Political Discussion Frequency, Network Size, and “Heterogeneity” of Discussion as Predictors of Political Knowledge and Participation

Abstract

In this study, we examine the influence of discussion frequency, network size, and 3 variables that together entangle the often misunderstood concept of network heterogeneity: discussion frequency with like-minded individuals (“safe” discussion), discussion frequency with nonlike-minded individuals (“dangerous” discussion), and diversity of discussion based on the proportion of safe and dangerous discussion. Data were gathered via a postelection random-digit dial telephone survey of residents of a battleground state (N = 600) in November 2004. Three central dependent variables were measured: factual political knowledge, political knowledge structure density, and political participation. The results support the argument that different aspects of political discussion have different implications for different democratic outcomes-and that different conceptualizations and measures of discussion “heterogeneity” produce different results.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 508 citations exist upstream.

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.