Intersectionality and the gendered discussion around Muslim Canadian politicians on Twitter

Abstract This study investigates users’ gendered attitudes towards Muslim Canadian politicians on Twitter with regard to intersectionality. Its purpose is to understand the tone and intersectional dimensions of Twitter users’ responses to Muslim Canadian politicians and the gendered responses to them. Therefore, we extracted all the available Twitter replies to 11 Muslim men and women politicians. Using a mixed method approach, we investigated how the public engages with Muslim politicians by focusing on intersectional characteristics. Results show that Muslim politicians are not directly under attack because of their religion unless they engage in public discussion of Islamic issues. Overall, both men and women politicians received higher numbers of negative replies than positive ones. Women received more personal replies while men received more professional ones. For both men and women politicians, personal attributes such as nationality, gender, and religion were used as a means for discriminating against them. However, we found that replies to women were more likely to be stereotypical and refer to characteristics of their identity and their appearance. The digital analysis shows, however, that men politicians were more trolled than their women counterparts and that the quality of attacks differed as well.