Gendered Communication Patterns of Political Elites on Truth Social

A team of researchers from the University of Edinburgh and other institutions has published the first large-scale computational analysis of political communication on Truth Social, the platform closely associated with the American far right. The study, accepted to the ACM Web Science Conference 2026, analyzed a novel dataset of 107,000 posts from 129 U.S. political figures to examine how gender influences rhetorical style, topic framing, and audience engagement on this distinctively partisan platform.

Key findings reveal that many gendered communication patterns documented on mainstream platforms like X (formerly Twitter) persist on Truth Social. Women political elites tend to express more joy and less anger than their male counterparts, and they receive significantly higher levels of audience engagement (likes, replies, etc.). However, the platform's unique environment also shapes communication: although men and women discuss similar conservative themes, women's posts contain higher levels of fear-based rhetoric, suggesting a selective adaptation to navigate the platform's norms.

The research indicates that while mainstream gendered constraints on communication endure, they are expressed through platform-specific patterns shaped by Truth Social's ideological orientation and sociotechnical design. This work fills a critical gap by moving analysis beyond mainstream social media to understand how political communication operates in hyper-partisan digital spaces.