Exploring the Intent-Behavior Gap in Social Media Advocacy for Gender Equality and Social Inclusion

The concepts of Gender Equality and Social Inclusion (GESI) are crucial for fostering inclusive societies and promoting equal opportunities for all individuals, contributing to social cohesion, economic development, and overall well-being. Social media platforms have offered several benefits for individuals, including information and knowledge sharing, and enhanced connectivity and networking opportunities. On the other hand, social media has enabled several forms of GESI violations, including hate speech, targeted harassment, and discriminatory content. One important solution to face these violations is the challenging behavior of those who violate GESI concepts on social media platforms. While many users may intend to confront and combat such violations, the actual behavior may not always align with these intentions. Accordingly, this study aims to investigate users' challenging intentions and behavior of GESI violations on social media platforms, while focusing on the cultural differences among the UK and Arab. We also investigated the moderating impact of social inclusion on the relationship between intention and behavior regarding challenging violations of GESI. To meet this goal, we deployed a survey among two samples of UK (325) and Arab (312) participants. Our results show that there are intention-behavior disparities in challenging GESI violations on social media platforms for both samples. The results also confirmed the moderating impact of social inclusion on the relationship between intention and behaviors regarding challenging violations of GESI among UK participants and rejected it among Arab participants.