The Impact of Perceived Opinion Climates on Online Partipation

The next session at ECREA 2022 is on online deliberation, and begins with Dennis Frieß. He notes that participation in online discussion is now a popular form of online engagement, and normatively it is important that such discussions are pluralistic and inclusive – but in reality they are often dominated by a handful of participants. The question therefore is who speaks out in such online environments. (This also links to Spiral of Silence theory, of course.)

Such participation is thus affected by the perceived climate of opinion within society overall, and the opinion climate in a specific communicative situation. It will also be related to various personality traits, including a high need for cognition, civic orientation to conflict (that is, tolerance towards other opinions), and various forms of perceived internal self-efficacy, external efficacy of the political system, and efficacy of online discussions. These various climate of opinion and personality trait factors may interact in various ways, of course.

The present study investigated this through a three-wave representative panel survey in Germany, and tested against attitudes towards plastic packaging and the cultivation of genetically modified foods. In the second and third waves participants were exposed to a simulated online discussion platform on these topics, to examine whether this would affect their views. Here they might encounter views that were congruent, balanced, or incongruent with their pre-existing views. Participants could also make further discursive contributions to the platform.

The perceived opinion climate in overall society appeared to have no effects on such contributions, but the perceived climate of opinions in the specific communicative situation appeared to have an effect; participants where more likely to participate in balanced or congruent discussions. These effects were not linear, however: people didn’t participate more if they felt more congruence with the existing discussion; they only avoided participation in incongruent discussions. Further, personality traits appeared not to interact at all with climate perceptions.