The role of gender in online campaigning: Swedish candidate’s motives and use of social media during the European election 2014

Social media provides a unique opportunity for politicians to control their message. It enables politicians to make statements about different events, add interpretation or make comments. Through social media politicians can thus control their self-image and do not have to rely on how media portraits them. The use of social media has also altered traditional campaign tactics to avoid traditional media outlets as they often filter and interpret the campaign message. In this study we address the importance of gender and how politicians use social media platforms for campaigning purposes. More specifically, the role of gender and social media is tested using survey data on the Swedish candidates and behavioral data from Twitter during the European election 2014. The findings show gender related patterns in how candidates assess the usefulness of social media as a campaign tool. Female candidates tend to value social media to a greater extent and evaluate their use more positively than male candidates. Thus, social media seems to be providing a more favorable platform for female politicians. Given that studies in recent years found decreasing gender differences in campaign strategies, the findings of this paper suggest that the role of gender must be studied to a greater extent in online political communication and campaigning.