The role of Facebook in attitude change toward Black Pete

The figure Black Pete as part of the yearly Sinterklaas festivities have been reason for discussion in the Netherlands for decades. However, in the past few years the discussion has intensified with an increasing number of Dutch people rooting for change. Drawing from the theoretical literature on attitude change and through 14 semi-structured interviews with Dutch citizens, this study aims to understand how current Black Pete opponents explain their attitude change from supporting the tradition, with a specific focus on the role of Facebook therein. The data results show that the process of attitude change toward Black Pete consists out of five stages, namely the initial positive attitude, existing personality, awareness, acknowledgement and the actual attitude change. Within the first stages initial influences for attitude change are proven to be personal contacts, primarily those on an international level and those that invoke empathic perspectives toward other individuals. Facebook’s role has proven to be immense in the process of attitude change toward Black Pete, especially in the stages of awareness, acknowledgement and actual attitude change. Facebook helped change attitudes and helped strengthen existing negative attitudes toward Black Pete by providing information and access to others’ perspectives quickly and easily, especially through the ability to join topic-specific groups and the newsfeed. This paper contributes to an understanding of the role of social media and in particular the social networking site Facebook in attitude change toward a Dutch cultural tradition.