The impact of ordinary political conversation on public opinion expression: Is existence of discord necessary?

Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly

Volumn 82, Issue 4, 2005, Pages 891-909

  Lee, Francis L F ^a  

^a CITY UNIVERSITY OF HONG KONG   (Hong Kong)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

POLITICAL PARTICIPATION; POLITICS;

ASIA; CHINA; EURASIA; FAR EAST; HONG KONG;

EID: 33645809556     PISSN: 10776990     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/107769900508200409     Document Type: Article

References (93)

1. Jane Mansbridge, "Everyday Talk in the Deliberative System," in Deliberative Politics, ed. Stephen Macedo (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 211-40.
2. Katherine C. Walsh, Talking About Politics: Informal Groups and Social Identity in American Life (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004), 8.
3. Joohan Kim, Robert O. Wyatt, and Elihu Katz, "News, Talk, Opinion, Participation: The Part Played by Conversation in Deliberative Democracy," Political Communication 16 (October-December 1999): 361-85.
4. Robert O. Wyatt, Elihu Katz, and Joohan Kim, "Bridging the Spheres: Political and Personal Conversation in Public and Private Spaces," Journal of Communication 50 (winter 2000): 71-92.
5. Robert Huckfeldt and John Sprague, "Networks in Context: The Social Flow of Political Information," American Political Science Review 81 (December 1987): 1197-1216
6. Robert Huckfeldt and John Sprague, Citizens, Politics, and Social Communication (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995).
7. Nina Eliasoph, Avoiding Politics: How Americans Produce Apathy in Everyday Life (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998);
8. Walsh, Talking About Politics.
9. Michael Schudson, "Why Conversation is Not the Soul of Democracy," Critical Studies in Mass Communication 14 (December 1997): 297-309.
10. This, in turn, is based upon the premise that the same normative ideal of democracy should, at least at a general level, be applicable to both established democracies in the West and democratizing societies such as Hong Kong. Admittedly, theories of deliberative or dialogic democracy are often regarded as attempts to make existing democracies - countries which have already set up the basic set of liberal democratic institutions such as periodic elections and constitutional protection of civil rights - "deeper" or "more authentic." For democratizing societies, it is arguable that the establishment of the basic liberal democratic institutions is more important than how democracy can be further deepened. Nevertheless, there is no necessary conflict between the development of liberal democratic institutions and the promotion of a more deliberative political culture. Hence there is no particular reason to dismiss the importance of public opinion expression and discussion to a democratizing society. For discussions of deliberative democracy as the deepening of existing democracy, see Iris M. Young, Inclusion and Democracy (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000)
11. and John Dryzek, Deliberative Democracy and Beyond (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000).
12. Elihu Katz and Paul Lazarsfeld, Personal Influence (Glencoe: Free Press, 1955).
13. For examples of recent studies, see William P. Eveland and Dhavan V. Shah, "The Impact of Individual and Interpersonal Factors on Perceived News Media Bias," Political Psychology 24 (March 2003): 101-117;
14. Michael Pfau, Kathleen E. Kendall, Tom Reichert, Susan A. Hellweg, Waipeng Lee, Kyle James Tusing, and Theodore O. Prosise, "Influence of Communication During the Distant Phase of the 1996 Republican Presidential Primary Campaign," Journal of Communication 47 (autumn 1997): 6-26;
15. Patrick Roessler, "The Individual Agenda-Designing Process: How Interpersonal Communication, Egocentric Networks, and Mass Media Shape the Perception of Political Issues by Individuals," Communication Research 27 (December 1999): 666-700.
16. Kim, Wyatt, and Katz, "News, Talk, Opinion, Participation."
17. Bruce C. Straits, "Bringing Strong Ties Back in: Interpersonal Gateways to Political Information and Influence," Public Opinion Quarterly 55 (autumn 1991): 432-48.
18. William P. Eveland, "The Effect of Political Discussion in Producing Informed Citizens: The Roles of Information, Motivation, and Elaboration," Political Communication 21 (April-June 2004): 17-193;
