Chicks Who Tweet: Gender and Patterns of Issue Attention on Twitter

• In Event: The 2022 U.S. Midterm Elections on Twitter

Abstract

Research in traditional campaign communication has shown that women and men discuss different political issues when they run for Congress. Due to stereotyping, women are typecast as candidates who care about specific issues more than others. These so-called “women’s issues” revolve around topics like healthcare, education, welfare, and women’s reproductive rights, while men tend to focus on issues like taxes, trade, war, and the economy. We review the work on “women’s issues” and present a list of the topics that we believe define “women’s issues.” We then track the number of women’s issues discussed on Twitter from 2012 to 2022 and show that women are more likely to discuss these topics than men. Furthermore, we present a list of “men’s issues” and also show that women are also more likely to discuss those on Twitter.

Authors

• Jennifer Hayes Clark, University of Houston

• Heather Evans, University of Virginia's College at Wise