How political disagreements undermine intrafamily communication: the case of the anti-extradition bill movement in Hong Kong

abstract

Cross-cutting communication among people of differing political views is essential because it embeds opportunities for deliberation in everyday life. Prior research indicates that people tend to avoid cross-cutting communication because of the potential for interpersonal conflicts. However, political disagreements can be more comfortably expressed between people with strong ties, such as family members, without concern for damage to the ties. Nevertheless, in societies that have witnessed extreme levels of political polarization, political disagreement can reduce intrafamily communication and make deliberation unlikely. In this study, we analyzed survey data collected during the increased political polarization that followed the Anti-Extradition Bill movement in Hong Kong in 2019. We found that political disagreement within families undermined political discussion, more general communication among family members, and family gatherings during the 2020 Chinese New Year. These findings raise an interesting dilemma, because even though previous research indicates that political disagreement is a precondition for deliberation, our results indicate that this precondition makes deliberation unlikely when a society is politically polarized. They also implied that intrafamily political disagreements can damage bonding social capital by suppressing culturally significant family gatherings.

Keywords:

• deliberation
• political discussion
• cross-cutting communication
• intrafamily communication
• social capital
• Hong Kong

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 The potential downside of cross-cutting communication is its negative impact on political participation (Mutz, 2002b, 2006; Ulbig & Funk, 1999). However, a recent meta-analysis has found no effect (Matthes et al., 2019).

2 Option labels were displayed only at either end, and only numeric indicators were displayed between points 2 and 6.

3 Chan et al. (2019) found that those with high political efficacy can overcome the political heterogeneity of their personal networks and use social media more actively. Given the relatively large effect of political interest in our analyses, we additionally examined whether political interest mitigated the negative effects of political disagreement. Adding the interaction term between political disagreement and political interest to Models 2 and 4 in Table 1 indicated a significant negative interaction effect on the frequency of political discussion (B = −0.208, p = 0.047), and a null interaction effect on the frequency of general communication (B = −.132, p = 0.228). The former effect resulted from the fact that people with low political interest seldom engage in political conversations to begin with, so there is little room for the frequency to fall, but people with high political interest often do so in the absence of ideological gaps, so the negative effect of political disagreement is relatively large. Thus, we found no effect such as that found by Chan et al. (2019), where people with high political efficacy can overcome the political heterogeneity of the network.

4 As friend gathering was measured with a single item on a five-point scale, we re-estimated the model using an ordered logit regression. However, the pattern of the effects did not change.

Additional information

Funding

This study was supported by the City University of Hong Kong Strategic Research Grant (Project No.: 7005331).

Notes on contributors

Tetsuro Kobayashi

Tetsuro Kobayashi is an associate professor in the Department of Media and Communication, City University of Hong Kong. He received his doctoral degree from the University of Tokyo. His research interests include public opinion, political psychology, and political communication. He published his papers in journals such as Communication Research, Political Communication, Human Communication Research, Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, and New Media & Society.

Chun Hong Tse

Chun Hong Tse is a research assistant in the Department of Media and Communication, City University of Hong Kong. His research interests focus on citizen journalism, computer-mediated communication, and political communication.