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Facilitating Communication Across Lines of Political Difference: The Role of Mass Media

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Abstract

We use national survey data to examine the extent to which various sources of political information expose people to dissimilar political views. We hypothesize that the individual's ability and desire to exercise selective exposure is a key factor in determining whether a given source produces exposure to dissimilar views. Although a lack of diverse perspectives is a common complaint against American news media, we find that individuals are exposed to far more dissimilar political views via news media than through interpersonal political discussants. The media advantage is rooted in the relative difficulty of selectively exposing oneself to those sources of information, as well as the lesser desire to do so, given the impersonal nature of mass media.

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... Also, as weak ties, diverse contacts bridge social capital (Putnam, 2007), with opportunities to enhance perspective-taking and tolerance of dissonant views through cross-cutting experiences (Mutz, 2002a). Therefore, a diverse social network may facilitate democratic deliberation (Mutz & Martin, 2001;Mutz, 2002a;Bennett & Iyengar, 2010) and create meaningful impacts on political tolerance and democratic legitimacy (Mutz, 2002a). ...
... Considering the inevitability of human conflicts, the ability to tolerate differences is necessary in a diverse, democratic society (Mutz, 2002a). However, tolerating differences is challenging because most people prefer social harmony over dealing with political diversity face-to-face (Mutz & Martin, 2001). Therefore, according to Mutz and Martin (2001), impersonal social networks would be more optimal for connecting with diverse and dissimilar political views. ...
... However, tolerating differences is challenging because most people prefer social harmony over dealing with political diversity face-to-face (Mutz & Martin, 2001). Therefore, according to Mutz and Martin (2001), impersonal social networks would be more optimal for connecting with diverse and dissimilar political views. ...
Thesis
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Good citizenship is essential for a democratic society to function well, and for people of different stripes to work along civilly and thrive together. Whereas a moral agent (such as a whistle-blower or a good Samaritan) is often praised as a good citizen, the concept of moral agency has never been tested for its relationship with good citizenship. Based on the new holistic concept of moral agency “6M”, this study hypothesizes that while moral agency is the endogenous factor shaping good citizenship from within, the diverse social network of an individual is the exogenous factor shaping good citizenship from without. To test these two possible efficient causes for good citizenship, this study was created using the validated measures of the Good Citizenship Scale and the 6M-Moral Agency Scale. A total of 368 respondents participated in the survey. Structural equation modeling was applied. The results showed that the standardized partial effect of moral agency was statistically significant. The impact of moral agency on good citizenship ranked first, which was roughly five times the magnitude of age group, five times the magnitude of community-engaged mothers, and seven times the magnitude of education. Education, social network diversity, and political orientation had no significant relationship with good citizenship. Social network diversity had a significant, positive relationship with moral agency, which in turn contributed to good citizenship. As the first empirical study known to the field, this study’s results have important implications for education, citizenship development, and the science of moral development. Particularly, its empirical evidence supports the need for moral agency education to cultivate good citizenship. Moreover, its evidence of the positive relationship between social network diversity and moral agency highlights the potential benefits of diversity initiatives in our society. Its implications are discussed.
... Exploring the nexus between digital media and citizens' exposure to diverse political views is imperative for understanding contemporary democratic engagement. This study builds upon Mutz and Martin's (2001) seminal research, integrating digital communication channels previously unexamined. Our findings suggest that the interpersonal character of media interactions, rather than the mere distinction between offline and online platforms, significantly influences the diversity of political views to which individuals are exposed. ...
... Exposure to diverse political views is necessary for citizens to form opinions while also considering the opinions and perspectives of others. Diverse opinions often strengthen people's sense of legitimacy regarding their own opinions after receiving a broad perspective (Mutz and Martin, 2001). Many studies have examined the level of exposure to diverse political views through specific media or platforms (e.g., Wojcieszak and Mutz, 2009;Kim, 2011;Guidetti et al., 2016;Cowan and Baldassarri, 2018;González-Bailón et al., 2023;Nyhan et al., 2023), or compared the frequency or extent of encountering diverse political views between some media (e.g., Baek et al., 2012;Anspach, 2017). ...
... This study is a follow-up to Mutz and Martin (2001), who examined the degree of exposure to diverse political views in various media that constitute key sources of political information. The aim of Mutz and Martin's research was to examine the contribution of sources of political information to exposure to diverse political views, and to compare the degree of exposure to Literature review Selective exposure and the importance of exposure to diverse opinions Diversity of opinions is an important precondition for making informed decisions (Wurff, 2011). ...
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Exploring the nexus between digital media and citizens' exposure to diverse political views is imperative for understanding contemporary democratic engagement. This study builds upon Mutz and Martin's (2001) seminal research, integrating digital communication channels previously unexamined. Our findings suggest that the interpersonal character of media interactions, rather than the mere distinction between offline and online platforms, significantly influences the diversity of political views to which individuals are exposed. Contrary to the prevalent theories of "echo chambers" and "filter bubbles," our analysis reveals a nuanced media landscape where digital platforms facilitate both homogeneous and heterogeneous political exposures, depending on their specific affordances. This study contributes to the political communication literature by offering a comprehensive overview of exposure dynamics in the digital age.
... Political communication literature consistently shows that news consumption is associated with different types of political participation, including political expression on social media (e.g., Gil de Zúñiga et al., 2012;Strömbäck et al., 2018). News media expose citizens to diverse and conflicting viewpoints, prompting them to make connections between new information and their existing beliefs (Eveland, 2001(Eveland, , 2002 and participate in political discussions that might not otherwise occur (Mutz, 2001). On social media, political expression can take the form of creating posts to express views on a political issue, or sharing or commenting on others' posts. ...
... Second, the research contributes to the political communication literature by explicating the association between news consumption and political expression. Scholars have reasoned and tested the association between news exposure and political discussions (e.g., Mutz, 2001). This study provides more nuance to this general pattern. ...
... Theoretically, these findings speak to the compelling arguments hypothesis (Ghanem, 1996;Kiousis, 2005), which suggests not all attributes are equally powerful in changing an issue's public salience and some may even deflate the agenda. Political communication research identifies a similar pattern in how media exposure encourages or discourages political participation (Eveland, 2001;Matthes et al., 2019;Mutz, 2001Mutz, , 2002b. While some studies suggested that exposure to diverse information led to elaboration and reflection (Eveland, 2001;Mutz, 2001), others argued that exposure to counter-attitudinal information would result in inaction due to ambivalence or threat to social relationships (Matthes et al., 2019;Mutz, 2002a). ...
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Focusing on a polarized issue—U.S. gun violence—this study examines agenda setting as an antecedent of political expression on social media. A state-of-the-art machine-learning model was used to analyze news coverage from 25 media outlets—mainstream and partisan. Those results were paired with a two-wave panel survey conducted during the 2018 U.S. midterm elections. Findings show mainstream media shape public opinion about gun violence, which then stimulates expression about the issue on social media. The study also reveals that partisan media’s gun violence coverage has significant cross-cutting effects. Notably, exposure to conservative media will decrease public salience of gun violence, pivot opinion in a more conservative direction, and discourage social media expression; and all of these effects are stronger among liberals.
... First, intermedia agenda setting (Harder et al., 2017) describes how mass media outlets amplify the salience of and sustained attention to specific topics (Langer & Gruber, 2021) and control information diversity (Stern et al., 2020), particularly during times of extraordinary events. Media users who consume diverse mass media outlets are exposed to cross-ideology information (Mutz & Martin, 2001), which can mitigate the echo chamber effect. Empirical studies found that a diverse diet of news is consumed by people from social media (Scharkow et al., 2020), which suggests a strong interplay between the traditional broadcast news media and social media. ...
