Multimodality, Identities and Gender Inequality in the context of the 2019 European Parliament Elections
Multimodality, Identities and Gender Inequality in the context of the 2019 European Parliament Elections

Summary/Abstract: This study aims to analyse the gender dimension in the European Parliament elections in May 2019 based on the extensive research carried out at the level of the entire European Union (Platform Europe 2019). Our main objective was to identify the extent to which there are gender differences in the multimodal content included in the documents and items used during the election campaign for the 2019 European Parliament in all EU countries at the time. Besides identifying the types of items in the campaign and the gender of politicians, in our analysis we focused on similarities and differences by gender dimension in terms of the main message of the content conveyed, the emotion used by the documents as leverage, the rationality called for by the documents, as well as some nonverbal codes, such as the facial expression and the outfit of politicians. According to our analysis, we are witnessing a new phase of ‘hybridization’, that is, in terms of messages transmitted and attitudes adopted, a two-way process has been identified: not only do female politicians adopt attitudes and behaviours regarded as masculine, but also male politicians take on attributes considered feminine, such as displaying emotionality.

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