From Persuasion to Deliberation: Do Experiences of Online Political Persuasion Facilitate Dialogic Openness?

Abstract

Research has long considered the role interpersonal persuasion plays in shaping how citizens form their political opinions and cast their votes. Yet few studies have examined how experiences with online persuasion might influence broader deliberative orientations. We propose the “Persuasion-Openness” model, in which both attempting and being the target of online political persuasion encourage individuals to engage in online cross-cutting discussion with those who hold differing political views. These more deliberative exchanges are in turn associated with increased “dialogic openness”—a broader orientation toward political dialog. We test this model using original panel survey data collected during the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Findings show that both types of persuasion experiences can indirectly lead to dialogic openness, by stimulating online cross-cutting discussion. However, the mediated pathway for those targeted for online persuasion is only significant in online environments with low levels of attitude-challenging information.

Keywords

persuasion political deliberation cross-cutting discussion dialogic openness

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Araujo

Wonneberger

Neijens

de Vreese

(2017). How much time do you spend online? Understanding and improving the accuracy of self-reported measures of Internet use. Communication Methods and Measures, 11, 173-190. doi:10.1080/19312458.2017.1317337

Bakshy

Messing

Adamic

L. A.

(2015). Exposure to ideologically diverse news and opinion on Facebook. Science, 348, 1130-1132. doi:10.1126/science.aaa1160

Barberá

Jost

J. T.

Nagler

Tucker

J. A.

Bonneau

(2015). Tweeting from left to right: Is online political communication more than an echo chamber? Psychological Science, 26, 1531-1542. doi:10.1177/0956797615594620

Benhabib

(1996). Toward a deliberative model of democratic legitimacy. In Benhabib

(Ed.), Democracy and difference (pp. 67-94). Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Berelson

B. R.

Lazarsfeld

P. F.

McPhee

W. N.

(1954). Voting: A study of opinion formation in a presidential campaign. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press.

Bode

(2016). Political news in the news feed: Learning politics from social media. Mass Communication and Society, 19, 24-48. doi:10.1080/15205436.2015.1045149

Bond

R. M.

Fariss

C. J.

Jones

J. J.

Kramer

A. D. I.

Marlow

Settle

J. E.

Fowler

J. H.

(2012). A 61-million-person experiment in social influence and political mobilization. Nature, 489, 295-298. doi:10.1038/nature11421

Brehm

S. S.

Brehm

J. W.

(1981). Psychological reactance: A theory of freedom and control. New York, NY: Academic Press.

Calabresi

(2017, May). Inside Russia’s social media war on America. Time. Retrieved from http://time.com/4783932/inside-russia-social-media-war-america/

10.

Calhoun

(Ed.). (1993). Habermas and the public sphere. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.

11.

Campbell

S. W.

Kwak

(2012). Mobile communication and strong network ties: Shrinking or expanding spheres of public discourse? New Media & Society, 14, 262-280. doi: 10.1177/1461444811411676

12.

Confessore

Hakim

(2017, March 6). Data firm says “secret sauce” aided Trump; Many scoff. The New York Times. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/06/us/politics/cambridge-analytica.html

13.

Delli Carpini

M. X.

Jacobs

L. R.

Cook

. (2009). Talking together: Public deliberation and political participation in America. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press.

14.

Diehl

Weeks

B. E.

Gil de Zúñiga

(2016). Political persuasion on social media: Tracing direct and indirect effects of news use and social interaction. New Media & Society, 18, 1875-1895. doi: 10.1177/1461444815616224

15.

Duggan

Smith

(2016). The political environment on social media. Retrieved from http://www.pewinternet.org/2016/10/25/the-political-environment-on-social-media/

16.

Elliot

A. J.

Devine

P. G.

(1994). On the motivational nature of cognitive dissonance: Dissonance as psychological discomfort. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 67, 382-394.

17.

Eveland

W. P.

(2004). The effect of political discussion in producing informed citizens: The roles of information, motivation, and elaboration. Political Communication, 21, 177-193. doi:10.1080/10584600490443877

18.

Eveland

W. P.

Thomson

(2006). Is it talking, thinking, or both? A lagged dependent variable model of discussion effects on political knowledge. Journal of Communication, 56, 523-542. doi:10.1111/j.1460-2466.2006.00299.x

19.

Festinger

(1962). A theory of cognitive dissonance. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

20.

Freedman

J. L.

(1965). Long-term behavioral effects of cognitive dissonance. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 1, 145-155. doi:10.1016/0022-1031(65)90042-9

21.

