Hesitant Allyship? How Identities and Affordances Shape White People?s Perceptions of Racial Justice Activism on Social Media
Creators: name: Roden, Jessica
Publisher: name: My University
Year: 2023
Subjects: subject: social media
subject: allyship
subject: social identity
subject: social media affordances
subject: Black Lives Matter
subject: racial justice
subject: Communications
subject: Social Sciences

description: Support for the Black Lives Matter movement among White people surged in the summer of 2020 but has dwindled to new lows ever since, calling into question the efficacy of racial justice messaging for White people. This is of particular importance, as Black Lives Matter activism and related racial justice campaigns are fueled by social media messaging, and the support of White allies could help to bring about needed policy changes and justice reform. This dissertation examines the effects of racial justice messaging on White people by focusing on perceptions of the messenger as a key link between social media messages and social movement attitudes. I integrate research on social movements, social media affordances, social identity, and media effects to better understand the role of messenger perceptions in social media activism. Through in-depth interviews and two experiments, I explore how social identities and social media affordances influence perceptions of racial justice messengers as similar, extreme, credible, and authentic. The semi-structured interviews provide rich insights into how people evaluate the credibility and authenticity of social media messengers, while also highlighting the perceived risks involved in posting about racial justice and under what conditions perceived risk is amplified. The social identities of the messenger and perceiver were impactful, although interpersonal communication and relationships were also important in many contexts. The majority of social movement messaging literature highlights the persuasive benefit of advantaged group member messengers; however, I find that Black messengers are simultaneously perceived as more extreme, credible, and authentic than White messengers. The political identity of the perceiver also affects what information people attend to, with conservative audiences tending to focus on discrediting the content of the message and liberal audiences tending to assess characteristics of the social media environment to help determine authenticity and credibility. Social media affordances enabled users to observe people in their social networks create original racial justice messages and re-share messages created by others, which shaped how these messengers were perceived. People who create original messages were perceived to be putting in more effort, which signaled more authentic engagement, and taking more responsibility for their opinions, which suggested heightened risk, compared to those who were only re-sharing messages created by others. Further, the volume of racial justice messages in social media environments influenced perceptions of messengers as credible supporters and inauthentic, bandwagon supporters. Altogether, these findings suggest that messenger perceptions play an important role in shaping attitudes toward racial justice movements and contribute to a more thorough understanding of social movement messaging effects.