The Rassemblement National on social media: the online rewards of gendered political speech for radical right politicians

Abstract

ABSTRACT Social media has provided powerful tools for parties looking to grow their followings and spread their messages, and the radical right has made good use of these tools as they reach out to voters concerned with immigration. Women politicians’ online experiences remain highly gendered, raising questions about the potential for social media to facilitate their substantive representation. Using the Rassemblement National as a case study, I take up the question of how patterns of gender inequality on the radical right are perpetuated on social media and in interactions with online audiences. I analyse data scraped from the X (formerly called Twitter) accounts of RN politicians with negative binomial regression analyses and a theoretically informed computational analysis. I find that, while gender is not a significant predictor of online engagement, online audiences are particularly responsive to women when they comply with stereotypical gender performances. I argue that despite the promise of social media to open new opportunities of self-presentation and interaction for marginalized politicians, women on the radical right continue to be held to strict gendered stereotypes on social media and are rewarded when they comply with these same stereotypes.