scholarly journals Cognitive Style, Selectivity, and Reinforcement: Toward Clarifying the Role of Political Ideology in the Reception of Political Communication

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eike Mark Rinke ◽  
Julia Lück
Keyword(s):  
Political Communication ◽  
Political Ideology ◽  
Research Area ◽  
Selective Exposure ◽  
Political Orientation ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
Communication Effects ◽  
Perceptions And Attitudes ◽  
Political Perceptions ◽  
The Individual

This essay examines the importance of political ideology for the occurrence of political communication effects on the individual level. It is a common assumption in this research area that people tend to be selective about the political information they expose themselves to and also to selectively process it. Selective exposure and selective perception processes are mainly based on the dominant political orientation of the recipient, which usually leads to a reinforcement of preexisting political perceptions and attitudes. We review recent research on selective exposure and perceptions and argue for greater involvement of findings in social psychology regarding differences in cognitive styles that underlie individual policy orientations and justify why and how these findings can promote the study of partisan selectivity in the reception of political communication. We conclude by highlighting theoretical and methodological perspectives arising from the proposed extension of research on selectivity in the process of receiving political communication. [Publication of this chapter in the public domain courtesy of Frank & Timme publishers. Publisher website: http://www.frank-timme.de/verlag/verlagsprogramm/buch/verlagsprogramm/kathrin-mokmichael-stahl-hg-politische-kommunikation-heute/]

Political Ideology and Issue Importance

2020 ◽  
pp. 106591292096774
Author(s):  
Douglas Rice ◽  
Brian F. Schaffner ◽  
David J. Barney
Keyword(s):  
Public Opinion ◽  
Political Ideology ◽  
Latent Variable ◽  
Past Research ◽  
Data Sets ◽  
Issue Salience ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
Measurement Models ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Issue Importance

Past research has shown that issues vary significantly in their salience across citizens, explaining key outcomes in political behavior. Yet it remains unclear how individual-level differences in issue salience affect the measurement of latent constructs in public opinion, namely political ideology. In this paper, we test whether scaling approaches that fail to incorporate individual-level differences in issue salience could understate the predictive power of ideology in public opinion research. To systematically examine this assertion, we employ a series of latent variable models which incorporate both issue importance and issue position. We compare the results of these different and diverse scaling approaches to two survey data sets, investigating the implications of accounting for issue salience in constructing latent measures of ideology. Ultimately, we find that accounting for issue importance adds little information to a more basic approach that uses only issue positions, suggesting ideological signals for measurement models reside most prominently in the issue positions of individuals rather than the importance of those issues to the individual.

Social Media and Beliefs about Climate Change: A Cross-National Analysis of News Use, Political Ideology, and Trust in Science

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Trevor Diehl ◽  
Brigitte Huber ◽  
Homero Gil de Zúñiga ◽  
James Liu
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Social Media ◽  
Political Ideology ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
The Public ◽  
Country Level ◽  
Emerging Media ◽  
Climate Skepticism ◽  
The Individual ◽  
National Analysis

Abstract This study explores the individual- and country-level factors that influence how getting news from social media relates to people’s beliefs about anthropogenic climate change. Concepts of psychological distance and motivated reasoning are tested using multilevel analysis with survey data in 20 countries (N = 18,785). Results suggest that using social media for news is associated with a decrease in climate skepticism across the sample. However, social context at the individual-level (conservative political ideology and low trust in science) and at the macro-level (high gross domestic product and individualism) moderate the effect, and therefore reduce social media’s potential to inform the public about climate change. This study contributes to conversations about the ability of emerging media to address science issues, particularly in developing countries.

Democracy, Screens, Identity, and Social Networks: The Case of Donald Trump’s Election

2017 ◽  
Vol 62 (3) ◽  
pp. 320-334 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ferran Sáez-Mateu
Keyword(s):  
Social Networks ◽  
Political Communication ◽  
Porous Surface ◽  
Donald Trump ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
Traditional Sense ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Rules Of The Game

The unexpected election of Donald Trump as the new U.S. president is situated in a complex and unprecedented intersection of ideas regarding democracy, identity, and social networks, all against the background of the omnipresent and cultural centrality of the digital screen. In this article, we will try to analyze these links through the concept of the paraphragmatic screen, an unusual term from the Greek that is found in Plato’s famous myth of the cave. Our thesis is that the paraphragmatic screen that hosts social networks is not merely interactive. It is also a porous surface that no longer serves only to communicate in the traditional sense but also for senders and receivers to negotiate what is and is not real or true. Using it changes the rules of the game for political communication and even for politics itself while it also generates new types of negotiable identities, as much at the individual level as at the collective.

