Political Cue Taking on Social Media Among Teens

• In Event: Cues That Matter

Abstract

What influences young people’s assessments of source credibility and persuasiveness? Traditional accounts of political socialization do not consider this question, which is critically important in our current political context. The proliferation of social media and rising political polarization have changed radically the landscape of political information transmission and the interaction of these changes has fostered an environment where misinformation widely circulates and people distrust both traditional media and the government. We know little about the effects of these changes in the media landscape on the process of political socialization, despite an expectation that the information young people encounter on social media may be particularly relevant to their political development. Young people do not yet have firm political attachments or orientations. Because there is considerable ideological heterogeneity on social media, they are exposed to more diverse messaging than they may have been in traditional media environments. However, their weaker partisan attachment leaves them without a party heuristic to parse quickly through the information they encounter. What cues do young people take in the absence of strong party cues to assess political arguments?

In order to answer these questions, in January 2021 we fielded an identical survey experiment to nationally representative samples of American teenagers and American adults using NORC’s AmeriSpeaks panel. The treatment contains re-tweets offering commentary on political issues relatively salient to teenagers and falling into clear partisan patterns (prayer in school, minimum wage, marijuana legalization, and police accountability). The core experiment is a straightforward 2×2 factorial design where the message provided is either liberal or conservative and makes the argument explicitly partisan or leaves the connection implicit. We layer on two experiments that are orthogonal to our core experiment that illuminate how young people interpret political news on social media. First, we vary the source of the re-tweet, either from an unknown Twitter user or from a trusted news source, the AP wire service. Second, we vary the extent to which a tweet has been shared, liked, and commented on. After reading each tweet, the respondent is asked to evaluate the credibility of the tweet and their opinion on the issue touched on by the tweet.

Authors

• Kevin Arceneaux, Sciences Po

• Johanna Dunaway, Texas A&M University

• David W. Nickerson, Temple University

• Jaime E. Settle, College of William & Mary