Gendered discourse patterns on online social networks: A social network analysis perspective

The study examines the gendered discourse patterns on a popular online social network, TheMarker Café, using social network analysis. Overall, the findings strengthen previous analyses that report evidence of men's assertive and dominant discourse style and social role versus women's more cooperative and supportive discourse style. Men wrote more posts, while women commented on other people's posts more often. Women's posts received higher rankings than men's posts, strengthening the notion that women receive more affirmations on online social networks. The study also examined the interplay between the structure of the TheMarker Café network and gendered discourse patterns. Our findings also confirmed a link between activity network structure and women content popularity.