Online Misogyny Against Female Candidates in the 2022 Brazilian Elections: A Threat to Women's Political Representation?

Fuente: arXiv
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Hauptverfasser: Koch, Luise, Ghawi, Raji, Pfeffer, Jürgen, Steinert, Janina Isabel
Format: Preprint
Veröffentlicht: 2024
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author Koch, Luise
Ghawi, Raji
Pfeffer, Jürgen
Steinert, Janina Isabel
author_facet Koch, Luise
Ghawi, Raji
Pfeffer, Jürgen
Steinert, Janina Isabel
contents Technology-facilitated gender-based violence has become a global threat to women's political representation and democracy. Understanding how online hate affects its targets is thus paramount. We analyse 10 million tweets directed at female candidates in the Brazilian election in 2022 and examine their reactions to online misogyny. Using a self-trained machine learning classifier to detect Portuguese misogynistic tweets and a quantitative analysis of the candidates' tweeting behaviour, we investigate how the number of misogynistic attacks received alters the online activity of the female candidates. We find that young and left-wing candidates and candidates with higher visibility online received significantly more attacks. Furthermore, we find that an increase in misogynistic attacks in the previous week is associated with a decrease in female candidates' tweets in the following week. This potentially threatens their equal participation in public opinion building and silences women's voices in political discourse.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2403_07523
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Online Misogyny Against Female Candidates in the 2022 Brazilian Elections: A Threat to Women's Political Representation?
Koch, Luise
Ghawi, Raji
Pfeffer, Jürgen
Steinert, Janina Isabel
Social and Information Networks
Technology-facilitated gender-based violence has become a global threat to women's political representation and democracy. Understanding how online hate affects its targets is thus paramount. We analyse 10 million tweets directed at female candidates in the Brazilian election in 2022 and examine their reactions to online misogyny. Using a self-trained machine learning classifier to detect Portuguese misogynistic tweets and a quantitative analysis of the candidates' tweeting behaviour, we investigate how the number of misogynistic attacks received alters the online activity of the female candidates. We find that young and left-wing candidates and candidates with higher visibility online received significantly more attacks. Furthermore, we find that an increase in misogynistic attacks in the previous week is associated with a decrease in female candidates' tweets in the following week. This potentially threatens their equal participation in public opinion building and silences women's voices in political discourse.
title Online Misogyny Against Female Candidates in the 2022 Brazilian Elections: A Threat to Women's Political Representation?
topic Social and Information Networks
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2403.07523