Gender Aspects of Online Political Toxicity

Why are women politicians experiencing more online political toxicity? Previous research has found that female politicians are targeted by insults, threats, and general incivility on social media to a higher degree than their male colleagues are. However, there is little evidence about the conditions under which women and men representatives are treated differently when doing politics online. Is this related to differences in who they are (the candidate characteristics hypothesis) or to differences in how they behave on social media (the behavioural hypothesis)? This research note presents novel empirical evidence beyond the Anglophone context. Drawing on a full sample of candidates’ campaign activities on Twitter in the run-up to the 2021 German national election, it analyses toxicity in over 13,000 Twitter conversations (comprising over 800,000 single tweets) between citizens and political candidates. I estimate how the toxicity of replies varies by candidate characteristics such as gender, party, and incumbency status as well as by tweet tone and topic. The results suggest that replies to women candidates' tweets are significantly more toxic than the ones sent to their male colleagues. Gender effects vary and are partly explained by politicians' party affiliation and incumbency status, as well as by candidate tweets' topic and tone.