Magdalena Wojcieszak
Biographic Data
| ID | 78721 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Magdalena Wojcieszak |
| GIVEN NAMES | Magdalena |
| FAMILY NAME | Wojcieszak |
| SIGNATURE | WOJCIESZAK M |
| AFFILIATIONS | IE University |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-5456-4483 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 70 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 814 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 70 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2007 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 16 |
U.S. Partisan Media Criticize the Out-Party More than They Praise the In-Party
News Informs and Boosts Discernment: A Replication in France and Germany
Can the news help people be more resilient to misinformation? Altay et al. found that news use increases surveillance knowledge and awareness of true and false news, while decreasing belief in false news. We conducted a two-wave panel survey ( N = 3,395) to replicate these findings in two new countries: France and Germany. The replication reinforces the conclusions of the original study: we found that higher news consumption predicted greater sur…
Survey Professionalism: New Evidence from Web Browsing Data
Online panels have become an important resource for research in political science, but the compensation offered to panelists incentivizes them to become “survey professionals,” raising concerns about data quality. We provide evidence on survey professionalism exploring three US samples of subjects who donated their browsing data, recruited via Lucid, YouGov, and Facebook (total $n = 3,886$ ). Survey professionalism is common, but varies across sa…
Effects of Over-Time Exposure to Partisan Media and Coverage of Polarization on Perceived Polarization
Following news on social media boosts knowledge, belief accuracy and trust
Many worry that news on social media leaves people uninformed or even misinformed. Here we conducted a preregistered two-wave online field experiment in France and Germany ( N = 3,395) to estimate the effect of following the news on Instagram and WhatsApp. Participants were asked to follow two accounts for 2 weeks and activate the notifications. In the treatment condition, the accounts were those of news organizations, while in the control condit…
(Media Attention to) Misinformation Can Undermine Trust in Scientists
Could news coverage of misinformation be harmful? Across two studies on U.S. citizens, we examine whether news coverage of misinformation generates misperceptions and decreases levels of trust in information institutions (i.e., media, professors, and scientists) and whether its effects can be comparable to those of exposure to untrustworthy content. We rely on an online experiment using mock social media posts (Study 1, N = 1,670) and also on onl…
Partisan temporal selective news avoidance: Evidence from online trace data
We assess the phenomenon of partisan temporal selective avoidance, or individuals dynamically altering their news consumption when news is negative toward their in‐ and out‐party. Using nine months of online behavioral data (27,648,770 visits) from 2,462 Americans paired with machine learning classifications, we examine whether changing daily news sentiment toward in‐ and out‐party (macro‐level) and exposure to articles negative toward in‐ or out…
The Diffusion and Reach of (Mis)Information on Facebook during the U.S. 2020 Election
Social media creates the possibility for rapid, viral spread of content, but how many posts actually reach millions? And is misinformation special in how it propagates? We answer these questions by analyzing the virality of and exposure to information on Facebook during the U.S. 2020 presidential election. We examine the diffusion trees of the approximately 1 B posts that were re-shared at least once by U.S.-based adults from July 1, 2020, to Feb…
Analysis of Web Browsing Data: A Guide
The use of individual-level browsing data, that is, the records of a person’s visits to online content through a desktop or mobile browser, is of increasing importance for social scientists. Browsing data have characteristics that raise many questions for statistical analysis, yet to date, little hands-on guidance on how to handle them exists. Reviewing extant research, and exploring data sets collected by our four research teams spanning seven c…
Non-News Websites Expose People to More Political Content Than News Websites: Evidence from Browsing Data in Three Countries
Most scholars focus on the prevalence and democratic effects of (partisan) news exposure. This focus misses large parts of online activities of a majority of politically disinterested citizens. Although political content also appears outside of news outlets and may profoundly shape public opinion, its prevalence and effects are under-studied at scale. This project combines three-wave panel survey data from three countries (total N = 7,266) with o…
Partisanship on Social Media: In-Party Love Among American Politicians, Greater Engagement with Out-Party Hate Among Ordinary Users
Americans view their in-party members positively and out-party members negatively. It remains unclear, however, whether in-party affinity (i.e., positive partisanship) or out-party animosity (i.e., negative partisanship) more strongly influences political attitudes and behaviors. Unlike past work, which relies on survey self-reports or experimental designs among ordinary citizens, this pre-registered project examines actual social media expressio…
Author Correction: Prominent misinformation interventions reduce misperceptions but increase scepticism
