William P. Eveland

The Ohio State University | OSU · School of Communication

Most prior U.S. political discussion research has failed to pay close attention to the networks of political independents, and to the differences between true partisans, leaners, and true independents. This is in direct contrast to the (appropriately) growing research attention paid to the decades-long rise in the proportion of independents and the...

White participants in the United States were asked to imagine having a hypothetical conversation about race-specific issues with either a White or Black discussant who was described as either a Republican or Democrat. Participants’ expectations of encountering negative outcomes during the conversation, and their intentions to avoid the conversation...

There is a dearth of research on listening in the context of political conversation. Yet there is theoretical reason to believe that political listening could be an important pathway toward several democratically important outcomes including increased exposure to difference, mutual understanding, and decreased polarization. Unfortunately, listening...

Der vorliegende Band ist dem Verhältnis von Informationen, Wahlen und Demokratie gewidmet. Deutschland, aber auch andere Länder in den Blick nehmend, widmen sich die Autor:innen vor allem den Bürger:innen, ihren Einstellungen, Interessen und Wahlentscheidungen. Auch die Rolle von Kontexten wird beleuchtet, insbesondere von Informationskontexten: Wi...

Marriage offers a context where individuals may have to discuss difficult topics. Discussing such topics, especially when there is a chance of disagreement, may lead to differences in the ability for spouses to listen to one another. In this study, we surveyed 746 individuals in heterosexual marriages to understand their listening in conversations...

Network size has a fundamental influence on other network properties. As studies of social network size have accumulated beyond the U.S. and Western Europe, diversity in the networks examined and methods used to construct size estimates have hindered the ability to make direct cross-national comparisons. We employ data from a summary political disc...

Conversations about race-specific issues with interracial conversation partners can be important to combat prejudice and foster mutual understanding. Using a national U.S. sample of 201 Black Democrats, 199 Black Republicans, 200 White Democrats, and 200 White Republicans, this study examined the role that race and partisanship play in individuals’...

Scholars studying ethnic-racial socialization often call for research with larger and more representative samples to permit comparison of the behaviors of members of various ethnic-racial subgroups. Moreover, research has highlighted the value of examining contextual variables that may influence ethnic-racial socialization behaviors. With a backdro...

Recent political theory in the areas of dialogic and deliberative democracy has placed particular emphasis on the importance of listening in contexts in which people disagree strongly, have competing (and potentially incompatible) interests, or are otherwise profoundly different. Despite this theoretical attention, there is very little empirical re...

Dialogue about race-based topics is essential to combat prejudice, foster mutual understanding, and improve race relations. This study describes the extent to which political conversations—especially those about race-related topics—are taking place within and across racial and political groups. This national survey with a Black oversample found rac...

Most existing evidence suggests that accuracy in perceptions of political preferences within communication networks is reasonably high, but closer examination suggests this may not be true. Perceptions may be accurate, inaccurate, or respondents may offer no perceptions to evaluate for accuracy due to uncertainty. We re-analyze data from several pu...

Presidential election campaigns provide opportunities for parents to socialize their children to become politically engaged citizens. However, news coverage of the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign contained inappropriate content, leading parents to possibly restrict or denigrate rather than encourage child campaign news consumption. This study built...

This study integrates and builds upon research on moral psychology, entertainment media selection, and political communication that has established a link between political ideology and moral sentiments. An automated content analysis of the lyrics of 37,309 songs across 10 genres assessed the extent of appeals to five different moral domains define...

There is growing concern about the polarizing impact of citizens primarily choosing sources of political information consistent with their existing partisan perspective. While research has begun providing answers about the consequences, questions remain about what factors drive such selective use of political media. This study conceptualizes partis...

network heterogeneity measures are frequently used and often-cited in work on interpersonal political disagreement, but their properties are not well documented and they produce anomalous results relative to other measures of socially supplied disagreement. This study deconstructs the familiar summary network heterogeneity measure to examine why it...

Use of name generators (NG) in assessing exposure to political difference has led to the conclusion that disagreement is uncommon. Data from two representative surveys tested a NG modification to probe for exposure to difference. Over half for whom NG results suggest no exposure to difference were able to name an alter who supported an alternative...

Although many insights about political conversation have been gleaned from survey data, researchers have yet to engage in serious and intense scrutiny of the measures used to assess political discussion habits. Analyzing three types of data (two three-wave panel studies, social network data from 25 intact groups, and a cognitive interview), this pa...

We add to the evidence regarding cross-national differences in political discussion by using survey data from North and South America, Western and Eastern Europe, and Asia gathered as part of the Comparative National Elections Project, combined with data on cross-national cultural differences from Hofstede (2001). First, we develop a general model...