... Information spread by broadcasting is bursty and novel in nature (De Domenico & Altmann, 2020;Wu & Huberman, 2007) and can quickly orient public attention in response to shocks. In addition, information spread via broadcasting is capable of reaching a broader audience (Mutz & Martin, 2001). Empirically, King et al. (2017) found that the publication of news stories on mass media can cause an increase in the corresponding topics in public discussion on social media immediately, and such an increase is evenly distributed regardless of political partisanship, gender, or geographical regions. ...
Article
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Understanding information diffusion is vital to explaining the good, bad, and ugly impacts of social media. Two types of processes govern information diffusion: broadcasting and viral spread. Viral spreading is when a message is diffused by peer-to-peer social connections, whereas broadcasting is characterized by influences that can come from outside of the peer-to-peer social network. How these processes shape public discourse is not well understood. Using a simulation study and real-world Twitter data (10,155 users, 18,000,929 tweets) gathered during 2020, we show that broadcast spreading is associated with more integrated discourse networks compared to viral spreading. Moreover, discourse oscillates between extended periods of segregation and punctuated periods of integration. These results defy simple interpretations of good or bad, and instead suggest that information diffusion dynamics on social media have the capacity to disrupt or amplify both prosocial and antisocial content.
... According to this hypothesis, new media technology facilitates the formation of clusters of likeminded individuals [12]. When such homogeneous groups are insulated from opposing perspectives, their views and biases are reinforced rather than moderated, resulting in polarization [4,[13][14][15][16][17][18][19]. While this hypothesis is intuitive and has been widely adopted by scholars as well as the general public, a growing number of empirical studies find that social media users are in fact engaging in significant interaction across ideological divides [16,[20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27]. ...
... In fact, retweet structures and political ideology are so strongly correlated that user ideology can be predicted from retweet networks [48,49]. These findings have been taken as support for the echo chamber hypothesis [5,6,12,13,15]-an idea that has become widely accepted and highly influential in the public debate [50][51][52]. ...
Preprint
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The influential “echo chamber” hypothesis suggests that social media drive polarization through a mutual reinforcement between isolation and radicalization. The existence of such echo chambers has been a central focus of academic debate, with competing studies finding ostensibly contradictory empirical evidence. This paper identifies a fundamental methodological limitation of these empirical studies: they do not differentiate between negative and positive interactions. To overcome this limitation, we develop a method to extract signed network representations of Twitter debates using Machine Learning. Applying our approach to a major Dutch cultural controversy, we show that the inclusion of negative interactions provides a new empirical picture of the dynamics of online polarization. Our findings suggest that conflict, not isolation, is at the heart of polarization.
... Research indicates both scenarios exist in political communication on the internet. While some argue that the internet can support democratic discussion, others suggest it reinforces prior views due to selective exposure, functioning as an echo chamber (Bimber & Davis, 2003;Davis, 1999;Galston, 2003;Mutz & Martin, 2001;Noveck, 2000;Sunstein, 2001;Wilhelm, 1998). E. Colleoni and his associates (2014) investigated whether Twitter enhances cross-ideological discussion or increases exposure to like-minded individuals. ...
Article
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Social media has become a ubiquitous platform for language directly impacting women with opioid use disorder (OUD) and children with neonatal abstinence syndrome (NAS). This study examines stigmatizing language applications related to OUD and NAS on Twitter during an event involving a political figure’s visit to a pediatric hospital unit. Analysis of N = 2,789 tweets across three stages of the event showed notable trends. Before the event, 56.07% of tweets focused on information sharing, while during and after the event, 22.64% and 20.69% of tweets were categorized as medically divisive and political. Chi-square analyses indicate significant differences in tweet categories, with the political category experiencing the most substantial increase during and after the event. Despite sharing information and opinions, stigmatizing language regarding NAS and OUD was pervasive. The researchers argue for more active involvement of healthcare professionals on social media to promote accurate information and advise patients on where to access supportive information and resources.
... Where extreme views remain unchallenged, these may increasingly be perceived as acceptable, prompting a possible self-reinforcing process (Lee, 2006;Moscovici & Zavalloni, 1969). As interactions with outgroup members become rare, this may erode respect and empathy with outsiders, facilitating the dismissal of their objections and the adoption of policies that would be harmful to them (Colleoni et al., 2014;Mutz & Martin, 2001;Sunstein, 2001). ...
... filter bubble). Pojęcie to zostało spopularyzowane przez internetowego aktywistę Eliego Parisera za sprawą jego pracy pod tytułem Bańka filtrująca: co internet ukrywa przed tobą, wydanej w 2011 roku (Pariser, 2011 Mutz, 2001 Twittera) oraz TikToka (Jankowski, 2018). Po trzecie, wyraźny jest ciągły spadek zaufania do środków masowego przekazu jako źródła w pełni dokładnych i rzetelnych wiadomości. ...
... Этому есть несколько причин. Во-первых, большой ассортимент доступных децентрализированных новостных ресурсов [Chaffee, Metzger 2001] позволяет выбирать источники новостей в соответствии со своими интересами [Mutz 2001;Prior 2007]. Это способствует фрагментации аудитории, поскольку люди склонны предпочитать информацию, подкрепляющую их взгляды или не противоречащую им [Stroud 2008]. ...
Article
This article examines two opposing media consumption trends—news avoidance and doomscrolling—through the lens of media environment and societal fragmentation. News avoidance refers to the conscious limitation of economic or socio-political content consumption to maintain emotional well-being, while doomscrolling is defined as compulsive and excessive attention to negative news. The study is based on 91 semi-structured interviews with individuals exhibiting these media consumption styles. News avoiders and doomscrollers demonstrate the ability to understand each other's logic through reflection on their own experiences and interactions with their social environment. However, both groups criticize the opposing media consumption style. Doomscrollers view news avoiders as passive and under-informed, whereas news avoiders accuse doomscrollers of addictive behavior. The interviews frequently reveal normative judgments about the necessity of consuming or avoiding news. Additionally, both groups perceive each other as more vulnerable to misinformation: news avoiders are associated with ignorance, while doomscrollers are seen as prone to believing false or biased media reports. A commonality between the two groups is anxiety about the future. The differences in news consumption volumes are explained by varied approaches to managing anxiety and assessing the usefulness of information. Thus, doomscrolling and news avoidance can be considered two sides of the same coin. However, these opposing media consumption styles contribute to further societal fragmentation, widening the gap in awareness of current events.
... We chose not to vary the source of the correction to maximize power, and because actors attempting to defuse rumors (such as fact-checkers and journalists) frequently cite multiple sources to craft effective corrections. In making this design choice, we arguably neutralized potential source effects (Mutz and Martin 2001). In addition, this led us to design a relatively strong correction. ...
Article
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Vigilante violence, often targeting religious and sectarian minorities and preceded by unsubstantiated rumors, has taken the lives of many citizens in India and Pakistan in recent years. Despite its horrific nature, such vigilantism receives popular support. Can reducing the credibility of rumors via corrections decrease support for vigilantism? To answer this question, we field simultaneous, in-person experiments in Punjab, Pakistan, and Uttar Pradesh, India, regions where anti-minority vigilantism has been preceded by misinformation. We find that correcting rumors reduces support for vigilantism and increases the desire to hold vigilantes accountable. This effect is not attenuated by prior distrust toward out-groups. By contrast, information about state and elite behavior does not always shape attitudes toward vigilantism. These findings provide evidence that support for vigilantism can be reduced through the dissemination of credible information, even in polarized settings.