Prominent misinformation interventions reduce misperceptions but increase scepticism
Current interventions to combat misinformation, including fact-checking, media literacy tips and media coverage of misinformation, may have unintended consequences for democracy. We propose that these interventions may increase scepticism towards all information, including accurate information. Across three online survey experiments in three diverse countries (the United States, Poland and Hong Kong; total n = 6,127), we tested the negative spill…
The majority of fact-checking labels in the United States are intense and this decreases engagement intention
Fact-checking labels have been widely accepted as an effective misinformation correction method. However, there is limited theoretical understanding of fact-checking labels' impact. This study theorizes that language intensity influences fact-checking label processing and tests this idea through a multi-method design. We first rely on a large-scale observational dataset of fact-checking labels from 7 U.S. fact-checking organizations (N = 33,755) …
Like-minded sources on Facebook are prevalent but not polarizing
Many critics raise concerns about the prevalence of ‘echo chambers’ on social media and their potential role in increasing political polarization. However, the lack of available data and the challenges of conducting large-scale field experiments have made it difficult to assess the scope of the problem 1,2 . Here we present data from 2020 for the entire population of active adult Facebook users in the USA showing that content from ‘like-minded’ s…
Asymmetric ideological segregation in exposure to political news on Facebook
Does Facebook enable ideological segregation in political news consumption? We analyzed exposure to news during the US 2020 election using aggregated data for 208 million US Facebook users. We compared the inventory of all political news that users could have seen in their feeds with the information that they saw (after algorithmic curation) and the information with which they engaged. We show that (i) ideological segregation is high and increase…
How do social media feed algorithms affect attitudes and behavior in an election campaign?
We investigated the effects of Facebook’s and Instagram’s feed algorithms during the 2020 US election. We assigned a sample of consenting users to reverse-chronologically-ordered feeds instead of the default algorithms. Moving users out of algorithmic feeds substantially decreased the time they spent on the platforms and their activity. The chronological feed also affected exposure to content: The amount of political and untrustworthy content the…
Introduction to the special issue of social media: The good, the bad, and the ugly
As social media scholarship pervades the communication discipline, it is time to reflect on the good, bad, and ugly of social media. The theme for this special issue is inspired in part by the 1966 film, “The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly.” Like its portrayal of the American Civil War, we again face deep divisions. The question is what role is social media helping us to heal those divides versus fragmenting us further? The seven articles in this is…
Searching for politics: Using real-world web search behavior and surveys to see political information searching in context
Search engines are one of the most trusted and used sources of political information. Yet there is limited research on how often people search for political topics in the real world, the search strategies they use to find information, and the results people select. We use a combination of survey and online behavioral data to illuminate how often people search for political content, what queries they use, how autocomplete affects political queries…
Exposure to Extremely Partisan News from the Other Political Side Shows Scarce Boomerang Effects
A narrow information diet may be partly to blame for the growing political divides in the United States, suggesting exposure to dissimilar views as a remedy. These efforts, however, could be counterproductive, exacerbating attitude and affective polarization. Yet findings on whether such boomerang effect exists are mixed and the consequences of dissimilar exposure on other important outcomes remain unexplored. To contribute to this debate, we rel…
Null effects of news exposure: A test of the (un)desirable effects of a ‘news vacation’ and ‘news binging’
Democratic theorists and the public emphasize the centrality of news media to a well-functioning society. Yet, there are reasons to believe that news exposure can have a range of largely overlooked detrimental effects. This preregistered project examines news exposure effects on desirable outcomes, i.e., political knowledge, participation, and support for compromise, and detrimental outcomes, i.e., attitude and affective polarization, negative sy…
The (null) over-time effects of exposure to local news websites: Evidence from trace data
Scholars and observers attribute many democratic benefits to local news media. This paper examines exposure to local and national news media websites, side-by-side in one model, testing their over-time effects on political participation, knowledge, and affective and attitude polarization. We test whether traditionally disengaged or disadvantaged groups (i.e., racial minorities, those with low education levels, politically disinterested, and those…
Over-Time Trends in Incivility on Social Media: Evidence From Political, Non-Political, and Mixed Sub-Reddits Over Eleven Years
