Politics Online: Gender Aspects of Digital Participation and Representation

Abstract

Social media and the internet have become an important arena for political participation and representation. Doing politics in digital, and often gendered, spaces poses new challenges to both citizens and politicians. For instance, the gender dimensions of online hate, toxicity, and violence in the context of digital politics have emerged as a topic for investigation. The papers in this panel provide a comprehensive perspective into the gendered promises and pitfalls of online politics. The papers cover a wide range of methodological approaches, both quantitative and qualitative. They shed light on how citizens’ online political participation is affected by online toxicity and how politicians behave in gendered ways when conducting online campaigns. Several papers draw on the unique context of the COVID-19 pandemic, in which online spaces had a primary role as places for political discussions and campaigns and where actors from the alt-right made use of social media to distribute nativist narratives. Finally, the papers explore how citizens make use of online tools to contact, praise, and criticize politicians—and the extent to which these actions are gendered.

Title	Details
Tweeting hate and tweeting love: The COVID-19 pandemic and gender biases in citizen’s responses to US governors and health officials.	View Paper Details
The digital divide. Gender differences in online negative campaigning	View Paper Details
The cost of visibility: Gendered online hostility against French MPs	View Paper Details
A Web of Hate? The influence of online hate comments on gendered political participation on the internet	View Paper Details
Gender, nativism and militant wellness	View Paper Details