... Just as for media consumption, political attitudes also play an important role in the composition of an individual's everyday interpersonal communication. The tendency that contacts between individuals with similar political attitudes occur at a higher rate than among individuals with dissimilar attitudes (McPherson et al., 2001, p. 416) -has been observed in offline (Mutz & Martin, 2001) and online social networks (Ackland & Shorish, 2014;Boutyline & Willer, 2017). Citizens' personal social networks tend to be homogeneous regarding different sociodemographic, behavioral, and attitudinal characteristics and therefore inhere the potential to limit perceptions of the social world (McPherson et al., 2001, p. 415), including issue-specific arguments. ...
Article
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This study investigates the relationship between attitude extremity and perceived exposure to diverse political arguments in the debate about COVID-19 health policy measures. Based on a comparative, cross-sectional survey in Germany and Switzerland, we show that extreme attitudes towards wearing face masks inhibit citizens’ perceived diversity of arguments regarding the issue in both countries. This tendency is slightly more pronounced for supporters of mask-wearing than opponents. However, contrary to existing concerns about issue-specific echo chambers, even respondents showing strong attitude extremity still experience exposure to a relatively diverse range of arguments for and against wearing face masks.
... Where extreme views remain unchallenged, these may increasingly be perceived as acceptable, prompting a possible self-reinforcing process (Lee, 2006;Moscovici & Zavalloni, 1969). As interactions with outgroup members become rare, this may erode respect and empathy with outsiders, facilitating the dismissal of their objections and the adoption of policies that would be harmful to them (Colleoni et al., 2014;Mutz & Martin, 2001;Sunstein, 2001). ...
... This may lead to decisions that benefit the well-connected and wealthy at the expense of common people 7) . Furthermore, political polarization and tribalism can promote a "us vs. them" mentality that hinders cooperation and compromise, making it challenging to resolve complicated challenges that call for shared sacrifices and collective effort 8) . Even if politics can bring about beneficial change, it is crucial to be aware of any unfavorable effects and work to build a more just and equitable society. ...
Article
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Critical Discourse Analysis is a research approach which examines how language use reflects and maintains societal power dynamics. It seeks to reveal hidden meanings and ideologies in speech by investigating how language establishes social reality, reinforces power hierarchies, and shapes social practices. In the current study, Fairclough's (2001) model is adopted to analyze a speech delivered by the UK's Prime Minister Boris Johnson, on April 12, 2020, during Easter Sunday to the nation. In this speech, Boris Johnson thanked The National Health Service for saving his life from Covid-19 after leaving the hospital. The problem of the study is of three-folds:(1) understanding the speech's context and backdrop, particularly the COVID-19 epidemic and its effects on the UK (2) Recognizing the possible impact of political objectives and biases on the speech's linguistic construction (3) overcoming the difficulty of locating and examining hidden meanings and presumptions in the speech. It is hypothesized that the speaker uses language reflecting a strong national unity. It is hypothesized that the speaker uses language reflecting a strong national unity. The study concludes that the speech involves using different discoursal and ideological features and structures (such as nationalism, calling for action, increasing solidarity, etc.) that directly reflect the power of the language used to make the speaker influence his audience positively. Also, the analysis confirms the hypothesis raised.
... Ideological extremity increases like-minded ideological media consumption, but does not influence cross-cutting consumption, supporting the argument that engaging in selective reinforcement seeking does not necessarily mean avoiding opinion challenges (Dvir-Gvirsman, Tsfati, & Menchen-Trevino, 2016;Garrett, 2009). On the other hand, cross-cutting consumption can also be driven by factors including expected utility of information (Knobloch-Westerwick & Kleinman, 2012), characteristics of media environment (Mutz & Martin, 2001), and political interest (Castro-Herrero et al., 2018). Politically sophisticated individuals, in particular, tend to seek out more information on political issues, contributing to an increased likelihood of cross-cutting media consumption (Castro-Herrero et al., 2018). ...
Article
The COVID-19 pandemic heightened the urgency of working across lines of political difference to combat misinformation. This paper asks: Does having news literacy matter in reducing misperceptions, and importantly, for whom does having news literacy matter? Using a national survey of US adults (N = 1700) that included the largest set of COVID-19-related misperceptions examined to date (k = 84), we tested how the effects of news literacy on misperceptions vary across ideology and ideological media consumption. Although holding a higher level of news literacy is associated with fewer misperceptions in general, it helps conservatives less than it helps liberals. Moreover, although news literacy is associated with mitigating the misperception-inducing effect of ideological media consumption on both ends of the political spectrum, this potential benefit appears to be weaker for conservative media use than for liberal media use. Finally, the benefit of having news literacy is maximized among cross-cutting consumers of ideological media but dampened among like-minded consumers, particularly conservatives with heavy conservative media consumption. We discuss the implications of our findings for identifying subgroups for future news literacy interventions and understanding the potentials and challenges of using news literacy to combat misinformation in a polarized climate. ARTICLE HISTORY
... According to Steenkamp and Hyde-Clarke (2014), the public is using Facebook site(s) to engage in discussions of a political nature as well as using the platform to connect with each other and share political information in new ways. Most studies on public response to election campaigns rely heavily on lists of media motivations and use that were developed in the prenew media era, indicating that voters use internet campaign media for guidance, surveillance/informationseeking, entertainment and social utility (Johnson and Kaye, 2003), as well as to reinforce their voting decisions (Mutz and Martin, 2001) that seems to be a key point that influences reaction (Bagi c Babac and Podobnik, 2018). Bronstein's (2013) content analysis revealed that the Facebook pages were used for fundraising purposes, and for the mobilization of supporters during the 2012 US elections. ...
Article
Purpose Social media platforms are highly visible platforms, so politicians try to maximize their benefits from their use, especially during election campaigns. On the other side, people express their views and sentiments toward politicians and political issues on social media, thus enabling them to observe their online political behavior. Therefore, this study aims to investigate user reactions on social media during the 2016 US presidential campaign to decide which candidate invoked stronger emotions on social media. Design/methodology/approach For testing the proposed hypotheses regarding emotional reactions to social media content during the 2016 presidential campaign, regression analysis was used to analyze a data set that consists of Trump’s 996 posts and Clinton’s 1,253 posts on Facebook. The proposed regression models are based on viral (likes, shares, comments) and emotional Facebook reactions (Angry, Haha, Sad, Surprise, Wow) as well as Russell’s valence, arousal, dominance (VAD) circumplex model for valence, arousal and dominance. Findings The results of regression analysis indicate how Facebook users felt about both presidential candidates. For Clinton’s page, both positive and negative content are equally liked, while Trump’s followers prefer funny and positive emotions. For both candidates, positive and negative content influences the number of comments. Trump’s followers mostly share positive content and the content that makes them angry, while Clinton’s followers share any content that does not make them angry. Based on VAD analysis, less dominant content, with high arousal and more positive emotions, is more liked on Trump’s page, where valence is a significant predictor for commenting and sharing. More positive content is more liked on Clinton’s page, where both positive and negative emotions with low arousal are correlated to commenting and sharing of posts. Originality/value Building on an empirical data set from Facebook, this study shows how differently the presidential candidates communicated on social media during the 2016 election campaign. According to the findings, Trump used a hard campaign strategy, while Clinton used a soft strategy.
... The recommendation algorithm and individuals' cognitive bias make it much more difficult for individuals to receive opponent opinions, and individuals are getting more extreme in their 'echo chamber' (Kitchens, Johnson, & Gray, 2020). These consequences are magnified in political fields where people tend to be more emotional and intolerant (Mutz, 2001). ...
