Huckfeldt - Communication ...

Huckfeldt - Communication Networks, Culture and Communication Processes

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//-->COMMUNICATION NETWORKS, COMPLEX INTERDEPENDENCE,AND THE SURVIVAL OF DISAGREEMENT AMONG CITIZENSA RESEARCH PROPOSALRobert HuckfeldtDepartment of Political ScienceIndiana University, BloomingtonandPaul E. JohnsonDepartment of GovernmentUniversity of Kansas, Lawrence2001 Robert Huckfeldt and Paul E. JohnsonDO NOT QUOTE WITHOUT PERMISSIONPresented at a colloquium at the Workshop in Political Theory and Policy Analysis, IndianaUniversity, Bloomington, on February 12, 2001.COMMUNICATION NETWORKS, COMPLEX INTERDEPENDENCE,AND THE SURVIVAL OF DISAGREEMENT AMONG CITIZENSThe survival of disagreement among and between citizens constitutes an enduring puzzle in thestudy of democratic politics. On the one hand, a compelling set of arguments suggests that politicalactivation tends to eliminate political disagreement. In their classic study of the 1948 election, Berelson,Lazarsfeld, and McPhee (1954: chapter 7) argue that individuals naturally turn their attention to politicalissues and controversies in politically high stimulus settings. Politics becomes a frequent topic ofconversation, disagreement becomes socially visible, and social conformity processes produce agreementand homogeneity within small groups. According to this argument, communication leads to agreement,and political conformity becomes the dominant condition within closely held networks of politicalcommunication. Indeed, more recent agent-based simulations of communication and diffusion suggestthat homogeneity is the likely outcome of such diffusion processes (Axelrod 1997), and the preservationof heterogeneity and disagreement is frequently rendered problematic (Johnson 1999).At the same time, a body of accumulated evidence suggests that political disagreement is afrequentoccurrence in democratic politics, even within the smallest and most closely held social groups(Huckfeldt and Sprague 1995; Huckfeldt et al. 1998a). While the political preferences of citizens tend toreflect the partisan composition of their micro-environmental surroundings, relatively few citizens residein politically homogeneous social worlds, protected from the immediate social experience of peopleholding divergent political viewpoints. Indeed, the experience of disagreement is perhaps the modalcondition among politically engaged citizens. And this simple fact, the survival of disagreement, forces areassessment of the models and mechanisms of communication and influence among citizens.The outcome of such a reassessment is important because a central issue in the study ofdemocratic politics is the capacity of citizens and electorates for tolerating and responding to politicaldisagreement in a creative manner (Barber 1984; Fishkin 1991). The ideal of a free, open, anddemocratic society is one in which political issues are fully explored and debates are fully aired. In sucha society, citizens are open to persuasion, the social boundaries on political viewpoints are fluid andshifting, and individuals encounter the full spectrum of issue positions and political viewpoints.How does this vision of a democratic society correspond to contemporary analyses of citizens anddemocratic politics? At one analytic extreme, citizens play the role of individually autonomous actors,oblivious to the experience of political disagreement. Individual preferences inform individual choices,and these preferences are idiosyncratic to particular, socially self-contained individuals. Thus, thepreferences and choices of one person become irrelevant to the preferences and choices of another, andpolitical disagreement among citizens becomes irrelevant to political outcomes. At an opposite extreme,inspired by the power of social conformity effects (Asch 1955,1956), citizens are sometimes seen asbeing powerless in the face of an irresistible social influence process. The psychic discomfort ofdisagreement causes individuals to reduce dissonance through various means (Festinger 1957). Inparticular, individuals adopt or selectively misperceive prevalent viewpoints and, just as important, theyavoid disagreement in the first place by censuring their patterns of social interaction to create politicallyhomogeneous networks of political communication.In summary, we are confronted by a contradiction. Political homogeneity within closely heldnetworks of political communication would appear to be the natural consequence of politicallyinterdependent citizens, but political disagreement is demonstrated to survive on a systematic basis(Huckfeldt, Johnson, and Sprague 2000). Disagreement would appear to suggest that citizens arrive atpolitical judgments independently, but analyses repeatedly demonstrate interdependence among citizens(Pattie and Johnston 1999; Zuckerman, Valentino, and Zuckerman 1994). Our goal is to construct analternative explanation for the individual and aggregate consequences of interdependent citizens indemocratic politics. According to this explanation, citizens areneitherthe powerless dupes of anirresistible social influence process,norare they individually autonomous actors. Rather, they are theinterdependent participants in a process that is imbedded within horizontal networks of political2communication and influence (Granovetter 1985; Putnam 1993). And this process systematically givesrise to complex patterns of agreement and disagreement among the citizens who populate these networks.Our research strategy is to pursue an analysis of political communication and influence thatcombines data collection and analysis with techniques of agent-based simulation. The data collection isessentially complete, based on a study of social communication in the 1996 presidential electioncampaign as it occurred in the Indianapolis and St. Louis metropolitan areas. In the remainder of thisproposal, we construct a plan of analysis. We evaluate the evidence regarding the survival of politicaldisagreement among citizens within their naturally occurring patterns of social interaction, before turningto a description of the Indianapolis-St. Louis study. We then offer an empirical strategy for specifying thestructure