Survey Experiment
I experimentally test the effects of adding background music to recent social media videos depicting homelessness and ICE arrests. Average treatment effects include stronger emotional responses and higher perceptions of video credibility and shareability, contingent on the issue. However, none of these effects translate into downstream policy support, suggesting that music is not politically persuasive in the short term.
Advances in media production technologies make it easy for “influencers” and general users alike to create professional-looking videos and distribute them widely on social media. Does the increasing production quality of social media video affect how viewers interpret political media, or do viewers disregard production quality as nothing more than glossy packaging? Using a video-based survey experiment, I test and compare a battery of effects from adding background music to social media videos documenting (1) homelessness and (2) Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) arrests. Adding topic-congruent background music increased general affective response and sympathy for subjects in the homelessness video, but not for the ICE video. Music also increased perceived credibility and shareability of videos in both conditions. However, music did not contribute to downstream policy outcomes in any significant way for either condition. These results suggest that although viewers emotionally respond to music and subconsciously recognize production quality as a credibility heuristic, they prioritize substantive informational cues over aesthetic polish when interpreting political content. How these effects might compound over time as social media production norms change remains an open question.
Keywords: affective cognition, social media video, music, homelessness, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)