We investigate the Twitter activity of all congressional candidates leading up to the 2012 U.S. House elections to assess whether there are significant differences in the tone and content of the tweets from male and female candidates. We argue that the electoral environment will have a significant effect over whether candidates engage in negative tweeting, address political issues, and discuss so-called “women’s issues” on Twitter. We find that gender has both a direct and contextual effect on candidates’ communication style on Twitter. Female candidates tweet significantly more “attack-style” messages than their male counterparts, discuss policy issues at a significantly higher rate, and women representatives focus more on “women’s issues.” We also find strong contextual effects in races with more female candidates: There is significantly more tweeting about political issues as well as significantly more negative attack-style tweets. However, with more female candidates, the number of tweets about “women’s issues” declines.
AnziaS. F.BerryC. R. (2011). The Jackie (and Jill) Robinson effect: Why do congresswomen outperform congressmen?American Journal of Political Science, 55, 478-493.
2.
AppletonA.WardD. (1997). Party response to environmental change. Party Politics, 3, 341-362.
3.
Box-SteffensmeierJ. M.DeBoefS.LinT. (2004). The dynamics of the partisan gender gap. American Political Science Review, 98, 515-528.
4.
BradenM. (1996). Women politicians and the media. Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky.
5.
BrattonK. A. (2002). The effect of legislative diversity on agenda setting: Evidence from six state legislatures. American Politics Research, 30, 115-142.
6.
BrooksD. J. (2011). Testing the double standard for candidate emotionality: Voter reactions to the tears and anger of male and female politicians. The Journal of Politics, 73, 596-615.
7.
BrownC.HeighbergerN. R.ShocketP. A. (1993). Gender-based differences in perceptions of male and female city council candidates. Women & Politics, 13, 1-17.
8.
BurrellB. (1994). A woman’s place is in the house: Campaigning for congress in the feminist era. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
9.
BystromD. G.BanwartM. C.KaidL. L.RobertsonT. A. (2004). Gender and candidate communication: Videostyle, webstyle, and newsstyle. New York, NY: Routledge.
10.
CarrollS. J. (1994). The politics of difference: Women public officials as agents of change. Policy Review, 5, 11-20.
11.
CookE. A. (1998). Voter reaction to women candidates. In ThomasS.WilcoxC. (Eds.), Women and elective office (pp. 56-72). New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
12.
DeitchC. (1988). Sex differences in support for government spending. In MuellerC. M. (Ed.), The politics of the gender gap: The social construction of political influence (pp. 192-216). Newbury Park, CA: Sage.
13.
DodsonD. L. (1998). Representing women’s interests in the U.S. house of representatives. In ThomasS.WilcoxC. (Eds.), Women and elective office (pp. 130-149). New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
14.
DodsonD. L.CarrollS. J. (1991). Reshaping the agenda: Women in state legislatures. New Brunswick, NJ: Center for the American Woman and Politics.
15.
DolanJ. (1998). Support for women’s interests in the 103rd congress: The distinct impact of congressional women. Women & Politics, 18, 81-84.
16.
DolanJ. (2010). The impact of gendered stereotyped evaluations on support for women candidates. Political Behavior, 32, 69-88.
17.
DolanK. (2005). Do women candidates play to stereotypes? Do men candidates play to women? Candidate sex and issues priorities on campaign websites. Political Research Quarterly, 58(1), 31-44.
18.
DunawayJ.LawrenceR. G.RoseM.WeberC. R. (2013). Traits versus issues: How female candidates shape coverage of senate and gubernatorial races. Political Research Quarterly, 66, 715-726.
19.
EvansH. K.CordovaV.SipoleS. (2014). Twitter style: An analysis of how house candidates used twitter in their 2012 campaigns. PS: Political Science and Politics, 47, 454-462.
20.
FinkelS.GeerJ. (1998). A spot check: Casting doubt on the demobilizing effect of attack advertising. American Journal of Political Science, 42, 573-595.
21.
FoxR. L. (1997). Gender dynamics in congressional elections. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
22.
FridkinK. L.KenneyP. J. (2009). The role of gender stereotypes in U.S. senate campaigns. Politics & Gender, 5, 301-324.
23.
FridkinK. L.KenneyP. J.WoodallG. S. (2009). Bad for men, better for women: The impact of stereotypes during political campaigns. Political Behavior, 31, 53-77.
