Major
Psychology
Second Major
Criminology and Criminal Justice
Advisor
Kelley Ryan
Date
5-2025
Keywords
Sexism:Politics; Election; Social Media
Abstract
“If we have come to think that the nursery and the kitchen are the natural sphere of a woman, we have done so exactly as English children come to think that a cage is the natural sphere of a parrot– because they have never seen one anywhere else”. - George Bernard Shaw
Sexism exists pervasively in the structures that exist in America. This is evident by the lack of America’s female leaders, with a female Vice President not being elected into office until Kamala Harris in 2020. As time moves forward, my fear grows that our nation continues to embrace sexist values, and work backwards toward furthered patriarchy.
Following the results of the 2024 election, my social media was flooded with openly misogynistic and violent threats that individuals felt compelled to share now that Donald Trump had won the election. Additionally, I had witnessed many false and AI generated posts criticizing and stereotyping democratic nominee Kamala Harris. For my honors project, I completed a research paper that analyzes the relationship between social media and sexism in politics for the past three presidential elections. I researched social media trends and posts in relation to the different candidates for each election, as well as researched and identified the amount of misinformation that was being spread on social media regarding certain candidates.
I found that social media had a great impact on how election campaigns were conducted and received. The algorithms on social media allowed for users to frequently see posts that echoed their political leaning. Additionally, many posts providing misinformation or AI generated images, which were usually sexist and demeaning in nature, were understood by users due to the absence of fact checking. This project has shown that now more than ever we must encourage young people to form their own opinions and to fight against a growing misogynistic culture.