@article{2026:wallaschek:gender_equ,
title = {Gender equality between rights and resentment: Social media engagement and gender attitudes across Europe},
year = {2026},
note = {This study examines how gender-related attitudes are structured within
contemporary cultural conflict lines and whether digital communicative
engagement is associated with regressive positioning on gender issues.
While support for formal gender equality has become widely
institutionalized across Europe, feminist mobilization and anti-gender
counter-movements have increasingly embedded gender in broader
value-based divides. We conceptualize gender-related attitudes along
two dimensions: rights-based support for equality and affective
anti-feminist positioning. Using an original 2021 cross-sectional
survey from France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Poland, and Spain (N =
12,000), we analyze whether the intensity of social media use –
understood as the degree to which individuals are embedded in
digitally mediated communication environments – is associated with
these attitudinal dimensions. Social media intensity is measured as
time spent on Facebook, YouTube, Twitter/X, and Instagram. Ordinary
Least Squares regressions with country fixed effects indicate that
higher levels of social media use intensity are consistently
associated with more regressive views on gender-related attitudes
across both dimensions. The findings contribute to debates in
political sociology and digital communication research by highlighting
the association between communicative embeddedness of citizens in
digital arenas and cultural positioning on gender equality.},
journal = {Culture, Practice & Europeanization},
pages = {159--184},
author = {Wallaschek, Stefan and Minkus, Lara},
volume = {11},
number = {1}
}