Incivility in social media has become a major concern of the public, who perceive uncivil online interactions to be both widespread and increasing. This study provides a descriptive account of incivility dynamics over the past 11 years by examining the trends of incivility in three main categories of social media interactions: political, mixed, and non-political. Using longitudinal data from Reddit that accounts for 95% of the entire Reddit unive…
Can I Stick to My Guns? Motivated Reasoning and Biased Processing of Balanced Political Information
News media offer balanced political messages and many citizens also seek content that presents two sides of a political issue. Despite this supply and demand, most work on information processing tests exposure to one-sided content, i.e., either pro- or counter-attitudinal. We advance this work by studying (1) how balanced and one-sided messages affect information processing; (2) whether the processing of balanced information is moderated by indiv…
No Polarization From Partisan News: Over-Time Evidence From Trace Data
Many blame partisan news media for polarization in America. This paper examines the effects of liberal, conservative, and centrist news on affective and attitude polarization. To this end, we rely on two studies that combine two-wave panel surveys (N1 = 303, N2 = 904) with twelve months worth of web browsing data submitted by the same participants comprising roughly thirty-eight million visits. We identify news exposure using an extensive list of…
Participation, Representation and Expertise: Citizen Preferences for Political Decision-Making Processes
In this article, it is shown that citizen process preferences are complex and include several dimensions. The argument relies on data from a representative sample of Spanish citizens (N = 2,450) to assess these dimensions. Using confirmatory factor analysis as well as Mokken analysis, it is shown that citizen process preferences capture support for three different models: participatory, representative and expert-based. The relationships between t…
Can Interparty Contact Reduce Affective Polarization? A Systematic Test of Different Forms of Intergroup Contact
We advance interparty contact as a remedy to affective polarization and examine the processes through which interparty contact attenuates the hostility between Democrats and Republicans. We present results from three studies: (1) a survey examining the association between outparty friendships and affective polarization (cross-validated with a representative data from Pew Research Center), and two experiments, testing the effects of (2) vicarious …
Social Identity, Selective Exposure, and Affective Polarization: How Priming National Identity Shapes Attitudes Toward Immigrants Via News Selection
We use three online experiments—two selection-based and one forced-exposure—to demonstrate that increasing the salience of national identity can promote affective polarization toward undocumented immigrants, both directly and indirectly, via the selection of pro- and counter-attitudinal articles about immigration. As anticipated, across both selection studies, priming national identity exacerbates polarization among immigration opponents. For tha…
Don’t talk to me’: Effects of ideologically homogeneous online groups and politically dissimilar offline ties on extremism
This study analyzes cross-sectional data obtained from respondents in neo-Nazi online discussion forums and textual data from postings to these forums. It assesses the impact of participation in radical and homogeneous online groups on opinion extremism and probes whether this impact depends on political dissimilarity of strong and weak offline ties. Specifically, does dissimilarity attenuate (as deliberative theorists hope) or rather exacerbate …
Partisan News and Political Participation: Exploring Mediated Relationships
This study examines mediators of the relationship between news consumption and political participation in the contemporary news environment. We test the differential effects exerted by pro- and counter-attitudinal news compared with balanced news on intended participation. Our primary objective is to model three paths that may link news exposure and participation: cognitive (i.e., perceived issue understanding), affective (i.e., emotions evoked b…
Bridging the Divide or Intensifying the Conflict? How Disagreement Affects Strong Predilections about Sexual Minorities: Deliberating the Divide
This study draws on a sample of participants in online groups that discussed legalization of same-sex marriage, to examine whether exposure to perceived disagreement decreases—as the deliberative theorists hope—or rather increases—as the research on confirmation bias predicts—strongly held predilections. Overall, participants' views towards same-sex marriage and sexual minority rights remained largely unchanged after deliberating, regardless of t…
Preferences for Political Decision-Making Processes and Issue Publics
Research on public attitudes toward political decision-making has typically focused on politics in general. This study attends to issue-level as well as individual-level factors that can explain political process preferences. First, drawing on the classic distinction between easy and hard political issues, this study differentiates between preferences for participatory versus representative processes as related to politics, abortion, immigration,…
Online versus face-to-face deliberation: Who? Why? What? With what effects
