Visual Gender Stereotyping in Campaign Communication: Evidence on Female and Male Candidate Imagery in 28 Countries

Using the case of the 2019 European election, the study compares the visual self-depiction of female and male political candidates from all European Union’s 28 member states on social networking sites and their depiction in the news coverage. It thereby investigates to what degree the news coverage and politicians’ self-depiction employs visual gender stereotypes. Moreover, the study presents results on differences in the depiction of male and female candidates across party lines. With the help of computational vision, we demonstrate that, while differences between progressive and conservative candidates are scarce, there are clear differences in the depiction of female and male politicians. These differences resemble emotional gender stereotypes, especially since women are more often depicted as happy. Overall, the study demonstrates that female political communication is still distinct from male political communication for both their self-representation as well as the media’s portrayal of political candidates.