POLITICS
When Taylor Swift spoke up against misogyny, her popularity went up among students
New evidence that celebrity activism can hurt or help a celebrity’s image.
When Caitlyn Jenner claimed that people with private planes are leaving”Concert Crowd (Osheaga 2009) — 30000 waiting for Coldplay” by Anirudh Koul is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0 California because they don’t like to see homeless people, she reminded us that a celebrity can affect their reputation for good or ill by getting involved in politics. But how do we know which one it will be? Is it likely that Jenner improved or worsened her reputation when she went on Hannity?
We did an experiment to find the answer.
But first, scholars have developed several broad theories to answer these questions about the relationships among celebrities, their political beliefs, and their fans. While these ideas were developed to explain celebrity influence on public opinion and voting behavior, they also help us understand how celebrities can hurt or help their own popularity with their political involvement.
To start, people identify with celebrities to the extent that they, “come to believe in the values, convictions and behaviors portrayed by the celebrity endorser and adopt them as their own.” Take fans of Elvis Presley. Fraser and Brown found that fans develop psychological relationships with celebrities like Elvis, look to them as role models, and even adopt a celebrity’s values and behaviors. Yet, how long will a fan continue to identify with a celebrity with whom they disagree politically, and will they identify more heavily with those with whom they agree?
Frizzell argued that identifying with celebrities is a helpful shortcut or cue for people to figure out what they should pay attention to. But, again, how long will a fan continue to accept cues from a celebrity who endorses ideas or candidates they find disagreeable?
Experts have identified several characteristics of celebrities and products that help a celebrity endorsement work, including, familiarity, trustworthiness and credibility. These studies suggest that sources with whom the audience is familiar and who are perceived by them as having high credibility and trustworthiness are more effective influencers than less trustworthy or credible sources. In politics, is the perceived trustworthiness and credibility of a celebrity just a matter of agreeing with them?
Probably the most comprehensive theory of celebrity endorsements is Grant McCracken’s Meaning Transfer Theory. In terms of celebrity political endorsements, celebrities, like Elvis or Jenner, transfer the meanings they possess to the idea or politician they support, and when the citizen or voter is influenced by the endorsement, he or she transfers the meaning to themselves. In other words, the youth, glamor, sexual prowess, wealth, and freedom that celebrities represent are desirable characteristics among their fans, who may never achieve them in reality, but may experience them by identifying with celebrities and the political ideas and politicians they endorse. If celebrities come to personify politically disagreeable notions, will fans continue to want to transfer celebrity meanings to themselves by agreeing with the celebrity?
In order to investigate these questions, we surveyed a group of students (60% women, 88% white, slightly more identified as Democrats) at Bowling Green State University in Ohio. While this does not generate a representative sample, it does allow us to gauge the opinions of a group particularly tuned-in to contemporary popular culture, and who are likely to become opinion leaders.
We asked students to rate celebrities as cold or hot on a 0 to 100 degree temperature scale. The three celebrities were Taylor Swift, Amy Schumer, and Kanye West. In a post-test only experiment, half of the respondents were shown a controversial political statement each figure had actually made, while the other half were asked only to rate the celebrity/political figure. Here are the three statements:
— Taylor Swift said, “misogyny is ingrained in people from the time they are born. So to me, feminism is probably the most important movement that you could embrace, because it’s just basically another word for equality.”
— Amy Schumer said, “No one wants to live in a country where a felon, the mentally ill, or other dangerous people can get their hands on a gun with such ease.”
— On an appearance on Saturday Night Live, Kanye West wore a red “Make America Great Again” hat, which is a symbol of support for President Donald Trump.
You can see the results in this table which shows the average temperature rating for each public figure based on whether respondents saw the statement or not.
Respondents who saw Swift and Schumer’s statements rated them higher than those who did not, a statistically significant difference. For instance, the students who saw that Swift had criticized misogyny, viewed her more more favorably than those who did not, the same for Schumer.
The opposite was true for Kanye West, those who saw Kanye West’s pro-Trump hat gave him a lower average rating, also a statistically significant differences. And these differences survived more advanced statistical testing that controlled in all cases for student race, gender, ideology, and partisanship. For Swift and Schumer, we also controlled for whether the respondent defined themselves as an anti-feminist. In the case of West’s statement, respondents’ Trump approval was controlled for as well.
To be sure, feminism is popular among the students in the experiment, while Trump is not. In part a consequence, this evidence suggests that celebrities who take popular positions among an audience may see their own popularity increase. Celebrities who take unpopular positions may see their own popularity decrease, each of which could influence the effectiveness of future endorsements. Fans are likely to continue to want to identify with those celebrities with whom they agree. They may even find such celebrities more trustworthy and credible. With Caitlyn Jenner stepping into California politics, we are going to see how this plays out in real time.
