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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Polit. Sci.
Sec. Politics of Technology
Volume 6 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fpos.2024.1457020
This article is part of the Research Topic Leadership, politics and society in the digital age View all articles

Digital Political Communication through a Gender Lens: Discourses, Themes, and Inclusive Language. A Case Study of Two Gender-Balanced Elections in Andalusia: 2018 and 2022

Provisionally accepted
Juana María Ruiloba - Núñez Juana María Ruiloba - Núñez 1*Maria Goenaga Ruiz de Zuazu Maria Goenaga Ruiz de Zuazu 2
  • 1 Universidad Pablo de Olavide, Sevilla, Spain
  • 2 Department of Applied Sociology, Faculty of Media and Communication, Complutense University of Madrid, Madrid, Spain

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Our main goal is to examine electoral political communication on social media platforms through a gender perspective. We analyse the messages posted on X (formerly Twitter) by candidates during the last two election campaigns in Andalusia. With a total sample of 2,196 posts, we applied quantitative content analysis and binary logistic regression, in addition to qualitative discourse analysis to a subset of the sample. We aim to identify how, where, when and by whom issues pertaining to women as a collective, feminism, gender, or the use of egalitarian language are introduced into two campaigns characterised by gender-balanced representation of candidates. Our findings indicate a limited use of inclusive language and infrequent foregrounding of women in discourse. Nonetheless, gender is a significant explanatory factor for a more inclusive communication style towards women, alongside an explicit emphasis on addressing policies affecting women.

    Keywords: political communication, gender, Inclusive language, electoral campaigns, x

    Received: 29 Jun 2024; Accepted: 09 Aug 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Ruiloba - Núñez and Goenaga Ruiz de Zuazu. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Juana María Ruiloba - Núñez, Universidad Pablo de Olavide, Sevilla, Spain

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