Gender and Political Communication Strategies

Abstract

This panel examines how gender shapes politicians' communication strategies and how those strategies in turn affect electoral success, representation, and polarisation. Across campaign advertising, parliamentary speech, and social media communication, the papers address how gendered expectations structure both the tone of political messaging and the substance of what politicians choose to emphasise. The panel brings together observational and causal approaches, combining large-scale text analyses with conjoint experiments on voter evaluations of communication style. Together, the papers analyse gendered negativity and incivility, men politicians' strategic attention to women’s issues, communication trade-offs for women candidates, and the institutional incentives that shape these dynamics.

Title	Details
Beyond the Campaign Trail: Gendered Patterns of Negativity and Issue Emphasis in Politicians’ Social Media Communication	View Paper Details
When the Spotlight’s On: Issue Salience and Men’s Conditional Representation of Women’s Interests	View Paper Details
Can Precision Help Women Candidates? Communication Style and Gendered Issue Competence Stereotypes	View Paper Details
Negative, Personal, Uncivil: The Effect of Gender on Political Campaign Messaging	View Paper Details
Speaking Across Tiers: Gender, Communication, and Institutional Incentives in Mixed-Member Elections	View Paper Details