Monitoring and Expressing Opinions on Social Networking Sites – Empirical Investigations based on the Spiral of Silence Theory
Year: 2016
Type: article
Abstract: Social networking technologies such as Facebook are increasingly used for the exchange of information and opinions on politically and civically relevant issues. Drawing on the spiral of silence theory, this dissertation investigated the psychological mechanisms leading to the formation of opinion climates on social networking platforms. Specifically, this work focused on (a) whether and how users monitor other people’s opinions through these technologies and (b) under which circumstances they are willing to contribute to these opinion climates by voicing their personal viewpoint on these platforms. These two processes were addressed by five empirical studies. Study 1 examined the effects of different opinion cues (available on Facebook) on people’s inferences about public opinion. Results of a two-session experiment showed that individuals’ fear of isolation sharpened their attention toward user-generated comments, which, in turn, affected recipients’ public opinion perceptions. The latter influenced subjects’ opinions and their willingness to participate in social media discussions. Study 2 explored the situational manifestations of people’s fear of isolation and environmental variables as influence factors of people’s outspokenness. Results from qualitative interviews revealed a variety of sanctions people expect from others when voicing a minority opinion and a series of factors such as the size or the relationship to the audience which could exert an impact on one’s willingness to express their opinion. Study 3 further investigated the expectations of sanctions and their explanatory value regarding people’s communication behavior in different situations. Findings from an experiment demonstrated that the expectation of being personally attacked can explain why people are more inclined to express a minority opinion in offline rather than in online communication settings. Study 4 tested whether the publicness of social networking platforms in terms of the size and relational diversity of the audience affect people’s outspokenness. Results from a cross-cultural experiment showed that in Germany, a higher level of publicness of a controversial discussion on Facebook reduced people’s likelihood to express their viewpoint. This pattern, however, was not found in Singapore. Study 5 analyzed whether the relationship to the audience determines people’s likelihood to express their opinion on Facebook. Findings from an experiment revealed no effects of relational closeness to the audience on outspokenness. Instead, people’s certainty about the prevailing opinion climate among the audience increased their willingness to voice their opinion on Facebook. This collection of studies extends the previous state of knowledge by testing the validity of the spiral of silence theory but also pointing to potential boundaries thereof in the context of increasingly popular communication environments.
Author: German Neubaum
Language: English
Topic: Social Media and Politics
Subfield: Communication
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2742075815