Women and digital political communication in non-Western societies

Abstract

ABSTRACT This special issue brings together contributions and theoretical insights that probe ways through which gender interacts with context to shape non-Western-based political communication trends. It seeks to address the need to diversify theory and research in political communication. Our key contribution is to provide empirically-guided, contextually-shaped and methodologically-rich research on digital political communication strategies that facilitate women's political participation in geographical areas underrepresented in the scholarship. We do this in five ways. First, feminist approaches to digital political communication have rarely been studied this way, focusing exclusively on previously unaddressed developments in non-Western settings while also theorizing their contributions to communication scholarship through a special issue format in a credible journal that retains a wider audience. Second, it is of scholarly interest to know whether women politicians in richer and poor countries grapple with the same issues when it comes to political communication. Third, we provide novel ways to expand scholarship on women's digital political participation through incorporation of indigenous knowledge and practices. Fourth, the diversity of fresh voices coupled with pioneering findings assembled in this special issue is encouraging in a field dominated by a few. Finally, the number of women vying for political office in the Global South is increasing. Therefore, studying how they are faring on the political frontline has a significant bearing on how current and future studies within the remit of understudied non-Western digital political communication can and should be framed, paving way for new and better understandings on the region and its multifaceted political perturbations.