Gender, leadership styles, and electoral campaigns on Twitter: Andalusia's regional elections 2018

Abstract

The aim of this article is to apply a gender perspective to reflect on political leadership and the communication style deployed on Twitter (1078 tweets) during Andalusia’s 2018 electoral campaign. By means of quantitative content analysis, we examine possible gender gaps. The data collected show that women politicians display a particular communicative style and are more visible on social media, putting women’s issues on the agenda and employing a strong, personalistic leadership style close to party organizations in their territories. Further analysis is possible, exploring whether our framework of analysis and conclusions for regional elections in Andalusia can be transferred or can explain similar dynamics in other realities or whether, in contrast, institutional or contextual variables define the political communications of leaders.

electoral campaigns; political communication; gender; political leadership; Twitter