Surviving or thriving political defeat on social media: a temporal analysis of how electoral loss exacerbates the gender gap in political expression

Abstract Extensive research reveals gender gaps in social media expression, particularly women’s reduced propensity for sharing political information and opinions. We examine the impact of political defeat on the gender gap in political expression on social media by pairing Twitter data from candidate supporters with a voter file. Our results indicate that Trump’s 2020 defeat reduced tweet volumes only among his female supporters, while his male supporters remained unaffected. This dampening effect was stronger for female Trump supporters who expressed their gender identity in their Twitter bios than those who did not. Tweet content remained largely unchanged for both genders. These findings enhance our understanding of how social media and political defeat together contribute to the gender expression gap and its relationship with offline political behaviors post-defeat. They also demonstrate the power of our methodological approach in revealing temporal and individual differences. Lay Summary Many studies demonstrate that women are less likely than men to talk about and participate in politics in digital spaces. This study asks how the gender gap in political expression on social media is affected by a significant life event: political defeat. We hypothesize that women’s psychological traits and social media’s digital architecture worsen the blow that political defeat deals to women supporters of losing politicians. Our empirical analysis combines Twitter data with voter records to track changes in the online activity of supporters of winning and losing political campaigns. The results show that only female Trump supporters experienced a steep drop in the volume of tweets they posted after Trump’s defeat in the 2020 U.S. general election. This tendency was more pronounced among female Trump supporters who displayed their gender identity in their Twitter bios. However, the content difference of tweets was minimal and did not change much after defeat. Our findings provide a new window into understanding how the gender expression gap is affected by both social media and political defeat as well as shed light on how women and men respond to political defeat offline differently.