Bringing Communication to Participation: Communicative Factors Influencing Citizen Political Engagement

Event Date: 

Monday, November 17, 2014 - 12:00pm

Event Location: 

  • The Lane Room (Ellison 3824)
  • Political Communication
  • PS 595

What encourages citizens to take an active part in the political process? What are the factors that make people more inclined to join a protest, write a letter to a public official or attempt to persuade someone? Traditionally, scholars have shown that people participate because of who they are (e.g., Smith, 1999; Verba et al., 1995), because of the benefits they obtain (e.g., Riker & Ordeshook, 1968) and because they are mobilized (e.g., Rosenstone & Hansen, 1993; Tarrow, 1998).

In this talk, I argue for the importance of attending to communicative factors in participation theory and research. I outline three communicative factors that may encourage citizens to take an active part in the political process: (1) media exposure, (2) interpersonal communication, and (3) online social networks. Because people tend to select like-minded political content, discuss politics with like-minded individuals, and join politically like-minded online groups, I will focus specifically on the mobilizing role played by exposure to pro-attitudinal information and the potential demobilizing role of exposure to conflicting perspectives.  In my presentation, I draw on three different datasets from two different countries to illustrate the various ways in which these communicative factors matter to political participation across samples, issues, and sociopolitical contexts.

PS 595 Credit