The present study focuses on how different features of discussion networks and the contexts in which they reside are related to political ambivalence, participation, and knowledge. Using full sociometric network data derived from 25 different student activity organizations, we reveal complex implications of various facets of discussion networks and...

The present study reviews problems in the political learning literature, including ambiguous causality and a lack of specificity in linking communication content to learning outcomes. As a partial solution, our study of media and discussion influence incorporates both manipulated and observed aspects of mass and interpersonal communication. Results...

We employed social network data from 25 randomly sampled voluntary associations to understand the factors associated with accurate perceptions of candidate preferences of group members. We analyzed relationships at the dyadic level, but also considered the overall accuracy of perceptions by each ego of all alters ("perceptiveness") and the overall...

How do people develop and maintain their beliefs about science? Decades of social science research exist to help us answer this question. The Integrated Model of Communication Influence on Beliefs presented here combines multiple theories that have considered aspects of this process into a comprehensive model to explain how individuals arrive at th...

We test an uninvestigated proposition from spiral of silence theory that fear of social isolation (FSI) prompts people to seek out information about the climate of public opinion. Taking a trait-based individual difference perspective, the authors develop and validate a measure of FSI that is less likely to produce the interpretational problems tha...

Recent evidence supports the important political role that political network size and distribution plays at both the individual and system levels. However, we argue that the evidence is likely stronger than the current literature suggests due to network size measurement limitations in the extant literature. The most common approach to measuring pol...

Research has examined the relationship between traditional news media use and normatively important political outcomes such as knowledge and participation. However, most research fails to account for variations in the nature of news over time and across communities that could alter the fundamental relationship between exposure and these outcomes. H...

Political discussion networks are influenced by the opportunities for political interactions within our larger social environments and more general discussion networks. In this study we compare general and political discussion networks using full sociometric social network data from a probability sample of voluntary organizations—specifically, inta...

Research consistently finds that we discuss politics most often with our strong ties (i.e., our close, intimate others). As our strong ties tend to be more politically similar to us than not, the conclusion is that everyday political discussions are overwhelmingly characterized by real or perceived political agreement. However, this scenario may pa...

Social networks and political knowledge Beginning in the mid- to late-1990s, disciplines such as communication and political science witnessed an increase in studies examining social or political networks far beyond the rate of such research in prior decades. Huckfeldt and Sprague's (1995) Citizens, Politics and Social Communication, Putnam's (2000...

The past 2 decades have witnessed important contributions to our understanding of political conversation and its effects. However, in many ways we have yet to scratch the surface of what we need to learn. We argue that the emphasis of the literature on political conversation as a weak form of deliberation or as an afterthought from the media effect...

One of the foundational assumptions of democratic theory is that the public must be sufficiently informed about public matters in order to be capable of fulfilling their roles in making collective decisions. The centrality of an informed public in democratic theory has made the study of political knowledge integral to the study of political communi...

Various forms of news use not only have independent impacts on political knowledge, but also create interactive effects across different types of news outlets. In the present study, data from 2 surveys conducted in 2004 were used to test hypotheses about the contingent effects of news media use on political knowledge. The results supported the intr...

Numerous studies have demonstrated a relationship between community attachment and local news media use. Despite calls for panel studies to determine the direction of causality in this relationship, there is little evidence beyond cross-sectional surveys, which are often further limited to single communities. In order to contribute to the debate ab...

The concept of news media use1 has been at the center of political communication research during the past several decades. Historically, scholars have employed measures of exposure to news (Atkin, Galloway, & Nayman, 1976), attention to news (Chaffee & Schleuder, 1986; McLeod & McDonald, 1985), and reliance on news (Culbertson & Stempel, 1986) to t...

In this study, we examine the influence of discussion frequency, network size, and 3 variables that together entangle the often misunderstood concept of network heterogeneity: discussion frequency with like-minded individuals (“safe” discussion), discussion frequency with nonlike-minded individuals (“dangerous” discussion), and diversity of discuss...

Understanding how adolescents come to be informed participants in a democracy is a key concern in political socialization scholarship. However, our understanding of this process is hampered by limited research on the antecedents of a sufficiently wide array of communication behaviors and cognitions, in addition to a limited repertoire of knowledge...

This report examines the effects of exposure to various elements of a civics curriculum on civic participation, two forms of political knowledge, internal political efficacy, political cynicism, news elaboration, discussion elaboration and various forms of interpersonal and mediated political communication behaviors. The data are based on a longitu...

One of the foundational assumptions of democratic theory is that the public must be sufficiently informed about public matters in order to be capable of fulfilling their roles in making collective decisions. The centrality of an informed public in democratic theory has made the study of political knowledge integral to the study of political communi...

This study extends existing research on political discussion’s influence on political knowledge in two ways. First, it expands the measures of discussion-related cognition to include discussion elaboration and perspective taking. Second, it employs panel data, which permit stronger causal inferences than cross-sectional studies. Our findings indica...

