Feminism as a polarizing axis of the political conversation on Twitterthe case of #IreneMonteroDimision

  1. Patricia Durántez-Stolle 1
  2. Raquel Martínez Sanz 1
  3. Teresa Piñeiro Otero 2
  4. Salvador Gómez-García 3
  1. 1 Universidad de Valladolid
    info

    Universidad de Valladolid

    Valladolid, España

    ROR https://ror.org/01fvbaw18

  2. 2 Universidade da Coruña
    info

    Universidade da Coruña

    La Coruña, España

    ROR https://ror.org/01qckj285

  3. 3 Universidad Complutense de Madrid
    info

    Universidad Complutense de Madrid

    Madrid, España

    ROR 02p0gd045

Show affiliations +
Journal:
El profesional de la información

ISSN: 1386-6710,  1699-2407

Year of publication: 2023

Issue Title: Political polarization

Volume: 32

Issue: 6

Type: Article

DOI: 10.3145/EPI.2023.NOV.07 DIALNET GOOGLE SCHOLAR lock_openOpen access editor

More publications in: El profesional de la información

Sustainable development goals

Abstract

The fragmentation of the Spanish party system has led to a growing political polarization, particularly evident on the Internet. The discursive strategies of political actors online, combined with the particularities of communication on social media platforms such as the disinhibition effect, echo chambers, and filter bubbles, are likely to promote a state of tension among digital citizens. This tension is particularly pronounced in gender issues, which have become key positions of political parties, with convergence of sexism in the community and a highly reactive misogynistic online culture that turns female politicians into easy targets. Starting from the hashtag #IreneMonteroDimision, which conveys a paradigmatic criticism movement against the Spanish Minister of Equality, an analysis of the social conversation on Twitter is developed to determine its intentionality, tone, and orientation, as well as the themes and users that generated the most tension. In this way, multimodal content and discourse analysis is applied to the 418 tweets with the greatest interaction and explicitly directed at the minister. The hypothesis is that the criticism of Irene Montero goes beyond the management of her Ministry to place her at the center of a power struggle in which political ideology, hate speech, and antifeminism converge. The study has shown that attacks on Montero extend to the Executive and the feminist movement; they are promoted by a mass of politicized and polarized profiles, with constant activism and a tendency towards contagious replication of messages. These practices, as well as the participation of artificial profiles, allow us to appreciate signs of astroturfing; behind this seemingly natural critical reaction, there are orchestrated movements of antifeminist and far-right profiles (gender trolling), but also of trans-exclusionary feminists opposed to legislation promoted by Montero.

