But is she married? Assessing information-seeking about female politicians on Wikipedia

While literature suggests that stereotypes matter for the success of women in politics, there is disagreement how they shape perceptions of actual politicians. The literature suggests that the availability of information plays a crucial role in this process. Information mediates whether citizens apply stereotypes in decision-making and which weight they attach to candidate gender as a heuristic. I argue that in addition to the availability of information, information-seeking matters: Citizens are more likely to seek out and retain information that fits stereotypes. I argue that the incongruence between female politicians and stereotypes of political leaders motivates citizens to seek more information on female politicians, compared to male politicians. However, this information-seeking occurs along stereotypical lines. As a result, it may reinforce existing stereotypes about women in politics. I test this argument using digital trace data from the Wikipedia online encyclopedia that covers visits to the pages of almost 1500 legislators over a period of two years. Drawing on page views as well as clickstream data that measures which links users click on, I show that Wikipedia users search for more information on female than on male politicians, however, their interest is centered on family and personal life, rather than the policy positions of these politicians. Thereby, the paper presents a proof of concept for a novel, low-cost approach to the study of perceptions of politicians that allows cross-national and over-time comparisons of political information-seeking.