1 DISCLAIMER: This is a pre-print version of the manuscript. The Version of Record of this manuscript has been published and is available in INFORMATION, COMMUNICATION & SOCIETY, 25 Sep 2015 [online], http://www.tandfonline.com/, DOI: 10.1080/1369118X.2015.1088881 GOOD GIRLS DON’T COMMENT ON POLITICS? Gendered character of online political participation in the Czech Republic Lenka Vochocová Václav Štětka Jaromír Mazák lenka.vochocova@fsv.cuni.cz vaclav.stetka@fsv.cuni.cz mazak.jaromir@gmail.com Faculty of Social Sciences Faculty of Social Sciences Faculty of Social Sciences, Charles University in Prague Charles University in Prague Faculty of Arts Charles University in Prague¨ Abstract The paper aims to contribute to the still relatively unexplored area of the relationship between gender and online political participation. Using two complementary methods – a representative, post-election survey of the adult Czech population, and a content analysis of communication on the selected Czech political parties’ Facebook profiles during the campaign for the 2013 Parliamentary Elections, we attempt to challenge some established assumptions regarding the allegedly equalizing effect of the Internet and social media on participatory behaviour of men and women. While survey data discovered subtle yet statistically significant differences between men and women in some online expressive activities on Facebook, mainly commenting on other users’ statuses, content analysis further revealed that there are not only notable gender gaps among the Facebook users who commented on the campaign, but also differences in the tone of communication produced by the respective gender groups, with men posting more negative comments addressed to parties as well as to other Facebook users. We suggest that these results question the prevailing perception about the narrowing of the ‘gender gap’ in the online environment and call for a more nuanced methodological approach to different forms of online political expression. Keywords online political participation, gender, election campaigns, Facebook, survey, content analysis Introduction After decades of academic consensus formed since the 1970s about the generally lower participation of women in politics (Burns, Schlozman, & Verba, 1997; Gallego, 2007; Norris, 2002; Lutz, Hoffmann, & Meckel, 2014), recent studies of political participation suggest that some of the traditional factors influencing citizen’s participation dwindle in importance in liberal democratic countries, gender undoubtedly being one of them (Vráblíková, 2009; Vesnic-Aujevic, 2012; Gil de Zúñiga, Puig-I-Abril, & Rojas, 2009). In this respect, patterns seem to be equal for both traditional Western democracies and the former Eastern bloc. According to Vráblíková (2009), who focused on post-socialist countries in Central and Eastern Europe, ‘there is no difference in the degree of political participation based on the factor of sex in most of the monitored countries’ (p. 885) with a few relatively unimportant exceptions. The assumption about the declining impact of gender on political participation seems to be commonplace within research on online participation as well. Overall there seems to be a significant lack of studies exploring online political participation