Visuals as Identity Markers in Political Communication on Social Media: Evidence for Effects of Visual Cues in Liberals, but Not in Conservatives

Politicians often rely on in-group markers of identity, aiming to signal their ideology to specific segments of the electorate. The impact of this practice on the electorate is insufficiently understood. In particular, we know markedly little about the effects of visual cues, a domain of utmost importance on social media. With previous research indicating that some politicians use more visual cues as identity markers than others, we set out to assess whether the effects of visual cues vary based on how much a politician uses them. We used an experiment conducted in Germany (N = 655) to test whether the use of visual cues by a fictitious politician impacted citizens' attitudes and voting intentions, depending on the interplay between strength of use (i.e. how many liberal or conservative cues a politician uses) and citizens' political ideology. A balanced sample of participants—one-third each self-categorized as liberal, moderate, or conservative—was randomly allocated to one of 13 conditions denoting various strengths of use, ranging from very liberal to very conservative. Analyses indicated substantial effects of strength of use on attitudes and voting intentions, yet only for liberal participants. Only liberals used the information provided by visual cues when evaluating the politician.