Three Dimensions of Gendered Online Abuse: Analyzing Swedish MPs’ Experiences of Social Media

Abstract

Women’s political representation has increased rapidly in the past few decades, but significant barriers continue to circumscribe women’s political participation in a myriad of ways. Previous research has indicated that online abuse constitutes one such obstacle. Yet, only a small number of studies have systematically examined and compared the experiences of online abuse of men and women politicians. We argue that it is not enough to merely state that online abuse is gendered if we wish to understand and tackle such abuse: it is essential to know how it is gendered. In this article we conceptualize gendered online abuse in terms of three dimensions—frequency, character, and consequences—so that we can provide a more comprehensive empirical understanding of its prevalence. Using original survey data and interviews with a large number of Swedish MPs, we demonstrate the merit of unpacking the concept of such abuse in respect to different analytical dimensions. We find all three dimensions to be gendered in the Swedish context but in different and sometimes unexpected ways. Although women do not experience a higher frequency of online abuse than men, the character of the abuse is gendered insofar as women MPs are subjected to more sexualized and gendered harassment. We also find that men exposed to high levels of online abuse seem slightly more inclined to leave politics, whereas women report that they feel that their personal agency is circumscribed to a greater extent.

Polarizing publics in Twitter through organic targeting tactics of political incivility

“…These findings suggest that uncivil targeting tactics make it much more challenging for women politicians to engage in online political activities as compared to men. Furthermore, anecdotal as well as systematic evidence suggests that some politicians choose to close down their social media accounts as a result of abuse, limit their presence in social media by self-censoring themselves, and by avoiding interacting with other users, or even choose to stand down as MPs (e.g., see Gorrell et al, 2020;Ward and McLoughlin, 2020;Erikson et al, 2021).…”

Explaining Citizen Hostility against Women Political Leaders: A Survey Experiment in the United States and Sweden

“…Relatedly, the fact that the type of hostility investigated here is not gendered in its form may also influence the results. HS and negative attitudes to women politicians may be a more pronounced driver of hostility that is explicitly gendered, such as sexualized comments and threats or sexist memes (see, e.g., Erikson, Håkansson, and Josefsson 2021;. Exploring attitudes to various forms of hostility against women and men politicians is an important task for future research.…”

“…Hostility against women politicians is seldom phrased in positive words, but often resonates with benevolent sexism's characterization of women as weak and best suited to caring roles. Women politicians frequently describe experiencing gender-denigrating harassment that diminishes their political competence while emphasizing their appearance and roles as mothers, wives, and sexual partners (Bardall 2013;Erikson, Håkansson, and Josefsson 2021;Krook and Sanín 2016a;Kuperberg 2021).…”

“…The research field on gendered violence against politicians is dominated by studies carried out from the perspectives of politicians: focusing on how prevalent the problem is, who the most likely targets are, and what impacts these attacks have on ambition, for example. Previous research has demonstrated that powerful and visible women are at a heightened risk of violence compared to their male counterparts (Håkansson 2021;Rheault, Rayment, and Musulan 2019) and that sexualized and gender-denigrating slurs overwhelmingly target women (Bjarnegård 2021;Bjarnegård, Håkansson, and Zetterberg 2022;Erikson, Håkansson, and Josefsson 2021;Ward and McLoughlin 2020). Furthermore, previous studies have found depressed ambition (Herrick and Franklin 2019) and disrupted campaign activities among women targeted by violence in politics (Collignon and Rüdig 2021).…”

The Gendered Representational Costs of Violence against Politicians

“…Using the representation framework reveals a broad range of gendered costs of violence against politicians. While previous studies have focused on violence making women leave politics (Bjarnegård, Håkansson, and Zetterberg 2022;Erikson, Håkansson, and Josefsson 2021;Herrick and Franklin 2019), this is the first to add politician ideals as a mechanism that can deter women's descriptive representation. I find that violence against politicians enforces masculine coded ideals such as A list of permanent links to Supplemental Materials provided by the author precedes the References section.…”