Semiotic Violence
Authors: Olivares Florencia 
Published: January 2024

Semiotic violence against female politicians is a subtype of violence against women in politics or VAWP (Krook, 2017), which operates at the level of portrayal and representation of female politicians –mainly through text and images–, with the aim of delegitimizing or nullifying their presence in political office, for gender-based reasons (Krook and Restrepo, 2016a, 2016b; Krook 2020; Krook 2022; Bardall et al. 2020). Like other types of VAWP, the main objective of this type of violence is to “keep politics as a male domain” (Bardall et al., 2020, p. 923).
According to Krook's (2022) conceptualization, there are two types of semiotic violence, namely, i) Semiotic violence as rendering women invisible, referring to the symbolic annihilation of female politicians by not considering their presence and contributions to the political debate, reinforcing the idea that men are the only valid participants in it; and ii) Semiotic violence as rendering women incompetent, referring to the attempt to present women as unfit for political life, using stereotypes about their inability to perform public functions. Both types can cover a wide range of manifestations, from overtly misogynist messages to subtle ones, mobilizing semiotic resources to hurt, discipline and subjugate women (Krook, 2022, p. 372).
Field of application/theoretical foundation
Semiotic violence remains a less explored dimension of VAWP, in contrast to numerous studies addressing its physical, sexual, psychological, and economic domains (For a systematic review of studies on VAWP, revise Krook and Restrepo (2019)) (Bardall et al., 2020). While theoretical frameworks have been established (Krook 2020, 2022; Kuperberg, 2021), the empirical research on semiotic violence is still pending. The phenomenon has often been approached through neighboring concepts, that on the one hand, highlight how female politicians face distinct forms –and, in some cases, higher levels– of aggression compared to their male counterparts (for example, studies by Rehault et al. (2019), and Solovev and Pröllochs (2022), show the prevalence of gendered violence towards women politicians on Twitter). However, the lack of a common conceptualization demonstrates limitations in fully and exclusively capturing and addressing its occurrence. For example, while Incivility is defined as discourteous behavior that encompasses offenses to individuals or social groups through stereotypes and denial of freedoms (Theocharis et al., 2016), in politics, it can be perceived by men and women, and not all its dimensions have gendered issues. In the case of Hate Speech, which refers to the devaluation of individuals according to personal characteristics such as gender (Hawdon et al., 2017), but not exclusively, it could also encompass other social categories such as ethnicity, sexual orientation, religion, etc.). Another common example is the extended concept of Online Misogyny, however, it could be applied in diverse contexts, and it is not necessarily confined to a political one.
Semiotic violence, as a concept, holds potential within political science to elucidate dynamics perpetuating gender-based political inequalities. Within the context of digital transformations impacting political spheres (Tucker et al., 2017; Zhuravskaya et al., 2020), studying online semiotic violence becomes crucial due its effortlessly diffusion and the normalization of its occurrence (Kuperberg, 2021; Albaine, 2020; Krook, 2022). Analyzing the associated characteristics of victims and perpetrators, delving into the underlying causal mechanisms behind semiotic violence, and examining its primary consequences to female politicians are critical issues to address. Additionally, in the field of communication, studying semiotic violence in news and media coverage could help address how media act as barriers or facilitators of gender equality in the exercise of power. Finally, within the institutional arena (Such as UN Women, Inter-Parliamentary Union, among other institutions), an empirical perspective on online semiotic violence could benefit efforts to measure and monitor the experiences of female politicians in the online sphere.
Information on example study
The section below outlines a proposed operationalization of semiotic violence against women in politics in online environments (see Table 1), developed by Olivares 2023 [unpublished manuscript]. This study employed an operationalization to assess the prevalence of semiotic violence content within tweet messages –text format– addressed to Spanish MP female candidates before the national election in November 2019. To that end, a semi-automatized context analysis and text classification was conducted using Quanteda package in R (Kenneth et al., 2018). From a feature extraction perspective (Kharde & Sonawe, 2016), the analysis was conducted on a sample of 431.354 tweets sources from the Q-Dem database at the University of Barcelona. Additional details about this study can be found in Table 2.
The used operationalization was built from Krook’s work on offline semiotic violence (2022) and was adapted for an online context. The codebook considers the two main dimensions –types– of the concept elaborated by Krook outlined above. Details of the conceptualization can be found in the original and translated codebook.
Table 1. Online semiotic violence against women in politics

Type of semiotic violence

Nº

Subtypes

Examples

Semiotic violence as rendering women invisible

1

Removing female politicians from political spaces

Calls and pleas for women to abandon their general presence or specific positions in politics.
E.g. “go back and take care of yourself and your family”.

