“Where are the Women? Rhetoric and Gender on Weblogs”

Clancy Ratliff, Department of Rhetoric
Weblog: http://culturecat.net/
Email: ratli008@umn.edu

In the last three years, blogging has gained recognition as a phenomenon in online communication, offering ordinary citizens a platform to publish their ideas and a space for deliberative political discourse. However, the majority of the most influential and widely-read political bloggers are men, and issues of concern to women are often not given equal attention, a disparity that has been discussed in the "Where are the women?" debates. I argue that these debates reveal disruptions of assumptions surrounding political discourse. Identifying these points can enrich our understanding of gendered rhetorical practices and the way they are constituted on weblogs.  

My project uses a mixed-method design of rhetorical analysis complemented by interviews to contextualize the discourse on the weblogs. My goal is to produce a case study of gender differentials in discourse on weblogs (often called the "blogosphere"). To that end, I am analyzing the "Where are the women?" debates to ascertain the ways both men and women account for the "gender gap" in blogging. Thus far, I have found that men attribute the gender gap to the following assertions: 1.) women don't do enough self-promotion; 2.) women can't handle the agonistic nature of political discourse on weblogs (common metaphors for political discourse men use include "sporting events" and "food fights"); 3.) the use of pseudonyms is more common among women; and 4.) women do not blog about politics. I will also analyze posts on four of the most commonly-cited examples of political weblogs, two by men and two by women, and look for topics discussed and writing styles.

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