Pathway to authenticity? The influence of politicians’ gender and multimodal self-presentation in social media on perceived authenticity

Abstract

The authenticity of political candidates has become a decisive factor in their evaluation by the public. In response, political candidates employ self-presentation techniques to appear genuine to constituents, and social media provides politicians with new tools to perform authenticity. Yet, we still know little about how politicians construct authentic images and how their gender and modes of self-presentation influence perceived authenticity. In this study, we examine how politicians’ gender (male vs female) and modes of self-presentation (text-only, image-only, and text–image combined) affect perceived political authenticity. Results from a 2 × 3 online survey experiment in Germany (N = 1,485) show that gender alone does not explain differences in perceived political authenticity when self-presentation is held consistently. Furthermore, we do not find significant effects for different self-presentation modes in social media. Additional analyses reveal that physical attractiveness is the primary factor for higher authenticity ratings in our sample.