The Effect of Streaming Chat on Perceptions of Political Debates

Broadcast media consumption is becoming more social. Many online video “livestreams” come with embedded livestreaming chatboxes, uniting the on-screen and social components. We investigate how streaming chat shapes perceptions of political events. We conducted a field experiment during the September 2019 Democratic Primary Debate where subjects were assigned to view the debate with or without streaming chat. We use text analyses to characterize the frequency, toxicity, and tone of comments in the chat. Our experimental findings indicate that Democratic subjects assigned to the Facebook (social) chat condition reported lower affect toward Democrats and a worse viewing experience, aligned with the toxic and overwhelming nature of the chat. The polarity of candidate-directed comments also influenced candidate evaluations and perceived performance in the polls. This suggests that consumers of mass media will be both more immediately affected by social feedback and likely to make inferences about the experiences of their fellow consumers.

Do high engagement Instagram images influence presidential candidate evaluation? The moderating effect of familiarity

PurposeThis paper aims to examine how exposure to a presidential candidate's high engagement Instagram images influences a citizen's candidate evaluations.Design/methodology/approachData were collected via Amazon MTurk. A 3 × 2 experimental design was employed to test the persuasive effect of exposure of the “most liked” and “most commented on” images of the top four 2016 US presidential primary candidates on a US citizen's candidate evaluation.FindingsResults reveal that highly engaging Instagram images of unfamiliar presidential candidates positively influenced candidate evaluations. However, the same was not true for more well-known presidential candidates.Research limitations/implicationsThis study was not conducted during a live campaign and only examined four of the top 2016 presidential primary candidates.Practical implicationsThe research includes implications for marketers seeking to increase engagement and reach in Instagram marketing campaigns. This study shows that even brief exposure to a highly engaged post involving an unfamiliar person/product on social media can significantly alter evaluations of that person or product.Originality/valueTo the authors' knowledge, no experimental designs have addressed how Instagram posts influence users' political attitudes and behaviors within the political marketing and communications literature.

A New Electorate? Explaining the Party Preferences of Immigrant-Origin Voters at the 2017 Bundestag Election

Immigrants now constitute a sizeable and rapidly growing group among many Western countries' electorates, but analyses of their party preferences remain limited. Theoretically, immigrants' party preferences might be explained with both standard electoral theories and immigrant-specific approaches. In this article, we rigorously test both perspectives against each other using the most recent data from Germany. Applying the Michigan model, with its three central explanatory variables – party identification, issue orientations and candidate evaluations – to the party preferences of immigrant-origin and native voters, we find that this standard model can explain both groups well. In contrast, we find no direct effects of the most prominent immigrant-specific variables, and neither do these meaningfully moderate the Michigan variables. However, we find strong formative effects on the presence of political attitudes and beliefs: immigrants with a longer time spent in Germany, a stronger German identity and less experience of discrimination report significantly fewer item non-responses for the Michigan model's main explanatory variables.

The Effects of “Live,” Authentic, and Emotional Instagram Images on Congressional Candidate Evaluations

This study examines how Instagram’s design and norms influence expectations for political imagery and, subsequently, the effects of these images on electability, vote likelihood, and candidate evaluations. Using the Elaboration Likelihood Model, we propose three norms of Instagram that likely function as heuristic cues and affect the reception of political visual communication on the platform: liveness, authenticity, and emotionality. We experimentally test these visual features on Congressional candidate images, finding some evidence that live, authentic, and emotional images positively influence vote likelihood but negatively impact electability. Results also indicate that live, authentic, and emotional images either have no or negative effects on female candidate evaluations or have no or positive effects on male candidate evaluations.

Are Political Attacks a Laughing Matter? Three Experiments on Political Humor and the Effectiveness of Negative Campaigning

Research on the effectiveness of negative campaigning offers mixed results. Negative messages can sometimes work to depress candidate evaluations, but they can also backfire against the attacker. In this article, we examine how humor can help mitigate the unintended effects of negative campaigning using data from three experimental studies in the United States and the Netherlands. Our results show that (1) political attacks combined with “other-deprecatory humor” (i.e., jokes against the opponents) are less likely to backfire against the attacker and can even increase positive evaluations of this latter—especially when the attack is perceived as amusing. At the same time and contrary to what we expected, (2) humor does not blunt the attack: humorous attacks are not less effective against the target than serious attacks. All in all, these results suggest that humor can be a good strategy for political attacks: jokes reduce harmful backlash effects against the attacker, and humoros attacks remain just as effective as humorless ones. When in doubt, be funny. All data and materials are openly available for replication.

The Effects of Dehumanizing Attitudes about Black People on Whites’ Voting Decisions

Political scientists have long noted the key role racial attitudes can play in electoral politics. However, the 2016 election of Donald Trump raises questions about prevailing theories of racial attitudes and their political effects. While existing research focuses on ‘cultural’ or ‘modern’ forms of racial prejudice, this article argues that a sizeable portion of White Americans, disturbingly, dehumanize Black people: that is, they view Black people as less than fully human. Unsurprisingly, given the blatant racism of Donald Trump's campaign, this study also demonstrates that dehumanizing attitudes toward Black people are more strongly associated with support for Trump than with support for other candidates in the 2016 Republican primary. The authors also find evidence that dehumanizing attitudes toward Black people bolstered Donald Trump's vote share among Whites in the 2016 presidential election. Finally, dehumanizing attitudes are negatively associated with Whites' evaluations of Barack Obama, even after holding standard measures of racial prejudice constant. These findings suggest that a fundamental form of racism – dehumanizing attitudes toward Black people – can powerfully shape candidate evaluations and voting decisions in the twenty-first century.