With Twitter, the messenger race counts

A sample of millennium White participants watched real tweets on the topic and answered questions about their perceptions of the problem and who was tweeting. Eye tracking equipment mapped the time spent by participants reading each message, used as an indicator of their attention. the tweets. According to eye tracking data, participants further examined messages from white Twitter users, while self-reported data showed that they would be more likely to engage with black Twitter users on the subject.

"Twitter is an important outlet, we know it," said Joseph Erba, assistant professor of journalism and mass communications and senior author of the study. "We also know from traditional advertising and marketing literature that the visual identification of the communicator is also important.What interested us was whether the visual identification of a Twitter user influenced the way that people perceive the message, that's the case. "

Erba co-authored the study with Yuchen Liu, a graduate student, and Mugur Geana, an associate professor of journalism and mass communication. They will present their research at the conference of the International Communication Association in May. The research was conducted at the CEHCUP Experimental Media Research Laboratory at the School of Journalism and Mass Communication.

A few weeks before the end of the experiment, the researchers gave participants a questionnaire to assess their perceptions of race and their feelings about NFL events. For the experimental part of the study, the research team gathered real tweets on the subject, in support and against the demonstrations. They built new Twitter identities to present tweets containing images of users who were either a white man or woman, or a black man or woman. During the experiment, participants were exposed to tweets for or against NFL events, broadcast by one of the sex / race combinations of Twitter users. Subsequently, participants participated in a post-test by asking the same questions about their perceptions of the protests and their feelings about black Americans. They also answered additional questions about the tweets and the person tweeting.

Eye tracking software has indicated that they are watching whites for the longest time, especially men. However, when asked after the study that was most credible about it and with whom they most likely engaged, the participants ranked the black users, especially the men, at the top of the list. This contradiction indicates that race can influence the public's attention and that self-reported data should be consulted with caution, said Erba.

Respondents also reported that they changed their feelings about the events after reading the tweets. Those who were exposed to tweets in favor of the protests had a better view of the subject and the opposite was true for those who had seen tweets against the movement compared to their views on the protest about three weeks earlier. . Each participant saw four tweets.

"Four little tweets were enough to radically change their view of the NFL protests, we did not find any difference in their attitudes towards black people or racism," Erba said. . "We think it was because the tweets were directly related to the protests and that it was perhaps too difficult to relate to larger issues."

A number of theories of communication are likely to be at play and may help explain why participants reported having more credibility for user tweets to which they paid less attention. The theory of social identification postulates that individuals are more attracted by what people like them have to say than those who do not say it. According to the theory of identification, people will provide information to make sure they are perceived as being perceived by others, as opposed to what they perceive. are really. The latter probably helps to explain why participants said that black Twitter users were considered more credible on the subject. Race was a central issue in the protests and the ensuing debate, and research revealed that the breed of Twitter users was important. White respondents said black Twitter users were more believable.

"Still, if you look at the elections (2016), 40% of white millennials voted for Trump," said Erba. In the study, they looked more closely at people who looked like them, but when asked directly, they said that they were supporting black men. "

The majority of NFL players are blacks, and police brutality, the central issue of the protests, disproportionately affects black Americans, especially men. Therefore, the authors assume that when white millennials are invited to think about black men's tweets in self-reported data, they may perceive them as better informed about the subject. However, eye data indicated that, subconsciously, participants paid even more attention to white men's tweets.

The researchers plan to investigate the issue further. Current results have revealed several important elements for researchers and those trying to reach millennia. Namely, that race and identity mattered when it came to Twitter, and that conscious and unconscious responses were different, suggesting that self-reported data should always be examined with caution. Finally, the messenger can be just as important as the message.

"If you want a message to sound with the white Millennials, you have to think not only about the message, but also about the person who transmits it," said Erba. "There must be a" match "between the subject being discussed and the perceived identity of the spokesperson."

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According to a study, with Twitter, the race of messengers matters