Although there has been much speculation regarding the strengths and weaknesses of face-to-face versus online deliberative settings, no studies have systematically compared the two. Drawing on a national sample of Americans who reported deliberating face-to-face and/or online, we examine these two deliberative settings with regard to the participants, the motivations, the process, and the effects. Our findings, although tentative, suggest that th…
Why Are “Others” So Polarized? Perceived Political Polarization and Media Use in 10 Countries
This study tests the associations between news media use and perceived political polarization, \nconceptualized as citizens’ beliefs about partisan divides among major political parties. Relying \non representative surveys in Canada, Colombia, Greece, India, Italy, Japan, South Korea, \nNorway, United Kingdom and United States, we test whether perceived polarization is related to \nthe use of television news, newspaper, radio news, and online new…
False Consensus Goes Online
This study analyzes survey data obtained from members of neo-Nazi and radical environmentalist discussion forums. It assesses the extent to which participants in homogeneous online groups exhibit false consensus, i.e., overestimate public support for their views, and whether the overestimation increases with increased online participation. Although the analyzed sample overestimates public support, the overestimation is no greater than found with …
Assessing Selective Exposure in Experiments: The Implications of Different Methodological Choices
Selective exposure has been studied for more than half a century, but little research has systematically analyzed the implications of various methodological choices inherent in these designs. We examine how four choices affect results in studies of selectivity in political contexts: including an entertainment option, including or excluding moderates, post-hoc adjustment of the subjects through a question about likelihood of selecting content in t…
Waving the Red Cloth
This study extends the boundary conditions of the work on media effects on polarization by (1) examining whether exposure to news coverage about a contentious political issue polarizes attitudes, especially among the already-polarized citizens; (2) analyzing "easy" and "hard" dimensions of EU attitudes; and (3) offering causal and generalizable evidence in a non-US context. Individual-level data from a representative four-wave panel survey are ma…
What Underlies the False Consensus Effect? How Personal Opinion and Disagreement Affect Perception of Public Opinion
Journal Article What Underlies the False Consensus Effect? How Personal Opinion and Disagreement Affect Perception of Public Opinion Get access Magdalena Wojcieszak, Magdalena Wojcieszak Magdalena Wojcieszak (M.A. Sociology, University of Warsaw; Ph.D. Communications, Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania) is an Associate Professor of Political Communication at the IE School of Communication at the IE University. Vincent …
Will politics be tweeted? New media use by Iranian youth in 2011
The uprisings after the 2009 elections in Iran generated debate on new media’s potential to affect dissent in authoritarian countries. We surveyed 2800 young, educated, metropolitan, and technologically savvy Iranians over a year after the election and during the uprisings in the Middle East and North Africa to examine what sources these youth use for information, the extent to which they rely on new media for political exchanges, their experienc…
Non-News Websites Expose People to More Political Content Than News Websites: Evidence from Browsing Data in Three Countries
Most scholars focus on the prevalence and democratic effects of (partisan) news exposure. This focus misses large parts of online activities of a majority of politically disinterested citizens. Although political content also appears outside of news outlets and may profoundly shape public opinion, its prevalence and effects are under-studied at scale. This project combines three-wave panel survey data from three countries (total N = 7,266) with o…
No Polarization From Partisan News: Over-Time Evidence From Trace Data
Many blame partisan news media for polarization in America. This paper examines the effects of liberal, conservative, and centrist news on affective and attitude polarization. To this end, we rely on two studies that combine two-wave panel surveys (N1 = 303, N2 = 904) with twelve months worth of web browsing data submitted by the same participants comprising roughly thirty-eight million visits. We identify news exposure using an extensive list of…
What’s Islam got to do with it? Attitudes toward specific religious and national out-groups, and support for EU policies
Previous studies predicted European Union attitudes using anti-immigrant attitudes, but without explicitly accounting for attitudes toward different out-groups. We propose that group-specific attitudes independently predict attitudes toward the European Union, but only when the out-group is linked to the European Union issue in question. We additionally argue that realistic or symbolic threat associated with specific out-groups determines whether…
On Strong Attitudes and Group Deliberation: Relationships, Structure, Changes, and Effects
Drawing on quasi‐experimental data from participants in structured and moderated deliberations on sexual minority rights in Poland, this study tests the relationship between attitude importance, certainty, intensity, and extremity. This study also examines the antecedents of these attributes and their consequences for several democratically important outcomes (i.e., perceived disagreement, negative affect, attitude polarization, self‐reported pol…
