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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...
Autores principales: | , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Public Library of Science
2023
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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. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-9876360 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2023 |
publisher | Public Library of Science |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
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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