TikTok, Reddit, and gender gaps in media ecosystems
Gender gaps in media use are a pretty new phenomenon.
If you could only use one social media site for the rest of your life, which would you choose? Chances are, responses will vary by gender. According to data from Pew Research Center, a similar share of men and women say they use YouTube, but for other social media sites there are pretty substantial gender gaps. And since this blog is titled GENDER GAP, we’re going to dig into that.
According to the survey by Pew, women are 17% more likely than men to say they use Facebook, and 15% more likely say they use Instagram and TikTok. Men, on the other hand, are 10% more likely to say they use Reddit and 7% more likely to say they use X (formally Twitter).1 In short, on a daily basis men and women likely find themselves immersed in unique social media ecosystems, where they are exposed to different people and discourse, and the informal rules about posting, engaging and sharing vary, too. These differences in platform use are probably politically consequential, and could be a source of the Gen Z gender gap.2
I’ve been thinking about gender gaps in media ecosystems in light of emerging data that shows a growing ideological chasm between Gen Z men and women: Today’s young women (under 30) are more liberal than their male counterparts. As Daniel Cox wrote for Business insider, “While the gender gap is an enduring feature of American politics, at no time in the past quarter century has there been such a rapid divergence between the views of young men and women.”
It's not necessarily that young men today are more conservative than young men from previous generations, but it does appear that young women are increasingly more liberal today than previous generations of women in the US.
Yes, the #MeToo movement that catalyzed young women’s political interest is playing a role here. Plus, women today are marrying later in life, which does a couple things: First, married women are more conservative than unmarried women, so if fewer women are getting married (or marrying later in life) that ideological shift is delayed (in so far as that relationship is causal, but let’s set that aside). Second, unmarried women have a stronger sense of gender linked fate, which is when an individual's political beliefs are influenced by their perception that what happens to their gender group will also affect them personally — married women have a lower sense of gender linked fate than single women. These converging phenomena likely contribute to more liberal attitudes among younger women, today.
But I think media diets are at play here, too.
How a platform is designed and its user base influence the type and accuracy of information available, and how that information is discussed, shared, and remembered. And that is going to influence political beliefs and identity, especially among younger audiences.
It’s not as simple as 70% of political content on X (Twitter) is conservative or 60% of political content on TikTok is liberal. Although I do suspect that there are differences in the ideologies of popular accounts of these sites. It’s more so about differences in:
imagined audiences (e.g. when you post, who do you have in mind as your audience)
engagement incentives (how do you interact with others, and what is the pay off)
and the way algorithms amplify content that reinforces users’ pre-existing beliefs, ultimately shaping partisan identity through selective exposure.
Shitposters from the left and the right exist on all these platforms, as do real experts, with the goal to inform their audiences. You can find an ideological “home” on any of these platforms. But I have to think that the differences in the platforms affordances that attract men and women are also shaping them politically, in ways that contribute to the gender gap.
Thanks for reading this week’s gender gap. Here’s more to devour:
Four things I’m reading right now (and you should too):
New York Magazine, Rebecca Traister: Tim Walz, Doug Emhoff, and the nice men of the left (August 10, 2024)
I’ve got a lot I’d like to say about the parties and their visions of masculinity, but if I never get around to it, Traister covers so much in this article. Especially love this excerpt:
But taken as a whole, as male Democrats fall over one another in an effort to elect a woman to the presidency, they are presenting a different definition of masculine strength tied to women’s liberation and full civic participation and all but declaring it a new norm.
New York Times, Jamelle Bouie: The reason Trump and Vance really hate being called ‘weird.’ (August 9, 2024)
Lots has already been written about Democrats using “weird” to insult Republicans (especially the Trump/Vance ticket). But none as clarifying as Bouie in this piece. As he explains:
Republican politicians seem taken aback by the idea that they’re outside the mainstream, by the charge that their interests and priorities are alienating to the average American. Now, stepping back a bit, they shouldn’t be. The signature obsessions of Republican politics since 2020 — election denialism, book banning, abortion bans and the crusades against trans and other gender non-conforming people — are either unpopular with most Americans or electoral dead weight.
Trump has made the GOP in his image, and it’s weird as hell. I think Lindsey Graham was right all along. It’s just taken some time to fully realize the transformation has been very bad for their Party. But I think “Weird” is helping it crystalize!
American Storylines, Dan Cox: What does Kamala Harris’ candidacy mean for the gender gap in 2024 (July 25, 2024)
The gender vote gap is what I was thinking about when I titled this substack, and I plan to write more about that here (and hopefully for ABCnews/538, where I am a contributor). But I haven’t written about it, yet! Read this post by Dan Cox for now, if that’s why you’re here.
Washington Post, Petula Dvorak: Kamala. Hillary. Nancy. But not Joe, Donald or Barack. Why? (August 15, 2024)
If you get most of your news from Instagram, you probably saw this excellent explainer from etymologynerd about the tendency of women in positions of power to be referred to by their first name while men get more formal treatment (as of writing this, that video has 4M views). There’s political science on this phenomenon, and bless the WaPo for interviewing a couple for this story, about it, the tension, and why it matters. Sidenote, there’s a seemingly never ending fight in higher ed among profs who like to use their first name in the classroom and those (women usually) who know that diminishes their authority. This poem is such a great distillation of that struggle:
Pew asks about a few other sites in that survey (e.g. Pinterest, LinkedIn) but I focused on the ones that seemed the most relevant to US politics. Sites like Discord and Twitch are probably more male, but Pew didn’t survey them.
I don’t have access to the Pew data, so I can’t tell you what those gaps look like for respondents 18 to 29, but I’d bet good money the gender gaps are even bigger among the youngest surveyed.