Differential Debates on Economic Inequality – Comparing Perspectives on Marginalized vs. Dominant Groups

While economic inequality is growing across societies, the political salience of economic cleavages is declining, and perceived levels of economic inequality among the public do not match its objective levels. Marginalized gender, class, and ethnic groups are more economically marginalized than dominant groups, yet their perspectives and needs are traditionally underrepresented in public debate. Existing research identifies meritocracy as the primary ideology justifying inequalities. We expect that meritocratic principles applied to marginalized groups differ distinctively from those applied to dominant groups. This study compares how ordinary people’s debates on economic inequality and meritocratic narratives therein differ concerning various gender, ethnic, and class groups. Previous research has primarily focused on debates among media and political elites. We propose a novel approach by examining political talk among ordinary individuals, which we consider crucial for understanding the gaps between objective inequality, perceived levels of inequality, and their thematization. We collected data from two large German subreddits on Reddit using RedditExtractoR in R. In R/r-de, a general political debate about German politics, we measure (1) the overall salience of economic inequality in political talk among ordinary people. In R/finanzen, which focuses on economic issues, we (2) analyze the specific sub-issues discussed in the context of economic inequality. Specifically, we investigate (3) the prevalence of marginalized gender, ethnic, and class groups in discussions on economic inequality across sub-issues, and (4) the differences in debates on economic inequality and meritocratic principles applied regarding marginalized gender, ethnic, and race groups. We use a dictionary-based approach to assess the overall salience of both economic inequality and marginalized groups and validate the results by human coding. We conduct a structural topic modeling of the discussions in r/finanzen to get at the financial sub-issues discussed and include the presence of gender, ethnicity, and race as covariates to examine differences in debates concerning marginalized groups. Our research offers new insights into how economic inequality is perceived and legitimized in wider societal context by shifting the focus from elite discourse. We distinguish debates by gender, ethnicity, and class, enhancing our understanding of the circumstances under which economic inequality is (de-)legitimized or (de-)thematized.