Luise Koch presents her research on the prevalence and impact of online misogyny against female candidates in the 2022 Brazilian Elections at the Fifth Early Career Workshop of DGGÖ Working Group on Health Economics and Development Cooperation held on April 12, in Erlangen. The study sheds light on the significant threats posed by technology-facilitated gender-based violence to women's political representation and democracy.

The research, titled "Online Misogyny Against Female Candidates in the 2022 Brazilian Elections: A Threat to Women's Political Representation?", scrutinizes 10 million tweets directed at female candidates, employing a self-trained machine learning classifier to detect Portuguese misogynistic tweets. Through quantitative analysis, Luise and her co-authors unveil that young, left-wing, and highly visible candidates were disproportionately targeted, with a subsequent decrease in their online activity following a surge in misogynistic attacks. This silencing effect does not only have a significant health impact on the targets but also threatens the equitable participation of women in shaping public discourse.

In attendance at this illuminating workshop were colleagues Janina Steinert, Henrike Sternberg, and Ines Böhret collectively enriching the academic exchange and discourse on health economics and development cooperation.

The presentation and the results are part of the research project "Understanding, Detecting, and Mitigating Online Misogyny against Politically Active Women". You can find more information on the project on the project homepage. You can also read a preprint of the presented research here .