Bibliographic References

  • Aladro, Eva; Requeijo, Paula (2020). “Discurso, estrategia e interacciones de Vox en su cuenta oficial de Instagram en las elecciones del 28-A. Derecha radical y redes sociales”. Revista latina de comunicación social, n. 77, pp. 203-229. https://doi.org/10.4185/RLCS-2020-1455
  • Allcott, Hunt; Gentzkow, Matthew (2017). “Social media and fake news in the 2016 election”. Journal of economic pespectives, v. 31, n. 2, pp. 211-236. https://doi.org/ 10.1257/jep.31.2.211
  • Arranz, Laura (2022). “El marco de la ‘ideología de género’ en el discurso de Vox”. Revista más poder local, v. 40, pp. 10-25. https://doi.org/10.1257.56151/maspoderlocal.107
  • Arroyo-Menéndez, Millán (2020). “Las causas del apoyo electoral a Vox en España”. Política y sociedad, v. 57, n. 3, pp. 693-717. https://doi.org/10.5209/poso.69206
  • Barberá, Pablo; Jost, John T.; Nagler, Jonathan; Tucker, Joshya A; Bonneau, Richard (2015). “Tweeting from left to right: Is online political communication more than an echo chamber?”. Psychological science, v. 26, pp. 1531-1542. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797615594620
  • Bellovary, Andrea K.; Young, Nathaniel A.; Goldenberg, Amit (2021). “Left-and right-leaning news organizations use negative emotional content and elicit user engagement similarly”. Affective science, v. 2, n. 4, pp. 391-396. https://doi.org/10.07/s42761-021-00046-w
  • Beltran, Javier; Gallego, Ana; Huidobro, Alba; Romero, Enrique; Padró, Lluís (2020). “Male and female politicians on Twitter: A machine learning approach”. European journal of political research, v. 60, n. 1, pp. 239-251. https://doi.org/10.1111/1475-6765.12392
  • Blanco-Alfonso, Ignacio; Rodríguez-Fernández, Leticia; Arce-García, Sergio (2022). “Polarización y discurso de odio con sesgo de género asociado a la política: análisis de las interacciones en Twitter”. Revista de comunicación, v. 21, n. 2, pp. 33-50. https://doi.org/10.26441/RC21.2-2022-A2
  • Bonet-Martí, Jordi (2020). “Análisis de las estrategias discursivas empleadas en la construcción de discurso antifeminista en redes sociales”. Psicoperspectivas. Individuo y sociedad, v. 19, n. 3, pp. 52-63. https://doi.org/10.5027/psicoperspectivas-Vol19-Issue3-fulltext-2040
  • Cardenal, Ana S.; Aguilar-Paredes, Carlos; Cristancho, Camilo; Majó-Vázquez, Silvia (2019). “Echo-chambers in online news consumption: Evidence from survey and navigation data in Spain”. European journal of communication, v. 34, n. 4, pp. 360-376. https://doi.org/10.1177/0267323119844409
  • Cassese, Erin C.; Holman, Mirya R. (2019). “Playing the woman card: Ambivalent sexism in the 2016 U.S. Presidential race”. Political psychology, v. 40, n. 1, pp. 55-74. https://doi.org/10.1111/pops.12492
  • CIS (2009). Barómetro de abril 2009. Estudio nº 2798. https://www.cis.es/cis/opencm/ES/1_encuestas/estudios/ver.jsp?estudio=9340
  • CIS (2010). Barómetro de abril 2010. Estudio nº 2834. https://www.cis.es/cis/opencm/ES/2_bancodatos/estudios/ver.jsp?estudio=10362
  • CIS (2021). Barómetro de abril 2021. Estudio nº 3318. https://www.cis.es/cis/export/sites/default/-Archivos/Marginales/3300_3319/3318/es3318mar.pdf
  • CIS (2022a). Barómetro de abril 2022. Estudio nº 3359. https://datos.cis.es/pdf/Es3359mar_A.pdf
  • CIS (2022b). Encuesta sobre cuestiones de actualidad. Estudio nº 3362. https://www.cis.es/cis/export/sites/default/-Archivos/Marginales/3360_3379/3362/es3362mar.pdf
  • Colleoni, Elanor; Rozza, Alessandro; Arvidsson, Adam (2014). “Echo chamber or public sphere? Predicting political orientation and measuring political homophily in Twitter using big data”. Journal of communication, v. 64, n. 2, pp. 317-332. https://doi.org/10.1111/jcom.12084
  • Conroy, Meredith; Oliver, Sarah; Breckenridge-Jackson, Ian; Heldman, Caroline (2015). “From Ferraro to Palin: sexism in coverage of vice presidential candidates in old and new media”. Politics, groups, and identities, v. 3, n. 4, pp. 573-591. https://doi.org/10.1080/21565503.2015.1050412
  • Cuthbertson, Lana; Kearney, Alex; Dawson, Riley; Zawaduk, Ashia; Cuthbertson, Eve; Gordon-Tighe, Ann; Mathewson, Kory W. (2019). “Women, politics and Twitter: using machine learning to change the discourse”. AI for social good workshop at NeurIPS. https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.1911.11025