Partisanship on Social Media: In-Party Love Among American Politicians, Greater Engagement with Out-Party Hate Among Ordinary Users
Americans view their in-party members positively and out-party members negatively. It remains unclear, however, whether in-party affinity (i.e., positive partisanship) or out-party animosity (i.e., negative partisanship) more strongly influences political attitudes and behaviors. Unlike past work, which relies on survey self-reports or experimental designs among ordinary citizens, this pre-registered project examines actual social media expressio…
Social Norms and Selectivity: Effects of Norms of Open-Mindedness on Content Selection and Affective Polarization
Given the polarizing effects of exposure to like-minded political information and the alleged societal benefits of exposure to diverse and dissimilar perspectives, we examine how to promote the selection of balanced and counter-attitudinal political content, thereby minimizing affective polarization. Two online experiments on American partisans (N = 389 and N = 1378) tested the influence of social norms promoting open-mindedness. Study 1 focused …
Al Jazeera: A Challenge to the Traditional Framing Research
This article examines framing research and the challenges posed to this model by al Jazeera. The study argues that traditional framing scholarship might not be applicable to analyzing al Jazeera and other satellite channels because it presumes the impact of political elites on the framing process, conceives of the media as hegemonic, is idiosyncratic to the American media and power arrangements, and does not account for new information communicat…
Partisan media, untrustworthy news sites, and political misperceptions
This study investigates the potential role both untrustworthy and partisan websites play in misinforming audiences by testing whether actual exposure to these sites is associated with political misperceptions. Using a sample of American adult social media users, we match data from individuals’ Internet browser histories with a survey measuring the accuracy of political beliefs. We find that visits to partisan websites are at times related to misp…
The Consequences of Forced Versus Selected Political Media Exposure
The effects of media exposure differ when people are given the opportunity to choose content compared to when they are forced to view it. Contemporary explanations propose that differences between forced and selected exposure occur because of between-subject differences. We propose that differences also result from within-subject psychological reactions. Using a novel experimental design, a representative sample of U.S. adults (N = 1,967) provide…
Deliberative and Participatory Democracy? Ideological Strength and the Processes Leading from Deliberation to Political Engagement
We draw on a nationally representative sample of American adults who reported having participated in face-to-face deliberation (N = 756). We use structural equation modeling to first ask whether perceived political diversity differently influences follow-up engagement in various civic or political activities among strong, weak, and moderate ideologues. We also examine the processes—cognitive and affective—that lead from perceived diversity to fol…
Exposure to Extremely Partisan News from the Other Political Side Shows Scarce Boomerang Effects
A narrow information diet may be partly to blame for the growing political divides in the United States, suggesting exposure to dissimilar views as a remedy. These efforts, however, could be counterproductive, exacerbating attitude and affective polarization. Yet findings on whether such boomerang effect exists are mixed and the consequences of dissimilar exposure on other important outcomes remain unexplored. To contribute to this debate, we rel…
Al Jazeera: A Challenge to the Traditional Framing Research
This article examines framing research and the challenges posed to this model by al Jazeera. The study argues that traditional framing scholarship might not be applicable to analyzing al Jazeera and other satellite channels because it presumes the impact of political elites on the framing process, conceives of the media as hegemonic, is idiosyncratic to the American media and power arrangements, and does not account for new information communicat…
False Consensus Goes Online
This study analyzes survey data obtained from members of neo-Nazi and radical environmentalist discussion forums. It assesses the extent to which participants in homogeneous online groups exhibit false consensus, i.e., overestimate public support for their views, and whether the overestimation increases with increased online participation. Although the analyzed sample overestimates public support, the overestimation is no greater than found with …
What Is Really Going On: Structure underlying face-to-face and online deliberation
Does deliberative setting, online versus face-to-face, influence citizens' experiences? Are certain factors differently influential in one setting than in the other? We draw on a nationally representative survey and identify citizens who participated in both online and face-to-face settings (n = 82). We use structural equation modeling to first assess the effects that deliberation format has on the interrelationship between such crucial factors a…
Online Groups and Political Discourse: Do Online Discussion Spaces Facilitate Exposure to Political Disagreement
