It’s a man’s (online) world. Personality traits and the gender gap in online political discussion

Abstract

ABSTRACT Despite initial optimism, a gender gap seems to exist in online political engagement. In this article, we focus on online political discussion and show that women use the internet to discuss politics significantly less than men. We propose that this is a ‘new’ gender gap and not a simple reflection of the traditional gender gap in offline political discussion activities. A unique dataset from Germany facilitates an empirical comparison of online and offline political discussion and their explanatory factors. We contend that the online environment imposes additional obstacles to women’s willingness to discuss politics as the result of a hostile environment and distinct socialization patterns. The resulting gap is visible in terms of specific personality traits that women, in comparison to men, require to discuss politics online. Using the ‘Big Five’ personality trait repertory, we show that women that score high on agreeableness are significantly less likely to discuss politics online than men with the same trait. We also find significant differences in the way the personality traits extraversion and openness influence both women’s and men’s participation in online and offline discussion.