The Impact of Political Discussion Networks on Civic and Political Engagement

2020 ◽  
pp. 117-148
Author(s):  
Taylor N. Carlson ◽  
Marisa Abrajano ◽  
Lisa García Bedolla
Keyword(s):  
Civic Engagement ◽  
Social Influence ◽  
Voter Turnout ◽  
Social Groups ◽  
Political Engagement ◽  
Network Size ◽  
Political Discussion ◽  
Foreign Born ◽  
Network Characteristics ◽  
The Impact

Chapter 6 examines the association among our network characteristics - partisan homogeneity, discussion frequency, and network size - and, civic engagement, self-reported political engagement, and validated voter turnout across our various social groups. Of course, we cannot causally distinguish between selection and social influence with our data. However, we uncover important associations nonetheless. We find that regardless of social position, across all groups, those who discuss politics more frequently are more politically engaged, but network size and partisan homogeneity are not uniformly associated with engagement. With regards to validated turnout, we observe that network size and discussion frequency are positively associated with voting for U.S.-born respondents, but none of the network characteristics are associated with voting among our foreign-born respondents.

Political Discussion Networks and Political Engagement among Voters of Color

2019 ◽  
Vol 73 (1) ◽  
pp. 79-95
Author(s):  
Taylor N. Carlson ◽  
Marisa Abrajano ◽  
Lisa García Bedolla
Keyword(s):  
Political Behavior ◽  
Asian American ◽  
Voter Turnout ◽  
Political Engagement ◽  
Network Size ◽  
Political Discussion ◽  
Positive Role ◽  
Network Characteristics ◽  
Original Survey ◽  
Registered Voters

Despite a large and growing literature documenting the powerful and positive role that political discussion networks exert on the political behavior among whites, we know little about how political discussion networks affect political behavior among voters of color. To fill this void in the existing literature, we conducted an original survey in California to gather information on a diverse group of registered voters’ political discussion networks and political engagement. The social positioning of ethnoracial groups in society, we contend, will affect how network characteristics explain their levels of political engagement. Our results support this contention. While we find that network characteristics, including network size, partisan homogeneity, and discussion frequency are positively associated with validated voter turnout and nonelectoral political participation, the effects are not uniform across black, Latino, Asian American, and white respondents. This is the first study that examines the relationship between political discussion network characteristics and political engagement among voters of color. Our analysis demonstrates that the opportunities for political integration and engagement offered by political discussion networks are not afforded equally across the U.S. electorate, which has important implications for broader patterns of engagement.

Political Discussion Networks and Information

2020 ◽  
pp. 96-116
Author(s):  
Taylor N. Carlson ◽  
Marisa Abrajano ◽  
Lisa García Bedolla
Keyword(s):  
Political Knowledge ◽  
Network Size ◽  
Political Discussion ◽  
Foreign Born ◽  
Network Characteristics ◽  
Policy Attitudes ◽  
Group Members ◽  
And Gender ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The U.S

Chapter 5 examines the relationship among network characteristics, political knowledge, and policy attitudes by ethnorace, nativity, and gender. While we are unable to distinguish between selection and social influence, we uncover some interesting patterns. Network size is positively associated with political knowledge for both men and women, but we observe variation by ethnorace and nativity. Network size is not associated with political knowledge among Latinos, and discussion frequency is not associated with political knowledge among Blacks, Latinos, or Whites. Discussion frequency is positively associated with political knowledge among both the U.S. and foreign born, but network size is only associated with political knowledge among the U.S. born. For policy attitudes, we explored two issues that are important for marginalized ethnoracial group members: environmental policy and social justice policy. We find substantial variation in the relationship between network characteristics and policy preferences among the ethnoracial groups in the sample.

