Normative and Informational Influences in Online Political Discussions

How do the statements made by people in online political discussions affect other people's willingness to express their own opinions, or argue for them? And how does group interaction ultimately shape individual opinions? We examine carefully whether and how patterns of group discussion shape (a) individuals' expressive behavior within those discussions and (b) changes in personal opinions. This research proposes that the argumentative "climate" of group opinion indeed affects postdiscussion opinions, and that a primary mechanism responsible for this effect is an intermediate influence on individual participants' own expressions during the online discussions. We find support for these propositions in data from a series of 60 online group discussions, involving ordinary citizens, about the tax plans offered by rival U.S. presidential candidates George W. Bush and Al Gore in 2000.  Normative and Informational Influences in Online Political Discussions Vincent Price, Lilach Nir, & Joseph N. Cappella 1 Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA 19104 6220 2 Department of Communication and the Department of Political Science, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Jerusalem, Israel, 91905 How do the statements made by people in online political discussions affect other peo ple’s willingness to express their own opinions, or argue for them? And how does group interaction ultimately shape individual opinions? We examine carefully whether and how patterns of group discussion shape (a) individuals’ expressive behavior within those discussions and (b) changes in personal opinions. This research proposes that the argu mentative ‘‘climate’’ of group opinion indeed affects postdiscussion opinions, and that a primary mechanism responsible for this effect is an intermediate influence on individ ual participants’ own expressions during the online discussions. We find support for these propositions in data from a series of 60 online group discussions, involving ordi nary citizens, about the tax plans offered by rival U.S. presidential candidates George W. Bush and Al Gore in 2000. Investigations of social influence and public opinion go hand in hand. Opinions may exist as psychological phenomena in individual minds, but the processes that shape these opinions—at least, public opinions—are inherently social–psychological. The notion that group interaction can influence individual opinions is widely accepted. Indeed, according to many participatory theories of democracy, lively exchanges among citizens are deemed central to the formation of sound or ‘‘true’’ public opinion, which is forged in the fire of group discussion. This truly public opinion is commonly contrasted with mass or ‘‘pseudo’’-opinion developed in isolation by disconnected media consumers responding individually to the news (e.g., Blumer, 1946; Fishkin, 1991, 1995; Graber, 1982). Although discussion is celebrated in democratic theory as a critical element of proper opinion formation, it also brings with it a variety of potential downsides. These include a possible tyranny of the majority (e.g., de Tocqueville, 1835/1945), distorted expression of opinions resulting from fear of social isolation (Noelle-Neumann, 1984), or shifts of opinion to more extreme positions than most individuals might actually prefer (see, e.g., Janis, 1972, on dangerous forms of ‘‘group think,’’ or more recently Sunstein, 2001, on the polarizing effects of ‘‘enclave’’ communication on the Web). The problem of how to foster productive social interaction while avoiding potential dysfunctions of group influence has occupied a large place in normative writings on public opinion and democracy. Modern democracies guarantee freedom of association and public expression; they also employ systems and procedures aimed at protecting collective decision making from untoward social pressure, including not only the use of secret ballots in elections but also more generally republican legislatures and executive and judicial offices that by design are insulated from too much democracy, that is, from direct popular control (e.g., Madison, 1788/1966). However, steady advances in popular education and growth of communication media have enlarged expectations of the ordinary citizen and brought calls for more direct, popular participation in government. In particular, dramatic technological changes over the past several decades—and especially the rise of interactive forms of electronic communication enabled by the Internet and World Wide Web—have fueled hopes for new, expansive, and energized forms of ‘‘teledemocracy’’ (e.g., Arterton, 1987). Online political discussion is thus of considerable interest to students of public opinion and political communication. It has been credited with creating vital spaces for public conversation, opening in a new ‘‘public sphere’’ of the sort envisioned by Habermas (1962/1989), (see, e.g., Papacharissi, 2004; Poor, 2005; Poster, 1997). Though still not a routine experience for citizens, it has been steadily growing in prevalence and likely import for popular opinion formation. Recent surveys indicate that close to a third of Internet users regularly engage with groups online, with nearly 10% reporting that they joined online discussions about the 2004 presidential election (Pew Research Center, 2005). Online political discussion offers new and potentially quite powerful modes of scientific observation as well. Despite continuous methodological improvements, the mainstay of public opinion research, the general-population survey, has always consisted of randomly sampled, one-on-one, respondent-to-interviewer ‘‘conversations’’ aimed at extracting precoded responses or short verbal answers to structured questionnaires. Web-based technologies, however, may now permit randomly constituted respondent-withrespondent group conversations. The conceptual fit between such conversations and the phenomenon of public opinion, itself grounded in popular discussion, renders it quite appealing. Developments in electronic data storage and retrieval, and telecommunication networks of increasing channel capacity, now make possible an integration of general-population survey techniques and more qualitative research approaches, such as focus group methods, that have become popular in large part owing to the sense that they offer a more refined understanding of popular thought than might be gained from structured surveys (e.g., Morgan, 1997). Perhaps most important, the study of online discussion opens new theoretical avenues for public opinion research. Understanding online citizen interactions calls for bringing together several strands of theory in social psychology, smallgroup decision making, and political communication that have heretofore been disconnected (Price, 1992). Social influence in opinion formation Certainly, the most prominent theory of social influence in public opinion research has been Noelle-Neumann’s (1984) spiral of silence. Citing early research on group conformity processes, such as that of Asch (1956), Noelle-Neumann argued that media depictions of the normative ‘‘climate of opinion’’ have a silencing effect on those who hold minority viewpoints. The reticence of minorities to express their views contributes to the appearance of a solid majority opinion, which, in turn, produces a spiral of silence that successively emboldens the majority and enervates the minority. Meta-analytic evaluations of research on the hypothetical silencing effect of the mediated climate of opinion suggest that such effects, if they indeed exist, appear to be fairly small (Glynn, Hayes, & Shanahan, 1997); nevertheless, the theory has garnered considerable empirical attention and remains influential. In experimental social psychology, group influence has been the object of systematic study for over half a century. Although no single theoretical framework is available for explaining how social influence operates, some important organizing principles and concepts have emerged over time (Price & Oshagan, 1995). One of the most useful heuristics, proposed by Deutsch and Gerard (1955), distinguishes two broad forms of social influence (see also Kaplan & Miller, 1987). Normative social influence occurs when someone is motivated by a desire to conform to the positive expectations of other people. Motivations for meeting these normative expectations lie in the various rewards that might accrue (self-esteem or feelings of social approval) or possible negative sanctions that might result from deviant behavior (alienation, excommunication, or social isolation). Normative social influence is clearly the basis of Noelle-Neumann’s (1984) theorizing about minorities silencing themselves in the face of majority pressure. Informational social influence, in contrast, occurs when people accept the words, opinions, and deeds of others as valid evidence about reality. People learn about the world, in part, from discovering that they disagree (e.g., Burnstein & Vinokur, 1977; Vinokur & Burnstein, 1974). They are influenced by groups not only because of group norms, but also because of arguments that arise in groups, through a comparison of their views to those expressed by others (see also the distinction between normative and comparative functions of reference groups in sociology, e.g., Hyman & Singer, 1968; Kelley, 1952). Although the distinction between informational and normative influence has proven useful and historically important in small-group research, it can become cloudy in many instances. This is so because normative pressure and persuasive information operate in similar ways within groups, and often with similar effects. For example, the tendency of groups to polarize—that is, to move following discussion to extreme positions in the direction that group members were initially inc