... According to Mutz and Martin (2001), second screeners encounter opposing political viewpoints through discussions. This is particularly true since social media have the potential to expand and diversify information and news networks. ...
Article
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This study aimed to investigate the direct and indirect impacts of second screening on online political participation in Indonesia (Jakarta) and Pakistan (Islamabad). The results showed that second screening had a significant effect on citizens' online political participation in Jakarta directly or mediated through social media elaboration and political efficacy. However, the practice did not have any effect in Islamabad, and the differing results might be attributed to sociocultural distinctions inherent in the two countries. The study confirmed that second screening significantly impacted online political discussion and elaboration on social media. Further studies could be carried out to examine the degree of acceptance accorded to news disseminated through these platforms.
... It is these echo chambers that are then viewed as the basis for further polarisation as belief congruent messages amplify extant beliefs and the failure to encounter opposing arguments makes pull back impossible. Traditional media exposed people to greater diversity of opinion than they typically encountered in their social contacts (see, [84]); replacing traditional media with information from self-selected online sources may consequently radically alter the diversity of opinion encountered. Given that there is evidence that exposure to congruent views on the internet is associated both with the adoption of extreme positions and polarised political stances [85], and-conversely-it has been found that an individual's network heterogeneity can increase their tolerance and understanding of other's views (e.g., [86]), it is understandable that selective exposure is a potential cause for concern. ...
Article
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This paper examines the fundamental problem of testimony. Much of what we believe to know we know in good part, or even entirely, through the testimony of others. The problem with testimony is that we often have very little on which to base estimates of the accuracy of our sources. Simulations with otherwise optimal agents examine the impact of this for the accuracy of our beliefs about the world. It is demonstrated both where social networks of information dissemination help and where they hinder. Most importantly, it is shown that both social networks and a common strategy for gauging the accuracy of our sources give rise to polarisation even for entirely accuracy motivated agents. Crucially these two factors interact, amplifying one another’s negative consequences, and this side effect of communication in a social network increases with network size. This suggests a new causal mechanism by which social media may have fostered the increase in polarisation currently observed in many parts of the world.
... Given the deep historical divisions pertaining to race and equity in the U.S., however, these important conversations can quickly become polarized, with the resulting debates reinforcing firmly established biases and conflicting opinions (Lee et al., 2014;Mutz & Martin, 2001) and/ or becoming traumatizing for some (Nayak et al., 2021;Smith et al., 2019). As divisive views have gained traction, public and private acts of violence and aggression stemming from bigotry, hate, and fear have escalated at an alarming rate (Mude et al., 2021;Nguyen et al., 2021;Pascual-Ferra et al., 2021). ...
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This article describes a Diversity Dialogue Facilitator Training Program for Trainees, an innovative project that prepares psychology and psychiatry learners to facilitate diversity dialogues with healthcare professionals (i.e., clinical and research faculty, staff, and learners) in academic healthcare settings. Through participating in this program, trainees learn to facilitate discussions in which participants reflect upon oppression, discrimination, and disparities; explore their biases; connect and exchange views with colleagues regarding challenging societal events; and delineate action steps for advancing equity, inclusion, social responsivity, and justice in their professional and personal lives. After outlining contextual factors that informed project development, implementation, and dissemination, the iterative process of creating and implementing the training curriculum is detailed, with the aim of offering a model for other academic health center-based training programs interested in establishing a similar initiative. Lessons learned also are shared with the hope of contributing to future efforts to advance training in diversity dialogue facilitation and expand the role of psychologists in medical settings.
... On the other hand, taking into account other aspects related to exposure, there is mediated versus interpersonal selective exposure. In this context, Mutz (2001) suggested that people have been exposed to a diversity of viewpoints through media use rather than through interpersonal interactions. Nevertheless, the authors anticipated that in a rich media environment, where media choices are numerous, people might be less likely exposed to diverse content. ...
Chapter
This chapter discusses some of the most prominent news-related phenomena that have emerged within the high-choice media environment. It explores topics such as news avoidance, selective exposure, incidental news exposure, echo chambers and media trust. Such phenomena have the potential to significantly influence people’s media diets in contemporary societies. The authors highlight the potential detrimental effects of these phenomena on democracy, including disengagement and the probability that individuals get stuck in echo chambers, which can further lead to fragmented audiences and heightened levels of polarisation. The chapter is important for understanding the complex relationship between news consumption patterns and democratic processes.
... Although this study did not investigate the audience's response to media reports, it is essential to consider previous research on selective exposure, polarization, and politicization (Camaj, 2014;Mutz & Martin, 2001;Stroud, 2010). Previous studies have shown that people tend to consume media that confirms their pre-existing beliefs and opinions (Camaj, 2014;Dilliplane, 2011). ...
... This is due to a series of well-known negative effects of online communication on social media discussion platforms such as the "echo chamber" effect and the activation of biased information dynamics (Ditto and Lopez, 1992;Taber and Lodge, 2006). Research evidence clearly indicates that people tend to select information from people who hold similar positions and support similar worldviews (Huckfeldt and Sprague, 1995;Mutz, 2001). On this account, social media companies, that seek consumers satisfaction in the first place, have designed social media platforms to recommend content on the base of similarity, popularity and agreementonly principles (France, 2017). ...
... Although not necessarily narrowing "knowledge gaps," traditional mass media reach a wide audience and therefore "change the distribution of political knowledge" (Jenssen, 2013). Thus, mass media consumption becomes a source of diverse viewpoints and encourages political exchange and opportunities for civic involvement (Mutz & Martin, 2001). However, recent studies show that such traditional mass media effects seem to be in decline (Boyle & Schmierbach, 2009;Prior, 2007), especially among adolescents (Quintelier & Hooghe, 2011)-a development that seems to coincide with the rise of the Internet. ...
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Studies examining the link between media use and political mobilization focus on contexts with high levels of democracy and freedom. This mixed-methods study investigates whether intentions for collective action are predicted by media use and past political participation offline and online in countries categorized as free versus restrictive. Quantitative analyses show that intensive users of offline media were more inclined toward future political participation if they were citizens of a free country and if they reported high levels of group efficacy. Although online media use also predicted future political participation, this likelihood was higher among citizens of restrictive countries who reported lower levels of group efficacy. Qualitative analyses provide a deeper understanding of the contextual differences between free and restrictive countries.
... Por un lado, al crear espacios dedicados a la conversación entre personas que piensan de manera diferente, las redes sociales podrían mejorar "la infraestructura política de las democracias de consenso que permiten un gobierno eficaz a pesar de que el sistema político está muy fragmentado" (Esteve del Valle, Broersma y Ponsioen, 202, p. 2). Por otro, estas plataformas pueden favorecer a una mayor radicalización y polarización por la tendencia a limitar la exposición de opiniones de personas de ideas afines (Mutz y Martin, 2001). ...
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Este artículo examina el discurso que realizaron a través de Twitter los principales partidos políticos que se presentaron a las elecciones a la Asamblea de Madrid el 4 de mayo de 2021. Se analizan 7.470 tweets publicados durante la campaña electoral a través de una metodología apoyada en una triangulación de técnicas que combina el análisis de contenido con el estudio de corpus lingüísticos. Los resultados revelan que los partidos desplegaron en Twitter un discurso hostil encaminado, en mayor o menor intensidad, al ataque y desprestigio del rival y en el que prácticamente se obviaron las medidas y propuestas de gobierno. Así, ante un discurso monopolizado casi en exclusiva por la polarización y la hostilidad partidista, se percibe un cambio de paradigma en la comunicación política digital caracterizado por la existencia de un «criptodiscurso de odio» entre formaciones políticas con unas características muy similares a la retórica de odio tradicional. En este caso, los/las representantes focalizaron sus argumentos en el enfrentamiento entre colectivos (ideológicamente) distantes o antagónicos, consolidando un imaginario colectivo en su electorado donde se anteponían dos visiones enfrentadas y donde la destrucción de una de ellas planteaba la pervivencia de la otra.
