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In this interdisciplinary roundtable discussion, five scholars interested in political communication work through the democratic dilemmas created when privately owned social media platforms are used as digital public squares by elected officials in the United States. This conversation unfolds in the context of ongoing legal cases that challenge politicians' efforts to block select interlocutors and bar them from participation. We grapple with the tension between politicians' use of social media to broadcast their own messages as a form of publicity with the desire by some members of the public that politicians be transparent online by allowing the electorate to question or even criticize them. Through this discussion, we weigh the importance of the right to criticize the government and its leaders alongside the realities of contentious content on social media platforms that are rife with abusive content, in a cultural context marked by social inequalities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the divides between political communication and social movement research. Topics include electoral politics, communication as internal interpretive work, sociological approach to communication and American Political Science Association (APSA) and social activism and political campaigns.

The article discusses the divides between political communication and social movement research. Topics include electoral politics, communication as internal interpretive work, sociological approach to communication and American Political Science Association (APSA) and social activism and political campaigns.

Resistance to women’s public voice and visibility via street harassment and workplace sexual harassment have long constrained women’s use of and comfort in physical public spaces; this gender-based resistance now extends into digital arenas. Women face extreme hostility in the form of digital sexism in discussion rooms, comment sections, gaming communities, and on social media platforms. Reflecting on two years of in-depth interviews with women who have been on the receiving end of gender-based digital abuse (n = 38), conversations with industry professionals working in content moderation and digital safety, the extant literature, and news stories about digital attacks against women, I offer a lens to think through the prominent patterns in digital sexism, showing (1) that aggressors draw upon three overlapping strategies - intimidating, shaming, and discrediting - to limit women’s impact in digital publics, (2) the way femininity and femaleness are used to undermine women’s contributions, and (3) men call attention to women’s physicality as a way to pull gender - and the male advantage that comes with it - to the fore in digital exchanges. Finally, I argue that when digital sexism succeeds in pressing women out of digital spaces, constrains the topics they address publicly, or limits the ways they address them, we must consider the democratic costs of gender-based harassment, in addition to the personal ones. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]