Abstract
ABSTRACT Facebook and other social media are often utilized by political campaigns to communicate with the electorate and provide vital information about a candidate. However, in doing so, political campaigns and their audiences are open to unfavorable comments, including sexism and misogyny. The current experiment investigates the influence of sexist Facebook comments on candidate support in a hypothesized moderated mediation process. Through manipulating the discussion beneath a Facebook post providing candidate information about a female candidate, we distinguish the influence of sexist comments from issue-based and pro-female commentary. We find evidence suggesting both pro-female and sexist commentary impact evaluation of a hypothetical female candidate through image scores and homophily. The social media discussion affects both image evaluations of the candidate and feelings of homophily, which lead to an increase in support for the female candidate.
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