Spiral of Silence Phenomenon in Online Environments
From lecture, we have learn about that the networks affect cascading at both the population level and the local network level. People can benefit from following the crowd if the cascading is a good one. However, in political aspect, it is hard to say whether an “innovation opinion” has a good quality that can bring high payoff. The payoff of expression one’s social or political idea is mostly depend on others’ action. One can only benefit from being the majority and fears being isolated. This fear leads to remaining silent instead of voicing opinions, especially when being a minority. As a result, the majority view becomes louder over time, whereas the minority view increasingly spirals to silence.
Nowadays, given that people increasingly express their political opinions on social networking sites (SNS) such as Facebook and Twitter, scientist want to explore how the online environments affect the serial of silence. Recently, a south Korean scientist, Doctor Mihee Kim from Sungkyunkwan University, has conducted a survey to confirm his hypotheses on Facebook’s spiral of silence and participation.
The process of the spiral of silence in online environment seems to closely align with the effects of cross-cutting networks. The cross-cutting networks refer to where people are exposed to cross-cutting perspectives. Say on Facebook, users tend to communicate with whom they have already known rather than strangers, and they are more likely to avoid conflicts that potentially hurt existing relationships. Therefore, perceived hostile opinion climate on Facebook will be negatively associated with political expression on Facebook. As politically expression actions on Facebook can “spill” over to the real world, it leads to another hypothesis that political expression on Facebook will be positively associated with political participation. Moreover, according to the communication mediation model, the expression will mediate the relationship between perceived opinion climate on Facebook and political participation. Another dimension to consider is the partisan strength. The spiral of silence is found only among the not-so-determined individuals, which means the relationship between perceived opinion climates and political expression on Facebook will be contingent on an individual’s partisan strength.
To test these proposed hypotheses, Doctor Kim conducted an online survey using a panel sample of a survey company based in South Korea. This survey controlled participants age, gender, numbers of Facebook friends and Facebook use so as to take a close look at their perceiving opinion climate, partisan strength and political expression on Facebook.
The results are consistent with the hypotheses and shed some light on the question of whether network characteristics of Facebook encourage or discourage political participation. This is also interesting research on how the characteristics of the network itself influent its influence on cascading. As Facebook users can be selectively exposed to political content supporting their own position by following ideologically congruent media or friending those with similar viewpoints, no one may feel to be a minority on Facebook. The Facebook may leads users who support different political camps to perceive opinion distributions to be congenial or supportive, and increase voices from both sides and promote political engagement in the real world.
More details can be found in full text.