Tweeting Along Partisan Lines: Identity-Motivated Elaboration and Presidential Debates

Abstract

The influence of partisan identification infiltrates all aspects of a democracy. This study employs an innovative design to explore the presidential debate-viewing experience among young citizens. Data were collected from across the United States for all three 2016 presidential debates between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump using pretest/posttest surveys and debate viewers’ Twitter posts. Examining Twitter expression as a form of political elaboration, the study employs a social identity theoretical perspective to better understand the process through which viewers form political attitudes. Applying the theory of identity-motivated elaboration (TIME) to presidential debates, the current research illuminates how partisan social identification changes the way viewers think about political issues and, resultantly, evaluate candidates and form political opinions. A strong partisan social identification results in greater identity-consistent elaboration and Twitter expression throughout one’s presidential debate viewing, which results in more biased candidate image evaluations and, subsequently, stronger preference for the in-party candidate.

The Democratic Value of Strategic Game Reporting and Uncivil Talk: A Computational Analysis of Facebook Conversations During U.S. Primary Debates

“…While online conversations can serve multiple behavioral roles for debate viewers (Bucy et al, 2020; Freelon & Karpf, 2015; Robertson et al, 2019), very few studies have explored the discursive quality of debate related user comments. Many viewers tune in to the debates because they are politically motivated partisans (McKinney & Warner, 2013), while social media engagement with debate related content represents a cognitive and expressive process for strong partisans (Jennings et al, 2020). This study assumes that if televised debates stimulate news consumption and political conversation (Cho & Choy, 2011) and cognitive elaborations (McGregor & Mourão, 2017), there might be democratic value in such discussions.…”

“…Social media platforms, which merge the private and the public domains, have contributed to the “privatization of the public sphere” (Klinger & Svensson, 2015) hence the expressive language in these online spaces encapsulates strong focus on conflict, collective identities and passionate discourse which often deviates from the normative expectations of consensus (Dahlberg, 2005). For example, a recent study found that in the context of live-tweeting a televised candidate debate, strong partisans were more likely to generate more comments supporting their candidate and criticizing and attacking the outgroup candidate (Jennings et al, 2020). This suggests that the online discussions can have positive and negative features simultaneously.…”