  • Dhrodia, Azmina (2018). “Unsocial media: a toxic place for women”. IPPR Progressive review, v. 24, n. 4, pp. 380-387. https://doi.org/10.1111/newe.12078
  • España (2007). “Ley Orgánica 3/2007, de 22 de marzo, para la igualdad efectiva de mujeres y hombres”. BOE, n. 71, de 23 de marzo de 2007, pp. 12611-12645. https://www.boe.es/buscar/doc.php?id=BOE-A-2007-6115
  • Esposito, Eleanora; Zollo, Sole A. (2021). “’How dare you call her a pig, I know several pigs who would be upset if they knew’. A multimodal critical discursive approach to online misogyny against UK MPs on YouTube”. Journal of language aggression and conflict, v. 9, n. 1, pp. 44-75. https://doi.org/10.1075/jlac.00053.esp
  • Fallarás, Cristina (2019). Ahora contamos nosotras. #Cuéntalo: una memoria colectiva de la violencia. Barcelona: Anagrama. ISBN: 978 84 339 1633 4
  • Fiorina, Morris P.; Abrams, Samuel J.; Pope, Jeremy C. (2006). Culture war? The myth of a polarization America. New York: Pearson Education Inc.
  • Fox, Jesse; Cruz, Carlos; Young-Lee, Ji (2015). “Perpetuating online sexism offline: Anonymity, interactivity, and the effects of sexist hashtags on social media”. Computers in human behavior, v. 53, pp. 436-442. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2015.06.024
  • Frenda, Simona; Ghanem, Bilal; Guzmán-Falcón, Estefanía; Montes-y-Gómez, Manuel; Villaseñor-Pineda, Luis (2018). “Automatic expansion of lexicons for multilingual misogyny detection”. I Proceedings of the sixth evaluation campaign of natural language processing and speech tools for italian (Evalita 2018). https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/302343999.pdf
  • García-Escribano, Juan-José; García-Palma, María-Belén; Manzanera-Román, Salvador (2021). “La polarización de la ciudadanía ante temas posicionales de la política española”. Revista más poder local, v. 45, pp. 57-73. https://www.maspoderlocal.com/index.php/mpl/article/view/ciudadania-polarizacion-temas-posicionales-mpl45
  • García-Mingo, Elisa; Díaz Fernández, Silvia; Tomás-Forte, Sergio (2022). “(Re)configurando el imaginario sobre la violencia sexual desde el antifeminismo: el trabajo ideológico de la manosfera española”. Política y sociedad, v. 59, n. 1, e80369. https://doi.org/10.5209/poso.80369
  • García-Orosa, Berta (2021). “Disinformation, social media, bots, and astroturfing: the fourth wave of digital democracy”. Profesional de la información, v. 30, n. 6, e300603. https://doi.org/10.3145/epi.2021.nov.03
  • Garmendia, Amuitz; Lorenzo-Rodríguez, Javier; Riera, Pedro (2022). “Construyendo bloques: la promiscuidad política online en tiempos de polarización en España”. Revista española de investigaciones sociológicas, v. 178, pp. 61-82. https://doi.org/10.5477/cis/reis.178.61
  • Gidron, Noam; Adams, James; Horne, Will (2020). American affective polarization in comparative perspective. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108914123
  • Glomb, Theresa M.; Richman, Wendy L.; Hulin, Charles L.; Drasgow, Fritz; Schneider, Kimberly T.; Fitzgerald, Louise F. (1997). “Ambient sexual harassment: An integrated model of antecedents and consequences”. Organizational behavior and human decision processes, n. 71, v. 3, pp. 309-328. https://doi.org/10.1006/obhd.1997.2728
  • GMMP (2020). ¿Quién figura en las noticias? España. Informe regional. Proyecto Monitoreo Mundial de Medios. https://bit.ly/3cElotT
  • Guerrero-Solé, Frederic; Perales-García, Cristina (2021). “Bridging the gap: How gender influences Spanish politicians’ activity on Twitter”. Journalism and media, v. 2, pp. 469-483. https://doi.org/10.3390/journalmedia2030028
  • Guerrero-Vizuete, Esther (2018). “La conciliación entre vida laboral, personal y familiar una década después de la Ley orgánica 3/2007”. Revista general de derecho del trabajo y de la Seguridad Social, v. 51, pp. 283-304.
  • Haller, André; Holt, Kristoffer (2018). “Paradoxical populism: How Pegida relates to mainstream and alternative media”. Information, communication & society, v. 22, pp. 1665-1680. https://doi.org/10.1080/1369118X.2018.1449882
  • Idoiaga, Nahiua; Berasategui, Naiara; Beloki, Nekane; Belasko, Maitane (2022). “#8M women’s strikes in Spain: following the unprecedented social mobilization through Twitter”. Journal of gender studies, v. 31, n. 5, pp. 639-653. https://doi.org/10.1080/09589236.2021.1881461