of agent-based simulation models based on the Swarm toolkit. We consider citizeninterdependence based on complex networks of communication – the manner in which citizens rely onone another for political information, expertise, and guidance. And we evaluate a dynamic, agent-basedmodel of political persuasion to assess the mechanisms that might sustain disagreement among citizens.The primary questions become, what are the circumstances that give rise to political influence withinnetworks of communication? What are the conditions under which disagreement is likely to be sustained?And what are the consequences, both for individual citizens and for the collective experience ofdemocratic politics?POLITICS, INTERDEPENDENCE, AND THE SURVIVAL OF DISAGREEMENTThe classic statement of the socially and politically conservative consequences that arise due tosocial communication in politics is contained in the work of Lazarsfeld and his Columbia Universitycolleagues, based on their field work in Elmira and Erie County during the 1940s (Lazarsfeld et al. 1944;Berelson et al. 1954). According to their argument, political preferences become individuallyidiosyncratic as political communication among citizens becomes less frequent during the period of timebetween election campaigns. In response to the stimulus of the election, the frequency of politicalcommunication increases, idiosyncratic preferences become socially visible, and hence these individualsare brought into conformity with micro-environmental surroundings. In this way, social communicationcreates political stability as it provides a buffer against the political volatility of the external politicalenvironment (Huckfeldt and Sprague 1995).The argument presented by the Columbia sociologists is quite persuasive, but carried to itsextreme, the logic of group conformity suggests that political disagreement should disappear withinnetworks of social relations. Pressures toward conformity might drive out disagreement in several ways(Festinger 1957; Huckfeldt and Sprague 1995). First, the discomfort of disagreement might encouragepeople to modify their patterns of social relations so as to exclude people with whom they disagree.Second, people might avoid political discussion with those associates who hold politically divergentpreferences. Third, and partially as a consequence of discussion avoidance, people might incorrectlyperceive agreement among those with whom they actually disagree. Finally, and perhaps mostimportantly, individuals might bring their own preferences into correspondence with the preferences thatthey encounter within their networks of social relations.As compelling as the theory of group conformity argument may be, it suffers from at least onemajor empirical weakness: campaigns donotextinguish disagreement within networks of social relations.At the end of the 1984 presidential election campaign, Huckfeldt and Sprague (1995) intervieweddiscussion partners who had been identified by a sample of respondents from South Bend, Indiana. Andat the end of the 1992 election campaign, Huckfeldt et al. (1995) interviewed discussion partners who hadbeen identified by a nationally drawn sample of respondents. In both instances, no more than two-thirdsof the discussion partners held a presidential candidate preference that coincided with the preference ofthe main respondent who named them.These measures understate the overall levels of disagreement that exist in the networks in whichcitizens are situated. Recall that these statistics are based on dyads rather than networks. If theprobability of dyadic disagreement within a network is .7, and if the likelihood of disagreement is3independent across the dyads within a network, then the probability of agreement across all therelationships in a network with three other discussants drops to .73or .34. In other words,disagreementand heterogeneous preferences are the rule rather than the exception within the micro-environmentssurrounding many citizens.The pervasiveness of disagreement within networks of political communication leads to areconsideration of the mechanisms of political interdependence among citizens, as well as areconsideration of the aggregate implications of political interdependence among citizens. Indeed, thetheory of the consequences of social communication for the dynamics of an election campaign might betransformed fundamentally. Rather than serving as a source of insulation from the external politicalenvironment, social communication might even serve to magnify the consequences of the externalenvironment by exposing individuals to non-redundant, politically disparate information.THE INDIANAPOLIS-ST. LOUIS STUDYWe address these issues on the basis of a unique election study, conducted by the Center forSurvey Research at Indiana University during the 1996 presidential election campaign, that was expresslydesigned to examine the dynamic consequences of the campaign. The primary focus of the study is onpolitical communication and preference formation over the course of the campaign, and thus campaigninterviews began early in March of 1996 and ended in early January of 1997. The campaign studyincludes two samples: a sample of main respondents (N=2,174) drawn from the lists of registered voters,combined with a one-stage snowball sample of these main respondents’ discussants (N=1,475).Main respondent samples are drawn from the voter registration lists of two study sites: (1) theIndianapolis metropolitan area defined as Marion County, Indiana; and (2) the St. Louis metropolitan areadefined as the independent city of St. Louis combined with the surrounding (and mostly suburban) St.Louis County, Missouri. The pre-election main respondent sampling plan was to complete interviewswith approximately 40 main respondents each week before the election, equally divided between the twostudy sites. After the election, an additional 830 respondents were interviewed, once again dividedbetween the St. Louis and Indianapolis metropolitan areas. Discussant interviews were completed at arate of approximately 30 interviews each week during the pre-election period, with an additional 639interviews conducted after the election. In the pre-election period, the discussant