Gendered styles, gendered differences: Candidates’ use of personalization and interactivity on Twitter

ABSTRACT

Historically, a “feminine communication style” has not been a welcomed addition to the masculinized arena of American campaigning. But this style’s personalized and interactive elements have started to gain a foothold in digital campaigning because it mimics the intimacy of retail politics and face-to-face campaigning. To examine whether candidates are incorporating a feminine communication style in a mediated campaign setting, this study features a content analysis of U.S. Senate candidates’ campaign Twitter feeds during the 2012 election cycle, and explores the differences across candidate gender and electoral success for personalization and interactivity. Results revealed that men and women were similar in their incorporation of personalization, and women were more interactive than men. Further, the type of personalization and interactivity contributed differently to electoral success for women and men.

KEYWORDS:

• Digital campaigning
• gender
• interactivity
• personalization
• Twitter

Notes

^1. It is important to note that these constructions are primarily heteronormative, and thus social and political expectations are based on what heterosexual men and women should do when they perform their gender. These gendered conceptions, then, do not take into account how gender and sexual orientation may intersect, which limits this study’s scope.

^2. It is worth noting that several scholars, including Hart (1999), disparage the “personalization of politics,” claiming that it moves the focus away from policy and encourages voters to evaluate candidates based on personality, and who is the most charismatic and exciting on screen.

^3. In 2012, there was one mixed-gender and zero all-female gubernatorial general elections.

^4. The code for this process is available here: https://github.com/rainersigwald/twitter_archiver

^5. Table 1 in the Appendix provides the percent of personalization- and interactivity-oriented tweets for each candidate. To assess whether a single outlier candidate could have skewed the aggregate results provided for RQ1 and H1, I ran descriptives (percentages in this case) for personalization and interactivity 24 times, each time excluding one candidate and assessing whether the pattern of results still held with the excluded candidate. For example, I ran descriptives for personalization, excluded Chris Murphy from the calculations, and then compared women and men’s percentages for personalization. I then reran the descriptives, this time including Murphy but now excluding Linda McMahon, and so on. This process of systematic exclusion and comparison revealed that no single candidate disrupted the pattern of results presented for RQ1 and H1.

^6. Tests of significance were not necessary in this analysis because the analysis included the entire census of data for the 24 candidates during their respective general elections. That said, it is possible to view these 24 candidates as a potential sample of all Senate candidates in 2012, which prompts the question of whether the differences and similarities between candidates were significant. I ran difference of proportion tests for the topline results for RQ1, H1, and RQ2. For RQ1, the difference between men and women’s use of personalization was not statistically significant. For H1, women were significantly more interactive than men, p < .05. For RQ2, all of the following results were significant at p < .05: Winning women were more personalizing and less interactive than losing women, and winning men were less personalizing and less interactive than losing men.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Lindsey Meeks

Lindsey Meeks is an assistant professor in the Department of Communication at the University of Oklahoma. Her research interests include political communication, gender, and media.