Tweets, either for or against, can influence the thinking process of young people and the speed of the messenger matters here too, say researchers.
"Twitter is an important outlet. We know that," said lead author Joseph Erba, Assistant Professor at the University of Kansas. "We also know from traditional advertising and marketing literature that the visual identification of the communicator matters. What we were interested to see is if the visual identification of a Twitter user influences how people perceive the message. It does." Finally, the messenger can be just as important as the message, the findings revealed.
"If you want a message to hit home with white millennials, you have to think not only about the message but who is delivering the message," Erba said. The team took a sample of how white millennial participants viewed real tweets, then answered about their perceptions of the issue and about who tweeted the messages.