24.
FultonS. A.MaestasC. D.MaiselL. S.StoneW. J. (2006). The sense of a woman: Gender, ambition, and the decision to run for congress. Political Research Quarterly, 59, 235-248.
25.
GainousJ.WagnerK. M. (2014). Tweeting to power: The social media revolution in American politics. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
26.
GordonA.ShafieD. M.CriglerA. N. (2003). Is negative advertising effective for female candidates? An experiment in voters’ uses of gender stereotypes. Harvard International Journal of Press/Politics, 8, 35-53.
27.
GueorguievaV. (2008). Voters, MySpace, and YouTube: The impact of alternative communication channels on the 2006 election cycle and beyond. Social Science Computer Review, 26(3), 288-300.
28.
HargittaiE.LittE. (2011). The tweet smell of celebrity success: Explaining variation in twitter adoption among a diverse group of young adults. New Media & Society, 13, 824-842.
29.
HendricksJ. A. (2014). The new-media campaign of 2012. In DentonR. E.Jr. (Ed.), The 2012 presidential campaign (pp. 133-156). Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.
30.
HerrnsonP. S.LayJ. C.StokesA. K. (2003). Women running “as women”: Candidate gender, campaign issues, and voter-targeting strategies. The Journal of Politics, 65, 244-255.
31.
HerrnsonP. S.LucasJ. C. (2006). The fairer sex? Gender and negative campaigning in U.S. elections. American Politics Research, 34, 69-94.
32.
HitchonJ. C.ChangC. (1995). Effects of gender schematic processing on the reception of political commercials for men and women candidates. Communication Research, 22, 430-458.
33.
HuddyL.TerkildsenN. (1993). The consequences of gender stereotypes for women candidates at different levels and types of offices. Political Research Quarterly, 46, 503-525.
34.
JamiesonK. H. (1995). Beyond the double bind: Women and leadership. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
35.
JohnsonJ. (2012). Twitter Bites and Romney: Examining the rhetorical situation of the 2012 presidential election in 140 characters. Journal of Contemporary Rhetoric, 2, 54-64.
36.
JohnsonT. J.PerlmutterD. D. (2010). Introduction: The Facebook election. Mass Communication and Society, 13, 554-599.
37.
KahnK. F. (1993). Gender differences in campaign messages: The political advertisements of men and women candidates for U.S. Senate. Political Research Quarterly, 46, 481-502.
38.
KahnK. F. (1996). The political consequences of being a woman. New York, NY: Columbia University Press.
39.
KahnK. F.GoldenbergE. N. (1991). Women candidates in the news: An examination of gender differences in U.S. Senate campaign coverage. Public Opinion Quarterly, 55, 180-199.
40.
KahnK. F.GordonA. (1997). How women campaign for the U.S. Senate: Substance and strategy. In NorrisP. (Ed.), Women, media, and politics (pp. 59-76). New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
41.
KarpfD. (2012). The move-on effect. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
42.
KaufmannK. M.PetrocikJ. R. (1999). The changing politics of American men: Understanding the sources of the gender gap. American Journal of Political Science, 43, 864-887.
43.
KelleyJ.McAllistarI. (1983). The electoral consequences of gender in Australia. British Journal of Political Science, 13, 365-377.
44.
KingJ. D.McConnellJ. B. (2003). The effect of negative campaign advertising on vote choice: The mediating influence of gender. Social Science Quarterly, 84, 843-857.
45.
KochJ. (1999). Candidate gender and assessments of women candidates. Social Science Quarterly, 80, 84-96.
46.
KochJ. (2000). Do citizens apply gender stereotypes to infer candidates’ ideological orientations?Journal of Politics, 62, 414-429.
47.
La Cour DabelkoK.HerrnsonP. S. (1997). Women’s and men’s campaigns for the US house of representatives. Political Research Quarterly, 50, 121-135.
48.
LarsonS. G. (2001). Running as women? A comparison of female and male Pennsylvania assembly candidates’ brochures. Women & Politics, 22, 107-124.
49.
LauR. R.PomperG. M. (2004). Negative campaigning: An analysis of U.S. senate elections. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.
50.
LauR. R.RovnerI. B. (2009). Negative campaigning. Annual Review of Political Science, 12, 285-306.
51.
