Twitter to Yell at Them, Facebook to Ask Questions and Instagram to Show Support? Exploring Platform Effects in Responses to Women Politicians On Social Media

Previous research has shown that women politicians are often subject to more incivility, hate speech, and sexualized abuse on social media. Until now, studies tend to analyze one platform, and there has been no research to establish whether these experiences are the same across different platforms. This study deploys a two-stage design to isolate a platform effect in online incivility and abuse. We selected 18 women politicians from a range of UK political parties because they shared identical posts across three platforms – Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. We collected all identical posts and replies to them, across each platform. The replies were content analyzed for elements of incivility and legitimate criticism but also for support and respectful responses. Multi-level binary logistic models were run on these data to assess platform effect, controlling for party and whether the original post mentioned a gendered topic. The replies were then subject to a qualitative analysis. The results showed a clear platform effect with Twitter being the source of the majority of uncivil, insulting and othering replies to women politicians. Twitter posts also received the least support and the fewest polite messages. Conversely, Instagram appeared to be less hostile. The platform had more polite interaction and a high proportion of supportive responses, accounting for well over half of all supportive responses across the sample.