When do women tweet? An inter-parliamentary, multi-level analysis of gender representation on Twitter

Since Dahlerup (1988) introduced Critical Mass Theory (CMT) to political science questions of representation and gender effects in different politcal arenas have been scrutinized using CMT, for example recently for instruments like parliamentary speeches (Bäck and Debus 2019) or parliamentary questions (Devroe 2021). A step apart from these activities constrained by instutional rules are social networks such as Twitter. While Bäck and Debus ask "when do women speak?", this contribution asks "when do women tweet?" Are female MPs substantially represented on Twitter? Are there significant differences between their activity in comparison to male MPs, especially in their reception? The analysis surveys representation on Twitter of the members of German state parliaments (MPs). Using the 16 state parliaments (Landtage) as venue enables a research design that holds most cultural and societal variables stable, while introducing variance in the assemblies when it comes to the composition of parliaments and especially the parliamentary party groups (PPGs). This work presents a new data set of 973 Twitter accounts by 1731 members of all German state parliaments in 2021 and their subsequent Tweets and count of retweets. The analysis is prepared using as mixed effects model, to hold state and party stable. Indeed the analysis shows significant effects of the gender ratios of PPGs on Twitter activity by MPs, both male and female, while gender ratios found in the overall assemblies have no significant effect. This presents a twofold contribution to Critical Mass Theory by showing an account of significant critical mass effects, and at the same time the absence of such effects in a higher configuration of the same actors. Noteworthy, the same effect configuration is evident in the question of Twitter reception, here too the gender ratio significantly predicts the number of retweets. This research informs subsequent work on representation of MPs on Twitter and can be read as argument of focusing more on representation within the PPGs. It presents a novel base model for the German case and discusses a possible application of the analytical framework for a cross national and European perspective. It also lays the groundwork for further relational inference.