Online cultural backlash? sexism and political user-generated content

ABSTRACT

Prior research highlights substantial beneficial effects of political user-generated content (UGC) in society, such as diversifying political viewpoints, mobilizing the electorate, and fostering citizens’ civic engagement. However, important user asymmetries exist when creating political content. Gender, age, media uses, and skills gaps have been identified as key variables predicting UGC. This study addressed the political UGC gender gap from a political perspective. We build on previous theory about feminist media studies, political polarization, and cultural backlash theory to disentangle whether hostile sexism predicts UGC creation. Drawing on online survey data from four well-established democracies, we find that those individuals holding hostile sexist views are more likely to generate political content online. Further implications for democracy and the role of women in the digital sphere are discussed.

KEYWORDS:

• User-generated content
• sexism
• polarization
• cultural backlash
• gender gap

Acknowledgement

The authors are grateful to James Liu and everyone involved in the ‘Digital Influence World Project’ who helped collecting these data. This research was supported by Grant FA2386-15-1-0003 from the Asian Office of Aerospace Research and Development. Responsibility for the information and views set out in this study lies entirely with the authors’.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 We test our model in other countries that either have similar levels of gender equality, development and democracy (New Zealand, Italy, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan) or do not present similar level of democracy and gender equality however where processes of cultural backlash have been documented at some point between 2015 and 2020 (Argentina, Brazil and Chile).

2 Additionally, after randomly applying the model to other countries, H4 is supported in 7 out of 8: New Zealand, Italy, South Korea, Taiwan, Argentina, Brazil and Chile. However, H3 was only supported in New Zealand, Argentina and Chile.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Asian Office of Aerospace Research and Development: [grant number FA2386-15-1-0003].

Notes on contributors

Isabel Inguanzo

Isabel Inguanzo is a sociologist and holds a Ph.D. in political science. She is an Assistant Professor at the University of Salamanca. Prior to that she was Assistant Professor at Universidad Loyola Andalucía (2016–2020) and worked at the UNESCO Regional Office for the Pacific States in Samoa (2014–2015). She has also worked as a consultant, for the European Parliament. Her research is primarily on Comparative Politics, Social Movements and Minorities’ studies, with a particular focus on Gender and Ethnic studies. She has published JCR peer-reviewed journal articles (i.e., Contemporary Politics) [email: [email protected]].

Bingbing Zhang

Bingbing Zhang is a doctoral student in Mass Communications at the Donald P. Bellisario College of Communications from the Pennsylvania State University in the United States. She obtained a master's degree on Mass Communications from Texas Tech University and a master's degree on Journalism and Communications from Jinan University in China. Her research interests focus on political communication and media effects on individuals’ political beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors [email: [email protected]].

Homero Gil de Zúñiga

Homero Gil de Zúñiga holds a Ph.D. in Politics at Universidad Europea de Madrid and a Ph.D. in Mass Communication at the University of Wisconsin – Madison, serves as Distinguished Research Professor at the University of Salamanca where he directs the Democracy Research Unit (DRU), as Professor at Pennsylvania State University, and as Senior Research Fellow at Universidad Diego Portales, Chile. His research addresses the influence of new technologies and digital media over people's daily lives, as well as the effect of such use on the overall democratic process. He has published nearly a dozen books/volumes and over 100 JCR peer-reviewed journal articles (i.e., Journal of Communication, Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, Political Communication, Human Communication Research, New Media & Society, Communication Research, etc) [email: [email protected]].