Tweeting through the glas ceiling

Tweeting through the glas ceiling

Prof. Dr. Eva-Maria Euchner (Teilprojektleitung)

Prof. Dr. Daniela Braun (Universität des Saarlandes) (Teilprojektleitung)

Dr. Rosa M. Navarrete (Universität des Saarlandes)

Dr. Sanja Hajdinjak (ehem. Ludwig-Maximilians Universität)

11/2021 –

Social media has been considered as the great equalizer for social inequalities such as gender and social class. Nonetheless, in particular gender inequalities seem to be quite persistent there: the usage of social media in political communication produces similar gender imbalances compared to pre-digital times. A systematic comparative approach across different (European) political systems, however, is still lacking. We contribute to fill this research gap by studying how politicians all over Europe use Twitter (online presence and activity levels) in the 2019 election campaigns to the European Parliament (EP). We rely on the novel ‘Twitter in the 2019 EP election campaigns dataset’ in combination with individual, party- as well as country-level contextual data as along with qualitative interviews to investigate the impact of structure and gender identity on MEPs Twitter behavior. Our findings show that party and societal country characteristics cannot explain differences in online campaigning among European politicians, but gender identity and resource availability for campaigning. In details, female identity, (low) list placement and little political experience seems to reduce the chance of campaigning via a Twitter account. Yet, activity levels on Twitter (i.e. how often they post) seem not to be shaped by gender identity but other factors associated with the available resources to run an election campaign (i.e., incumbency and list placement). In other words, it looks like as when female politicians have decided to campaign online despite increased risks of online harassment, they seems to be equally active as their male counterpart. These findings enhance our understanding of the hurdles of gender equality in European politics by pointing to the promotion of gender equality in the very early stage of campaigning.

LMU Nachwuchsförderungsfond