Gender Differences in the Use of New Technologies: Campaigning and Engagement in the European Elections

Previous gender and politics research suggests that political mobilisation by female candidates can reduce gender gap in political attitudes and engagement. These conclusions, however, are drawn from studies that focus on traditional campaigning tools and modes of political engagement only, thus far largely ignoring digital campaigning and on-line political participation. To fill this gap in the literature, this paper investigates, on one hand, the extent to which male and female candidates differ in their adoption of digital campaign tools and, on the other hand, the gender gap across the European population in new media use. Furthermore, the paper aims to assess whether on-line campaigning by female candidates contributes to reducing the gender gap in political engagement. Specifically, it addresses the role of age in determining variation in usage as well as in electioneering. The effects of gender are expected to be conditioned by age with regard to the former as well as to the latter. This contention is tested on data from EB 76.3 (2011) for the general population usage and engagement side and on the European Candidates Study 2009 on the candidate component.