19. R. Lance Holbert, William L. Benoit, Glenn J. Hansen, and Wei-chun Wen, "The Role of Communication in the Formation of an Issue-based Citizenry," Communication Monographs 69 (December 2002): 296-310
20. R. Kelly Myers, "Interpersonal and Mass Media Communication: Political Learning in New Hampshire's 1st in the Nation Presidential Primary," Sociological Spectrum 14 (April-June 1994): 143-65
21. Dietram A. Scheufele, "Talk or Conversation? Dimensions of Interpersonal Discussion and Their Implications for Participatory Democracy," Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly 77 (winter 2000): 727-43.
22. Jack M. McLeod, Keith Daily, Zhongshi Guo, William P. Eveland, Jan Bayer, Seungchan Yang, and Hsu Wang, "Community Integration, Local Media Use, and Democratic Process," Communication Research 23 (April 1996): 179-209;
23. Jack M. McLeod, Dietram A. Scheufele, Patricia Moy, Edward M. Horowitz, R. Lance Holbert, Weiwu Zhang, Stephen Zubric, and Jessica Zubric, "Understanding Deliberation: The Effects of Discussion Networks on Participation in a Public Forum," Communication Research 26 (December 1999): 743-74;
24. Diana C. Mutz, "Cross-cutting Social Networks: Testing Democratic Theory in Practice," American Political Science Review 96 (March 2002): 111-26
25. Dietram A. Scheufele, "Examining Differential Gains from Mass Media and Their Implications for Participatory Behavior," Communication Research 29 (February 2002): 46-65.
26. Mansur Lalljee and Geoffrey Evans, "Political Talk and the Stability and Consistency of Political Orientation," British Journal of Social Psychology 37 (June 1998): 203-212.
27. Kim, Wyatt, and Katz, "News, Talk, Opinion, Participation."
28. Gabriel Almond and Sidney Verba, The Civic Culture (Boston: Little Brown, 1965).
29. Michael DeGolyer and Janet Lee Scott, "The Myth of Political Apathy in Hong Kong," The Annals of the American Academcy of Political and Social Science 547 (1996), 68-78
30. Siu Hing Lo, "Citizen Participation, Political Culture and Governability in Hong Kong: A Critique of the Psychocultural Approach," in Political Participation in Hong Kong, ed. Joseph Cheng (Hong Kong: City University of Hong Kong Press, 1999), 49-69.
31. See Slavko Splichal, Public Opinion: Developments and Controversies in the Twentieth Century (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2000).
32. This point received one of its classic treatments through Goffman's conception of civil inattention. See Erving Goffman, Behavior in Public Places (New York: Free Press, 1963).
33. Anthony Y. H. Fung, "One City, Two Systems: Democracy in an Electronic Chat Room in Hong Kong," Javnost/The Public 9 (summer 2002): 77-93
34. Francis L. F. Lee, "Radio Phone-In Talk Show as Politically Significant Infotainment in Hong Kong," Harvard International Journal of Press/Politics 7 (fall 2002): 57-79.
35. Elizabeth Noelle-Neumann, The Spiral of Silence (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984).
36. For a review of the literature, see Dietram A. Scheufele and Patricia Moy, "Twenty-Five Years of the Spiral of Silence: A Conceptual Review and Empirical Outlook," International Journal of Public Opinion Research 12 (spring 2000): 3-28.
37. For discussions and analysis of Hong Kong citizens' political participation, see Siu-kai Lau and Hsin-chi Kuan, The Ethos of Hong Kong Chinese (Hong Kong: The Chinese University Press, 1988);
38. Siu-hing Lo, "Citizen Participation, Political Culture and Governability"
39. Michael DeGolyer and Janet Lee Scott, "The Myth of Political Apathy"
40. Francis L. F. Lee, "Collective Efficacy, Suppport for Democratization, and Political Participation in Hong Kong," International Journal of Public Opinion Research (forthcoming)
41. Francis L. F. Lee and Joseph Man Chan, "Political Attitudes, Participation, and Hong Kong Identities After 1997," Issues & Studies 44 (June 2005): 1-35.
42. Walsh, Talking About Politics.
43. Jeffrey J. Mondak, "Media Exposure and Political Discussion in U.S. Elections," Journal of Politics 57 (February 1995): 62-85.
44. Eveland, "The Effect of Political Discussion."
45. Walter Lippmann, Liberty and the News (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Howe, 1920).
46. James Bohman and William Rehg, "Introduction," in Deliberative Democracy, ed. James Bohman and William Rehg (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1997), ix-xxx.
