Gender-Related Differences in Online Comment Sections: Findings From a Large-Scale Content Analysis of Commenting Behavior

Abstract

Comment sections below news articles are public fora in which potentially everyone can engage in equal and fair discussions on political and social issues. Yet, empirical studies have reported that many comment sections are spaces of selective participation, discrimination, and verbal abuse. The current study complements these findings by analyzing gender-related differences in participation and incivility. It uses a sample of 303,342 user comments from 14 German news media Facebook pages. We compare participation rates of female and male users as well as associations between the users’ gender, the incivility of their comments, and the incivility of the adjacent replies. To determine the incivility of the comments, we developed a Supervised Machine Learning Model (classifier) using pre-trained word embeddings and word// frequency features. The findings show that, overall, women participate less than men. Comments written by female authors are more civil than comments written by male authors. Women’s comments do not receive more uncivil replies than men’s comments and women are not punished disproportionately for communicating uncivilly. These findings contribute to the discourse on gender-related differences in online comment sections and provide insights into the dynamics of online discussions.

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“…On the contrary, women are more expressive, polite, and tentative in conversation, preferring to hold back their concerns and avoid interrupting others. Gender-related differences are evident in online communication (e.g., Küchler et al, 2022) as men tend to assert their presence by being more individualistic while women are found to be more intimate and feel a communal and connective bond, consequently talking about the common issues rather than their grievances (Rovai & Baker, 2005).…”

Perceived gender and political persuasion: a social media field experiment during the 2020 US Democratic presidential primary election

“…Women’s contributions can be discounted through subtle behaviors such as interrupting women when they speak 8 , 44 , 45 , not giving women credit for their ideas or equal work 46 , or mansplaining in online discourse 47 . While women may not be more likely than men to be targets of incivility online 48 , 49 , the experience of online harassment has a depressive effect on women’s future participation in online discourse 48 , 50 . Over time, these processes systematically undervalue the contributions of women 51 and make it more difficult for women to succeed in politics and other leadership roles 30 .…”

“…In politics, women have lower levels of self-confidence 61 , are more likely to avoid conversations that might lead to confrontation 62 , 63 , and are less likely to try to influence the votes of others 9 or correct their views 64 . Specifically in online environments, women are less likely to comment on news sites or post about politics 49 , 64 , 65 . This limits the scope of women’s influence in political disagreements 66 , their participation in politics 67 , and their ambitions to seek office 68 , 69 .…”

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“…Women's contributions can be discounted through subtle behaviors such as interrupting women when they speak (8,44,45), not giving women credit for their ideas or equal work (46), or mansplaining in online discourse (47). While women are not more likely than men to be targets of incivility online (48,49), the experience of online harassment has a depressive effect on women's future participation in online discourse (48). Over time, these processes system-3 atically undervalue the contributions of women (50) and make it more difficult for women to succeed in politics and other leadership roles (30).…”

“…In politics, women have lower levels of self-confidence (60), are more likely to avoid conversations that might lead to confrontation (61,62), and are less likely to try to influence the votes of others (9) or correct their views (63). Specifically in online environments, women are less likely to comment on news sites or post about politics (49,63,64).…”