More and more in American politics, I see an inherent struggle between the rational, self-interested individual and the self-sacrificing collective being. Both the health care debate and the mortgage meltdown provide amazing examples of this struggle.
First, in the health care debate, we can think of wasteful testing. Through out the debate, we heard numerous calls from both sides of the aisle to cut down on unnecessary, wasteful tests. The idea being that doctors are doing tests that aren’t really necessary and billing it to the individual’s insurance. The individual never realizes the cost and the doctor makes more money, this, in turn, raises premium costs. Therefore, at the macro-level everyone realizes we need to get rid of unneeded tests. But does this hold-up when we move down to the micro-level. Can an individual actually be asked to not do everything possible to help him or herself survive? For example, can we prevent women from getting mammograms until an age when the cost/benefits calculation makes sense? Probably not. The health care system is inherently suffers from a tragedy of the commons outcome.
The mortgage meltdown presents nearly the same principles. If everyone acts to maximize individual profits, the system ends up falling apart. Individual banks and bankers sought to maximize profits and ignored the effects of their actions on the larger system. This resulted in staggering profits for a while, followed by a staggering collapse of the system.
I know these aren’t new or unique thoughts, but in my view this individual v. collective problem, or social dilemmas, keep reappearing in American political culture.
Uncategorized
collectives, thoughts
This summer I will be presenting 3 papers at the International Communication Associations annual conference in Singapore. The first is a solo-authored paper that looks at the measurement of perceived network connection, which is a concept I have been working on for the last couple years. This is the first formal measurement of the concept. Below is the abstract. For more information check the connection page.
Much of human action occurs within groups (e.g., workgroups, family, social groups, society, etc.). Yet, the relationship between individuals and the groups they interact with has been a relatively understudied area. This paper presents perceived network connection as an important explanatory variable in understanding human action within groups. Specifically, PNC is defined as an individual’s assumptions and comprehensions about their cognitive, emotional, and communicative attachment to a bounded collective to which they belong. PNC is theorized to have three lower-order factors (perceived utility, affective evaluation, and communication connectedness). Using a 3-study design, this paper presents a valid and reliable 9-item measure for quantifying an individual’s perceived connection to a given network.
The second paper is co-authored with Prof. Dongyoung Sohn and examines the assumption of quasi-statistical sense within the spiral of silence. The paper uses agent-based modeling to propose a boundary condition for the spiral of silence. Here is the abstract:
The spiral of silence has persisted as one of the main explanatory mechanisms in mass communication research, which links individuals’ perception of opinion climate and their likelihood of speaking out. Since individuals’ opinions and likelihood of expressing them are shaped, altered, and/or reinforced constantly by the changing opinion climate, the outcome of this dynamic process cannot be inferred directly from the sum of individual traits at a particular point in time. This study, using computer simulations, examined the generative mechanism, through which individuals’ opinion sampling and monitoring translate into macro-level outcomes. Findings indicate that large scale spiral of silence is not a universal phenomenon, but occurs only when some macro-level boundary conditions are met — a critical mass of individuals who perceive the global opinion climate with the intermediate level of accuracy.
The final paper I co-authored with Prof. Lance Holbert and is a follow-up to his recent Communication Monographs piece on political campaign media connectedness theory. Here is the abstract:
Holbert and Benoit’s (2009) theory of political campaign media connectedness (PCMC) offers three axioms that allow for the positing of a series of causal associations between the use of two-sided political media information outlets, the use of one-sided political media information outlets, and debate viewing. The present study clarifies the specific role played by debate viewing as mediator and introduces the use of new media for political communication purposes to PCMC’s theoretical fold. Fourteen hypotheses serve as a foundation for this secondary analysis of 2004 National Annenberg Election Study (NAES) debate panel data (N = 1248). Debate viewing was found to play a key role as mediator, allowing for linkages to be established between seemingly disparate forms of political media use. In addition, multiple types of online political media engagement served as predictors of debate viewing and debate viewing also served as a mediator that linked new political media use with more traditional forms of media engagement within the context of a political election.
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ICA, research