47. For representative theorizations of deliberative democracy, see James Bohman, Public Deliberation (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1996);
48. John Dryzek, Deliberative Democracy and Beyond (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000);
49. Amy Gutmann and Dennis Thompson, Democracy and Disagreement (Harvard: Belknap Press, 1996)
50. Jurgen Habermas, Between Facts and Norms (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1996)
51. Iris M. Young, Inclusion and Democracy (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000).
52. Eliasoph, Avoiding Politics.
53. Walsh, Talking About Politics.
54. Schudson, "Why Conversation Is Not the Soul."
55. Eliasoph, Avoiding Politics.
56. Katz and Lazarsfeld, Personal Influence
57. Myers, "Interpersonal and Mass Media Communication"
58. Rudger Schmitt-Beck, "Intermediation Environments of West German and East German Voters: Interpersonal Communication and Mass Communication During the First All-German Election Campaign," European Journal of Communication 9 (October 1994): 381-419.
59. Diana C. Mutz and Paul S. Martin, "Facilitating Communication Across Lines of Political Difference: The Role of Mass Media," American Political Science Review 91 (March 2001): 97-114.
60. Paul Allen Beck, "Voters' Intermediation Environments in the 1988 Presidential Contest," Public Opinion Quarterly 55 (autumn 1991): 371-94.
61. Robert Huckfeldt, "The Social Communication of Political Expertise," American Journal of Political Science 45 (April 2001): 425-38.
62. Huckfeldt and Sprague, Citizens, Politics, and Social Communication.
63. Michael MacKuen, "Speaking of Politics: Individual Conversational Choice, Public Opinion, and the Prospects for Deliberative Democracy," in Information and Democratic Processes, ed. John A. Ferejohn and James H. Kuklinski (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1990).
64. McLeod et al., "Understanding Deliberation"
65. Dietram A. Scheufele, Matthew Nisbet, Dominique Brossard, and Erik C. Nisbet, "Social Structure and Citizenship: Examining the Impacts of Social Setting, Network Heterogeneity, and Informational Variables on Political Participation," Political Communication 21 (October-December 2004): 315-338
66. Mira Sotirovic and Jack M. McLeod, "Values, Communication Behavior, and Political Participation," Political Communication 18 (April-June 2001): 273-300.
67. However, Mutz has provided evidences contrary to the argument here. See Mutz, "Cross-cutting Social Networks."
68. Cantonese is the Chinese dialect spoken by over 95% of Hong Kong residents. Although 18 is the legal age for voting, survey research organizations typically solicit the responses of individuals 15 years of age or older (in the current sample, 12.8% of the respondents are between 15 to 17, and 10.4% are between 18 to 20. See the next footnote for more information about the representativeness of the sample). From past experiences of survey research in Hong Kong, very old people's participation in survey research is plagued by problems of inabilities to understand the questions and/or to handle the survey situation itself. Interviewing very old people in telephone surveys is very costly while it actually contributes to unreliability of the results. Hence the survey did not include people aged 70 or above.
69. The sample has an average age of 37, 51.4% females, 23% holding college or university degrees, and 44.4% having household monthly income higher than HK$20,000. According to government census data in 2001, the corresponding population (people 15 years old or above) parameters are: 41.7 years old, 51.4% females, 16.4% with college education, and 47.7% having household income higher than HK$20,000. The sample is younger and better educated than the population. Weighting is not applied in the analyses, though, as multivariate methods are used and the discrepancies are not extreme.
70. Kim, Wyatt, and Katz, "News, Talk, Opinion, Participation," 79.
71. The status of political culture in Hong Kong has been a subject of debate among local scholars. Most agree that a civic culture has been in the process of formation in the past twenty years. However, some scholars argue that Hong Kong people's understanding of politics and democracy is only "partial." It has not yet been developed to a stage that makes Hong Kong's civic culture comparable to the West. See Hsin-chi Kuan and Siu-kai Lau, "Political Learning and Elections in Hong Kong," in Out of the Shadow of 1997?, ed. Hsin-chi Kuan, Siu-kai Lau, and Timothy K. Y. Wong (Hong Kong: The Chinese University Press, 2002), 309-336.
