How the Police and Armed Forces Construct Gender on Social Media: A Comparison of El Salvador and Honduras.

This article examines how state security forces in El Salvador and Honduras construct and perform gender on their official TikTok social media accounts, analyzing 315 videos from national police and armed forces between January 2022 and October 2023. It identifies three mechanisms of gender construction: the visibility and roles of female officers, the portrayal of masculinized versus feminized policing practices, and gendered editorial choices such as background music and video framing. The study finds that El Salvador's police emphasize hyper-masculine, aggressive policing aligned with President Nayib Bukele's "iron-fist" regime, largely excluding female officers from digital representation, while Honduras' National Police, under President Xiomara Castro's "soft-touch" approach, over-represent female officers and feminized practices, though its Military Police maintain masculinized images. The armed forces in both countries tend to present more gender-neutral images, highlighting distinct institutional strategies in shaping public perceptions of policing and gender in digital spaces.