Social media: are there noticeable differences in communication patterns?

[deepwatersolo]

I picked up someone on this board mention that there are (on average) distinct communication patterns in males and females and I wondered whether and how this translates to social media interactions.

Do you get ‚misgendered‘ based on your communication style? I do, regularly by men but not by women on Twitter (where you‘d expect gender parity, I guess). But this could be my neutral user name, which makes everyone assume their ‚default‘, maybe. Which leads to the question: do you - consciously or not - choose usernames (or bios) that indicate your gender? (I just realized I don‘t. Not consciously). Also, do you think it is possible to attribute communication patterns to a gender (or sex) with high confidence, or are there other factors (age, class, personality...) that drown any potential gender impact out? (Personally I do not think I see the differences, if there are any, unless, possibly in extreme rare cases. Never heard a woman talk about feminazis, to pick a recent example on this board).

What is your take on this?

When I posted on the Guardian years ago - it used to be called GUT and was a lot less moderated than Comment is Free - I had a feminine name but people thought I was male. In the end I ran with it because it meant being treated with a lot more respect- and I started to see differences in the way I was treated there and 'in real life'.

Its more noticeable on a platform such as this where the style is more conversational.
There will always be outliers but some of the typical gendered differences in speech can also often be seen here.
Socialisation has a profound effect on speech differences between males and females. There's a lot of well-established studies about spoken language.

Confirmation bias re names on platforms such as Twitter & comments below the article spaces is an interesting area.

There was an interesting example a while ago when colleagues (differnt sex) inadvertedly switched email accounts and the difference in how the same communication was received made clear.