News coverage on transgender celebrities in Belgium: Parasocial contact, attitudes, and policy support

ABSTRACT

The role of media representations of transgender people in ameliorating attitudes towards transgender people and related policies has recently aroused attention. Since real-life transgender contact is rather seldom for most people, positive media representations may stimulate the formation of parasocial relationships, resulting in more supportive attitudes and policies, and thus less prejudices and discrimination. Current studies predominantly focus on entertainment narratives, approach attitudes towards transgender people one-dimensionally, and have shown interpersonal transgender contact is a predictor. This online cross-sectional study (N = 388, M_age = 32.34, SD = 10.76) contributes to the literature by examining the indirect relationship between evaluation of news coverage on transgender celebrities' coming out and policy support through transphobia and transnegativity, and the moderating role of interpersonal transgender contact. Findings indicated that a positive news coverage evaluation, rather than mere exposure, relates to more policy support directly and indirectly via lower transphobia and lower transnegativity. Interpersonal contact strengthened the association between transphobia and policy support, but did not moderate the indirect associations. Taken together, the results point to the importance of disentangling transgender attitudes into transphobia and transnegativity, and highlight the parasocial role of a positive news coverage evaluation in enhancing attitudes and policy support.

KEYWORDS:

• News media
• parasocial contact hypothesis
• attitudes
• gender norms
• celebrities

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank Manou Swinnen and Lena Vandenberghen for their assistance in collecting the data used in this study.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Data availability statement

The data described in this article are openly available in the Open Science Framework at https://osf.io/8h4r9/

Open scholarship

This article has earned the Center for Open Science badges for Open Data and Open Materials through Open Practices Disclosure. The data and materials are openly accessible at https://osf.io/8h4r9/.

Ethical approval

This study was approved by the Social and Societal Ethics Committee of KU Leuven. The approval number is G- 2019 05 1662.

Additional information

Funding

No external funding was received for conducting this study.