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The existing literature presents ambivalent evidence regarding the significance of visual cues, as opposed to textual cues, in the process of impression formation. While visual information may have a strong effect due to its vividness and immediate absorption, textual information might be more powerful due to its solid, unambiguous nature. This debate is particularly relevant in the context of online social networks, whose users share textual and visual elements. To explore our main research question, "Which elements of one's Facebook profile have a more significant influence on impression formation of extroversion—pictures or texts?" we conducted two complementary online experiments, manipulating visual and textual cues inside and outside the context of Facebook. We then attempted to identify the relevant underlying mechanisms in impression formation. Our findings indicate that textual cues play a more dominant role online, whether via Facebook or not, supporting assertions of a new-media literacy that is text based. Additionally, we found the participants' level of need for cognition influenced the effect such that individuals with a high need for cognition placed more emphasis on textual cues. The number of "likes" was also a significant predictor of perceptions of the individuals' social orientation, especially when the other cues were ambiguous.

How populists engage with media of various types, and are treated by those media, are questions of international interest. In the United States, Donald Trump stands out for both his populism-inflected campaign style and his success at attracting media attention. This article examines how interactions between candidate communications, social media, partisan media, and news media combined to shape attention to Trump, Clinton, Cruz, and Sanders during the 2015–2016 American presidential primary elections. We identify six major components of the American media system and measure candidates' efforts to gain attention from them. Our results demonstrate that social media activity, in the form of retweets of candidate posts, provided a significant boost to news media coverage of Trump, but no comparable boost for other candidates. Furthermore, Trump tweeted more at times when he had recently garnered less of a relative advantage in news attention, suggesting he strategically used Twitter to trigger coverage.