Abstract
Two experiments investigated how politicians’ personal disclosures on social media might affect individuals’ vote intention. In Study 1 (n = 240), a male politician’s Facebook posts centering on his private life (vs. impersonal posts highlighting public activities) enhanced U.S. participants’ intention to vote for him, mostly by heightening likability. By contrast, a female politician’s personal Facebook posts lowered perceived competence, and thereby, vote intention among those who considered Facebook ill-suited for relational purposes. Using Twitter, Study 2 (n = 258) mostly replicated the findings among South Korean participants, confirming bounded benefits of publicizing politicians’ private persona via social media.
Keywords
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
Supplementary Material
Please find the following supplemental material available below.
For Open Access articles published under a Creative Commons License, all supplemental material carries the same license as the article it is associated with.
For non-Open Access articles published, all supplemental material carries a non-exclusive license, and permission requests for re-use of supplemental material or any part of supplemental material shall be sent directly to the copyright owner as specified in the copyright notice associated with the article.