interviews for aparticular main respondent were completed within two subsequent interview weeks of the mainrespondent interview.In the modern era of presidential election campaigns, it is very difficult to get in front of thecampaign, or even to say when the campaign begins, with candidates lining up support and planningstrategy long before the preceding midterm congressional elections. Hence, in order to establish aposthoc baselinefor campaign effects on the political activation of citizens, we returned to the field inOctober and November of 1997 using the same questionnaire and sampling design. During this period wecompleted 438 interviews with main respondents and 265 interviews with their discussants.In order to collect social network information, every respondent to the survey was asked toprovide the first names of not more than 5 discussion partners. A random half of the sample was asked toname people with whom they discuss “important matters”; the other half was asked to name people withwhom they discuss “government, elections, and politics” (Burt 1986; Huckfeldt, Sprague, and Levine2000). The experimental condition imbedded within the design of this name generator allows us toexamine the extent to which political information networks are separate from social communicationnetworks more broadly considered (Huckfeldt et al. 1998b).After compiling a list of first names for not more than five discussants, the interviewers asked abattery of questions about each discussant. At the end of the interview, we asked the main respondents foridentifying information to use in contacting and interviewing their discussants. Based on their responses1475 discussant interviews were completed for the campaign sample and another 265 were4completed as part of thepost hocbaseline, employing a survey instrument that was very similar to theinstrument used in the main respondent interview.CAMPAIGN EFFECTS ON ACTIVATION AND HOMOGENEITYAn important element of the Columbia model, and indeed a crucial ingredient to any model ofsocial communication effects in politics, is the activation of communication as a consequence of politicalstimuli. We have examined activation effects on thevolumeof communication from two differentvantage points, by considering both the frequency of political discussion within communication networksas well as the size of the networks (Huckfeldt, Johnson, and Sprague 2000). The onlycampaigneffect oncommunication volume comes in terms of thepost hoc baseline.Both the frequency of politicaldiscussion and the size of discussion networks are reduced in the fall of 1997 as compared to the periodduring the 1996 campaign. And we see no variation in these levels during the course of the campaign.Hence, the campaigndoesappear to increase the volume of communication among citizens, but theactivation effect evidently occurs early and persists throughout the campaign.In contrast, other analyses of the Indianapolis-St. Louis data (Huckfeldt, Sprague, and Levine2000) demonstrate important activation effects on theeffectivenessof communication that occurduringthe course of the fall election campaign.Indeed, the campaign generates substantial enhancements inthe effectiveness of communication, where effectiveness is defined in terms of the clarity and accuracywith which political messages are conveyed among citizens. During the course of the campaign, citizensbecome increasingly more likely to perceive their associates’ preferences accurately. They are moreconfident in their assessments of associates’ preferences. And their judgments regarding the preferencesof others become more accessible – they come to mind more readily (Fazio 1995).In short, the stimulus of the campaign produces an activation effect onboththe volumeandeffectiveness of political communication among citizens. Does the campaign also reduce politicaldisagreement among individuals who are connected within these networks of social communication?If the campaign has the effect of eliminating disagreement, then the level of correspondencebetween individual preferences and surrounding preferences should be enhanced across the campaign.While strong relationships appear between the respondent's perception regarding the partisan compositionof the network and the respondent’s self-reported partisan preferences, we find no consistent evidence tosuggest that these relationshipschangeover the course of the campaign. Moreover, in comparing theself-reported preferences of main respondents and discussants, we find that 63 percent of the dyadsagreed during the primary season, 52 percent agreed during the general election campaign, and 60 percentagreed immediately after the election. In summary, we see no compelling evidence to suggest thatpolitical disagreement is consistently or dramatically reduced as a consequence of the campaign. Thesimplest, most direct tests for the homogenizing impact of political interaction do not bear fruit. A moresubtle, contingent model of communication and persuasion must be pursued.CONTINGENCIES OPERATING ON POLITICAL INFLUENCETheinfluenceof political communication depends in very important ways on theeffectivenessofcommunication within dyads. Hence, we are deliberately separating the effectiveness of communicationfrom the influence of communication. Unless people communicate clearly and unambiguously, theycannot hope to exercise direct influence within their networks of communication (Latane 1981; Huckfeldtand Sprague 1995). Election campaigns activate networks of political communication, thereby enhancingthe effectiveness of communication among citizens. The potential for influential communication is thusincreased, but the realization of this potential is problematic due to contingencies operating on politicalinfluence within communication networks.Perhaps most important, the impact of dyadic communication is contingent on theconfigurationof the larger networkswithin which the communication occurs (Huckfeldt et al. 1998a; Huckfeldt,Sprague, and Levine 2000). For example, respondents are much more likely to recognize the preferenceof a particular discussion partner accurately when they perceive the preference to be more widespread5 [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]