... Starting with early work in the 1940s, many researchers have observed that people's ideological views bias their attention to news that confirm beliefs already held (e.g., Garrett & Resnick, 2011;Lazarsfeld et al., 1948;Yom-Tov et al., 2014; see also Gentzkow & Shapiro, 2011). In the social sciences, the term selective exposure denotes this general tendency to seek out information that conforms to extant convictions at the expense of information that does not (see Frey, 1986;Klapper, 1960;Sears & Freedman, 1967, see also Mutz & Martin, 2001). Festinger (1957), famously made this aspect of human cognition a central part of his theory of cognitive dissonance, according to which people strive to reduce the mental discomfort ensuing from simultaneously entertaining two or more incoherent beliefs. ...
... Moreover, during discussions, users continue to seek new information, verify, reconsider, and elaborate on the information they have received from other users (Lane et al., 2019;Velasquez & Rojas, 2017). Previous research has demonstrated that exposure to disagreements during discussions can prompt individuals to reevaluate their opinions and perspectives (Mutz & Martin, 2001). So that political discussions may be able to mediate the user's news consumption with their possibility to be persuaded. ...
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Social media can be an information dissemination tool to influence the mindset of the recipient based on the message being sent. Political persuasion is a psychological process that results from taking in messages from the media. Through online discussions, there is a cognitive elaboration where there is a deeper debate in an individual about the information received. The purpose of this study is to examine the role of cognitive elaboration in mediating online political discussions against political persuasion. Prior studies have not seen participation in cognitive development as a mental process that plays a role in the persuasion process. The study used a survey method in and around Jakarta, data collection was conducted using questionnaires distributed via social media. Based on the criteria for respondents between the ages of 17 and 64, 495 respondents were obtained. The findings demonstrate that political debates are significantly influenced by social media political information and online news consumption and that cognitive elaboration mediates political discussion of political persuasion.
... Many of these studies rely heavily on lists of media motivations and uses that were developed in the pre-new media era (see Blumler, 1979;Owen, 1991). Studies adopting these frameworks reveal that voters use new campaign media for guidance, surveillance/information seeking, entertainment, and social utility (Kaye and Johnson, 2002) as well as to reinforce their voting decisions (Mutz and Martin, 2001). ...
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A more recent version of this content exists; this version was replaced on 11 Jan 2018. The version that replaced it can be found here. Abstract and Keywords New media have been playing an increasingly central role in American elections since they first appeared in 1992. While television remains the main source of election information for a majority of voters, digital communication platforms have become prominent. New media have triggered changes in the campaign strategies of political parties, candidates, and political organizations; reshaped election media coverage; and influenced voter engagement. This chapter examines the stages in the development of new media in elections from the use of rudimentary websites to the rise sophisticated social media. It discusses the ways in which new media differ from traditional media in terms of their form, function, and content; identifies the audiences for new election media; and examines the effects on voter interest, knowledge, engagement, and turnout. Going forward, scholars need to employ creative research methodologies to catalogue and analyze new campaign media as they emerge and develop.
... When there is a lack of cross-cutting information and conversations are cyclical, those conversations can be described as echo chambers (Iyengar & Hahn, 2009;Mutz & Martin, 2001). For instance, conservatives are more likely to encounter content about border protection and enforcement in their news, and news consumption influences attitudes toward law enforcement (Lynott et al., 2019). ...
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The Customs and Border Protection agency (CBP) is one of the largest law enforcement agencies in the US, counting more than 60,0000 employees. Increased news coverage has polarized public opinion on the CBP in recent years, and attitudes toward CBP agents vary. This study investigates individual differences in moral foundations, political orientation, emotions, and news consumption as predictors for attitudes toward CBP agents. Four hundred fifty-nine MTurk Workers from five regions across the US participated. While not without limitations, the results provide evidence that the proposed predictors are relevant, explaining up to 74% of the variance in attitudes toward CBP agents in this sample. Emotions were the strongest predictor, followed by the binding moral foundations of authority and loyalty, followed by news consumption and political orientation. Age and prior interactions with CBP agents correlated with attitudes, and there were systematic differences in news consumption relative to individuals’ political orientation, which affected individuals’ attitudes toward CBP agents as well as their confidence in those attitudes.
... Lazarsfeld et al. (1944) established the concept and theoretical basis of selective exposure in the field of media research in the mid-20th century; in their analysis of the presidential elections, they found that voters were willing to accept only election reports that were consistent with their predispositions. Since that study, multiple political communication researchers have investigated whether political information and media choices are made selectively according to political orientation Mutz and Martin, 2001;Redlawsk, 2002). For instance, Barlett et al. (1974) studied voters' selective exposure to presidential election campaigns and found that voters only read candidates' content that matched their political orientation. ...
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Social media networks have become a powerful platform for shaping public opinion. In such networks, opinions change through complex processes. To better understand this process, we present a novel method to examine the specific dynamics of social media interactions and information spread. In this model, each person has both private and public opinions. Private opinions are continuously adjusted based on others’ public opinions and personal biases. In contrast, public opinions are updated only when expressed, shaped by the individual’s private opinion and a tendency to conform to widely accepted group views and social pressure. We analyze the model’s two-state updating mechanisms and provide conditions for opinion convergence. Our findings on the consensus dynamics are presented, along with implications for social interactions in social media networks. The proposed model is validated by comparing real social media Twitter data to the simulated results.
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South America is transitioning from an era of mass media—one with consolidated media players and actors—to one of many media—with emerging new faces, as is the case of digital-native news organizations. This increased offering through digital and social media results in a high-choice media environment where audiences (given they have the means, capitals and interest) can consume news from sources more varied than ever before. This is a departure from an era of mass media when few news organizations overwhelmingly dominated the flow of information in the region. From a media perspective, news organizations are seeing their audiences distributed across a great number of outlets, fragmented and segmented. From an audience-centric approach, media consumption online resembles more properly a repertoire of media, with potential for audience duplication. This chapter focuses on the current high-choice media environment, providing evidence for this phenomenon, and three cases evidencing the relationship of the news media environment and polarization in Brazil, Argentina and Colombia.
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The expansion of the Internet and the sudden popularity of Web 2.0 applications, such as blogs, YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook, raise important questions about the extent and consequences of homophilous sorting in online political discussions. In particular, there is growing concern that Internet users' ability to filter out alternative points of view will lead political discourse to become more polarized and fragmented along ideological lines. The decline of deliberative democracy and the breakdown of America's system of representative government, the story goes, will be the inevitable causalities of political discussions moving from in-person to online. Unfortunately, the empirical research in fields such as mass communication, political science, and sociology provides no hard and fast conclusions about the amount of online homophily in political discussions. This article details this conflicted body of research and points to some areas where future research may provide more insight into the intersection of online politics and homophilous sorting.
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Anemic demand for local news has contributed to an industry crisis. We consider whether local elections, which highlight the ability of local television stations and newspapers to provide information that is unavailable from national news outlets, increase local media use. While we show these elections are a time of increased attention to local politics in the news and among the public, we also find local media outlets do not benefit from this when considering behavioral news use measures. Relative to news outlets in cities without an election, local television remains substantively unchanged during local elections. Newspaper website traffic is largely stable, although it falls slightly the month after an election. In both cases these differences are small, even when considering close races and those happening off the federal election cycle. This shows limits on the ability of salient local political events to motivate local news use.
