Journal
INFORMATION COMMUNICATION & SOCIETY
Volume 22, Issue 5, Pages 709-716Publisher
ROUTLEDGE JOURNALS, TAYLOR & FRANCIS LTD
DOI: 10.1080/1369118X.2018.1543443
Keywords
Social media; twitter; race
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Funding
- Indiana University Faculty Research Support Program
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Race, gender, and physical attractiveness strongly affect perceptions of trustworthiness and subsequent face-to-face interactions. This study examines how social media users' perceived gender, race, and physical attractiveness can impact their standing online. We test these broad hypotheses by having Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk) workers evaluate a sample of 816 Twitter accounts. Our results show a beauty premium,' where MTurk workers say they are more likely to follow Twitter accounts with attractive profile photos, and attractive photos are positively associated with evaluations of trust. However, very attractive Black male and female Twitter accounts are associated with lower evaluations of trust compared to their White counterparts. These findings suggest that social media users' social characteristics, perceived from their username or profile image, can replicate offline inequality online.
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