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Motivated Tweeting and Motivated Processing: Influencing Debate Viewership Through Twitter Instruction

Sat, May 27, 11:00 to 12:15, Hilton San Diego Bayfront, Floor: 2, Indigo 206

Abstract

Researchers have noted that individual processing of political media messages occurs through various filters of partisanship, interest, cynicism, and exogenous factors such as media frames. This phenomenon of motivated processing is, as of yet, understudied in the context of presidential debates. As major campaign events, presidential debates have been linked to significant increases in participant political knowledge, PIE, and changes in candidate evaluation. Individual information processing undetected by the extant literature on debates may influence these outcomes. As such, the present study proposes the capacity to manipulate processing of a political debate, as evidenced through engagement with social media. Researchers asked participants to tweet while watching presidential primary debates following three different sets instructions, approximating partisan motivated processing, accuracy motivated processing, and a control group who were simply asked to tweet their thoughts about the debate. The content of the tweets are presented, alongside survey data to determine if manipulating prompts to process the debate in a particular way had an impact on tweet frequency and content.

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