TY - JOUR
T1 - Will political disagreement silence political expression? The role of information repertoire filtration and discussion network heterogeneity
AU - Zhang, Xinzhi
N1 - Funding Information:
This work is supported by the General Research Fund (GRF) by the Research Grants Council (RGC) in the Hong Kong SAR (project no.: 12609319).
Publisher copyright:
© The Author(s) 2023. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of International Communication Association. All rights reserved.
PY - 2023/4
Y1 - 2023/4
N2 - The present research aims to extend the literature on the effects of interpersonal political disagreement on political expression on social media. It investigates how disagreement-motivated information repertoire filtration and discussion network heterogeneity play a role in the disagreement–expression nexus. A two-wave online panel survey (n = 791) implemented in Hong Kong finds that encountering disagreement during political conversations is associated with filtering the information repertoire. While information repertoire filtration itself may not lead to political expression, political disagreement influenced political expression via information repertoire filtration, and this effect was stronger when network heterogeneity was low. The result indicates that politically motivated selectivity makes already-homogeneous online networks even more fragmented. The present study enriches the literature regarding how digitally mediated disconnectivity creates a personalized, homogeneous private sphere during interpersonal political communication, which may fail to nurture an open and inclusive society.
AB - The present research aims to extend the literature on the effects of interpersonal political disagreement on political expression on social media. It investigates how disagreement-motivated information repertoire filtration and discussion network heterogeneity play a role in the disagreement–expression nexus. A two-wave online panel survey (n = 791) implemented in Hong Kong finds that encountering disagreement during political conversations is associated with filtering the information repertoire. While information repertoire filtration itself may not lead to political expression, political disagreement influenced political expression via information repertoire filtration, and this effect was stronger when network heterogeneity was low. The result indicates that politically motivated selectivity makes already-homogeneous online networks even more fragmented. The present study enriches the literature regarding how digitally mediated disconnectivity creates a personalized, homogeneous private sphere during interpersonal political communication, which may fail to nurture an open and inclusive society.
KW - digitally mediated disconnectivity
KW - information repertoire filtration
KW - network heterogeneity
KW - political disagreement
KW - political expression
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85160436946&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1093/hcr/hqad009
DO - 10.1093/hcr/hqad009
M3 - Journal article
SN - 0360-3989
VL - 49
SP - 139
EP - 148
JO - Human Communication Research
JF - Human Communication Research
IS - 2
ER -