Male and female politicians on Twitter: A machine learning approach

How does the language of male and female politicians differ when they communicate directly with the public on social media? Do citizens address them differently? We apply Lasso logistic regression models to identify the linguistic features that most differentiate the language used by or addressed to male and female Spanish politicians. Male politicians use more words related to politics, sports, ideology, and infrastructure, while female politicians talk about gender and social affairs. The choice of emojis varies greatly across genders. In a novel analysis of tweets written by citizens, we find evidence of gender-specific insults, and note that mentions of physical appearance and infantilizing words are disproportionately found in text addressed to female politicians. The results suggest that politicians conform to gender stereotypes online and reveal ways in which citizens treat politicians differently depending on their gender.We gratefully acknowledge financial support from the Spanish Ministry for the Economy, Industry and Competitiveness (grant CSO2016-79569-P).Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft