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The Spiral of Silence in Virtual Space: Examining How Expert Participation, Digital Media Form, and Opinion Congruency Relate to Opinion Expression

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The Spiral of Silence in Virtual Space: Examining How Expert Participation, Digital Media Form, and Opinion Congruency Relate to Opinion Expression Louisiana State University LSU Digital Commons LSU Master's Theses Graduate School 2015 The pirS al of Silence in Virtual Space: Examining How Expert Participation, Digital Media Form, and Opinion Congruency Relate to Opinion Expression Yiwei Zhang Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_theses Part of the Mass Communication Commons Recommended Citation Zhang, Yiwei, "The pS iral of Silence in Virtual Space: Examining How Expert Participation, Digital Media Form, and Opinion Congruency Relate to Opinion Expression" (2015). LSU Master's Theses. 4175. https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_theses/4175 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at LSU Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in LSU Master's Theses by an authorized graduate school editor of LSU Digital Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. THE SPIRAL OF SILENCE IN VIRTUAL SPACE: EXAMINING HOW EXPERT PARTICIPATION, DIGITAL MEDIA FORM, AND OPINION CONGRUENCY RELATE TO OPINION EXPRESSION A Thesis Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of the Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Mass Communication in The Manship School of Mass Communication by Yiwei Zhang B.A., Jinan University, 2013 August 2015 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to express the deepest appreciation to my committee chair, Dr. Kasey F. Windels. She spent a long time helping me solve any problems I encountered during my study, no matter how tedious my questions were. When I lost confidence in my thesis, she challenged me to think outside the box and encouraged me to generate new ideas. She helped me develop my ideas and process them into a thesis. Without her guidance and persistent help, this thesis would not have been possible. I would like to thank my committee member, Dr. Ray Pingree, who gave me a tremendous amount of help in the methods part of my thesis. He taught me how to conduct an experiment, design an online survey, and conduct data analyses. He also played an important role in helping me shape my plan of studies. I deeply appreciated the help from my committee member, Dr. Margaret DeFleur, for her critical suggestions and advice in the theoretical part of my thesis. She helped me realize the limitations of my thesis and made up for my shortages in theoretical expertise. Finally, I wish to acknowledge my father, Weitian Zhang, and my mother Xiaoxi Zhang. They kept me going through difficulties and despair. Without their love and support, this thesis would not have been possible. ii TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ............................................................................................................ ii ABSTRACT ................................................................................................................................... iv CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION ....................................................................................................1 CHAPTER 2. LITERATURE REVIEW..........................................................................................6 Spiral of Silence and Audience Composition ........................................................................6 Spiral of Silence and Online Discussion .............................................................................10 Online Expert Participation..................................................................................................14 CHAPTER 3. METHOD ...............................................................................................................18 Procedure .............................................................................................................................18 Operationalization ................................................................................................................18 Measurement ........................................................................................................................21 Data Analysis Techniques ....................................................................................................23 CHAPTER 4. RESULTS ...............................................................................................................24 Demographics and Manipulation Check .............................................................................24 Spiral of Silence and Expert Participation ..........................................................................24 CHAPTER 5. DISCUSSION .........................................................................................................28 REFERENCES ..............................................................................................................................33 APPENDIX A: IRB APPROVAL ..................................................................................................38 APPENDIX B: QUESTIONNAIRES ............................................................................................39 APPENDIX C: STIMULUS ...........................................................................................................48 VITA ..............................................................................................................................................56 iii ABSTRACT This study tested the spiral of silence in both Social Networking Sites (SNS) and online discussion forums. It argued that online expert participation may influence people's willingness to take part in an online discussion. A two (opinion climate) by two (expert participation) experiment was designed to examine how expert participation influenced the relationship between people’s willingness to speak out and opinion climate with the controversial topic: abortion. In this study, the spiral of silence effect was only found when experts were present in the discussion. iv CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION One of the foundational principles of modern democracy is that every person may express political opinions freely and equally. In the ideal situation, nobody's opinion should be overlooked or overshadowed by others. However, in real life, the minority's opinions are easily overshadowed by the majority's. The spiral of silence theory (Noelle-Neumann, 1974) is one of the most prominent theories to describe and express such phenomenon. Noelle-Neumann outlined the spiral of silence theory in 1974 and tested this theory in the face-to-face communication setting. Forty years later, society has changed and the Internet has become an important part of people's daily lives. The Internet has been viewed as a booster of democracy. Many people believe that the Internet breaks social hierarchy and provides a virtual space where every person shares an equal chance to express. Therefore, scholars predicted that spiral of silence may disappear in computer-based-environments, and they tested spiral of silence online (Lee, Choi & Lee, 2004; McDevitt, Kiousis & Wahl-Jorgensen, Wanta & Dimitrova, 2002; Yun & Park, 2011, 2003). However, the results contradicted with each other. Some scholars, like Yun and Park, found the significant relation between opinion climate and people's willingness to speak out online. Some scholars, like Wanta and Dimitrova, found no significant results but only some indications supported spiral of silence effect online. Other scholars, like Lee and his coworkers, found opinion climate could influenced people's willingness to express online only when it interacted with some other moderators. Further, the appearance of Social Networking Sites (SNS) makes the interpretation of spiral of silence in an online environment more difficult. Several scholars tested spiral of silence theory on SNS from different angles (Fox & Warber, 2015; Gearhart & Zhang, Hampton, et al., 2014; Lee & Kim, 2014; 2014; Porten-Chee & Eilders, 2015). The results also contradicted with each other. For example, the results of Gearhart and 1 Zhang's (2014) study showed that spiral of silence exists on SNS, but Porten-Chee and Eilders' (2015) study showed contradicted conclusions. Moreover, among the studies about spiral of silence on SNS, the experiments were rarity. There is only one experiment (Gerhart & Zhang, 2014) about spiral of silence has been done on SNS until now. One of the reasons for the mixed results for online spiral of silence studies was some scholars focused too much on examining the existence of spiral of silence and testing traditional moderators of spiral of silence online, while ignoring the possibility that the new environment may create new factors which could affect people's willingness to express. The new factors also may affect the relationship between opinion climate and people's willingness to speak out. After its introduction, some scholars began to doubt the key propositions of spiral of silence and bring up new factors that may influence this theory. Scholars questioned the suitability and sufficiency of fear of isolation as the only motivator to explain people's willingness to speak out in different opinion climates. Scholars found people’s interest in politics (Kim, Han, Shanahan & Berdayes, 2004), communication apprehension (Neuwirth, Frederick, & Mayo, 2007), cultural differences (Trubinsky et al., 1991),willingness to self-censor (Hayes, Glynn, Berdayes & Shanahan, 2005), attention to news (Lee, 2007), efficacy (Huang, 2005),
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