72. One specific problem here is that people in democratizing societies may be less willing to report levels of political participation and discussions to survey researchers. On the one hand, given the degree of freedom of speech and of the press that has been existent in Hong Kong in the past decades, such underreporting should not be a serious problem. In fact, survey research conducted during elections in Hong Kong has found over-reporting of voting behavior that is similar to that found in democratic countries. But on the other hand, there has not been research conducted specifically addressing the issue of whether and to what extent Hong Kong people are unwilling to report their real political behavior and attitudes in survey settings. Hence under-reporting of political discussion remains a possible problem here.
73. Beck, "Voters' Intermediation Environments"
74. Schmitt-Beck, "Intermediation Environments of West German and East German Voters."
75. It can also be noted that there are a few analytical advantages of combining the two in this way. First, not combining the two would entail treating the two discussion frequency variables separately. This would sacrifice the efficiency of the analysis and the reliability of the discussion frequency measure. Second, most respondents who "never" discuss politics with friends or family members have not estimated the degree of discord existing in their social networks. The number of people who have given a valid answer to both questions on discord is only 586. Combining the two variables on discord, and using one to represent existence of discord when the other is missing, is a way to reduce the number of missing cases.
76. The first question asks respondents if they listened to the talk shows hosted by a number of highly prominent talk show hosts in Hong Kong while the second question asks them if they listened to other talk shows on public affairs.
77. Lee, "Radio Phone-In Talk Show."
78. Scheufele and Moy, "Twenty Five Years of the Spiral of Silence."
79. In the study, half of the sample was asked whether they would "express opinions" and the other half was asked whether they would "join the discussion," which, at least literally speaking does not entail expressing one's opinion. The original intention is to see if more people would be willing to join the discussion. The results show that it is indeed the case. Percentages of respondents answering "yes" are 60.9% and 66.0% for political reform and economic matters respectively when "join the discussion" was used, while the percentages drop to 43.0% and 53.6% when "express opinions" was used. Nevertheless, there is no difference between the two when determinants of expressivity are concerned.
80. The high percentages probably result from over-sampling of well-educated people and over-reporting of participation. But the present study is not concerned with precise estimates of participation, and it is unlikely that systematic biases are introduced. There is also a lack of theoretically or conceptually informed weighting method that can be used in the context of the present study. Hence no method to correct such biases was used.
81. See Ming K. Chan and Alvin So, eds., Crisis and Transformation in China's Hong Kong (New York: M. E. Sharpe, 2002).
82. Noelle-Neumann, Spiral of Silence
83. MacKuen, "Speaking of Politics."
84. Leona S. Aiken and Stephen G. West, Multiple Regression Analysis (CA, Newbury Park: Sage, 1991).
85. Lee, "Radio Phone-in Talk Show."
86. Russell Dalton, Citizen Politics: Public Opinion and Political Parties in Advanced Western Democracies, 2d ed. (Chatham, NJ: Chatham, 1996).
87. The Chief Executive of the Hong Kong government is not directly elected. What disgruntled Hong Kong people can do, as a result, is only to vote for "oppositional" politicians in Legco elections. Hence, voting in Legco elections can take up the characteristics of "protest voting." in the 2004 Legco election, protest voting seems to have been dominant.
88. Kim, Wyatt, and Katz, "News, Talk, Opinion, Participation"
89. Walsh, Talking About Politics
90. Wyatt, Katz, and Kim, "Bridging the Spheres."
91. Mansbridge, "Everyday Talk."
92. E.G., Mutz and Martin, "Facilitating Communication"
93. Schudson, "Why Conversation Is Not the Soul."