2

Misrecognizing female politicians as not being leaders

Direct and indirect appeals to women politicians as lacking in leadership and, consequently, incapable of doing their jobs well.
E.g. “God help us if we are left in the hands of these women...”.

3

Applying masculine pronouns to female politicians

Denial of the feminization of language associated with women in politics.
Note: this may not apply in English.

4

Denying female politicians’ right to speak and to be heard

Expressions of inquiring female politicians to "shut up".
E.g. “Mrs. Calvo, why don’t you shut up!!?”.

5

Pejorative depictions of feminism

Insults associated with feminism, or the feminist movement and it demands.
E.g. “She is another sectarian feminazi”.

Semiotic violence as rendering women incompetent

6

Ridiculing female politicians as emotional and other gender stereotypes

Appeal to binary stereotypes to disqualify female politicians because of an "own emotionality" (sensitive, nervous, angry, crazy), and non-emotional stereotypes such as being liars, dangerous, evil, manipulative, etc.
E.g. “Come on, now say it without crying”; “ma'am (…), have you taken your medication?”.

7

Denying female politicians’ qualifications

Questioning women’s professional and personal qualifications. Includes lack of education and training, nepotism, addictions, among other elements.
E.g. “I don't think she understands anything. We must explain it to her very slowly”; “stop smoking whatever it is you smoke, you're leaving yourself with an intellectual defect that is difficult to solve”.

8

Mansplaining and infantilizing female politicians

E.g. “Do you know what division of powers is?”; “Tell that to this little girl”.

9

Sexually and physically objectifying female politicians

Reducing women to their body characteristics –in terms of sexual attractiveness and physical appearance.
E.g. “Forcing your smile makes you ugly”; “These do not even conquer a pimp”.

10

Slut-shaming female politicians

Shaming female politicians for real or imagined sexual behavior.
E.g. “we know this girl very well in Sevilla, a slut”.

11

Denying that female politicians are real women

Consider the implication that female politicians who display some degree of competence may not be real women.
E.g. “She is actually @marianorajoy dressed as a woman”.

Source: Own elaboration, based on Krook 2022.
Note: Text in italics indicates the main modifications to Krook’s conceptualization, to adapt the definition and subtypes of semiotic violence to the online environment.
Table 2. Summary of Example Study

Author

Sample

Unit of Analysis

Values

Reliability

Olivares 2023 [unpublished manuscript]

Content type: Tweets addressed to female MP candidates (113 twitter accounts).
Country: Spain
Sampling period: October 14th to November 6th, 2019.
Sample size: N = 431.354 tweets
Source: Q-Dem, University of Barcelona

Unit of analysis: Tweets addressed to female MP candidates for the November 2019 national election.

Semiotic violence (0/1): Presence or absence of contents of semiotic violence in tweets corpus.
Corresponds to the presence of elements from 1-11 subtypes from Table 1
Type of Semiotic Violence (categories):
· “Invisible” (1-5 subtypes)
· “Incompetent” (6-11 subtypes)
· “Both” (1-11 subtypes)
· “None”

Semiotic violence: Accuracy = 0.72 F1 = 0.73

Type of Semiotic Violence:Accuracy = 0.65Macro F1 = 0.63F1 Invisible = 0.58F1 Incompetent = 0.58F1 Both = NA (The NA value represents a minimum co-occurrence of the presence of semiotic violence from subtypes “Invisible” and “Incompetent”, within the analyzed sample)F1 None = 0.70

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