It's a Man's World?

Abstract

This study focuses on the role of gender in Internet campaigning. Empirically, the research is expanded beyond the United States by exploring candidate Web campaigning in the 2003 Finnish parliamentary elections. The results of the empirical analysis show that female candidates put up Web sites in a higher degree than their male counterparts. However, gender itself is not a significant factor for being online. Moreover, utilizing a matched-pairs design, the analysis suggests that male and female candidates take advantage of the new communication technology in a similar way and that female candidates do not build a distinct feminine candidate profile online.

Key Words:

• Electioneering
• Internet
• Web sites
• candidate gender
• female candidates