Who Says What About Whom: Young Voters' Impression Formation of Political Candidates on Social Networking Sites

Abstract

Social information processing theory claims that computer-mediated communication users form impressions of others by utilizing available information in the web environment. As social networking sites offer a wider variety of cues, however, the environment has become increasingly complex. This study explores which cues influence computer-mediated communication users in a cue-rich environment. More specifically, based on the social identification and deindividuation model, we examined not only how others' opinions but also how the perceived age of the commenters and candidates influenced young people's impressions of political candidates. Participants (N = 520) were randomly placed into a 2 (positive/negative comments) × 2 (younger/older commenters) × 2 (younger/older candidate) design and exposed to a fictitious candidate's Facebook profile with unknown others' comments before reporting the candidate's trustworthiness. Although comments' valence was the strongest cue, the results showed that older commenters' opinions were more influential than young commenters'. This two-way interaction between comments' valence and commenters' age was significant only when the candidate was young, suggesting that social networking sites users utilize multiple cues depending on the situation.