Gender representations and user engagement in social media posts of companies: Dream crazier or keep walking?

Abstract

Harmful gender stereotypes perpetuated and reinforced via gendered corporate communication can have deeply adverse consequences—particularly for women. Although a rich body of work has examined gender representation and its effects on advertising, there are hardly any insights into corporate social media communication. It is important to examine this as social media is a critical channel for stakeholder engagement, especially when leveraging its visual affordances. Hence, we conducted a visual social semiotic content analysis of 543 Instagram posts of international B2C companies to see how companies represented gender on social media and how various aspects of gender representation are related to user engagement. We found both diverse and inclusive gender portrayals and the sticky persistence of stereotypes. While women were depicted more as individual, central figures compared to men—allowing women to gain more visibility—women were more often associated with female gender-stereotypical topics than men. While no differences were found between gender representations and user engagement, user engagement differed between visuals showing men and women when considering their ethnicity. As such, we offer five evidence-based recommendations on how companies can contribute to gender equity by addressing gendered communication on social media.