I have been thinking a lot about some of the ideas that participant's presented at the Breaux Symposium on Friday. I know I saw many of you there, so I hope we can start a discussion on our blog about some of the ideas and perspectives we observed.
I was particularly interested in Susan Herbst's suggestion that we need to think about public opinion as "talk embedded in community." This is a particularly interesting suggestion in light of our discussions from last week about whether publicly elected officials should pay attention to polling results and our readings about the limitations of survey research. If Herbst’s conception of Public Opinion is to be examined, many commonplace methods of measuring this construct fall short. To qualify or measure any kind of “talk embedded in community,” we would have to think about where “talk” or “discussion” takes place in our society today. One obvious answer is in classrooms such as ours, but, of course, this is only a very small cross section of talk in one particular academic community.
More and more, we see Americans engaging in communication over the internet. In her talk, Herbst also mentioned that she believes that the internet may hold the same level of import for Public Opinion today as the salon did in 18th century France. Is she idealizing the role of the internet for democracy? How is discourse on the internet different from talking in a coffee shop or other public space? Furthermore, if her conception is correct, how can we supplement polling results to better reflect public opinion as “talk embedded in community”?
An interesting recent article that critiques one kind of internet discourse is Erikson, E. (2008) ‘Hilary is my Friend’: MySpace and Political Fandom. Rocky Mountain Communication Review, 4, 2, 3-16. Erikson explains that the dynamics of social networking sites encourage political activities as affective allegiances and actually discourage dissent. Of course, social networking sites are only one avenue for interaction online. We can think about a number of activities that people engage in online which come closer to “talking” about issues than just posting on a candidate’s social networking profile.
Do others have lingering thoughts or comments from the Symposium (related or unrelated to this post)?
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Portia, I love that you started the Breaux conversation with Herbst's paper because it was also one of my favorites. But full disclosure here, the first time I read it- I was not impressed. However, the more times I read it, the more I learn from it, and the more I enjoy it.
ReplyDeleteI think you do a good job of summarizing Herbst's argument in that she thinks that we need a different measure of public opinion, she calls our current technique of polling as "counting." Why do we feel the need to put conversation in number format?
As much as I enjoy that point, her argument that the Internet should inspire a new method of measurement troubles me. The reason is that what we know about political talk on the Internet shows us that if we only look at public opinion in this fashion, we will not be able to measure the "moderate" view. Kirby and I found that while the Internet with its polarized news sources encourages conversation among those who are highly politically engaged and knowledgeable (or aware if you are Zaller). Moderates are lost in the conversation. They do not know where to go for news and more importantly for Herbst, they avoid engaging in political conversation on traditionally political blogs and sites.
True deliberation or conversation occurs on non-political sites sporadically. For example, on band websites when one members brings up a political issue and engages others, who have different political views, to discuss the issue.
And while I agree with Herbst that it is important to look at this type of political conversation, the real problem is where do I find it so I can examine it?
I was also very intrigued by Susan Herbst's remarks. Engagement on the net is rapidly evolving and new analytical software to measure conversation in this space is emerging. This is a fun graphic that you might enjoy: http://theconversationprism.com/share/
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