If you survive Deutsche Bahn, I'm gonna buy you not one but two coffees!

The broader goal: to map how gender shapes political communication on social media - from who posts, to what they post, to how citizens respond. Stay tuned! 🚀

This paper is only the first step. Next up:

🔎 A content analysis of 250,000+ social media posts → do women & men post differently?
🧪 A survey experiment with AI-generated images → how do voters react to different communication styles?

Taken together, our findings complicate sweeping claims that digital media either flatten or entrench power hierarchies. In routine times, Twitter/X does not widen gender gaps, but neither does it dramatically close them.

Results (unexpected!):

❌ No significant gender differences
❌ No systematic cross-country variation

Do two forces cancel each other out? Equalization (women gain access) vs. Normalization (established actors’ resources & algorithms) + hostile online environments may still deter women’s activity.

Hypotheses:

▶️Women politicians are more likely to adopt
▶️Women politicians are more active users
▶️Gender gaps are larger in countries where women hold less political power

📊 The data: 1,246 MPs in Finland, Belgium, Germany & Ireland → 4 countries with different levels of political power for women

I collected whether each MP had a Twitter/X account and measured their activity (Tweets, Quote Tweets and reactions) for the whole year of 2022.

Unlike most studies (which focus on campaigns), I looked at non-election times - the everyday politics that shape reputations & long-term visibility.

Why this matters:

Traditional media & party gatekeepers restrict women’s visibility. Social media has been hailed as a possible equalizer. But does it really level the playing field?

This was a great course, Amélie! Really learned a lot 😊

Any questions? Reach out to us!

@merelfieremans.bsky.social, @annevanbavel.bsky.social, @margotthewis.bsky.social