  • Jamieson, Kathleen-Hall; Cappella, Joseph N. (2008). Echo chamber: Rush Limbaugh and the conservative media establishment. Oxford: Oxford University press. ISBN: 978 0 195398601
  • KhosraviNik, Majid; Esposito, Eleonora (2018). “Online hate, digital discourse and critique: exploring digitally-mediated discursive practices of gender-based hostility”. Lodz papers in pragmatics, v. 14, n. 1, pp. 45-58. https://doi.org/10.1515/lpp-2018-0003
  • Kovic, Marco; Rauchfleisch, Adrian; Sele, Marc; Caspar, Christian (2018). “Digital astroturfing in politics: Definition, typology, and countermeasures”. Studies in communication sciences, v. 18, n. 1, pp. 69-85. https://doi.org/10.24434/j.scoms.2018.01.005
  • Lacalle, Charo; Martín-Jiménez, Virginia; Etura-Hernández, Dunia (2023). “El antifeminismo de la ultraderecha española en Twitter en torno al 8M”. Prisma social, n. 40, pp. 358-376. https://revistaprismasocial.es/article/view/4837
  • Lagarde, Marcela (2003). “La igualdad formal a la diversidad. Una perspectiva étnica latinoamericana”. Anales de la Cátedra Francisco Suárez, v. 37, pp. 57-79.
  • Larrondo, Ainhara; Morales-i-Gras, Jordi; Orbegozo-Terradillos, Julen (2019). “Feminist hashtag activism in Spain: measuring the degree of politicisation of online discourse on #YoSíTeCreo, #HermanaYoSíTeCreo, #Cuéntalo y #NoEstásSola”. Communication and society, v. 32, n. 4, pp. 207-221. https://doi.org/10.15581/003.32.34734
  • López-García, Guillermo (2016). “New vs ‘old’ leaderships: The campaign of Spanish general elections 2015 on Twitter”. Communication and society, v. 29, n. 3, pp. 149-168. https://doi.org/10.15581/003.29.35829
  • Losada-Díaz, José-Carlos; Zamora-Medina, Rocío; Martínez-Martínez, Helena (2021). “El discurso del odio en Instagram durante las Elecciones Generales 2019 en España”. Revista mediterránea de comunicación, v. 12, n. 2, pp. 195-208. https://www.doi.org/10.14198/MEDCOM.19142
  • Mantilla, Karla (2013). “Gendertrolling: Misogyny adapts to new media”. Feminist studies, v. 39, n. 2. https://www.jstor.org/stable/23719068
  • Martínez-Rolán, Xabier; Piñeiro-Otero, Teresa (2020). Mulleres pontevedresas na Rede. Análise do discurso, micromachismos e discurso de odio en Twitter. Deputación de Pontevedra; Universidade de Vigo. https://bit.ly/3OZ6hJN
  • Mata, Teresa; Luque, Francisco-Javier; Ortega, Manuela (2010). La percepción de los ministros del Gobierno de España (1984-2009). Madrid: CIS. ISBN: 978 84 74764932
  • McGregor, Shannon; Mourão, Rachel (2016). “Talking politics on Twitter: Gender, elections, and social networks”. Social media and society, v. 2. https://doi.org/10.1177/20563051166642
  • Méndez-Lago, Mónica (2020). “Parties and party systems”. In: Muro, Diego; Lago, Ignacio (eds.). The Oxford handbook of Spanish politics. Oxford: Oxford University press, pp. 331-348. ISBN: 978 0 198826934 https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780198826934.001.0001
  • Nagle, Angela (2017). Kill all normies: online culture wars from 4Chan and Tumblr to Trump and the alt-right. Zero Books. ISBN: 978 1 785355431
  • Nicholas, Lucy; Agius, Christine (2018). “#Notallmen, #Menenism, manospheres and unsafe spaces: Overt and subtle masculinism in anti-’PC’”. In: Nicholas, Lucy; Agius, Christine. The persistence of global masculinism. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 31-59. ISBN: 978 3 319 68360 7 https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-68360-7_2
  • Núñez-Puente, Sonia; Fernández-Romero, Diana (2019). “Posverdad y victimización en Twitter ante el caso de La Manada: propuesta de un marco analítico a partir del testimonio ético”. Investigaciones feministas, v. 10, n. 2, pp. 385-398. https://doi.org/10.5209/infe.66501
  • Pariser, Eli (2011). The filter bubble: What the Internet is hiding from you. New York: Penguin Press. ISBN: 978 1 59420 300 8
  • Piñeiro-Otero, Teresa; Martínez-Rolán, Xabier (2020). “Understanding digital politics. Basics and actions”. Vivat academia, v. 152, pp. 19-48. https://doi.org/10.15178/va.2020.152.19-48
  • Piñeiro-Otero, Teresa; Martínez-Rolán, Xabier (2021). “Say it to my face: Analysing hate speech against women on Twitter”. Profesional de la información, v. 30, n. 5, e300502. https://doi.org/10.3145/epi.2021.sep.02
