Computer-mediated political expression: A conceptual framework of technological affordances and individual tradeoffs

ABSTRACT

Digital media provide individuals platforms to express political views. Despite the significant scholarly attention to how and why political expression occurs through technologies and to what effect, research remains fragmented in its theoretical frameworks. The present work synthesizes research on computer-mediated communication and political communication to offer a framework that describes theoretically (a) which technological affordances lead (b) to which psychological processes with (c) which politically relevant actions. We address these questions in the context of four different technological affordances. In doing so, we emphasize the psychological cost-benefit calculations that occur when deciding whether to engage in political expression online.

KEYWORDS:

• Political expression
• technological affordances
• metaconstructs
• social media

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Digital Society research program funded by the Ministry of Culture and Science of the German State of North Rhine-Westphalia (Grant Number: 005-1709-0004), Junior Research Group “Digital Citizenship in Network Technologies” (Project Number: 1706dgn009) and by the program Global Young Faculty (Stiftung Mercator incooperation with the University Alliance Ruhr).

Notes on contributors

German Neubaum

German Neubaum is an Assistant Professor of Media Psychology and Education at the University of Duisburg-Essen. His research interests focus on how the use of contemporary social technologies (e.g., social networking sites) influences users‘ cognitions, emotions, and actions. By combining media psychological methods and social media analytics, he recently studies the formation and the psychological effects of opinion homogeneity in online networks.

Brian Weeks

Brian E. Weeks is an Associate Professor in the Department of Communication and Media and a Faculty Associate in the Center for Political Studies at the University of Michigan. His research interests include news exposure and engagement on social media, political misinformation and misperceptions, and emotions and politics.