Some of my best work.

I flirted with the idea of being an academic for a while! My research interest was the sexist abuse that women experience on social media when they run for office. My first project focused on sexist tweets directed at Hillary Clinton and Theresa May. In 2017, I spoke on that topic at conferences in Chicago and New Brunswick, and the Council of Europe cited my work in its 2017 report on media, elections, and gender.

Later, I launched another project analyzing the sexism women gubernatorial candidates encounter on Facebook and Twitter when they run for office and how they address this sexism in their campaign strategies. I presented this work at the European Conference on Politics and Gender, held in Amsterdam in 2019.

Here are a few highlights from the research:

• While women politicians have long dealt with sexism in traditional media coverage, social media sexism appears to be much nastier and more obvious.
• Candidates received fewer sexist messages on Facebook than on Twitter. Facebook sexism was much tamer than Twitter sexism, as well.
• Intersecting identities became a clear focus of much of the abuse and often intensified harassment. For example, Paulette Jordan, who would have been Idaho’s first Native American governor and first woman governor, received many harassing messages about both facets of her identity.
• The most common form of sexism was one related to appearance and sexual attraction, involving sexual or gendered epithets. “Playing the woman card” was another common theme.