From the Secret Ballot to the Public Vote: Examining Voters’ Experience of Political Discussion in Vote-by-Mail Elections

Considerable research on political discussion has focused on identifying its antecedents and outcomes. The rise of voting by mail provides an opportunity to examine the subject in a new context—one in which voters discuss their views and electoral choices with others while filling out their ballots. We explored the possibility that conventional predictors of political engagement would predict who partakes in such discussions. Past research also suggested that those voters most likely to report changing their minds as a result of discussion would perceive their discussants as holding contrary views and higher levels of political sophistication. We further hypothesized that less politically engaged voters would seek out discussants they rated as more knowledgeable than themselves, whereas the more politically sophisticated voters would seek out like-minded discussants. Past research also suggested that the least partisan voters would be those most likely to report disagreement in their absentee discussions. To test these hypotheses, we analyzed telephone survey data from two elections conducted in Washington State. Results showed that the factors that predict traditional forms of political participation and discussion do not explain who engages in discussion during vote-by-mail elections. We also found that independent voters were more likely to talk with ideologically divergent discussants, whereas less knowledgeable citizens sought discussants who knew more about politics than they did. Many voters reported that these discussions shaped their vote choices, with the highest rates of perceived influence coming from those who viewed their discussion partners as more knowledgeable and more ideologically divergent.     

My Journey to Artistic Peak

正I was born in a doctor’s family in a village in Heze,Shandong Province.Since the ancient times,Heze has been home to many painters and literature masters due to the influence of Confucianism.My grandfather and greatgrandfather were both good at calligraphy,not least to mention their medical skills.Even by now,senior people in our village still praise them for it.Both of them had deceased before I was born.     

论公共视阈下的思想政治工作

文章从“公共视阈”这一新的视角来考察思想政治工作,提出思想政治工作本质上是一种公共行为;生活世界是思想政治工作的唯一源泉;互为主体是思想政治工作的核心特征;对话是实现思想政治工作的重要途径。     

Making the Most of the First‐Offer Advantage: Pre‐Offer Conversation and Negotiation Outcomes

Why do some negotiators benefit from making the first offer during negotiations while others do not? This study explores the contents of conversations that take place before negotiators make their first offers in order to learn more about the differences between ultimately successful first offers that benefit from anchoring effects and ultimately unsuccessful ones in which negotiators apparently derive no benefit from making the first offer. In‐depth qualitative analyses of the conversations that role players engaged in prior to their first offers were conducted in simulated negotiation exercises. Their analysis identified five different conversational tactics that negotiators employed in one‐on‐one negotiations to gain power in the negotiation, or what they call here “power conversation tactics.” Their findings suggest that the negotiation outcome (i.e., net value) was related to how the negotiators employed and combined these tactics during the pre‐offer conversation. Based on these findings, they conceptualized four types of power‐gaining/power‐losing pre‐offer conversation scenarios and explored the link between negotiation outcomes and each of these types of pre‐offer conversations. This study further develops the literature on power dynamics and conversations in negotiations as well as the literature on the anchoring effect of a first offer.     

哈贝马斯"理想的话语环境"评析

现代社会的人际关系,在金钱和权力两只"看不见的手"的控制之下日趋疏远、冷漠、紧张.褪去单一、冰冷的算计理性,换一种热情、丰富的伦理精神去对待同样作为主体的"他者",营造一个"理想的话语环境",通过商谈、沟通,求得主体问的和谐、共生,是哈贝马斯商谈伦理的基本理念.     

Overcoming Barriers to Mediation in Intake Calls to Services: Research‐Based Strategies for Mediators

In this article, I investigate intake calls to community mediation services in which disputing neighbors ask mediators to help them resolve their conflicts. These calls are the first point of contact between potential clients and mediators. To maintain their organization's funding, mediators must convert a sufficient number of these callers into clients of the service. Intake calls, however, are not treated as part of the mediation process proper, and mediators are not trained to handle them. I audio‐recorded and transcribed approximately two hundred calls to mediation services based in the United Kingdom and then analyzed them using conversation analysis. I identified several factors routinely present in these intake calls that seemed to prevent disputants from ultimately engaging in the mediation process; I characterize these factors as “barriers to mediation.” These barriers include callers' lack of knowledge about mediation as a service and mediators' often ineffective methods of explaining the process. In particular, callers rejected mediation services when the mediators explained that mediation is an impartial service. Some of the mediators, however, managed intake calls differently, describing it more effectively, expressing empathy or affiliation with callers, and thus were able to overcome many of the callers' most common concerns about the process. In this article, I also discuss this study's implications for understanding the institution of mediation and for training mediators.     

The Place of Sociology in the Study of Political Communication

Robert K. Merton's Mass Persuasion (1946) and related 1940s communications research represent a body of work that repays those who read it carefully today. Merton charted a world that became our own, one marked by the interplay of mass media, celebrity, and “public images” that traversed cultures of entertainment, moral life, and politics. In this essay, I read Mass Persuasion through a later Merton article discussing the role of reading and rereading classic texts in the human sciences. After extending Merton's arguments about the functions of predecessor texts, I amplify aspects of Mass Persuasion that remain instructive within political communication and related fields today.     

Predicting Deliberative Conversation: The Impact of Discussion Networks,Media Use,and Political Cognitions

This study explores the meaning and origins of deliberative political conversation, characterized by an openness to political conflict, the absence of conversational dominance, clear and reasonable argument, and mutual comprehension. Adapting McLeod, Scheufele, and Moy's (1999) McLeod, J. M., Scheufele, D. A. and Moy, P. 1999. Community, communication, and participation: The role of mass media and interpersonal discussion in local political participation. Political Communication, 16: 315–336. [CSA][CROSSREF][Taylor & Francis Online], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar] model of democratic engagement, we posit a series of relationships among discussion networks, media use, political cognition, and public participation. Using two divergent samples—one consisting of 149 adult literacy students and another comprising 130 public forum participants—we test the model's utility as a predictor of deliberative conversation. Structural equation modeling indicates that network characteristics had mixed effects. Print media use and interpersonal discussion tended to enhance deliberative conversation, and television news viewing hindered both the reasonableness of one's arguments and the comprehension of others' views. Taken together, these results suggest that the deliberative quality of public talk has a complex relationship with common predictors of other political communication behavior.     

言语交际中判断性“吧”问句的话语功能

判断性"吧"问句实质上是判断和提问这两种言语行为在特定话语位置要求下的融合,它的话语功能可以概括为两点:第一,指明某一事实;第二,引发以这一事实为话题的一段相对独立的会话.