Populism and the Gender Gap: Comparing Digital Engagement with Populist and Non-populist Facebook Pa...

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Bibliographische Detailangaben
Beteiligte: Bobba, Giuliano, Cremonesi, Cristina, Mancosu, Moreno, Seddone, Antonella
In: The International Journal of Press/Politics, 23, 2018, 4, S. 458-475
veröffentlicht:
SAGE Publications
Medientyp: Artikel, E-Artikel

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Umfang: 458-475
ISSN: 1940-1612
1940-1620
DOI: 10.1177/1940161218787046
veröffentlicht in: The International Journal of Press/Politics
Sprache: Englisch
Schlagwörter:
Kollektion: SAGE Publications (CrossRef)
Inhaltsangabe

<jats:p> This paper clarifies whether and to what extent populist communication could drive different gender-oriented reactions. We adopted an original research design intending Facebook as a natural environment where investigating the interaction between social media users and populist and non-populist parties. Our case selection considers three countries falling into the pluralist polarized media system: France, Italy, and Spain. A human content analysis was carried out on a sample of 2,235 Facebook posts published during thirty days in 2016 by the four main parties/leaders in each country. An original algorithm allowed to identify the gender of users liking each message. We tested whether men tend more to provide likes to messages posted by populist parties, messages published by radical populists, messages containing populist contents, and different components of populist messages. Findings confirm the existence of a gender-oriented reaction to populism: Men tend to support populist actors and parties on Facebook more than women do, by providing likes to their content. Yet the difference in gender gap between radical and moderate parties is not significant. We also found that the antielite component of populist discourse obtains more likes by male Facebook users. This pattern is common for both populist and non-populist parties. </jats:p>