Share or not? Effects of Stereotypes on Social Media Engagement Using the Stereotype Content Model

From a reader-experience and reader-engagement perspective, drawing upon stereotype content model and news engagement research, this study examined the impact of the stereotypes that the news characters receive on news audience’ s affective and behavioral responses in social media news environment. 145 participants were recruited for a between-subjects posttest-only online experiment. Based on an identical news plot, the stereotypes (warmth and competence) of the news characters were manipulated into four stereotypical quadrants, high competence and high warmth, high competence and low warmth, low competence and high warmth, and low competence and low warmth. Results showed that distinct emotions were elicited by the different stereotyped news characters. Second, the stereotypical perception of warmth was conducive to emotional, functional and communal engagement compared with competence, validating the warmth primacy principle. Furthermore, we found that ambivalent emotions, pity and envy, fueled more social media engagement than admiration and contempt. Lastly, lining with the principle of cognition, affect, and behavior, the mediation analyses showed that emotions significantly mediated the relationships between stereotype perceptions and social media engagement. Theoretical and practical implications on audience engagement and the role of emotion in journalism are further discussed.