Transnationalization of Anti-Gender Politics on Social Media: Hashtag Practices and Cross-Border Visibility

Abstract

Gender politics have become central arenas of contemporary political struggle, with anti-gender movements mobilizing across borders to contest women’s and LGBTQI+ rights. While research has shown that anti-gender actors articulate strikingly similar positions across national contexts, it remains insufficiently understood how such similarity translates into shared transnational action. This study examines how anti-gender movements collectively generate transnational visibility on social media by analyzing ten years of Twitter (now X) communication from 148 anti-gender social movement organizations in Croatia, Germany, France, Italy, and Poland (N = 126,711 tweets). Drawing on concepts of networked framing and discourse coalitions, this study employs a mixed-methods analysis of hashtag co-usage on Twitter, combining quantitative measures of transnational hashtag connectivity with qualitative thematic content analysis. The findings reveal that anti-gender movements co-create visibility for opposition to gender equality through a threefold pattern, including a continuous dissemination of ideological narratives, an episodic activation of campaigns, and a strategic extension of anti-gender frames into broader public debates. These practices enable actors to jointly enhance the visibility and persistence of anti-gender claims across multiple publics while simultaneously adapting frames to divergent political contexts. By linking cross-border hashtag practices to the co-production of visibility, this study contributes to research on gendered public spheres by demonstrating how similarity among anti-gender actors becomes transnationally consequential through the joint production of visibility in networked communication environments.

The authors' abstract, as published at the source. Media and Communication, 2026 · DOI ↗