Like-minded and cross-cutting talk, network characteristics, and political participation online and offline: A panel study

2020 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jörg Matthes ◽  
Franziska Marquart ◽  
Christian von Sikorski
Keyword(s):  
Political Participation ◽  
Panel Study ◽  
Political Engagement ◽  
Political Discussion ◽  
Panel Survey ◽  
Network Ties ◽  
Cross Sectional ◽  
Strong Ties ◽  
Network Characteristics

AbstractWe test the role of like-minded and cross-cutting political discussion as a facilitator of online and offline political participation and examine the role of strong versus weak network ties. Most prior research on the topic has employed cross-sectional designs that may lead to spurious relationships due to the lack of controlled variables. The findings of a two-wave panel survey controlling the autoregressive effects suggest that cross-cutting talk with weak ties significantly dampens online but not offline political participation. However, no such effects were detectable for cross-cutting talk with strong ties. In addition, we found no effect of discussions involving like-minded individuals in either weak or strong network connections on online and offline forms of political engagement. Implications are discussed.

scholarly journals Do as I Say or Do as I Do? How Social Relationships Shape the Impact of Descriptive and Injunctive Norms of Voting

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-13
Author(s):  
Edward Fieldhouse ◽  
David Cutts
Keyword(s):  
Social Relationships ◽  
Voter Turnout ◽  
Social Relationship ◽  
Joint Effect ◽  
Political Discussion ◽  
Relative Importance ◽  
Social Approval ◽  
Election Study ◽  
Injunctive Norms ◽  
The Impact

Abstract Social norms play an important role in our understanding of why people vote, yet very little is known about the relative importance of descriptive and injunctive norms for voter turnout or how normative influence is affected by the political and social relationship between citizens. Using political discussion network data from the British Election Study, this article examines the joint effect of descriptive and injunctive norms on turnout. It demonstrates that citizens follow the example of those closest to them (descriptive norms), especially their partner, but they also respond to social approval of voting from political discussants regardless of the nature of their relationship.

Immigrants, Citizenship and Political Action in Europe

2011 ◽  
Vol 42 (3) ◽  
pp. 481-509 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aida Just ◽  
Christopher J. Anderson
Keyword(s):  
Civic Engagement ◽  
Political Participation ◽  
Survey Data ◽  
Political Action ◽  
Positive Impact ◽  
Political Engagement ◽  
European Social Survey ◽  
Foreign Born ◽  
Social Survey ◽  
Definition Of

Little is known about how immigrants participate in politics and whether they transform political engagement in contemporary democracies. This study investigates whether citizenship (as opposed to being foreign-born) affects political and civic engagement beyond the voting booth. It is argued that citizenship should be understood as a resource that enhances participation and helps immigrants overcome socialization experiences that are inauspicious for political engagement. The analysis of the European Social Survey data collected in nineteen European democracies in 2002–03 reveals that citizenship has a positive impact on political participation. Moreover, citizenship is a particularly powerful determinant of un-institutionalized political action among individuals who were socialized in less democratic countries. These findings have important implications for debates over the definition of and access to citizenship in contemporary democracies.

scholarly journals Short-Term Memory Capacity in Networks via the Restricted Isometry Property

2014 ◽  
Vol 26 (6) ◽  
pp. 1198-1235 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adam S. Charles ◽  
Han Lun Yap ◽  
Christopher J. Rozell
Keyword(s):  
Short Term Memory ◽  
Optimal Recovery ◽  
Network Size ◽  
Network Activity ◽  
System Capacity ◽  
Short Term ◽  
Term Memory ◽  
Network Characteristics ◽  
Perfect Recovery ◽  
The Impact

Cortical networks are hypothesized to rely on transient network activity to support short-term memory (STM). In this letter, we study the capacity of randomly connected recurrent linear networks for performing STM when the input signals are approximately sparse in some basis. We leverage results from compressed sensing to provide rigorous nonasymptotic recovery guarantees, quantifying the impact of the input sparsity level, the input sparsity basis, and the network characteristics on the system capacity. Our analysis demonstrates that network memory capacities can scale superlinearly with the number of nodes and in some situations can achieve STM capacities that are much larger than the network size. We provide perfect recovery guarantees for finite sequences and recovery bounds for infinite sequences. The latter analysis predicts that network STM systems may have an optimal recovery length that balances errors due to omission and recall mistakes. Furthermore, we show that the conditions yielding optimal STM capacity can be embodied in several network topologies, including networks with sparse or dense connectivities.

scholarly journals Some politics is local: the determinants of engagement in local and national politics across Europe

