Hoon Lee

Talking Politics and Engaging Politics: An Examination of the Interactive Relationships Between Structural Features of Political Talk and Discussion Engagement

This study takes a process-oriented approach to understand the current status of political discussion research and identifies discussion engagement—discussion attention and integrative discussion—as an unexplored but important facet of political discussion. As a block, these two variables of discussion engagement independently accounted for significant variance in two criterion variables of political engagement, political knowledge and political participation, after controlling for not only a host of demographic, attitudinal, and media use variables but also three most researched structural features of political discussion—network size, discussion frequency, and network heterogeneity. In addition, the study analyzes the interplay between various attributes of political discussion in an attempt to untangle the dynamic relationships among features of political discussion in politics. Findings suggest that whether network size and heterogeneity mobilize or demobilize citizens may depend on whether they are attentively and frequently discussing political issues with others.

Hearing the Other Side Revisited: The Joint Workings of Cross-Cutting Discussion and Strong Tie Homogeneity in Facilitating Deliberative and Participatory Democracy:

This study seeks to shed light on the highly publicized democracy dilemma signaling that encountering disagreement tends to promote deliberative democracy, while the same experience can dampen a citizen’s motivation to participate. By assessing the processes wherein the joint workings of cross-cutting discussion and strong tie homogeneity are simultaneously associated with the outcomes of deliberative and participatory democracy, we provide a number of key insights into the puzzling quandary. First, our results indicate that cross-cutting discussion and strong tie homogeneity interact with each other to predict increased political participation. Second, the relationship between cross-cutting discussion and preference for open dialogue is stronger for those who belong to a congenial primary network. Third, efficacious individuals seem more capable of translating the benefits of an ongoing deliberative orientation into meaningful political behavior. The current research suggests that deliberation and participation can go hand in hand under a particular network context.

Communication Mediation Model of Late-Night Comedy: The Mediating Role of Structural Features of Interpersonal Talk Between Comedy Viewing and Political Participation

This study advances a communication mediation model of late-night comedy in an effort to understand the process wherein consuming satirical humor indirectly spurs political participation via the conduit of interpersonal talk about politics. The theoretical model was tested utilizing two different research designs. The findings from the experiment and the survey provide considerable support for the model, demonstrating that various structural features of interpersonal talk (e.g., discussion frequency, online interaction, and network size) positively mediate the association between late-night comedy viewing and political participation. Meanwhile, the assessments concerning the mediating role of heterogeneous discussion illustrate that late-night comedy can draw a higher level of political involvement from those who are highly educated. The present study urges the field to extend the scope of the communication mediation model by incorporating a greater number of media channels and more diverse aspects of interpersonal talk.

The affect effect of political satire: Sarcastic humor, negative emotions, and political participation

Building on the Orientation-Stimulus-Orientation-Response (O-S-O-R) framework, the current study proposes a mediation model wherein negative emotions serve as a second O. An online experiment using a representative sample demonstrated that consuming sarcastic political humor can indirectly increase the likelihood of political participation by eliciting negative emotions toward a government policy. In addition, we introduced education as a first O, illustrating that the indirect mobilizing effect of the viewing of sarcastic humor through negative emotions is stronger for political sophisticates. The proposed model suggests avenues for exploring the role of emerging media genres that are presumably less enlightening yet are more emotionally provocative.

Mobile communication and political participation in South Korea: Examining the intersections between informational and relational uses

This study aims to extend the literature on mobile communication by demonstrating that multifaceted mobile practices work in coordination with one another to predict enhanced engagement in public life. Using a national survey of adults in South Korea, we show that informational mobile phone use to gather and discuss content about news and public affairs is positively associated with political participation while the corresponding link for relational mobile phone use to enhance strong personal tie relationships being also significant. More importantly, the findings indicate that the two mobile usage patterns interact with each other to explain increased involvement in political activities. However, analysis of the three-way interaction points to a noteworthy caveat, namely that those who are already engaged, by virtue of their perceived capacity to produce desired outcomes in politics (i.e., self-efficacy), are even more likely to obtain motivational benefits from the manifold uses of mobile telephony.