Sit Still, Talk Pretty: Partisan Differences Among Women Candidates’ Campaign Appeals

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1 Scopus citations

Abstract

Women running for Congress make different choices from men about how to connect with constituents on social media, and the increasing number of women running for Congress from both parties suggests that further assessment of the gendered patterns of emotional appeals is needed. We use this opportunity to assess the joint influence of gender and partisanship on patterns of emotional appeals, showing how party moderates the distinct appeals women candidates make on social media. We use a dictionary-based computational approach to catalog congressional candidates’ emotional rhetoric on Twitter during the 2020 election year, finding Republican women use more joyful appeals and fewer angry appeals compared to both Republican men and Democratic women, suggesting a gap in emotive appeals and differing expectations for how women communicate that varies with party. Our results underscore the importance of accounting for relative partisanship in developing a more nuanced explanation of how and when women adopt stereotypical styles of campaign communication as the number of Republican women running for Congress continues to increase.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)354-370
Number of pages17
JournalJournal of Women, Politics and Policy
Volume44
Issue number3
DOIs
StatePublished - 2023

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2023 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.

Keywords

  • Congress
  • Twitter
  • gender

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Gender Studies
  • Sociology and Political Science

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