The Lasting Effect of Civic Talk on Civic Participation: Evidence from a Panel Study

Extant research shows that individuals who discuss politics and current events with their peers also participate more actively in civil society. However, this correlation is not sufficient evidence of causation due to a number of analytical biases. To address this problem, data were collected through a panel study conducted on students at a large public university in the Midwestern United States. These data show that discussing politics and current events caused these students to participate in civic activities during their first year of college. A follow-up study conducted on the same population during their fourth year of college shows that the positive effect of civic talk on civic participation still exists despite the passage of three years. Further analysis shows that the boost in civic participation initially after engaging in civic talk is the mechanism by which the effect of civic talk lasts into the future. These findings illustrate the need to account for both individual- and social-level antecedents of civic participation when studying participatory democracy

The Political Discussion Networks of Immigrants and Native Born Voters

Despite that fact that political discussion has become a more common topic of research in political science, and despite the fact that immigrants have begun to comprise a larger portion of the United States population, the content and effect of immigrant political discussion networks have not yet been examined. In this paper we examine whether engaging in political discussion is a means by which to encourage immigrants to participate in political activities. Our evidence shows that while immigrants are as likely as native born citizens to engage in political discussions, immigrants are less likely to share politically-relevant information during such conversations. Further analysis shows that immigrants are less likely to exchange information because they have weaker political predispositions than native born citizens. As a consequence, the relationship between political talk and political participation is not statistically significant for immigrants, suggesting that political discussion is not a sufficient means by which to encourage foreign born citizens to participate in civil society

Once again, accusations of Satanism and sex abuse loom large in American politics

ight wing politicians and media figures have been increasingly expressing concerns about the “grooming” of children into sexualized lifestyles and satanic activity in America. Joseph E. Uscinski and Casey Klofstad write that such concerns are a repeat of the “Satanic panic” of the 1980s and 90s. And while there is no evidence to support the concerns of conservative figures, through a new national survey, they find that over a quarter of Americans share these fears. They also find that, on some debunked claims, Democrats are just as likely to be believers as Republicans

All in the family: partisan disagreement and electoral mobilization in intimate networks—a spillover experiment

We advance the debate about the impact of political disagreement in social networks on electoral participation by addressing issues of causal inference common in network studies, focusing on voters' most important context of interpersonal influence: the household. We leverage a randomly assigned spillover experiment conducted in the United Kingdom, combined with a detailed database of pretreatment party preferences and public turnout records, to identify social influence within heterogeneous and homogeneous partisan households. Our results show that intrahousehold mobilization effects are larger as a result of campaign contact in heterogeneous than in homogeneous partisan households, and larger still when the partisan intensity of the message is exogenously increased, suggesting discussion rather than behavioral contagion as a mechanism. Our results qualify findings from influential observational studies and suggest that within intimate social networks, negative correlations between political heterogeneity and electoral participation are unlikely to result from political disagreement

Introduction Resources, Engagement, and Recruitment

How do we govern ourselves? Why do some people have more say over what the government does than others? While these might seem like complex questions, in many ways it is a simple process. A representative democracy can be divided into three parts: the people, elected officials and government institutions, and policy outcomes (Figure 1.1). The arrows in Figure 1.1 symbolize how these three parts are interconnected. Starting from the left, the first arrow symbolizes the ability of citizens in a free society to articulate their preferences to the government. The second arrow symbolizes the influence that elected officials an

The Internet Generation: Engaged Citizens or Political Dropouts by Henry Milner

Klofstad reviews The Internet Generation: Engaged Citizens or Political Dropouts by Henry Milner

Talk Leads to Recruitment How Discussions about Politics and Current Events Increase Civic Participation

There is a positive relationship between how much we talk about politics and current events and how much we participate in civic activities. However, analytical biases make it difficult to accurately estimate the causal influence of talk on individual behavior. Moreover, existing data sources do not include information on the mechanisms that might explain how individuals translate talk into action. These problems are addressed with new data that were collected through a natural experiment. The results show that civic discussions promote civic participation largely because during such discussions we are recruited to become involved

Looks and Sounds Like a Winner: Perceptions of Competence in Candidates’ Faces and Voices Influences Vote Choice

Voters are more likely to support candidates whose faces and voices are perceived as competent. However, what is the simultaneous influence of these two characteristics? Here this question is examined with an observational study and an experiment. In the observational study, subjects rated the facial competence of Members of the U.S. House of Representatives. The most and least competent faces identified were paired with recordings of competent (i.e., lower pitched) and incompetent (i.e., higher pitched) voices to create simulated candidates. For the experiment, a separate set of subjects voted between randomly generated pairs of these simulated candidates. The results show that candidates with competent faces or competent voices won more votes, but the influence of facial competence was nearly three times that of vocal competence