Robert Huckfeldt

The Social Calculus of Voting: Interpersonal, Media, and Organizational Influences on Presidential Choices

Voting choices are a product of both personal attitudes and social contexts, of a personal and a social calculus. Research has illuminated the personal calculus of voting, but the social calculus has received little attention since the 1940s. This study expands our understanding of the social influences on individual choice by examining the relationship of partisan biases in media, organizational, and interpersonal intermediaries to the voting choices of Americans. Its results show that the traditional sources of social influence still dominate: Interpersonal discussion outweighs the media in affecting the vote. Media effects appear to be the product of newspaper editorial pages rather than television or newspaper reporting, which contain so little perceptible bias that they often are misperceived as hostile. Parties and secondary organizations also are influential, but only for less interested voters—who are more affected by social contexts in general. Overall, this study demonstrates that democratic citizens are embedded in social contexts that join with personal traits in shaping their voting decisions.

Political Participation and the Neighborhood Social Context

This study combines sample survey data with aggregate census tract data to show that the neighborhood social context has an important effect upon the extent of individual political activity and the degree to which participation is structured by individual status. Higher status contexts often encourage participation among higher status individuals at the same time that they discourage participation among lower status individuals. As a result, political activity is more highly structured by individual status in higher status contexts than in lower status contexts. The effect of the social context seems most pronounced upon political activities which require social interaction, and alternative explanations based upon individual attributes do not satisfactorily account for the social contexts effect.

The Social Communication of Political Expertise

citizens is called into question. This article focuses on (1) the criteria that people employ in making judgments with respect to the political competence of other individuals, (2) the consequences of these judgments for the pattern and frequency of political communication, and (3) the implications for the effectiveness of collective deliberation among citizens. The database is taken from a study of political communication in the 1996 election, built on interviews with registered voters and their discussants in the Indianapolis and St. Louis metropolitan areas. he ability of citizens to identify political expertise and knowledge among others lies near the core of the political communication process at both individual and collective levels. If one individual recognizes the presence (or absence) of expertise among other citizens, the potential is created for the enhancement of political capacity within the electorate. The whole might indeed become greater than the sum of its parts, and social communication would provide one element of a solution to the public opinion paradox-individual citizens who appear woefully uninformed compared to an aggregate electorate that behaves in a predictable and sensible manner (Converse 1964; Page and Shapiro 1992; Sniderman, Brody, and Tetlock 1991). Indeed, to the extent that one citizen obtains political information and guidance from other citizens who are relatively more knowledgeable and informed, an asymmetrical process of social communication creates a multiplier effect on the distribution of expertise within the electorate. Those who employ socially communicated expertise may or may not become more politically expert themselves. The important point is that they might act on the basis of shared expertise obtained through countless social exchanges (see Katz 1957). In short, social communication creates the potential for modest amounts of political expertise to go a long way in enhancing the performance of democratic politics. But are people able to render valid judgments regarding the expertise of others? Do they discriminate among associates based on individual levels of expertise? Or is the social communication of political expertise swamped by other considerations, most particularly by the presence or absence of shared political perspectives between individuals? What are the implications for political deliberation and for the enhancement of political capacity on the part of individuals and electorates? This article focuses on (1) the criteria that people employ in making judgments with respect to the political competence of other individuals, (2) the consequences of these judgments for the frequency of political discussion with particular individuals, and (3) the resulting implications for the

The Dynamics of Collective Deliberation in the 1996 Election: Campaign Effects on Accessibility, Certainty, and Accuracy

We examine the effectiveness of political communication and deliberation among citizens during a presidential election campaign. In order for communication to be effective, messages conveyed through social interaction must be unambiguous, and the recipient must readily, confidently, and accurately perceive the intent of the sender. We address a number of factors that may influence communication effectiveness: the accessibility and extremity of political preferences, the distribution of preferences in the surrounding environment, disagreement between the senders and receivers of political messages, and the dynamic of the election campaign. The analysis is based on a study of the 1996 campaign, which interviewed citizens and discussion partners between March 1996 and January 1997. The citizens are a random sample of registered voters in the Indianapolis and St. Louis areas, and these registered voters identified the discussion partners as people with whom they discuss either “government, elections, and politics” or “important matters.”