To what extent do online discussion spaces expose participants to political talk and to cross-cutting political views in particular? Drawing on a representative national sample of over 1000 Americans reporting participation in chat rooms or message boards, we examine the types of online discussion spaces that create opportunities for cross-cutting political exchanges. Our findings suggest that the potential for deliberation occurs primarily in on…
“Carrying Online Participation Offline”-Mobilization by Radical Online Groups and Politically Dissimilar Offline Ties
This study analyzes survey data obtained from members in neo-Nazi and environmentalist discussion forums. It assesses the links between participation in radical and ideologically homogeneous online groups and two forms of political engagement (Movement Support and Movement Promotion). This study also tests whether perceived political dissimilarity of offline friends and family (core ties) and of more distant interpersonal associates (significant …
Three Dimensionality: Taxonomy of Iconic, Linguistic, and Audio Messages in Television News
Visual critics interested in news primarily analyze still photographs in print media. Thus, the questions of how images in television news are contextualized, complemented, displaced, explained, or contradicted by the auditory channel and linguistic messages on the screen have not been studied extensively. Based on an exploratory content analysis of CNN, MSNBC, and FOX News coverage of the 9/11 terrorist attacks and Hurricane Katrina, the author …
What Underlies the False Consensus Effect? How Personal Opinion and Disagreement Affect Perception of Public Opinion
Journal Article What Underlies the False Consensus Effect? How Personal Opinion and Disagreement Affect Perception of Public Opinion Get access Magdalena Wojcieszak, Magdalena Wojcieszak Magdalena Wojcieszak (M.A. Sociology, University of Warsaw; Ph.D. Communications, Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania) is an Associate Professor of Political Communication at the IE School of Communication at the IE University. Vincent …
Don’t talk to me’: Effects of ideologically homogeneous online groups and politically dissimilar offline ties on extremism
This study analyzes cross-sectional data obtained from respondents in neo-Nazi online discussion forums and textual data from postings to these forums. It assesses the impact of participation in radical and homogeneous online groups on opinion extremism and probes whether this impact depends on political dissimilarity of strong and weak offline ties. Specifically, does dissimilarity attenuate (as deliberative theorists hope) or rather exacerbate …
Deliberative and Participatory Democracy? Ideological Strength and the Processes Leading from Deliberation to Political Engagement
We draw on a nationally representative sample of American adults who reported having participated in face-to-face deliberation (N = 756). We use structural equation modeling to first ask whether perceived political diversity differently influences follow-up engagement in various civic or political activities among strong, weak, and moderate ideologues. We also examine the processes—cognitive and affective—that lead from perceived diversity to fol…
Bridging the Divide or Intensifying the Conflict? How Disagreement Affects Strong Predilections about Sexual Minorities: Deliberating the Divide
This study draws on a sample of participants in online groups that discussed legalization of same-sex marriage, to examine whether exposure to perceived disagreement decreases—as the deliberative theorists hope—or rather increases—as the research on confirmation bias predicts—strongly held predilections. Overall, participants' views towards same-sex marriage and sexual minority rights remained largely unchanged after deliberating, regardless of t…
Cyber Racism: White Supremacy Online and the New Attack on Civil Rights
Deliberation and Attitude Polarization
Journal Article Deliberation and Attitude Polarization Get access Magdalena Wojcieszak Magdalena Wojcieszak 1IE School of Communication, IE University, Segovia 40003, Spain Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of Communication, Volume 61, Issue 4, August 2011, Pages 596–617, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1460-2466.2011.01568.x Published: 04 August 2011
Correlates of Party, Ideology and Issue Based Extremity in an era of Egocentric Publics
We extend the study of political extremity to an evolving media landscape. We differentiate between political and non-political uses of both “traditional” and “new” media, and situate political extremity within a new conceptualization of public– egocentric publics –a meso-level phenomenon enabled by new communication technologies that overcomes the traditional dichotomy of small groups and mass publics. Testing the relationship between informatio…
Computer-Mediated False Consensus: Radical Online Groups, Social Networks and News Media
This study draws on survey data obtained from members in neo-Nazi discussion forums and builds on evidence that participation in these forums exacerbates false consensus, that is, overestimating public support for own views. This study goes further to test whether contacts with dissimilar offline social networks as well as exposure to ideologically dissimilar news media attenuate false consensus and its association with online participation. Cont…
Online versus face-to-face deliberation: Who? Why? What? With what effects
