Discussion catalysts

Combining the theoretical background provided by the Katz-Lazarsfeld two-step flow of communication theory (and its subsequent criticism and revisions) with a social roles perspective, a recent JCMC article looked at Usenet discussions to find out whether there is something special about those contributors who create popular threads – and if so, then what is it.

The article, by Itai Himelboim, Eric Gleave and Marc Smith, termed successful conversation starters “discussion catalysts” (DC) – not surprisingly, a small minority among conversants.

Interestingly, 95% of DC thread starting posts contained content imported elsewhere from the web, and about two thirds of this content came from “traditional news organizations,” especially AP, The Washington Post and The New York Times in particular.

So it seems that the two-step flow hypothesis still have some relevance: it is through a small number of participants (DCs, at Katz and Lazarsfeld: opinion leaders) that the larger community is “agitated,” and delivered information originally coming from the mainstream media.

The authors consider the heavy reliance on established media “less encouraging;” they claim that the heavier use of alternative sources of information would be desirable. For reasons cited many times, I don’t fully agree, but the most important point is that to an important extent this is not a question of agreement or disagreement, insofar as the dominant position of the established media is an practical an economic reality.

And as a final remark, I just cannot believe that the JCMC still writes about the “Internet”, with capital I. With the words of Lorelai Gilmore: I don’t even know how to respond to this! It’s 2009 now!

Himelboim, Itai, Eric Gleave and Marc Smith (2009): “Discussion catalysts in online political discussion: Content importers and conversation starters” in Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 14, 771-789.

AR; political discussion frequency, network size, and heterogeneity of discussions

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Not one of the snappiest titles ever, but the original – from William P. Eveland, Jr. and Myiah Hutchens Hively, is even longer. In their paper they have reviewed considerable amounts of previous research material on political discussion, and on this basis arrived at more accurate and hence more useful conceptualization of notions such as “discussion frequency”, “safe” and “dangerous” discussion, and “heterogeneity” of political discussion.

Finally, they examined how these affect political knowledge (also reconceptualized here), and political participation, through a new survey.

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AR; Political discussion in online chat?

Is political discussion possible in online chatrooms? It absolutely is, argues Jennifer Stromer-Galley in a recent article. She and Anna M. Martinson analysed chatroom conversations to see whether or not the particularities of this online form of communication hinder meaningful, coherent and engaged discussion about politics.

(Previous research tend to claim that chat is not really suitable for such discussion, as messages are short and fragmented, arguments are underdeveloped, and random, wild changes in topic are rife.)

Tampere – some reflections

Back from Tampere; and after my first ever lecture; thanks for everyone who came. I’d like to take up now a couple of points in connection with the presentations of Tarmo, Ivan and myself, and the discussion that followed.

The setting. Ivan’s presentation was a good reminder how I took certain things for granted in my research, and thus how I haven’t emphasized their importance. More concretely, I’m talking here about how a look at the political public sphere in the US might not be comparable to that of the quasi-democracy of Russia. So I need to be mindful of the scope of applicability, so to say, of the results I uncover.

(Where this gets really interesting is the idea of a global public sphere – could even such a thing exist? I guess this is another topic to dwell into later.)