Racial, political cues on social media shape TV audiences’ choices

(Press-News.org) CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Social media users are more likely to watch TV programs that are endorsed by members of their political party, a recent study suggests. However, individuals’ racial identity and their perceptions of racial and political ingroup norms and the demographics of a program’s intended audience also play roles in their decisions.

Stewart Coles, a professor of communication at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign,

surveyed 1,259 Black and white Republicans and Democrats to see how their intentions to view a fictitious TV program were affected by their race and political party and those of the person endorsing it. Coles found that certain racial differences were much larger among Republicans compared with Democrats. Overall, the effect of endorsements from people of the same political group — as opposed to endorsements from members of the other party — was stronger for white participants. White Republicans reported the weakest intentions to watch the program regardless of who endorsed it, whereas Black Republicans reported the strongest intentions.

“Although prior studies found that Republicans have a more limited media and popular culture diet, the current study’s results suggest that these narrower preferences may be specific to white Republicans rather than generalizable to the entire party,” Coles said.

The findings, published in the journal Human Communication Research, suggest that the partisan divide in entertainment media usage is influenced by an array of factors, including users’ multiple group identities as well as political and racial ingroup norms — beliefs that others in their group watch and would approve of their watching a program and that the content is intended for people like them.

The study population included equal numbers of Black Democrats and Republicans and white Democrats and Republicans. Coles showed the participants an image of four tweets endorsing a fictitious TV program. The display names and Twitter profile pictures of the endorsers were altered so that they appeared to be of the same or opposite political party and the same or different race as the participant. Coles assessed how these differing endorsements influenced participants’ intention to watch the TV show or to obtain more information about it. Participants completed questionnaires that asked about ingroup norms, such as how many people of their race and political ideology they believed were currently watching the show or would watch it during the next season. The participants also rated how much they wanted to view the show and if they would like to be sent to a website to watch a free episode after completing the survey.

Besides the actual content of a TV program, other information, such as cues about a program’s audience, may affect people’s intentions to view it due to their perceptions of their political and racial ingroup norms and their perceptions whether a program’s intended audience is people like them, Coles wrote. In the current study, Coles found that participants’ exposure intentions were affected by a combination of the race and political party of the participants and those of the endorsers.

            When the white participants were shown endorsements by people of the other political party, white Democrats’ intentions to watch it were weaker when they believed the intended audience was white Republicans, as were white Republicans’ intentions when they thought the intended audience was Democrats of either race, Coles found. However, he also found that the intentions of Black partisans of either party were not significantly affected by who endorsed the program.

“As much as partisans might be attracted to different types of entertainment content, they — at least white partisans — are also sensitive to social signals about who else is watching,” Coles said.

The findings also demonstrated the power of social media exposure in shaping norms and behaviors surrounding media consumption.

“This was in a context in which norms should be the least influential — a relatively private behavior rather than a more public context — and when the sources of the norm-conveying communication were strangers on the internet,” Coles said. “How might offline endorsements from presumed co-partisans versus out-partisans influence people’s intentions? This study’s implications go beyond exposure intentions resulting from explicit political identity cues online.”

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