Suchergebnisse

Political discussion matters for a wide array of political phenomena such as attitude formation, electoral choice, other forms of participation, levels of political expertise, and tolerance. Thus far, research on the underpinnings of political discussion has focused on political, social, and contextual forces. We expand upon this existing research by examining how individual personality traits influence patterns of political discussion. Drawing on data from two surveys we investigate how personality traits influence the context in which citizens discuss politics, the nature of the relationship between individuals and their discussion partners, and the influence discussion partners have on respondents' views. We find a number of personality effects and our results highlight the importance of accounting for individual predispositions in the study of political discussion. Adapted from the source document.

Residents of IA & NH are exposed to a much more intense primary campaign than those in the rest of the country. One would therefore expect that those living in these two states would be more engaged with the primary election than residents of other states. Survey data indicate that while this proves to be true of those in NH, it does not appear to be the case in IA. While NH residents talked about politics more frequently than those in other states -- & with greater frequency as their primary approached -- IA residents discussed politics less often than those in states with primaries on Super Tuesday. The same result was obtained examining only survey respondents who rated themselves very likely to vote in their primary or caucus. 3 Figures. Adapted from the source document.

Abstract
What role, if any, should Confucianism play in the politics of our time? In some of my previous works, I claimed that modern liberal states should not seek to promote Confucian values on the basis of their intrinsic merits. Yet, drawing insights from Joseph Chan's moderate state perfectionism and John Rawls's wide view of public political culture, I proposed the "wide view of moderate perfectionism." According to this view, in public political discussion, citizens should be allowed to deliberate whether and how Confucianism, among other reasonable moral doctrines, can make positive contributions to their social and political thinking and public policymaking, provided that certain conditions are met. This view has been criticized by some scholars, in particular Zhuoyao Li. Li argues that the practice of the wide view of moderate perfectionism would inevitably harm civility. In this article, I clarify and develop the wide view, and respond to Li's criticisms.

Reader's comment columns on online political news pages are locations where political discussions between citizens can emerge and develop. The reader comment column is a standard feature of almost all media sites because of its ability to initiate discussion and promote a particular article or issues within the news site. Unfortunately, in its development, the online comment column's discussion process is often filled by incivility and disrespectful expressions, such as sentences containing insults, condemnation, or expressions full of anger. Such sentences have the potential to undermine the discussion process and encourage pointless arguments, especially in articles that discuss political polarity. This study aims to determine the extent to which incivility and disrespectful expressions appear in readers' comments columns of online news sites, especially on polarized political issues. This study uses content analysis techniques on 403 comments in political news on Detik.com, one of Indonesia's main news portals. The results show that although the incivility expression shows a small number, the form of disrespectful shows a high number in the readers' comments. The highest form of the expression of disrespectful is the expression tat contains name-calling (23%), followed by hyperbole (15.6%) and the use of sarcasm (6.2%). The high number of disrespectful expressions seems to be related to the comment column service feature that allows users to use anonymous identities.

What is the deliberative potential of everyday political discussion? We address this question using survey data and qualitative data collected in six communities in the United States and Britain. Our findings suggest that political discussion is infrequently public, modestly contested and sometimes marred by inequality. But the factors inhibiting more deliberative discussions - structural, cultural and motivational in nature - should be amenable to some change, particularly through education. (British Journal of Political Science / FUB)

The recent developments in political communication, in particular the process of popularization of politics and the diffusion of Internet, are notably challenging the relationship between citizens and media. In this rapidly evolving context it is worth analysing the role of political discussion in personal networks and small groups. Also, very recent research has offered new evidence to the old thesis that, despite the massive presence of mass media, personal discussion shapes the formation of the political opinion. A particularly important aspect concerns the nature of opinion leadership: who are the new opinion leaders able to influence processes of interpersonal communication? This article reassesses such a theoretical framework by reviewing the state-of-the-art and providing a foundation for a debate on the themes of trust in information sources and the impact of opinion leaders.