Perceptions and Polarization Flashcards
1
Q
What’s this section about??
A
Perception-based behavioral choices and potential social segregation
2
Q
The Public Sphere (Dahlgren)
A
“A constellation of communicative spaces ina society that permit the circulation of information, ideas, debates; ideally in an unfettered manner, and also the formation of political will.”
3
Q
Internet (Public Sphere)
A
- Inadvertent exposure to differences
- Greater density of ego-network
- Complementing one’s offline ego-network
4
Q
The Spiral of Silence (Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann)
A
- Perceiving the opinion climate
- Fear of social isolation
- Self-censor (willingness to express opinion)
- Individuals become less willing to express opinion in public or a social setting if they are holding a minority point of view. A key perceptual element in the process is that of perceiving the opinion climate, which is majority of pro vs. con opinions.
- Imagine
- A conservative fundamentalism party in Madison.
- A gun control advocate enters this place..
- Imagine
5
Q
How do we perceive opinion climate?
A
- Cues from our surroundings: Our perceptions are likely flawed.
- Projection: “false consensus”
6
Q
Wokcieszak & Price
A
- Looked into mean perceieved public support for character education, death penalty, and gun control individual position.
- Findings
- People tend to think their position is widely shared.
- Supporters have highest levels of perceived support.
- Investigated “benefits of exposure to disagreement”: predicted perceived public support for gun control by level of offline network disagreement.
- Engaging in communication with opposing views adjusts bias.
- ***Again, opponents perceived overall the lowest support and supporters perceived the highest. So, overall people will perceive more public support for an issue if they support that issue, but the effects can be lowered by talking to people of differing views.
7
Q
Colleoni- Observed Relationship (on Thinking About Social Media)
A
- Social media outlet –> Inadvertent exposure –> Public sphere scenario
- Social media outlet –> selectivity based on homophily –> echo chamber scenario
- Selectivity based on homophily: people want to interact with those similar to them
- Echo chamber scenario: Are more likely to projet our general opinion to public.
- Become more confident with our opnion.
8
Q
Colleoni et. al Study
A
- Studied structure of political homphily of the entire network of users.
- Compared levels between Democrat and Republican Twitter users 2010
- Data: Predicting users’ political orientation based on content & network that shares it
- Findings
- 10% of tweets were related to political issues
9
Q
Network Measures (Colleoni study)
A
- For each node: all the outbound ties (A–>B)
- Classification: Republicans, Democrats, non-political accounts
- Homophily= number with shared orientation/ total number of ties (0-1)
- Three social graphs:
- Overall nonsymmetric, symmetric
- Baseline: expected level, given the known structure, based on a random model.
10
Q
Colleoni Results
A
- Republicans most often were identified based on political accounts followed.
- Democrats were mostly classified based on content.
- Interpretation: Democrats express, Republicans follow.
- Party affiliation (stronger among Republicans).
- Partisan sentiment in context (stronger among Democrats).
11
Q
Colleoni Explanation
A
- Different “political cultures”?
- Republicans: better organized
- Democrats: more expressive
- As a social medium echo chamber scenario > Public sphere scenario
12
Q
Relationships so far..
A
- Prior: High choice –> increased knowledge gaps
- Stroud, iyengar & Hahn: Partisan-based selectivity <–> political polarization
- J Turow: More outlets + niche outlets + market segmentation –> “breaking up America”
- Colorful images: echo chambers, digital enclaves, image tribes
- Question: Do we have no overlap in our respective “media repertoire”?
- John: ESPN, Fox News, Youtube, Twitter, HBO
- Emily: MSNBC, Youtube, ntimes, HBO, We
13
Q
Media repertoire
A
- The mixture of media outlets that one regularly uses.
- Varies among people in size and competition.
- Likely overlaps among people.
- Ex:
- John: ESPN, Fox News, Youtube, Twitter, HBO
- Emily: MSNBC, Youtube, ntimes, HBO, We
14
Q
A network of media outlets
A
Depics audiences sharing among media outlets as links
15
Q
Perceptions and Polarization: Key Propositions of Media Use
(Content, media repertoires & trend)
A
- Audiences consume a wide range of outlets and platforms.
- Content: replicated across platforms
- Media repertoires: differences as well as overlaps.
- Trend: significant overlaps, as long as we pursue quality and use media for social currency.
- In terms of effects:
- From usage to effects: logical jump