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In The people's choice , → Paul F. Lazarsfeld and his colleagues laid out many of the key issues that disciplines such as communication, political science, and sociology continue to struggle with when modeling the intersection of mass media and social networks (Lazarsfeld et al. 1948). More specifically, they offered two key constructs to explain the interplay of mass‐mediated information, → social networks, and political → attitudes that are still relevant today: opinion leadership and political cross‐pressures (→ Opinion Leader).
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This article discusses how the performance of leading European news media evolved between 2010 and 2020 regarding normative expectations of liberal democracies, focusing on the role of digital journalism. The rise of platforms, news media crisis and consolidation of digital journalism in the 2010 decade challenge established discourses on the normative roles of news media. It is unclear to what extent media performance may have changed, especially outside the United States. This article draws on 2010 and 2020 data from the Media for Democracy Monitor (MDM) to compare the performance of news media in Austria, Finland, Germany, the Netherlands, Portugal, Sweden, Switzerland and United Kingdom. It argues that leading news media in these countries have had an overall similar contribution to democratic roles as before the 2010 decade. However, there are uneven developments, as digital journalism has strengthened the watchdog dimension while failing to attract younger audiences for the news industry. Additionally, countries with stronger public media ownership performed fairly better, indicating that technology alone is not the main factor to fulfil democratic expectations.
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Political hostility is a pervasive problem in American politics, producing dangerous consequences for individuals and society. Recent research in social psychology suggests that intellectual humility may be able to reduce political hostility, but the underlying causal relationship remains unclear. The purpose of this article is to examine how intellectual humility lowers hostility toward people who disagree (dissenters) about specific political topics. Results from a national survey indicate that those holding political beliefs with humility feel less negativity toward dissenters. Fixed‐effects regression models also show that intrapersonal variation in intellectual humility predicts issue‐specific hostility across political topics. Furthermore, a survey experiment priming intellectual humility caused a corresponding decrease in hostility toward dissenters without impacting underlying opinions. Altogether, these results suggest that fostering intellectual humility may be a fruitful avenue for alleviating the hostility and anger that often accompany political disagreement.
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Internet and media use can provide accessible, diverse, and timely opportunities for civic engagement. However, to use media and the internet to interact and collaborate, citizens need to be equipped with particular skills and knowledge. This study draws on a national survey of Australian adults (N = 3,510) to examine how media abilities and online interaction activities are related to their civic engagement. The findings suggest that the more active people are online, interacting with content or other people, the more likely they are to be engaged in civic activities. The data also shows that those with a higher level of confidence in their media abilities are more likely to engage in more civic activities. A broader understanding of the multidimensional characteristics of media literacy is needed to consider the role online interaction activities and media literacy abilities play in contributing to civic engagement. At the same time, the research suggests that equipping citizens with media literacy as well as enabling them to use the interactive functions of digital media can increase citizens’ civic engagement.
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In this essay we will try to delineate a kind of genealogy of public and private binomial identifying, first of all, the historical sense of a secular dichotomy, then turning to the eruption of the private space par excellence. In the third and last part, we will pay special attention to the democratization of intimacy without, however, forgetting how progressive mediatisation of society contributes to the confusion between public and private experiences.
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Social scientists who study the mass media share a widely held "ideal of conservation" which assumes that face-to-face interpersonal communication is characterized by continuous feedback between participants, multichannel communication, spontaneous utterance, and egalitarian norms. Compared to this image of what face-to-face conversation is like, communication by mass media seems inferior. It is argued, however, that this "ideal of conversation" does not correspond closely to most actual conversations. It is argued further that the rise of the mass media is itself responsible for the development of an ideal of conversation and is responsible for making ideal conversations more often realized in practice. The contribution of the mass media to face-to-face conversation has been to make conversation, particularly between men and women and between adults and children, more egalitarian and to enlarge the possibility of spontaneous conversation. It is suggested, finally, that research on the mass media will be improved if it appraises the nature of conversation more realistically.
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From at least the Progressives through recent media effects research, American thought about mass media has been marked by attention to the nexus of community, communication and democracy. Thinkers from Cooley and Dewey to Lazarsfeld and Katz have worried about the relation between local forms of civil society and far‐flung solidarity, argued about the role of communication in each, and addressed all these concerns in light of broader political visions. That tradition is marked by a recurring dream that mass communication might overcome the finitude of local civil society and bring about nationwide community. I call that dream communication hope.
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Public perception of a biased news media, particularly media biased in a liberal direction, has increased over the past 3 presidential elections. To examine what might be influencing this public opinion, the authors look at shifts in public perception of media bias, press coverage of the topic of media bias, and the balance in valence coverage of presidential candidates—all during the 1988, 1992, and 1996 presidential elections. Their results suggest that the rise in public perception that news media are liberally biased is not the result of bias in valence news coverage of the candidates, but, rather, due to increasing news self-coverage that focuses on the general topic of bias in news content. Furthermore, the increased claims of media bias come primarily from conservative elites who have proclaimed a liberal bias that is viewed as including the entire media industry.
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A survey of political preferences and attitudes conducted during the US Senate Watergate hearings of 1973 was used to examine hypotheses developed from selective exposure theory. Three groups of voters ( N = 82)—Richard Nixon supporters, George McGovern supporters, and undecideds—participated in a 3-wave panel survey conducted (a) just before the Watergate hearings started, (b) midway through the hearings, and (c) just before the end of the hearings. Responses that reflected interest in and attention to Watergate-related matters gave support to both the selective approach and avoidance components of the selective exposure hypothesis: The Nixon supporters reported less interest in and attention paid to Watergate-related matters than did members of the other groups. Responses to questions that probed for general knowledge about Watergate committee matters complemented the selective exposure analyses: Nixon supporters appeared to know less about the committee proceedings than the undecideds or McGovern supporters. Analyses of behavioral intentions and evaluations of the attitude object illustrated the importance of studying selective exposure effects. (30 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
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Numerous studies have demonstrated that the attitudes people consider personally important have an enhanced impact on cognition and behavior. This article explores the possibility that importance may regulate the magnitude of the false consensus effect as well. The authors report on six experiments that involved a variety of subject samples (college students and the general population), data collection methods (telephone interviewing and selJ-administered questionnaires), and political issues (e.g., abortion, gun control, defense spending). Meta analyses summarizing the results of 12 tests revealed a strong false consensus effect but no reliable relation between its magnitude and attitude importance. These results are inconsistent with the assumption that the false consensus effect is a result of attitudes directly or indirectly influencing perceptions of others, and they lend support to explanations of the false consensus effect that posit other mechanisms (i.e., attribution and object construal).
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It is strange, but true, that public opinion research, mass communications research and public opinion theory have become disconnected. It is difficult even to explain how any one of these can exist without the others, and yet the fact is that each has wandered off on its own. It is to the great credit of Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann that she has taken the lead in trying to bring them together again.1 Beginning with her call for a “return to a theory of powerful mass media”, Noelle-Neumann has been trying to show how the dynamics of media production and the dynamics of opinion formation interact, and how the process of this interaction can be described empirically by means of creative polling techniques.2 There may be room for debate over her inferences from the data, but nobody can underestimate the importance of her attempt to put the whole together.
