Social media homophily among women and men political candidates

Abstract

Abstract This paper assesses differences between women and men political candidates in their likelihood to interact with peers who share the same gender, political affiliation, electoral district, incumbency, age, and the governmental status of their party. Using Twitter (currently X) data from Finland’s 2019 election campaign, we find a tendency towards homophily—a tendency to interact predominantly with similar others—among all candidates across the various studied characteristics. However, some gender differences in the tendency towards homophily emerge. Notably, women are more inclined than men to retweet candidates from their own party but are less likely to retweet peers with the same incumbency status and the same gender. Our multivariate analyses further show that retweet tendencies based on age, shared electoral district and party governmental status exhibit no significant gender disparities. These nuanced variations in homophilous relations highlight the complex interplay between gender and other characteristics in candidates’ social media interactions during electoral campaigns.