EconPapers    
Economics at your fingertips  
 

When your supporters become your opponents: Exploring the unintended effects of parodies on social media engagement

Ouidade Sabri, Nadr El Hana (), Zineb Abidi and Silvia Martin
Additional contact information
Ouidade Sabri: LAB IAE Paris - Sorbonne - IAE Paris - Sorbonne Business School
Nadr El Hana: EDC - EDC Paris Business School, UM6P - Africa Business School, Université Mohammed VI Polytechnique

Post-Print from HAL

Abstract: Abstract Using parodies to mock politicians' personal flaws is a prevalent practice and represents an important threat to their brand image and reputation. However, the ability of parodies based on personal attacks to create positive social media engagement from the parodist's point of view is still unexplored. This study contributes to the attribution–emotion–action theory by exposing the unintended effects of parodies on social media engagement. We began with a content analysis of 331 parodies of political figures posted on YouTube from 2012 to 2019. Then, by using both a machine‐learning‐based analysis of 31,300 comments on those parodies and an experiment, we compared the effectiveness of two types of parodies based on personal attacks, depending on the type of stigma depicted: controllable versus uncontrollable. Our findings are paradoxical. Compared to parodies based on controllable personal stigmas, parodies of uncontrollable stigmas foster less supportive social media engagement toward the parodist and his/her parody (i.e., likes, shares), especially among individuals who were originally detractors and opponents of the parodied politician. Those effects are mediated by the role of moral‐condemning emotions expressing the inappropriateness of the topic selected by the parodist. Henceforth, it is advisable for parodists to refrain from incorporating representations of an uncontrollable stigma into their spoof creations, as such actions may imperil the levels of engagement exhibited by their audience, encompassing both their reception of the parodies and their perception of the parodists themselves.

Date: 2023-10-18
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Published in Psychology and Marketing, 2023, ⟨10.1002/mar.21928⟩

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hal:journl:hal-04309173

DOI: 10.1002/mar.21928

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Post-Print from HAL
Bibliographic data for series maintained by CCSD ().

 
Page updated 2025-03-19
Handle: RePEc:hal:journl:hal-04309173