Image, issue, and affective priming effects of candidates’ Facebook posts on voters’ trait perceptions and overall evaluations

ABSTRACT

Trait perception is crucial to electoral support. Increasingly, candidates are using social media posts to shape their images, prime trait perception, and enhance overall evaluations. This study distinguishes three types of priming effects – namely, image priming, issue priming, and affective priming. Three online experiments assess these effects in the context of Facebook campaigns. The image priming effects were consistently confirmed. When coupled with issue discussions, their effectiveness was amplified only for applicable issues in positive tones. The suitability of applying media priming theory to social media campaigns is also discussed.

KEYWORDS:

• Image priming
• issue priming
• affective priming
• Facebook campaign
• candidate evaluations

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Ministry of Science and Technology, Taiwan: [Grant Number MOST 108-2410-H-110-051-MY2].

Notes on contributors

Yue Tan

Yue Tan is an associate professor at the Institute of Marketing Communication, National Sun Yat-sen University, Taiwan. She has her PhD (2008) in Mass Communication from University of Indiana, Bloomington. Her research interests are political communication, social media and media effects. Her publications have appeared in refereed international journals such as New Media & Society, Asian Journal of Communication, Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, Chinese Journal of Communication, and Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies.

Hsuan-Yi Chou

Hsuan-Yi Chou is a professor in the Institute of Marketing Communication at National Sun Yat-sen University. He received his PhD from the Graduate Institute of Business Administration at National Taiwan University. His research areas include political communication, advertising effects, consumer psychology, and e-commerce. His work has been published in such journals as Electoral Studies, International Journal of Advertising, International Journal of Communication, Chinese Journal of Communication, Asian Journal of Communication, International Journal of Research in Marketing, Electronic Commerce Research and Applications, European Journal of Marketing, Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, Psychology & Marketing, Journal of Consumer Affairs, Journal of Economic Psychology, The Journal of Psychology: Interdisciplinary and Applied, The Journal of Social Psychology, The Service Industries Journal, and Marketing Intelligence and Planning.