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This chapter highlights the recent research on the selective exposure to information. The term “selective exposure” implies several assumptions concerning the decision-making process. It assumes that the seeking out of decision relevant information does not cease once a decision is made. This notion also implies that this post-decisional information seeking and evaluation is not impartial but, rather, is biased by certain factors activated during the decision-making process. This chapter discusses the fundamental theses of dissonance theory as it relates to selective exposure and gives a short overview of the early research. This chapter describes new research, including the experiments designed to specify those factors most important in influencing informational selectivity: the effects of choice and commitment on selective information seeking, selectivity and refutability of arguments, the amount of available information and its usefulness, the usefulness of decision reversibility, as well as the intensity of dissonance. This chapter reports the results on some additional variables-cost of information, the reliability of dissonant information, and the effects of personality.
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A theory of political communication is employed which stresses the importance of citizen discussion beyond the boundaries of cohesive groups for the dissemination of public opinion. If the social communication of political information is bounded by cohesive social groups and strong social ties, we should expect the social flow of political information to be independent from opinion distributions in the larger environment. In contrast, when social communication extends beyond socially cohesive groups, the flow of information should reflect these opinion distributions. We analyze a 1992 election survey which includes a battery of questions regarding the construction of respondents' social networks. The analysis is undertaken with respect to opinion distributions in the larger environments (counties) where the respondents reside. Individuals are differentially exposed to larger environments of opinion depending on micro environmental patterns of social interaction and political communication. Hence, the construction of a citizen's social network serves as a filter on the macro environmental flow of political information. In this way, the consequences of the larger environment of opinion depend on the existence of micro environments which expose citizens to surrounding opinion distributions.
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Faced with a minimally participatory democracy, a variety of populists have sought to revitalize popular political participation by strengthening local community mobilizations. Others have called for reliance on frequent referenda. Assessing the limits of these proposals requires theoretical attention to two key issues. The first is the growing importance of very large scale patterns of societal integration which depend on indirect social relationships achieved through communications media, markets and bureaucracies. This split of system world from lifeworld, in Habermas's terms, poses a challenge to democratic theories which assume that the lessons of local social life and political participation are directly translatable into the necessary knowledge for state level (let alone international) activity. Secondly, changes in patterns of community formation and communications media have transformed the basis for democracy. In particular, socio-spatial segmentation by life-style choice, market position and other factors limits direct relationships increasingly to similar individuals. Mass media become increasingly predominant sources of information about people different from oneself, and indirect social relationships form the structural basis for the social integration of most politics. The present paper revised and adapts Habermas's conceptualization of system world and lifeworld in order to address the transformation of patterns of societal integration. This forms the basis for a critical analysis of the implications of changing community form and especially communications media for populist political proposals.
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This book shows that many ordinary people today are highly susceptible to hate literature and are psychologically disposed to embrace antidemocratic, facist policies. Many of our biggest problems, seemingly unrelated, are found to have common authoritarian roots. This book gives insight into how authoritarian minds are created and how they operate, and how their failings and vulnerabilities produce submission and aggression. A search for authoritarians on the left finds very few. Instead, studies reveal a strong concentration of authoritarians among religious fundamentalists and conservative politicians. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)(jacket)
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With the rapid multiplication of channels, television has all but ceased to function as a shared public space. Except for occasional media events, the nation no longer gathers together. Un like the replacement of radio by television as radio underwent a similar process of segmentation, there is no new medium in the wings to replace television that is likely to promote national political inte gration. No less than in the United States, the governments of Europe—once proud of their public broadcasting systems—are bow ing to the combined constraints of the new media technology, the new liberal mood, the economic and political burden of public broadcast ing, and the seductions of multinational corporations. Thus is mass democracy deprived of its last common meeting ground, and, if theories of technological determinism are applicable, the cohesion of the nation-state itself is in jeopardy The case of Israeli broadcast ing—now in the throes of this paradigm change—is presented in illustration.
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Investigations of vague quantifiers—phrases like “very often,” which express frequency in relative terms—have left the consequences of analyzing absolute or relative responses largely unexplored. This paper examines whether the choice of relative or absolute frequencies affects comparisons by race, sex, education, and age and the meaning of relative-frequency and relative-intensity phrases for these groups. Items analyzed are the frequency of excitement and boredom (using a 1975 national probability sample of households with quotas, N=1,172). Conclusions about race differences in excitement and boredom differ for absolute and relative frequencies. There are significant differences by race, education, and age in the meaning of phrases conveying relative frequency: such phrases stand for higher absolute frequencies for whites, for better educated, and for younger respondents.
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Inspired by the writings of John Dewey, among others, thinking in communication studies has often taken face‐to‐face conversation to be the heart of democratic life. But face‐to‐face conversation has been as much honored in aristocracies as in democracies and there are, in fact, two distinctive and contrasting ideals of conversation—the sociable conversation and the problem‐solving conversation. Conversation that serves democracy is distinguished not by egalitarianism but by norm‐governedness and public‐ness, not by spontaneity but by civility, and not by its priority or superiority to print and broadcast media but by its necessary dependence on them. An argument is offered that institutions and norms of democracy give rise to democratic conversations rather than that the inherent democracy of conversation gives rise to politically democratic norms and institutions.
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This book proposes a new kind of democracy for the modern era, one that not only gives citizens more power but also allows them more opportunities to exercise this power thoughtfully. James S. Fishkin here suggests an innovative solution to the problem of inadequate deliberation, in particular within our presidential nomination system. His reform involves a well-publicized national caucus in which a representative sample of American citizens would interact directly with presidential contenders in order to reflect and vote on the issues and candidates. In adapting democracy to the large scale nation state, says Fishkin, Americans have previously had two choices. They could participate directly through primaries and referenda or they could depend on elite groups-such as party conventions and legislatures-to represent them. The first choice offers political equality but little chance for deliberation; the second offers the participants an opportunity to deliberate but provides less political equality for the electorate. The national caucus that Fishkin proposes-an example of what he calls a "deliberative opinion poll"-combines deliberation with political equality and reveals what the public would think if it had better conditions and information with which to explore and define the issues with the candidates. Arguing persuasively for the usefulness of deliberative opinion polls, Fishkin places them within the history of democratic theory and practice, exploring models of democracy ranging form ancient Athens and the debates of the American founders to contemporary transitions toward democracy in Eastern Europe.
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Numerous studies have demonstrated that the attitudes people consider personally important have an enhanced impact on cognition and behavior. This article explores the possibility that importance may regulate the magnitude of the false consensus effect as well. The authors report on six experiments that involved a variety of subject samples (college students and the general population), data collection methods (telephone interviewing and selJ-administered questionnaires), and political issues (e.g., abortion, gun control, defense spending). Meta analyses summarizing the results of 12 tests revealed a strong false consensus effect but no reliable relation between its magnitude and attitude importance. These results are inconsistent with the assumption that the false consensus effect is a result of attitudes directly or indirectly influencing perceptions of others, and they lend support to explanations of the false consensus effect that posit other mechanisms (i.e., attribution and object construal).
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Electoral research acknowledges the growing significance of the mass media in contemporary campaigns, but scholars are divided on the nature of this influence. Using a unique database that includes both media content and public opinion, we examine the flow of partisan information from newspapers to the voters and assess the press's role in electoral politics and citizen learning. We find that the American press does not present clear and singular messages about presidential elections but, rather multiple messages about the candidates and the campaign. In addition, perception of the information is shaped as much by an individual's political views as by the objective content. Despite the mixed messages, we find that a newspaper's editorial content is significantly related to candidate preferences in 1992. These results challenge the minimal effects interpretation of the media, because local newspapers can play a significant role in providing cues that influence voters' electoral calculus.
