When #BlackLivesMatter at the Women’s March: a study of the emotional influence of racial appeals on Instagram

Abstract

Protestors often carry signs expressing their support or opposition to political issues. In recent years, people often take pictures holding their protests signs and post these images to social media platforms like Instagram. “Black Lives Matter” has become a common and controversial refrain used on protest images online. Black protestors as well as white protestors have posted images holding signs that say “Black Lives Matter.” In this study, I use experimental methods to explore how exposure to Instagram posts that vary the race of the protestor as well as the message on the protester’s sign influence white people’s emotional responses to political messages. I make use of new media to demonstrate the ways in which white guilt remains a powerful mobilizing tool in the era of social media. Using data from Amazon’s Mechanical Turk, I conduct sentiment analysis of open-ended survey responses to explore the role of emotions in the process of political agenda setting. I find that when racial appeals elicit white guilt, they motivate support for identifying racism as an important issue in this country. However, when racial appeals elicit feelings of annoyance or irritation white respondents are significantly less likely to identify racism as an important issue.

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