Gender and Political Speech on Facebook

By Coralie Le Caroff
English

This paper investigates ordinary speech about political affairs on Facebook and the role of gender as a distinctive factor in political expression. Women have been underrepresented in the public sphere throughout history, and they also tend to stay away from online discussion spaces devoted to public issues. They have now invested heavily in Facebook, which was originally designed and adopted for private use. We show that the informal format of online discussion on this device promotes shared ways for men and women to comment on political news in the media pages of this social network. We are witnessing forms of political expression that are less systematically gendered than those identified in the spaces specifically dedicated to public speech.

Keywords

  • Facebook
  • gender
  • political speech
  • news comment
  • online political talk
  • ethnographic online observation
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