Are gender policies absent from Twitter? Unpacking the silence from citizens and politicians

In the last decade, the growth of feminist protests worldwide has allowed activist groups to become more prominent in the political sphere (McCabe, 2024; Daby & Moseley, 2022). Spain has been no exception (Alonso et al., 2023): the feminist movement has used social media to highlight their demands, even though the behavior of political representatives suggest that interaction with citizens is not a priority for them (Ramos-Serrano et al., 2018). Understanding how the public employs digital platforms to voice their demands provides valuable insights that can help policymakers shape legislation that meets societal needs. Hence, this study aims to explore the discourse of citizens using the 8M hashtags to determine whether they are demanding legislative action from institutions. We also aim to clarify whether messages issued by Spanish MPs address gender-related legislative issues. The data analyzed come from both the official accounts of members of the Congress of Deputies and users who tweeted with the hashtags #HuelgaFeminista, #HaciaLaHuelgaFeminista, #RevueltaFeminista, #8M2020, #8M2021 and #8Marzo2022. Nearly 4 million tweets published between January 2017 and May 2023 were collected and analyzed with R and Python. The research reveals that gender-related posts on Twitter rarely focus on legislative demands, with only 0.36% of the tweets observed dealing with this matter. Meanwhile, the five MPs who discuss this issue most frequently in their accounts are Lídia Guinart (PSOE), Laura Berja (PSOE), Rosa Romero (PP), Carla Toscano (VOX) and Susana Ros (PSOE). However, overall, representatives mention this topic only in just 0.29% of their tweets. Thus, these findings support the idea that social media is not widely used either to call for nor report on public policies aimed at improving women’s lives.