Panel: The Effects of One-Sided News Media – Political Communication

Paper: A Theory of Political Campaign Media Connectedness, Part II: Clarifying Debate Viewing and Online Media

Authors: R. Lance Holbert & Nick W. Geidner, Ohio State U, USA

Friday – 10:00-11:15 – Room 310

Panel: The Influence of the Media on Political Knowledge and Socialization – Mass Communication

Paper: Collective Dynamics of the Spiral of Silence: The Role of Quasi-Statistical Monitoring

Authors: Dongyoung Sohn & Nick W. Geidner, Ohio State U, USA

Friday – 13:00-14:15 – Gallery

Poster: Perceived Network Connection: A Reliability and Validity Assessment of an Individual-Level Measure of Group Attachment

Author: Nick W. Geidner, Ohio State U, USA

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A paper I wrote was accepted for presentation in the Communication Theory and Methodology division at the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication annual conference. The conference is in August this summer. Here is the abstract:

The spiral of silence is one of the primary social explanations of public opinion formation currently employed in social science research. In short, Noelle-Neumann (1974; 1993) argues that individual-level opinion expression is a function of the opinion climate of the society. This paper adds a macro-level boundary condition to by the theory by examining how group involvement can affect the spiraling process. Using agent-based modeling, a simulation, replicating the assumptions in the spiral of silence, was created. Two other models, which added groups to the simulated society, were also created. Through running and comparing the results of these simulations, it was found that the addition of groups allowed for the survival of the societal-level minority opinions in certain cases. Further research should enhance the models used in this paper and should use agent-based modeling to examine other social communication theories.

The paper is titled “Group Involvement and the Spiral of Silence: Using Agent-Based Modeling to Understand Opinion Expression” and hopefully will sent out for potential publication soon.