2020 ◽  
Vol 83 (1) ◽  
pp. 29-44
Author(s):  
João Cancela
Keyword(s):  
Local Politics ◽  
Full Range ◽  
Political Engagement ◽  
Political Discussion ◽  
National Politics ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
Country Level ◽  
Civil Society Organisations ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The Impact

Understanding the roots of political engagement has been one of the critical tasks performed by students of comparative political behaviour. This paper adds to the literature by examining the determinants of political discussion about local and national affairs in Europe. A series of multilevel logit models are fitted to the data (n = 28,563 from 31 European countries) to test the individual and country level determinants of political discussion about local and national matters. At the individual level, we find that gender, the type of community, the type of civil society organisations people are members of, and their level of education affect the type of politics they engage with. At the macro level, citizens from countries with a higher economic development are more likely to engage in discussions about national affairs, while the impact of local government autonomy does not seem to make individuals more likely to engage in discussions about local politics. The findings suggest that if local politics is considered the share of politically disengaged citizens can be smaller than is typically estimated. The full range of democratic practice may thus remain underappreciated if non-national politics is left out of the picture in the study of political engagement.

scholarly journals Youth political (dis)engagement and the need for citizenship education: Encouraging young people’s civic and political participation through the curriculum

2017 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-21 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ana Isabel Pontes ◽  
Matt Henn ◽  
Mark D Griffiths
Keyword(s):  
Secondary Education ◽  
Young People ◽  
Civic Engagement ◽  
Political Participation ◽  
Citizenship Education ◽  
Political Engagement ◽  
General Election ◽  
The Past ◽  
Using Data ◽  
The Impact

Over the past two decades, there has been a wide-ranging debate about the impact of citizenship education on young people’s political engagement and participation across Britain. Using data from a survey of 1025 young people aged 18 years at the time of the 2010 General Election, we examined the impact that studying for a formal qualification in General Certificate of Secondary Education in Citizenship Studies has on young people’s political and civic engagement. Drawing from the hypothesis that those young people who took the course would be more engaged than those who did not, results demonstrated that there are many differences between the two groups in terms of their political perspectives as well as their past and future patterns of political participation.

From Posting to Voting: The Effects of Political Competition on Online Political Engagement

2015 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 361-378 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jaime E. Settle ◽  
Robert M. Bond ◽  
Lorenzo Coviello ◽  
Christopher J. Fariss ◽  
James H. Fowler ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Voter Turnout ◽  
Political Competition ◽  
Political Engagement ◽  
Daily Basis ◽  
Political Environment ◽  
Political Discussion ◽  
Social Media Data ◽  
Political Status ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Media Data

How does living in a battleground state during a presidential election affect an individual’s political engagement? We utilize a unique collection of 113 million Facebook status updates to compare users’ political discussion during the 2008 election. “Battleground” state users are significantly more likely to discuss politics in the campaign season than are users in uncompetitive “blackout” states. Posting a political status update—a form ofday-to-dayengagement with politics—mediates ∼20 percent of the relationship between exposure to political competition and self-reported voter turnout. This paper is among the first to use a massive quantity of social media data to explain the microfoundations of how people think, feel, and act on a daily basis in response to their political environment.

Wrestling with 9/11: Immigrant Perceptions and Perceptions of Immigrants

2006 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 107-124 ◽  
Author(s):  
Caroline Brettell
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Immigration Policy ◽  
Asian Indians ◽  
World Trade Center ◽  
The United States ◽  
Fort Worth ◽  
Foreign Born ◽  
Immigrant Populations ◽  
Trade Center ◽  
The Impact

Soon after 9/11 a research project to study new immigration into the Dallas Fort Worth metropolitan area got under way. In the questionnaire that was administered to 600 immigrants across five different immigrant populations (Asian Indians, Vietnamese, Mexicans, Salvadorans, and Nigerians) between 2003 and 2005 we decided to include a question about the impact of 9/11 on their lives. We asked: “How has the attack on the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001 affected your position as an immigrant in the United States?” This article analyzes the responses to this question, looking at similarities and differences across different immigrant populations. It also addresses the broader issue of how 9/11 has affected both immigration policy and attitudes toward the foreign-born in the United States. 

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