Closing the gap: gender parity in political engagement on social media

ABSTRACT

Historically, major gender differences exist in both political engagement and online content creation. Expanding on these literatures, this study considers the extent to which men and women engage in politics specifically in social media. Novel survey data are employed to test for any gendered differences in encountering and responding to political content via social media. Despite measuring a robust set of political behaviors within social media, few gender differences emerge. Where differences do emerge, they are most likely among the most visible political behaviors, suggesting that women may strategically engage in less visible or less-likely-to-offend political behaviors, as compared to men. This poses important questions regarding political participation, representation, and gender.

KEYWORDS:

• Gender
• political participation
• social media
• Internet
• political knowledge

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Leticia Bode is an assistant professor in the Communication, Culture, and Technology master’s program at Georgetown University. She received her PhD in Political Science from the University of Wisconsin – Madison, and her bachelor’s degree from Trinity University. Her work lies at the intersection of communication, technology, and political behavior, emphasizing the role communication and information technologies may play in the acquisition and use of political information. [email: [email protected]].

Notes

1. Certainly a large part of the political gender gap literature has focused on the gender gap in political ideology (see, for instance, Kaufman & Petrocik, 1999; Schlesinger & Heldman, 2001; Trevor, 1999). Because that area is generally outside the scope of this study, it will therefore be omitted.

2. Ideally, other variables would have been included with known associations with political engagement, including media use, political interest, and political knowledge. Unfortunately, these variables were not available from Pew. Future research should build on this work to create and test more robust models of these effects.