Groshek

Koc-Michalska

(2017). Helping populism win? Social media use, filter bubbles, and support for populist presidential candidates in the 2016 US election campaign. Information, Communication & Society, 20, 1389-1407. doi:10.1080/1369118X.2017.1329334

22.

Habermas

(1984). The theory of communicative action: Reason and the rationalization of society (Vol. 1; McCarthy

Trans.). Boston, MA: Beacon Press.

23.

Hanson

R. L.

(1993). Deliberation, tolerance and democracy. In Marcus

G. E.

Hanson

R. L.

(Eds.), Reconsidering the democratic public. University Park: Penn State University Press.

24.

Hayes

A. F.

(2013). Introduction to mediation, moderation, and conditional process analysis: A regression-based approach. New York, NY: Guilford Press.

25.

Himelboim

McCreery

Smith

(2013). Birds of a feather tweet together: Integrating network and content analyses to examine cross-ideology exposure on Twitter. Journal of Computer-mediated Communication, 18, 154-174. doi:10.1111/jcc4.12001

26.

Iyengar

Konitzer

Tedin

(2018). The home as a political fortress; Family agreement in an era of polarization. Journal of Politics, 80, 1326-1338.

27.

Katz

Lazarsfeld

P. F.

(1955). Personal influence: The part played by people in the flow of mass communications. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers.

28.

Knobloch-Westerwick

Meng

(2009). Looking the other way: Selective exposure to attitude-consistent and counterattitudinal political information. Communication Research, 36, 426-448. doi:10.1177/0093650209333030

29.

Knobloch-Westerwick

Meng

(2011). Reinforcement of the political self through selective exposure to political messages. Journal of Communication, 61, 349-368. doi:10.1111/j.1460-2466.2011.01543.x

30.

Lazarsfeld

P. F.

Berelson

Gaudet

(1948). The people’s choice: How the voter makes up his mind in a presidential campaign. New York, NY: Columbia University Press.

31.

Lee

Kwak

Campbell

S. W.

(2015). Hearing the Other Side Revisited: The Joint Workings of Cross-Cutting Discussion and Strong Tie Homogeneity in Facilitating Deliberative and Participatory Democracy. Communication Research, 42, 569-596. doi: 10.1177/0093650213483824

32.

Lyons

Sokhey

(2014). Emotion, motivation, and social information seeking about politics. Political Communication, 31, 237-258. doi:10.1080/10584609.2013.828138

33.

Mansbridge

Morris

(2001). Oppositional consciousness: The subjective roots of social protest. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press.

34.

Matland

R. E.

Murray

G. R.

(2013). An experimental test for “backlash” against social pressure techniques used to mobilize voters. American Politics Research, 41, 359-386. doi:10.1177/1532673X12463423

35.

Matthes

Rios Morrison

Schemer

(2010). A spiral of silence for some: Attitude certainty and the expression of political minority opinions. Communication Research, 37, 774-800. doi:10.1177/0093650210362685

36.

McLeod

J. M.

Scheufele

D. A.

Moy

Horowitz

E. D.

Holbert

R. L.

Zhang

Zubric

(1999). Understanding deliberation: The effects of discussion networks on participation in a public forum. Communication Research, 26, 743-774. doi:10.1177/009365099026006005

37.

McPhee

Smith

Ferguson

(1963). A theory of informal social influence. In McPhee

(Ed.), Formal theories of mass behavior (pp. 74-203). London, England: Collier-Macmillan.

38.

Meirick

P. C.

Nisbett

G. S.

(2011). I approve this message: Effects of sponsorship, ad tone, and reactance in 2008 presidential advertising. Mass Communication and Society, 14, 666-689. doi:10.1080/15205436.2010.530381

39.

Messing

Westwood

S. J.

(2014). Selective exposure in the age of social media: Endorsements trump partisan source affiliation when selecting news online. Communication Research, 41, 1042-1063. doi:10.1177/0093650212466406

40.

Mutz

D. C.

(2006). Hearing the other side: Deliberative versus participatory democracy. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

41.

Mutz

D. C.

Mondak

J. J.

(2006). The workplace as a context for cross-cutting political discourse. Journal of Politics, 68, 140-155. doi:10.1111/j.1468-2508.2006.00376.x

42.

Mutz

D. C.

Sniderman

Brody

(Eds.). (1996). Political persuasion and attitude change. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.

43.

Nir

(2005). Ambivalent social networks and their consequences for participation. International Journal of Public Opinion Research, 17, 422-442. doi:10.1093/ijpor/edh069

44.

Noelle-Neumann

(1991). The theory of public opinion: The concept of the spiral of silence. Annals of the International Communication Association, 14, 256-287. doi:10.1080/23808985.1991.11678790

45.

