Echoes of Identity: Public Response to Minority Politicians on Social Media

• In Event: The Media's Role in Forming and Reinforcing Political Identity and Community

Abstract

Politicians from racial or gender minority groups are often criticized for overemphasizing their personal characteristics when communicating with voters. Do politicians from minority groups genuinely wish to emphasize their background, or are they forced to do so? To address this question, we examine politicians' social media posts and public replies. We expect that when politicians belong to racial or gender minority groups, the public's response to their posts will predominantly center around their identity traits, irrespective of the original content. Conversely, when politicians belong to the majority group (e.g., Male or White), we expect the public's reaction to align with the politician's initial message.

To test our expectations, we collected 50,356 original tweets from House of Representatives candidates during the American 2020 election period, along with 434,599 replies to these tweets. We analyze these data using machine learning-based text labeling techniques to identify discrepancies between the candidate’s message and users’ responses.  Specifically, we categorize these tweets to determine whether a politician's message considers policies or if they are attempting to connect with their audience through personal identity. Additionally, we categorize replies made by the public to determine whether they are directly related to the politician's intended message or if they revolve around the politician's personal traits.

Our findings provide new insights into understanding the political communication of racial and gender minority politicians by highlighting the role of public perceptions of these politicians. While a significant number of studies have focused on the role of identities solely from the perspective of either politicians or the public, few have examined the interaction between the two. Furthermore, our dataset, which we have meticulously compiled, is particularly valuable given its size and its accessibility following Twitter's transition into 'X'.

Authors

• Young Seok Kim, University of Texas at Austin

• Jiyoung Park, Yonsei University

• Jeong Hyun Kim, Yonsei University