THE USE OF SEXIST DISCOURSE AGAINST WOMEN POLITICIANS ON TWITTER

Abstract

Today, sexist discourses against women are encountered in all areas of social life, despite the fact that women are equal to men in terms of rights and there are no obstacles to their presence in the public sphere. Sexist discourses used in political communication give us important clues about the discrimination that women politicians are exposed to in political life. The ease of access to politicians provided by Web 2.0 technology facilitates sexist discourses against women politicians in political communication. Twitter stands out in this sense as a social media platform where political agenda is discussed. Methodologically, the study is a qualitative analysis based on data mining. The sample of the study consists of the Twitter accounts of 5 politician women who belong to 5 different political parties with seats in the Grand National Assembly of Turkey and who are active in politics during the 27th Government of the Republic of Turkey. First of all, a total of 558 tweets tagged with the aforementioned accounts between January 1, 2019 and October 31, 2022 using 27 keywords created as a result of the preliminary examination on Twitter were captured with the R-Studio program. Then, the 558 tweets were subjected to qualitative content analysis procedure with MAXQDA Qualitative Analysis Program. As a result of the analysis, a total of 562 codes containing sexist expressions were made among 558 tweets, which were read and coded one by one, and 11 categories were formed. Finally, the categories were grouped under 3 themes: "humiliation", "swearing and insult" and "symbolization with gender roles”. Accordingly, it is seen that the expressions against all women politician differ quantitatively and are similar in content.