A Test of Media-Centered Agenda Setting: Newspaper Content and Public Interests in a Presidential Election

The conventional wisdom in political communications research is that the media play a dominant role in defining the agenda of elections. In Bernard Cohens words, the media do not tell us what to think, but they tell us what to think about. The present article challenges this conclusion. We present data on media coverage of the 1992 presidential election from the first nationally representative sample of American newspapers and compare these to the issue interests of the American public. We conclude that past claims that the media control the agenda-setting process have been overstated. Candidates messages are well represented in press coverage of the campaign, and coverage is even independent of a newspapers editorial endorsement. We argue that agenda setting is a transaction process in which elites, the media, and the public converge to a common set of salient issues that define a campaign.

Moths, Flames, and Political Engagement: Managing Disagreement within Communication Networks

Some people are located, either by intent or by accident, within closed social cells of politically like-minded associates. Others find themselves in politically diverse settings where participants deftly avoid political discussion in an effort at keeping the peace. Still others, in similarly diverse settings, resemble the moth and the flame—incapable of resisting the temptation to address politics, even when political disagreement is the result. We address the factors giving rise to these circumstances based on the 1996 Indianapolis-St. Louis Study. Our central argument is that political discussion stimulates argumentation, while argumentation impedes discussion, and the combined dynamic helps to explain patterns of persistent disagreement in democratic politics.

Urban contexts, spatially dispersed networks, and the diffusion of political information

Abstract This paper examines the spatial and temporal diffusion of political information within urban areas. We construct a multi-level analysis of information and communication, dependent on time, that is based on interviews with residents of the Indianapolis and St Louis metropolitan areas during the 1996 presidential election campaign. Moreover, based on a social network name generator, interviews were also conducted with discussants of the main respondents to the survey. Both sets of interviews are spread over a period of ten months, and we are able to locate the main respondents and their discussants within the urban neighborhoods where they reside. Hence, both the individual respondents and their discussants are located in time and space. Levels of aggregation are both dynamic and spatial, based on individuals who are located within residential neighborhoods and networks of social and political communication. We draw three main conclusions. First, not all networks are spatially dispersed, but some are, and the factors that give rise to spatial dispersion are directly related to an individual’s position in social structure. Second, spatially dispersed networks produce a number of important consequences, but none is more important than decreasing the density of the respondents’ communication networks. Finally, spatially dispersed networks are not necessarily politically diverse, but they are more likely to connect individuals who reside in socially and politically divergent settings.

Political Loyalties and Social Class Ties: The Mechanisms of Contextual Influence*

The social context is considered as a connecting tie between individuals and the political loyalties that predominate within social classes. Two different explanations for contextual influence are examined: (1) the social context as a source of group loyalty and self-identification and (2) the social context as a factor that structures social interaction. Results indicate that the social context is especially important in relationship to the social class content of friendship groups, but the political influence of context persists even when subjective class membership and friendship group composition are taken into account. Finally, the political impact of the social context appears to vary, both in magnitude and direction, as a function of class loyalties, friendship group composition, and the larger political environment.

Ambiguity, Distorted Messages, and Nested Environmental Effects on Political Communication

In this paper we are concerned with the clarity of political signals transmitted through political conversation and the accuracy with which those signals are perceived. The social communication of political information is subject to distortion effects that arise due to skewed expectations on the part of the receiver and ambiguous representations on the part of the sender. Indeed, communication that occurs between two citizens might be distorted either by characteristics of the individuals who are transmitting and receiving messages, or by characteristics of the setting in which the information is being transmitted. We argue that the power of majority opinion is magnified by the inferential devices that citizens use to reach judgments in the face of ambiguous political messages and hence the use of a personal experience heuristic gives rise to a political bias that favors the continued dominance of majority opinion.

Examining the Possible Corrosive Impact of Negative Advertising on Citizens' Attitudes toward Politics

Negative campaign advertisements have been depicted by many observers as a scourge on American politics. One facet of the case against negative ads—that such commercials discourage voter turnout—has been studied extensively in the past decade. In contrast, a second criticism—that negative advertisements produce corrosive effects on mass attitudes—has received less attention. This is unfortunate as it would be highly consequential for American political behavior if exposure to negative campaign ads breeds widespread cynicism and antipathy toward politics, disapproval of political institutions and elected officials, and a decline in political efficacy. We examine these charges in the context of the 2002 U.S. midterm elections. Merging data on political ads from the 2002 rendition of the Wisconsin Advertising (WiscAds) Project with individual-level data collected via the 2002 Exercising Citizenship in American Democracy Survey, we devise a thorough and multifaceted test of the case against negative advertising. Our analyses do not provide empirical support for the charges levied against negative campaign ads.