This study attempts to replicate recent findings suggesting a reversal of the standard knowledge gap, i.e., that the relationship between television news use and knowledge is greater among those with less than with more education. We also extend this approach to examine need for cognition and campaign interest as additional moderators beyond the st...

The purpose of this study was to examine more closely the assumptions of causality in research on communication and political knowledge. Although most communica-tion theory suggests that communication causes learning, some have argued for the reverse causal direction or reciprocal causality. Others have confounded these con-cepts—in conjunction wit...

This article examines the role of the Internet as a source of political information and a sphere for public expression. Informational media use, whether traditional news sources or online public affairs content, is expected to foster interpersonal political discussion and online civic messaging, contributing to increased civic participation. Using...

Past research has demonstrated that nonlinear Web presentations (i.e., those that allow view-ing in multiple orders) may lead to decreased free recall and learning of factual information compared to traditional, print-like linear Web designs. Recent evidence suggests, however, that nonlinear designs may facilitate learning of the interconnectedness...

Past research has demonstrated that nonlinear Web presentations (i.e., those that allow viewing in multiple orders) may lead to decreased free recall and learning of factual information compared to traditional, print-like linear Web designs. Recent evidence suggests, however, that nonlinear designs may facilitate learning of the interconnectedness...

Recent studies have demonstrated a strong empirical relationship between political discussion and political knowledge. However, as of yet there has been no clear discussion or demonstration of how political discussion translates into increased political knowledge. The present study proposes three explanations--exposure (similar to the two step flow...

The increasing use of online news, particularly by young Americans, pointsto the importance of understanding what users learn from this form of news and whether features of online news encourage or discourage various types of learning. This experimental study demonstrates that online news that takes advantage of one of the key characteristics of th...

The purpose of this article is to discuss the media effects approach broadly, to point out limitations the traditional approach imposes on the field, and to discuss a “mix of attributes” approach with a focus on the study of “new” technologies for the dissemination of news. It is argued that the mix of attributes approach would better serve to adva...

This two-wave national panel study was designed to test the causal claims of the “cognitive mediation model.” The data indicate strong support for the following causal relationships predicted by the model: (a) surveillance motivations influence information processing, (b) information processing influences knowledge, and (c) motivations influence kn...

A large percentage of the public believes that the news media are biased, and the majority of these individuals consider the direction of bias to be against their own viewpoints. Past research has examined how individual factors such as strength of partisanship or extent of political involvement heighten bias perceptions, but little attention has b...

The concept of vitality was first introduced to account for factors affecting language use in the late 1970s. Today, vitality has developed into a broader theory addressing issues related to ethnicity, gender, age, and intergroup communication. Theorists propose that the more vitality a group has, the more likely that group will survive as an entit...

The present study seeks to contribute to the literature on learning differences across media by extending the traditional television news versus newspaper comparison to include reading of online news. It employs an experimental design, but with exposure over time and a reasonable delay between exposure and the measurement of learning. It also moves...

A survey of 265 caregivers of 2nd through 8th graders was conducted to understand active mediation, restrictive mediation, and support for censorship. Active mediation and support for censorship occurred more frequently with violent television than with sexual television. Caregivers believed that other children were more likely to be affected by ha...

Recent studies suggest that Web delivery may produce less, learning than traditional print. Left unanswered are questions of the process through which differences are produced Using 2 theories-user control and structural isomorphism-we proposed 2 mediators of the influence of medium on learning. Path analysis of experimental data varying medium whi...

The cognitive mediation model of learning from the news proposes that motivations for news use influence the processing to which the news information is put, and that this processing is the proximal determinant of learning. The role of motivations in learning from the news, then, is indirect through information processing. Secondary analysis of dat...

This study investigated factors related to two types of judgments that make up the third-person perception: media effects on others and effects on self. Specifically, separate regression path models revealed that estimates of effects on others are based on a relatively naive schema for media effects that is similar to the “magic bullet” model of me...

Response‐effects research has shown that survey questions shape and channel public opinion. Our study examines the degree to which the variance in people's cognitions about and attitudes toward crime policy proposals is a methodological artifact and the degree to which it represents media effects. Four different forms of a survey were used to manip...

The cognitive mediation model predicts that the impact of a learning gratification for news media use on knowledge of news content is mediated by information processing variables. Specifically, surveillance gratifications seeking should encourage two forms of information processing: news attention and elaboration. These forms of information process...

A large number of studies have been devoted to the impact of perceptions of opinion distributions on the expression of public opinion. In the present study we propose that perceptions of opinion distributions have implications that go beyond influencing individual issue stances, but rather influence respondents' willingness to engage in political a...