  • Piñeiro-Otero, Teresa; Martínez-Rolán, Xabier (2023). “Feminismo de verificación contra la misoginia digital”. Periodismo, ciudadanía y política en el escenario digital. Sevilla: Dykinson. ISBN: 978 84 1170 539 4 (en edición).
  • Ramírez-Dueñas, José-María; Vinuesa-Tejero, María-Lourdes (2020). “Exposición selectiva y sus efectos en el comportamiento electoral de los ciudadanos: la influencia del consumo mediático en el voto en las elecciones generales españolas de 2015 y 2016”. Palabra clave, v. 23, n. 4, e2346. https://doi.org/10.5294/pacla.2020.23.4.6
  • Richardson-Self, Louise (2018). “Woman-hating: On misogyny, sexism, and hate speech”. Hypatia, v. 33, n. 2, pp. 256-272. https://doi.org/10.1111/hypa.12398
  • Robles, José-Manuel; Guevara, Juan-Antonio; Casas-Mas, Belén; Gómez, Daniel (2022). “Cuando la negatividad es el combustible. Bots y polarización política en el debate sobre el COVID-19”. Comunicar, v. 71, pp. 63-75. https://doi.org/10.3916/C71-2022-05
  • Ruiloba-Núñez, Juana-María; Valenzuela-Samaniego, Patricia (2021). “Discursos y significados en torno al género de ‘los nuevos partidos políticos’ en España (2008-2018)”. Multidisciplinary journal of gender studies, v. 10, n. 1, pp. 22-44. https://doi.org/10.17583/generos.2021.6737
  • Sánchez-Calero, María-Luisa; Vinuesa-Tejero, María-Lourdes; Abejón-Mendoza, Paloma (2013). “Las mujeres políticas en España y su proyección en los medios de comunicación”. Razón y palabra, n. 82. http://www.razonypalabra.org.mx/N/N82/V82/01_SanchezVinuesaAbejon_V82.pdf
  • Sessa, Maria-Giovanna (2020). Misogyny and misinformation: An analysis of gendered disinformation tactics during the COVID-19 pandemic. Disinfo.eu, 4 December. https://bit.ly/3EY8QpP
  • Soriano-Moreno, Silvia (2019). “Violencia y acoso en el ámbito político como forma específica de violencia contra las mujeres”. Femeris: Revista multidisciplinar de estudios de género, v. 4, n. 3, pp. 134-157. https://doi.org/10.20318/femeris.2019.4933
  • Southern, Rosalyn; Harmer, Emily (2019). “Twitter, incivility and ‘everyday’ gendered othering: an analysis of tweets sent to UK members of parliament”. Social science computer review, n. 39, pp. 259-275. https://doi.org/10.1177/089443931986551
  • Stokes, Donald E. (1963). “Spatial models of party competition”. The American political science review, v. 57, n. 2, pp. 368-377. https://doi.org/10.2307/1952828
  • Suler, John (2004). “The online disinhibition effect”. Cyberpsychology and behavior, v. 7, pp. 321-326. https://doi.org/10.1089/1094931041291295
  • Torcal, Mariano (2020). “¡Enfrentados y enfadados! Una realidad preocupante”. Agenda pública, 31 de mayo. https://agendapublica.elpais.com/noticia/17006/enfrentados-enfadados-realidad-preocupante
  • Tromble, Rebekah; Koole, Karin (2020). “She belongs in the kitchen, not in Congress? Political engagement and sexism on Twitter”. Journal of applied journalism & media studies, v. 9, n. 2, pp. 191-214. https://doi.org/10.1386/ajms_00022_1
  • Verge, Tània (2012). “Institutionalising gender equality in Spain: from party quotas to electoral gender quotas”. West European politics, v. 35, pp. 395-414. https://doi.org/10.1080/01402382.2011.648014
  • Vogels, Emily A. (2021). “The state of online harassment”. Pew Research Center, 13 January. https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2021/01/13/the-state-of-online-harassment
  • Wilhelm, Claudia; Joeckel, Sven (2018). “Gendered morality and backlash effects in online discussions: An experimental study on how users respond to hate speech comments against women and sexual minorities”. Sex roles, v. 80, pp. 381-392. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11199-018-0941-5
  • Zamora-Martínez, Patricia; Durántez-Stolle, Patricia; Martínez-Sanz, Raquel; Hernández-Herrarte, María (2020). “The language of secessionist activism: Discourse and dialogue on Twitter”. Catalan journal of communication & cultural studies, v. 12, n. 1, pp. 59-78. https://doi.org/10.1386/cjcs_00014_1
  • Zamora-Medina, Rocío; Gómez-García, Salvador; Martínez-Martínez, Helena (2021). “Los memes políticos como recurso persuasivo online. Análisis de su repercusión durante los debates electorales de 2019 en España”. Opinião pública, v. 27, n. 2. https://doi.org/10.1590/1807-01912021272681
Data source: Dialnet