scholarly journals Tell Me Who You Vote for, and I'll Tell You Who You Are? The Associations of Political Orientation With Personality and Prosocial Behavior and the Plausibility of Evolutionary Approaches

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Grünhage ◽  
Martin Reuter
Keyword(s):  
Political Orientation ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
Interpersonal Behavior ◽  
Political Polarization ◽  
Future Research ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Systems ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
Trace Back ◽  
The Individual

Blatantly observable in the U.S. currently, the political chasm grows, representing a prototype of political polarization in most if not all western democratic political systems. Differential political psychology strives to trace back increasingly polarized political convictions to differences on the individual level. Recent evolutionary informed approaches suggest that interindividual differences in political orientation reflect differences in group-mindedness and cooperativeness. Contrarily, the existence of meaningful associations between political orientation, personality traits, and interpersonal behavior has been questioned critically. Here, we shortly review evidence showing that these relationships do exist, which supports the assumption that political orientation is deeply rooted in the human condition. Potential reasons for the premature rejection of these relationships and directions for future research are outlined and implications for refinements and extensions of evolutionary informed approaches are derived.

Exploring antecedents of social media usage in B2B: a systematic review

2018 ◽  
Vol 41 (6) ◽  
pp. 629-656 ◽  
Author(s):  
Federica Pascucci ◽  
Chiara Ancillai ◽  
Silvio Cardinali
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Literature Review ◽  
Research Area ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
The Social ◽  
Managerial Implications ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Interest In Research

PurposeThis paper aims to review the state-of-the-art literature on social media adoption in business-to-business (B2B) contexts to propose an inclusive and theoretical viewpoint to understand the antecedents of this phenomenon.Design/methodology/approachThis paper presents the results of a systematic literature review. For this purpose, 29 studies published in academic journals, books and conference papers in the field of marketing and management from 2001 to 2017 were analysed.FindingsThe results show that the number of studies has increased in the past five years. Three different groups of antecedents are identified by considering the nature of these factors (personal, organisational and external) and analysed at two different levels of adoption: individual and firm/function. Managerial implications and future research insights are provided.Research limitations/implicationsThis research area deserves much more attention, both theoretical and empirical, to analyse the existing classifications and develop new categories of antecedents of social media adoption in B2B. Further studies are needed on the individual level of adoption, on new skills and capabilities required to use social media as well as on the social factors influencing usage.Practical implicationsThe literature review allows to understand the role of personal, organisational and social antecedents and suggest ways to improve the level and quality of adoption.Originality/valueDespite a considerable interest in research on social media, this paper provides the first complete framework in the new field of study concerning social media adoption in B2B.

Anatomy of audience duplication networks: How individual characteristics differentially contribute to fragmentation in news consumption and trust

2021 ◽  
pp. 146144482199155
Author(s):  
Yilang Peng ◽  
Tian Yang
Keyword(s):  
Media Exposure ◽  
Selective Exposure ◽  
Individual Characteristics ◽  
Individual Factors ◽  
Representative Survey ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
Audience Fragmentation ◽  
Media Trust ◽  
Nationally Representative ◽  
The Individual

While partisan selective exposure could drive audience fragmentation, other individual factors might also differentiate news diets. This study applies a method that disentangles the differential contributions of the individual characteristics to audience duplication networks. By analyzing a nationally representative survey about US adults’ media use in 2019 ( N = 12,043), we demonstrate that news fragmentation is driven by a myriad of individual factors, such as gender, race, and religiosity. Partisanship is still an important driver. We also distinguish between media exposure and media trust, showing that many cross-cutting ties in co-exposure networks disappear when media trust is considered. We conclude that audience fragmentation research should extend beyond ideological selectivity and additionally investigate how and why other individual-level preferences differentially contribute to fragmentation both in news exposure and in news trust.

scholarly journals Spatially extended hybrid methods: a review

2018 ◽  
Vol 15 (139) ◽  
pp. 20170931 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cameron A. Smith ◽  
Christian A. Yates
Keyword(s):  
Hybrid Method ◽  
Method Development ◽  
Hybrid Methods ◽  
Research Area ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
Physical Problems ◽  
Spatially Extended ◽  
Active Research ◽  
And Mathematics ◽  
The Individual

