Diversity, Disagreement, and Expression across Liberal, Conservative, and Mixed Groups

ABSTRACT

The notion that a healthy democracy requires a public who discusses politics is based on the assumption that discussions expose people to perspective that differ from their own. That people generally prefer to avoid political disagreements, however, suggests that people may withhold their opinions during such encounters. This work couples survey responses and a content analysis of sixty political discussions from a nationally representative sample to investigate the relationships among political opinion expression, diversity, and disagreement and how those variables function across liberal, conservative, and politically heterogeneous groups. Findings challenge the extent to which disagreement dampens political opinion expression and whether ideologically mixed groups expose people to more diverse views than those that are politically homogeneous.

KEYWORDS:

• Deliberation
• network heterogeneity
• partisanship
• political discussion
• political opinion expression
• spiral of silence

Acknowledgements

I am indebted to several others for helping make this work possible. First, I would like to thank Professor Joseph N. Cappella for sharing the data from the Electronic Dialogue Project that was analyzed in this study. I am grateful to all of the researchers who worked on the project. Finally, I appreciate the thoughtful guidance of Professor Talia Stroud. The views expressed within this paper, as well as any errors, are exclusively my own.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Some discussion groups had more questions posed. For consistency and comparability, only the questions that were posed to all groups were analyzed.

2. Additional hierarchical multiple regressions determined these findings do not differ by group type (conservative, liberal, heterogeneous).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Cynthia Peacock

Cynthia Peacock (PhD, University of Texas at Austin) is an assistant professor in the Communication Studies department at the University of Alabama and a Faculty Research Associate with the Center for Media Engagement at the University of Texas at Austin. Her research focuses on the ways people form, change, and express their political opinions.