Although there has been much speculation regarding the strengths and weaknesses of face-to-face versus online deliberative settings, no studies have systematically compared the two. Drawing on a national sample of Americans who reported deliberating face-to-face and/or online, we examine these two deliberative settings with regard to the participants, the motivations, the process, and the effects. Our findings, although tentative, suggest that th…
When Deliberation Divides: Processes Underlying Mobilization to Collective Action
This study uses quasi-experimental data from participants in structured and moderated face-to-face deliberations on sexual minority rights in Poland (n =182) and builds on evidence that disagreement perceived during these deliberations mobilizes extreme participants to political action. This study takes the next step and tests the processes underlying such mobilization. Drawing on social movement scholarship and using Structural Equation Modeling…
Pulling Toward or Pulling Away: Deliberation, Disagreement, and Opinion Extremity in Political Participation
Objective. Evidence supports two somewhat contradictory notions: deliberation is to encourage engagement, but disagreement may decrease participation. This study aims to provide a common denominator in the debate. It distinguishes between deliberation and political disagreement that emerges during deliberation to test which factors advance or thwart participatory goals. This study also accounts for opinion extremity, which may moderate the tested…
Perceived Versus Actual Disagreement: Which Influences Deliberative Experiences
Little is known about whether deliberative experiences are affected by participants' perceptions of disagreement or by what is expressed during deliberation. Drawing on participants in online deliberations, we find that (a) it is perceived disagreement that is strongly related to experiences such as interest/enjoyment, (b) medium levels of objective disagreement attenuate confusion, and (c) these associations depend on the topic discussed and are…
On Strong Attitudes and Group Deliberation: Relationships, Structure, Changes, and Effects
Drawing on quasi‐experimental data from participants in structured and moderated deliberations on sexual minority rights in Poland, this study tests the relationship between attitude importance, certainty, intensity, and extremity. This study also examines the antecedents of these attributes and their consequences for several democratically important outcomes (i.e., perceived disagreement, negative affect, attitude polarization, self‐reported pol…
Facts Versus Perceptions: Who Reports Disagreement During Deliberation and Are the Reports Accurate
Although deliberative scholarship is often concerned with disagreement, two issues remain unaddressed. Little is known about individual characteristics that make people perceive disagreement during deliberation. Even less is known about perceptual accuracy. Do people accurately report the disagreement they encounter in deliberative settings? This study addresses these gaps. We draw on a sample of participants in structured and moderated online gr…
Assessing Selective Exposure in Experiments: The Implications of Different Methodological Choices
Selective exposure has been studied for more than half a century, but little research has systematically analyzed the implications of various methodological choices inherent in these designs. We examine how four choices affect results in studies of selectivity in political contexts: including an entertainment option, including or excluding moderates, post-hoc adjustment of the subjects through a question about likelihood of selecting content in t…
Will politics be tweeted? New media use by Iranian youth in 2011
The uprisings after the 2009 elections in Iran generated debate on new media’s potential to affect dissent in authoritarian countries. We surveyed 2800 young, educated, metropolitan, and technologically savvy Iranians over a year after the election and during the uprisings in the Middle East and North Africa to examine what sources these youth use for information, the extent to which they rely on new media for political exchanges, their experienc…
Aversive Racism in Spain--Testing the Theory
This study applies the aversive racism framework to Spain and tests whether aversive racism depends on intergroup contact. Relying on a 3 (qualifications) by 3 (ethnicity) experiment, this study finds that aversive racism is especially pronounced against the Mexican job applicant, and emerges among those who held overtly positive attitudes toward immigrants. Friendships with Latinos predicted decreased overt prejudice yet exacerbated aversive rac…
Preferences for Political Decision-Making Processes and Issue Publics
Research on public attitudes toward political decision-making has typically focused on politics in general. This study attends to issue-level as well as individual-level factors that can explain political process preferences. First, drawing on the classic distinction between easy and hard political issues, this study differentiates between preferences for participatory versus representative processes as related to politics, abortion, immigration,…
Hostile Public Effect: Minority Status Mobilizing Political Participation
This study theorizes and tests the hostile public effect, according to which citizens who (a) actually are and/or (b) merely see themselves in a minority should be more participatory than those holding the dominant opinion. This study also tests whether it is citizens’ perceptions or their actual status that matters to political engagement. Furthermore, the hostile public effect is tested across three distinct issues and two participatory forms. …
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