The Search for Common Ground: Audience Closure and Producer Legitimation

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We ask how the structure of audiences affects the evaluation of producers. We present findings from two different settings showing that audience closure generates a systematic positive influence on evaluations of producers. We attribute this effect to “common ground”, a positive impact on the identification of evaluators with the audience, facilitated by closure. The first empirical study, a re-analysis of Ezra Zuckerman’s 1999 study of stock analysts, demonstrates that financial markets reward firms covered by analysts with high closure, independent of the category mismatch effect that was Zuckerman’s focus. The second study is a natural experiment where instructors randomly assigned to teach first-year MBA course sections spanned pairs of student groups with differential amounts of closure. We find that the average rating given to an instructor improves as a function of closure in their evaluators’ network and that closure increases the buzz around an instructor, an indicator that audience members are s...