User control theory predicts that providing freedom in learning increases learning compared to traditional instruction, implying that the Web is more effective for learning than print. Theorists have also argued that navigation through Web sites mimics the associative nature of human memory and information processing—structural isomorphism—suggesti...

This article situates the technological and historical origins of the World Wide Web in hypermedia systems that were conceptualized during the World War II era and first developed decades before the Web. The article then reviews the cross-disciplinary literature on hypermedia, which has developed over the past decade or so in education and educatio...

This article examines the relative size of gaps in knowledge and participation between the more and less educated as they vary by the quantity and type of news media use. We predicted that the gap between high and low education groups would be smaller among heavy television news users than among light users, whereas the gap between high and low edu...

Some theorists argue that the node-link design of the Web mimics human information storage and that Web use encourages individuals to process information efficiently and effectively, potentially increasing meaningful learning. However, critics claim that Web navigation increases cognitive load and often produces disorientation. This reduces the pro...

This study examines variations in perceptions of media influence based on the locus of impact (self vs. other) and the valence of the message (pro-social vs. anti-social). After reading one of four versions of rap lyrics either advocating or condemning violence or misogyny, 406 undergraduates filled out a survey measuring the perceived impact of so...

This study examines variations in perceptions of media influence based on the locus of impact (self vs. other) and the valence of the message (pro-social vs. anti-social). After reading one of four versions of rap lyrics either advocating or condemning violence or misogyny, 406 undergraduates filled out a survey measuring the perceived impact of so...

Researchers have proposed a social distance corollary to the third-person perception to explain the common finding that as comparison groups become more different from the self or more generally described, the size of the third-person perception increases (i.e., media messages are perceived to have greater negative impact on others than self). The...

Researchers have proposed a social distance corollary to the third-person perception to explain the common finding that as comparison groups become more different from the self or more generally described, the size of the third-person perception increases (i.e., media messages are perceived to have greater negative impact on others than self). The...

The proposed interactive model of political development predicts that the socialization effects of communication will be moderated by age, such that younger children will be influenced less than older children by the same communication source. Using data collected from a sample of 290 children from San Jose, California, in grades five through twelv...

We report here initial findings of a multi-year study of public use of a World Wide Web site for science information. “The Why Files” strives to provide “the science behind the news” in story narratives that contain opportunities for both linear and non-linear navigation. We report results of two studies, one using survey data and another using com...

This brief offers an initial look at one science site on the World Wide Web (The Why Files: http://whyfiles.news.wise.edu) in order to consider the educational potential of this technology. The long-term goal of the studies of this site is to understand how the World Wide Web can be used to enhance science, mathematics, engineering, and technology...

This paper stresses the importance of a close link between theory and methodology. Specifically, in the context of mass communication research this paper (1) defines interactions and nonlinearity; (2) explains the appropriate techniques to test for these effects in survey data; (3) uses four well-known mass communication theories (knowledge gap, di...

Recent calls for censorship of rap music have demonstrated the need to test the perceptual and especially the behavioral components of Davison's third-person effect hypothesis. The hypothesis states that people perceive media content to have a greater impact on others than on themselves (perceptual component), and that these perceptions lead people...

Recent calls for censorship of rap music have demonstrated the need to test the perceptual and especially the behavioral components of Davison's third-person effect hypothesis. The hypothesis states that people perceive media content to have a greater impact on others than on themselves (perceptual component), and that these perceptions lead people...

The 1992 presidential election campaign marked the first time that non‐traditional news media (e.g. talk shows) were employed as a prevalent form of campaign communication by the candidates. The present study employs a path analysis of panel data (N = 151) to assess the influence of traditional and non‐traditional forms of news media in the initial...

Research on dimensions of community integration has suffered from the lack of clear conceptual and operational definitions. The purposes of this article are to explicate the concept of community integration and its dimensions and to specify the structural and media antecedents and the political consequences of these dimensions. Using 15 indicators...

This study analyzes actual and perceived support for the Persian Gulf War in the United States. Data were collected from 292 residents of New Castle County, Delaware, during the 1991 Gulf War. Results show that support for the war was not the strong consensus reported in mainstream media. In fact, 53.1 percent of the respondents fell within the neu...

For the first time in the history of televised presidential debates, organizers in 1992 used undecided voters to query the candidates, a significant deviation from the traditional practice of using experienced journalists. The present study uses quantitative and qualitative analysis to compare the questions asked by undecided voters and reporters....

This study examines the dissipation of “rally effects” in the aftermath of the Persian Gulf War using data from a panel of 167 New Castle County (Delaware) respondents interviewed during the war and one year later. Public support for the war and confidence in the president, Congress, and the military declined significantly. Hostility toward antiwar...

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Delaware, 1993. Principal faculty adviser: Douglas M. McLeod, Dept. of Communication. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 139-144).