Exploring Political Discussion Motivations: Relationships with Different Forms of Political Talk

ABSTRACT

This study expands political discussion scholarship by examining the relationship between six motivations for political discussion (i.e., educate oneself, learn about others, influence others, be social, and build relationships) and five forms of political talk (i.e., overall discussion frequency, discussion involving agreement, disagreement, strong ties, and weak ties). Survey results demonstrate that different motivations are associated with different forms of political talk. These findings suggest that motivations offer significant potential for advancing understanding of what drives the most common manifestations (agreement, strong-tie discussion) and the most deliberative and democratically beneficial (disagreement, weak-tie discussion) forms of political discussion.

KEYWORDS:

• Political disagreement
• interpersonal discussion motivations
• deliberation
• strong and weak ties
• uses and gratifications

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Social connections grow in “strength” with increasing amounts of time, emotional intensity, intimacy, and reciprocity of services (Granovetter, 1973).

2. Even if myriad reasons for engaging in a behavior exist, one or two motivations may play a primary role in driving behavior. Furthermore, motivations for any given behavior are unlikely to be completely unique and independent (i.e., someone who engages in behavior X because of high levels of motivation A, is also more likely to have high levels of motivation B, C, and D).

3. Verification of the structure of the political discussion motivation variables examined in this study was conducted by reviewing the correlations among the original 10 motivation survey items, performing a factor analysis on these items, and calculating correlations among the final six political discussion motivation variables. Results can be found in Online Appendix B.

4. It is interesting to note that the reported average for strong-tie discussion frequency was higher than the reported average for general political discussion frequency (a contradiction that cannot be true in reality), demonstrating a well-known and highly studied issue with (and limitation of) self-report behavioral measures.

5. Supplementary analyses were performed to test the robustness of results. An explanation of these analyses and presentation of results are provided in Online Appendix C.

6. Tests to see if the data met the assumption of collinearity suggest that multicollinearity is not of significant concern (Tolerance and Variance Inflation Factor scores are presented in Online Appendix D).

7. Potential implications of demonstrated links between motivations and political discussion forms for deliberative practice are explored in Online Appendix E.

8. Potential differences in online and offline political discussion (and online and offline discussion motivations) are addressed more fully in Online Appendix F.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Alyssa C. Morey

Alyssa C. Morey is Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication at the University at Albany.

Masahiro Yamamoto

Masahiro Yamamoto is Associate Professor in the Department of Communication at the University at Albany.