Posting for Votes: Candidate Gender, Facebook Personalization, and Electoral Performance in Taiwan

This study examines how candidate gender is associated with Facebook activity, message composition, and the electoral associations of personalization in Taiwan’s 2020 legislative election. By linking candidates’ social media activity to district-level electoral outcomes, the study provides behavioural evidence of gendered personalization under competitive campaign conditions. The analysis evaluates three expectations: active adoption, selective personalization, and asymmetric electoral association. Results show that women were as active as men on Facebook, indicating gender parity in platform participation. However, personal posts constituted a smaller share of women’s Facebook communication than of men’s, consistent with selective personalization under gendered leadership expectations. The electoral analysis further reveals a gender-differentiated association: a higher share of personal posts was more positively associated with vote share among female candidates, whereas no comparable association appeared among male candidates. These findings distinguish equal platform participation from gender differences in both message composition and the electoral associations of personalization. Together, they suggest that social media may broaden women’s opportunities for political communication without eliminating the gendered expectations that shape self-presentation and its potential electoral consequences.