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Acknowledgements 1. The mysterious shrinking circle of concern 2. Volunteers trying to make sense of the world 3. 'Close to home' and 'for the children': trying really hard not to care 4. Humour, nostalgia and commercial culture in the postmodern public sphere 5. Creating ignorance and memorizing facts: how Buffaloes understood politics 6. Strenuous disengagement and cynical chic solidarity 7. Activists carving out a place in the public sphere for discussion 8. Newspapers in the cycle of political evaporation 9. The evaporation of politics in the US public sphere Appendices Notes References Index.
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Book
“Public” life once meant that vital part one’s life outside the circle of family and close friends. Connecting with strangers in an emotionally satisfying way and yet remaining aloof from them was seen as the means by which the human animal was transformed into the social – the civilized – being. And the fullest flowering of that public life was realized in the 18th Century in the great capital cities of Europe. Sennett shows how our lives today are bereft of the pleasures and reinforcements of this lost interchange with fellow citizens. He shows how, today, the stranger is a threatening figure; how silence and observation have become the only ways to experience public life, especially street life, without feeling overwhelmed ; how each person believes in the right, in public, to be left alone. And he makes clear how, because of the change in public life, private life becomes distorted as we of necessity focus more and more on ourselves, on increasingly narcissistic forms of intimacy and self-absorption. Because of this, our personalities cannot fully develop: we lack much of the ease, the spirit of play, the kind of discretion that would allow us real and pleasurable relationships with those whom we may never know intimately.
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From the Publisher:In this provocative work, communications scholar Herbert Schiller contends that the current proliferation of informational activities and the increasingly sophisticated information technology they demand are largely the result of efforts to control the economic, political, and cultural strains produced by a general crisis of the world market system.
Article
The conventional wisdom in political communications research is that the media play a dominant role in defining the agenda of elections. In Bernard Cohen's words, the media do not tell us what to think, but they tell us what to think about. The present article challenges this conclusion. We present data on media coverage of the 1992 presidential election from the first nationally representative sample of American newspapers and compare these to the issue interests of the American public. We conclude that past claims that the media control the agenda-setting process have been overstated. Candidates messages are well represented in press coverage of the campaign, and coverage is even independent of a newspaper's editorial endorsement. We argue that agenda setting is a transaction process in which elites, the media, and the public converge to a common set of salient issues that define a campaign.
Article
The instrumentalist principles are applied to fundamental social theory. The concept of the public is more general than that of the state, which is the public politically organized, with suitable officials; the public itself is individuals in relations, the latter being so complex and mobile in existing publics that the whole social fabric is amorphous and inarticulate. Law, associated with the state, is the total of the conditions established for making the results of interaction somewhat predictable. The "eclipse of the public" is effectively described, with a tracing of the historical causes underlying it in the rise of democracy and associated technology. The conditions for the emergence of the public and the formation of a genuine community are found chiefly in the free communication of knowledge of every sort. The most hopeful method for such emergence is, concisely, the practical recognition of the interdependence of individual and social aspects of existence, plus free experimental inquiry. Tendencies in a forward direction are noted. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Article
Investigated the mechanisms involved in the hostile media effect, in which partisans tend to judge news coverage as biased against their own side. 146 college students on both sides of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict and the abortion issue were shown TV news coverage of both issues. They were then tested for memory of program content and judgments of bias and imbalance in coverage. Mideast partisans judged coverage to be biased against their own side; abortion partisans showed a much less consistent pattern of hostile media judgments. Prior beliefs about media bias, together with issue attitudes, were found to account for hostile media judgments. Ss also tended to selectively categorize specific items in a direction favorable to their attitude, a process tending to inhibit hostile media judgments. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Article
This book is "primarily a collation of the findings of published research… . Part I deals with mass communication as an agent of persuasion… . Part II deals with the effects of specific kinds of media content." A new orientation is suggested: the "Phenomenistic" approach which "is in essence a shift away from the tendency to regard mass communication as a necessary and sufficient cause of audience effects, toward a view of the media as influences, working amid other influences, in a total situation." The following generalizations are central to organizing the research findings: (a) mass communication by itself does not act as a necessary and suficient cause of audience effects and (b) mass communication typically reinforces existing conditions, rather than changing them. (270 ref.) From Psyc Abstracts 36:01:1GI02K. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Article
Assimilation and contrast effects in the placement of opinion items in a series and in the evaluation of the acceptability of such items are explained by principles derived from psychophysical studies of stimulus placement and the development of scales of judgment. The book contains a systematic survey of relevant psychophysical studies plus an analysis of several of the authors' recent experiments on the judgment of weights, opinion topics, and political parties. In addition to the argument that assimilation and contrast effects depend on the location of anchors employed by the judge in evaluating the stimulus items, the authors introduce the concepts of latitude of acceptance and latitude of rejection and discuss the implications of these concepts for attitude change and communication. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Article
Democratic politics is a collective enterprise, not simply because individual votes are counted to determine winners, but more fundamentally because the individual exercise of citizenship is an interdependent undertaking. Citizens argue with one another, they inform one another, and they generally arrive at political decisions through processes of social interaction and deliberation. This book is dedicated to investigating the political implications of interdependent citizens within the context of the 1984 presidential election campaign as it was experienced in the metropolitan area of South Bend, Indiana. Hence, this is a community study in the fullest sense of the term. National politics is experienced locally through a series of filters unique to a particular setting. And this study is concerned with understanding that setting and its consequences for the exercise of democratic citizenship. Several different themes structure the undertaking: the dynamic implications of social communication among citizens, the importance of communication networks for citizen decision making, the exercise of citizen purpose in locating sources of information, the constraints on individual choice that arise as a function of contexts and environments, and the institutional and organizational effects that operate on the flow of information within particular settings. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Article
Studies of social influence have suffered from limitations in available data resources. Consequently, they usually have either failed to consider the dynamic nature of attitudes or have specified the social environment in some restricted way. This article evaluates a dynamic model of attitude change that includes direct information on individuals named as political discussants. Using party identification as an attitude subject to social influence, several findings are advanced. Political discussants are shown to significantly affect change in party identification. In addition, these effects are enhanced or inhibited depending on characteristics of the discussion partners, the nature of the relationship, and properties of the interaction. The nature of the relationship interacts with the other components in some interesting and surprising ways as well. Overall, the results show that intimacy and respect are more important deter-minants of social influence than previously given credit.
Article
Previous explanations of mass participation have often focused on sociodemographic characteristics to the neglect of social psychological factors. This study takes a new path in thinking about the role of psychological factors in participation. Specifically, we hypothesize that individual propensities regarding conflict will influence the likelihood of participating in political affairs. We develop more specific expectations for how the avenue of participation interacts with individual propensities toward conflict to influence participation. Using secondary analysis of the Citizen Participation Study (CPS), we show that conflict avoidance is significantly and inversely related to participation in some kinds of activities, consistent with our expectations. Thus, both individual propensities and the political context influence participation. This study provides a new understanding of which individuals participate in political affairs and which avenues they choose. This suggests a need to reconsider the role of psychological factors in models of participation.
Article
Exposure to conflicting political viewpoints is widely assumed to benefit the citizens of a democratic polity. Nonetheless, the benefits of exposure to heterogeneous political viewpoints have yet to be demonstrated empirically. Drawing on national survey data that tap characteristics of people’s political discussion networks, I examine the impact of heterogeneous networks of political discussion on individuals’ awareness of legitimate rationales for oppositional viewpoints, on their awareness of rationales for their own viewpoints, and on levels of political tolerance. Finally, utilizing a laboratory experiment manipulating exposure to dissonant and consonant political views, I further substantiate the causal role of cross-cutting exposure in fostering political tolerance.