which contradicted these narratives, such as by emphasising medical transition as necessary for living as one’s desired gender despite Ireland’s gender recognition act operating through self-determination of gender. As it has elsewhere been found that media portrayals of transgender people can influence transgender rights, the use of negative narratives about this group in Irish news media could lead to the rescinding of existing liberal rights for trans people in Ireland and prevent more such rights being granted in the future.