Likeminded and cross-cutting talk, network characteristics, and political participation online and offline: A panel study
- Author(s)
- Jörg Matthes, Franziska Marquart, Christian von Sikorski
- Abstract
We 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.
- Organisation(s)
- Department of Communication
- External organisation(s)
- University of Amsterdam (UvA), Universität Koblenz-Landau
- Journal
- Communications: the European journal of communication research
- Volume
- 46
- Pages
- 113-126
- No. of pages
- 14
- ISSN
- 0341-2059
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1515/commun-2020-2080
- Publication date
- 2020
- Peer reviewed
- Yes
- Austrian Fields of Science 2012
- 508007 Communication science, 508014 Journalism
- Keywords
- ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Communication, Arts and Humanities (miscellaneous)
- Portal url
- https://ucris.univie.ac.at/portal/en/publications/likeminded-and-crosscutting-talk-network-characteristics-and-political-participation-online-and-offline-a-panel-study(f328d0ef-fc72-4ab4-a9eb-691dfb1be996).html