LauR. R.SigelmanL.RovnerI. B. (2007). The effects of negative political campaigns: A meta-analytic reassessment. The Journal of Politics, 69, 1176-1209.
52.
LawlessJ. L. (2004). Women, war, and winning elections: Gender stereotyping in the post September 11th era. Political Research Quarterly, 57, 479-490.
53.
LawlessJ. L.FoxR. L. (2005). It takes a candidate: Why women don’t run for office. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.
54.
LawlessJ. L.PearsonK. (2008). The primary reason for women’s underrepresentation? Reevaluating the conventional wisdom. The Journal of Politics, 70, 67-82.
55.
LeeperM. S. (1991). The impact of prejudice on female candidates: An experimental look at voter inference. American Politics Research, 19, 248-261.
LongJ. S. (1997). Regression models for categorical and limited dependent variables. Advanced quantatitive techniques in the social sciences vol. 7. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
58.
LowiT. (1963). Toward functionalism in political science: The case of innovation in party systems. American Political Science Review, 57, 570-583.
59.
MarwickA. E.Boydd. (2011). I tweet honestly, I tweet passionately: Twitter users, context collapse, and the Imagined audience. New Media & Society, 13, 114-133.
60.
MetzgarE.MaruggiA. (2009). Social media and the 2008 U.S. presidential election. Journal of New Communications Research, 4, 141-165.
61.
MolinariS. (1998). Representative mom: Balanced budgets, bill, and baby in the U.S. Congress. New York, NY: Doubleday.
62.
PageB. I.ShapiroR. Y. (1992). The rational public: Fifty years of trends in Americans’ policy preferences. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
63.
ParmeleeJ. H.BichardS. L. (2012). Politics and the Twitter revolution. Lanham, MD: Lexington.
64.
PetrocikJ. R. (1996). Issue ownership in presidential elections, with a 1980 case study. American Journal of Political Science, 40, 825-850.
65.
ReingoldB. (2000). Representing women: Sex, gender, and legislative behavior in Arizona and California. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.
66.
RosenbergG. (1991). The hollow hope: Can courts bring about social change?Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
67.
RosenwasserS. M.SealeJ. (1988). Attitudes toward a hypothetical male or female presidential candidate: A research note. Political Psychology, 9, 591-598.
68.
RudmanL. A. (1998). Self-promotion as a risk factor for women: The costs and benefits of counterstereotypical impression management. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 74, 629-645.
69.
SanbonmatsuK. (2002). Gender stereotypes and vote choice. American Journal of Political Science, 46, 20-34.
70.
SellersP. J. (1998). Strategy and background in congressional campaigns. American Political Science Review, 92, 159-172.
71.
SeltzerR.NewmanJ.LeightonM. V. (1997). Sex as a political variable: Women as candidates and voters in U.S. elections. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner.
72.
ShapiroR. Y.MahajanH. (1986). Gender differences in policy preferences: A summary of trends from the 1960s to the 1980s. Public Opinion Quarterly, 50, 42-61.
73.
SmithA.RainieL. (2010). Who tweets?Washington, DC: Pew Research Center.
SwersM. (2002). The difference women make: The policy impact of women in congress. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
76.
TarrowS. (1998). Power in movement. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.
77.
ThomasS. (1991). The impact of women on state legislative policies. Journal of Politics, 53, 958-976.
78.
ThomasS. (1994). How women legislate. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
79.
TrentJ. S.FriedenbergR. V. (2008). Political campaign communication: Principles and practices. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.
80.
TrumanD. (1951). The governmental process: Political interests and public opinion. New York, NY: Alfred A. Knopf.
81.
WirlsD. (1986). Reinterpreting the gender gap. Public Opinion Quarterly, 50, 316-330.
82.
WittL.PagetK. M.MatthewsG. (1994). Running as a woman: Gender and power in American politics. New York, NY: The Free Press.
83.
WolbrechtC. (2000). The politics of women’s rights: Parties, positions, and change. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Supplementary Material
Please find the following supplemental material available below.
For Open Access articles published under a Creative Commons License, all supplemental material carries the same license as the article it is associated with.
For non-Open Access articles published, all supplemental material carries a non-exclusive license, and permission requests for re-use of supplemental material or any part of supplemental material shall be sent directly to the copyright owner as specified in the copyright notice associated with the article.
