Study finds gap between online election threats women face and what data shows
A new analysis of Tunisia's 2019 election reveals women candidates report feeling targeted by online attacks despite Facebook data showing little gender-based harassment. The disconnect suggests current monitoring tools may miss real harms, raising questions about election integrity safeguards and how platforms measure abuse.
Originaltitel: Comparing Gendered Exposure and Impact in Online Election Violence: Tunisian Political Candidates Targeted on Facebook
<p>Election violence is increasingly taking place online. However, we still do not know much about how such attacks affect the representation of politically marginalized groups such as women. This article develops and applies strategies for analyzing (gendered) exposure to and impacts of online attacks against political candidates. It focuses on the 2019 parliamentary election campaign in Tunisia and combines manual analysis of Tunisian candidates’ public Facebook pages with candidate interviews. We find no gendered patterns in exposure to online election violence in the Facebook data and a low general exposure to attacks. The interview data nevertheless suggests gendered perceptions and impacts of attacks, as well as a perception among the candidates that online election violence is widespread and problematic. These discrepancies highlight that we need a combination of methods and materials to capture the multifaceted nature of online election violence, and in particular those that directly link candidate exposure to impact.</p>