Pattie

C. J.

Johnston

R. J.

(2008). It’s good to talk: Talk, disagreement and tolerance. British Journal of Political Science, 38, 677-698. doi:10.1017/S0007123408000331

46.

Pew Research Center. (2016). As election nears, voters divided over democracy and “respect.” Retrieved from http://www.people-press.org/2016/10/27/as-election-nears-voters-divided-over-democracy-and-respect/

47.

Pingree

R. J.

(2007). How messages affect their senders: A more general model of message effects and implications for deliberation. Communication Theory, 17, 439-461. doi:10.1111/j.1468-2885.2007.00306.x

48.

Pratkanis

A. R.

Aronson

(2001). Age of propaganda: The everyday use and abuse of persuasion. New York, NY: Macmillan.

49.

Price

Cappella

J. N.

Nir

(2002). Does disagreement contribute to more deliberative opinion? Political Communication, 19, 95-112. doi:10.1080/105846002317246506

50.

Scheufele

D. A.

Hardy

B. W.

Brossard

Waismel-Manor

I. S.

Nisbet

E. C.

(2006). Democracy based on difference: Examining the links between structural heterogeneity, heterogeneity of discussion networks, and democratic citizenship. Journal of Communication, 56, 728-753. doi:10.1111/j.1460-2466.2006.00317.x

51.

Slater

M. D.

(2007). Reinforcing spirals: The mutual influence of media selectivity and media effects and their impact on individual behavior and social identity. Communication Theory, 17, 281-303. doi:10.1111/j.1468-2885.2007.00296.x

52.

Sprague

(1982). Is there a micro-theory consistent with contextual analysis? In Ostrom

(Ed.), Strategies of political inquiry (pp. 99-121). Beverly Hills, CA: SAGE.

53.

Taber

C. S.

Lodge

(2006). Motivated skepticism in the evaluation of political beliefs. American Journal of Political Science, 50, 755-769. doi:10.1111/j.1540-5907.2006.00214.x

54.

Thompson

D. F.

(2008). Deliberative democratic theory and empirical political science. Annual Review of Political Science, 11, 497-520. doi:10.1146/annurev.polisci.11.081306.070555

55.

Thorson

(2014). Beyond opinion leaders: How attempts to persuade foster political awareness and campaign learning. Communication Research, 41, 353-374. doi:10.1177/0093650212443824

56.

Tingley

Yamamoto

Hirose

Keele

Imai

(2014). Mediation: R package for causal mediation analysis. Journal of Statistical Software, 59, 1-38.

57.

Valkenburg

P. M.

(2017). Understanding self-effects in social media. Human Communication Research, 43, 477-490. doi:10.1111/hcre.12113

58.

Weeks

B. E.

Ardèvol-Abreu

Gil de Zúñiga

(2017). Online Influence? Social Media Use, Opinion Leadership, and Political Persuasion. International Journal of Public Opinion Research, 29, 214-239. doi: 10.1093/ijpor/edv050

59.

Weeks

B. E.

Lane

D. S.

Kim

D. H.

Lee

S. S.

Kwak

(2017). Incidental exposure, selective exposure, and political information sharing: Integrating online exposure patterns and expression on social media. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 22, 363-379.

60.

Wheeler

S. C.

Briñol

Hermann

A. D.

(2007). Resistance to persuasion as self-regulation: Ego-depletion and its effects on attitude change processes. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 43, 150-156. doi:10.1016/j.jesp.2006.01.001

61.

Wicklund

R. A.

(1974). Freedom and reactance. Potomac, MD: Lawrence Erlbaum.

62.

Wojcieszak

(2011). When deliberation divides: Processes underlying mobilization to collective action. Communication Monographs, 78, 324-346. doi:10.1080/03637751.2011.589459

63.

Wojcieszak

Mutz

D. C.

(2009). Online groups and political discourse: Do online discussion spaces facilitate exposure to political disagreement? Journal of Communication, 59, 40-56. doi:10.1111/j.1460-2466.2008.01403.x

64.

Wojcieszak

Price

(2012). Perceived versus actual disagreement: Which influences deliberative experiences? Journal of Communication, 62, 418-436. doi:10.1111/j.1460-2466.2012.01645.x

Supplementary Material

Please find the following supplemental material available below.

For Open Access articles published under a Creative Commons License, all supplemental material carries the same license as the article it is associated with.

For non-Open Access articles published, all supplemental material carries a non-exclusive license, and permission requests for re-use of supplemental material or any part of supplemental material shall be sent directly to the copyright owner as specified in the copyright notice associated with the article.

0.00 MB

0.37 MB