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Debating stereotypes: Online reactions to the vice-presidential debate of 2020

The 2020 Vice-Presidential debate afforded the opportunity to examine online reactions toward a woman of color, Kamala Harris, and a white man, Mike Pence, as they vied for the same position. We collected tweets from the Twitter API related to Harris and Pence, mainly using neutral hashtags. We exam...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Felmlee, Diane H., Julien, Chris, Francisco, Sara C.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Public Library of Science 2023
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9876360/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36696430
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0280828
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author Felmlee, Diane H.
Julien, Chris
Francisco, Sara C.
author_facet Felmlee, Diane H.
Julien, Chris
Francisco, Sara C.
author_sort Felmlee, Diane H.
collection PubMed
description The 2020 Vice-Presidential debate afforded the opportunity to examine online reactions toward a woman of color, Kamala Harris, and a white man, Mike Pence, as they vied for the same position. We collected tweets from the Twitter API related to Harris and Pence, mainly using neutral hashtags. We examined keywords for gender and race slurs and conducted a multivariate analysis of tweet sentiment. Gender and racial slurs surface in both Harris and Pence datasets, showcasing the insidious nature of sexist and racist stereotypes that seep into online conversations regarding a high-status job debate. As anticipated, tweets regarding Harris contained a higher proportion of racist and sexist curse words, highlighting greater levels of harassment and “intersectional,” multi-ethnic/gender attacks. Racial insults targeting Blacks or Asians were more negative than those associated with Whites. Unexpectedly, tweets related to Harris were more positive in average sentiment than those regarding Pence. Yet, there were significantly more retweets, and more negativity of retweets, relating to Harris than to Pence, underscoring the relatively widespread broadcasting of derogatory messages about Harris. Overall, we found that harassing messages toward the candidates reinforced traditional race and gender stereotypes and bolstered the status of those who posted negative content by attaining more retweets. Harassers routinely invoked well-worn, stereotypical insults in their attacks, especially when targeting a multiracial woman.
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spelling pubmed-98763602023-01-26 Debating stereotypes: Online reactions to the vice-presidential debate of 2020 Felmlee, Diane H. Julien, Chris Francisco, Sara C. PLoS One Research Article The 2020 Vice-Presidential debate afforded the opportunity to examine online reactions toward a woman of color, Kamala Harris, and a white man, Mike Pence, as they vied for the same position. We collected tweets from the Twitter API related to Harris and Pence, mainly using neutral hashtags. We examined keywords for gender and race slurs and conducted a multivariate analysis of tweet sentiment. Gender and racial slurs surface in both Harris and Pence datasets, showcasing the insidious nature of sexist and racist stereotypes that seep into online conversations regarding a high-status job debate. As anticipated, tweets regarding Harris contained a higher proportion of racist and sexist curse words, highlighting greater levels of harassment and “intersectional,” multi-ethnic/gender attacks. Racial insults targeting Blacks or Asians were more negative than those associated with Whites. Unexpectedly, tweets related to Harris were more positive in average sentiment than those regarding Pence. Yet, there were significantly more retweets, and more negativity of retweets, relating to Harris than to Pence, underscoring the relatively widespread broadcasting of derogatory messages about Harris. Overall, we found that harassing messages toward the candidates reinforced traditional race and gender stereotypes and bolstered the status of those who posted negative content by attaining more retweets. Harassers routinely invoked well-worn, stereotypical insults in their attacks, especially when targeting a multiracial woman. Public Library of Science 2023-01-25 /pmc/articles/PMC9876360/ /pubmed/36696430 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0280828 Text en © 2023 Felmlee et al https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
spellingShingle Research Article
Felmlee, Diane H.
Julien, Chris
Francisco, Sara C.
Debating stereotypes: Online reactions to the vice-presidential debate of 2020
title Debating stereotypes: Online reactions to the vice-presidential debate of 2020
title_full Debating stereotypes: Online reactions to the vice-presidential debate of 2020
title_fullStr Debating stereotypes: Online reactions to the vice-presidential debate of 2020
title_full_unstemmed Debating stereotypes: Online reactions to the vice-presidential debate of 2020
title_short Debating stereotypes: Online reactions to the vice-presidential debate of 2020
title_sort debating stereotypes: online reactions to the vice-presidential debate of 2020
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9876360/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36696430
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0280828
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