Many biological and physical systems exhibit behaviour at multiple spatial, temporal or population scales. Multiscale processes provide challenges when they are to be simulated using numerical techniques. While coarser methods such as partial differential equations are typically fast to simulate, they lack the individual-level detail that may be required in regions of low concentration or small spatial scale. However, to simulate at such an individual level throughout a domain and in regions where concentrations are high can be computationally expensive. Spatially coupled hybrid methods provide a bridge, allowing for multiple representations of the same species in one spatial domain by partitioning space into distinct modelling subdomains. Over the past 20 years, such hybrid methods have risen to prominence, leading to what is now a very active research area across multiple disciplines including chemistry, physics and mathematics. There are three main motivations for undertaking this review. Firstly, we have collated a large number of spatially extended hybrid methods and presented them in a single coherent document, while comparing and contrasting them, so that anyone who requires a multiscale hybrid method will be able to find the most appropriate one for their need. Secondly, we have provided canonical examples with algorithms and accompanying code, serving to demonstrate how these types of methods work in practice. Finally, we have presented papers that employ these methods on real biological and physical problems, demonstrating their utility. We also consider some open research questions in the area of hybrid method development and the future directions for the field.

scholarly journals The POPC Citizen: Political Information in the Fourth Age of Political Communication

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dorothée Hefner ◽  
Eike Mark Rinke ◽  
Frank M. Schneider
Keyword(s):  
Information And Communication Technologies ◽  
Political Communication ◽  
Personal Characteristics ◽  
Communication Technologies ◽  
Political Information ◽  
Political Consequences ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
Recent Developments ◽  
Information And Communication ◽  
The Individual

The goal of this chapter is to describe how the POPC environment operates in tandem with personal characteristics to influence people’s exposure to and processing of political information. In describing the political consequences of the POPC phenomenon we take a social-psychological perspective and focus on the individual level (for a more sociological perspective see the chapter by Vromen, Loader, and Xenos, this volume). We sketch the psychological contours of the contemporary “POPC citizen” and outline recent developments in citizens’ use of mobile information and communication technologies (ICTs) for political information, which have consequences for their individual civic competencies as well as democracy at large.

Learning from Politics? The Causal Interplay between Government Performance and Political Ideology

2006 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 89-114 ◽  
Author(s):  
STAFFAN KUMLIN
Keyword(s):  
Political Ideology ◽  
Adult Life ◽  
Government Performance ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
Economic Class ◽  
Short Run ◽  
The Government ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The Life Course ◽  
Ideological Change

Most models of public opinion assign a fundamental role to ideological predispositions. Moreover, the literature usually portrays ideology as a stable phenomenon at the individual-level, one that is mainly shaped by socio-economic class experiences and pre-adult socialisation, and that is likely to grow stronger in intensity – rather than change – over the life-course. However, less is known about the scope of, or reasons for, ideological change in adult life. This paper uses Swedish panel data to investigate the interrelation between evaluations of government performance and ideological left–right related orientations. There is some support for ‘the socialisation school’, in that ideological positions and values display considerable short-term stability, although less stability over a four-year period. Moreover, there is evidence of short-run selective perception, with those close to the government at t1 being more likely than others to form more positive performance perceptions between t1 and t2. Interestingly however, over a four-year period this tendency was not statistically significant. Moreover, there is also clear support for a ‘revisionist’ interpretation of left–right ideology. Such orientations do change at the individual level, according to how people perceive incumbent government performance, an impact which does not depend on political sophistication.

Perceiving Immigrants as a Threat: A Motivational Approach to False Consensus

2021 ◽  
pp. 009365022110436
Author(s):  
Hyungjin Gill ◽  
Hernando Rojas
Keyword(s):  
Political Communication ◽  
Political Ideology ◽  
Selective Exposure ◽  
Path Model ◽  
Perceived Threat ◽  
Cognitive Assessments ◽  
False Consensus ◽  
Nationally Representative ◽  
Consistent Information ◽  
The Relationship

False consensus, or biased projection of one’s opinion onto others, has repeatedly been described by political communication scholars as a derivative of selective exposure to attitude-consistent information. This study proposes a distinctive approach to understanding the phenomenon by suggesting “perceived threat” as a motivational factor that contributes to self-serving estimates of public opinion. Based on a nationally representative sample of U.S. adults, we test a path model in which political ideology relates to false consensus regarding the issue of immigration through cognitive assessments of communication environment and perceived immigration threat. Results suggest that the relationship between cognition and false consensus may not be direct but instead works through motivational factors when one perceives threat, and that conservatives are more sensitive to outgroup threat and thus are more likely to overestimate public consensus for their attitudes on immigration than their ideological counterparts. Implications of these findings are discussed.

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