The Role of Interpersonal Political Communication in the Process of Media Effects

• Applicant: Dr. Nicole Podschuweit
• Subject Area: Communication Sciences
• Term: from 2014 to 2018
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 256231860

The groundbreaking People's Choice Study (Lazarsfeld, Berelson, and Gaudet, 1944) led to the conclusions that (1) interpersonal communication is used more intensively for political information than mass communication and (2) that its effects on voting decisions are stronger. In the meantime mass media have replaced political conversation as citizens' most important political information source. However, the stronger persuasive power is still attributed to interpersonal communication. Though, interpersonal communication would only hinder persuasion effects of media coverage if interpersonal and mass communication usually diverged. Vice versa, it can be assumed, that interpersonal communication enforces persuasion effects of mass media, if interpersonal and mass communication were usually consonant. The following research project addresses this issue. The project aims for (1) developing a theoretical approach that explains effects of interpersonal political communication on media effects and (2) for empirically answering the question if interpersonal communication enforces or hinders effects of media coverage on political opinions, attitudes and behavior. Enforcing effects are due to a high accordance of used and referred media contents as well as to affirmative responses to media references by conversational partners. Hindering effects are due to a high dissonance of used and referred media contents or to dismissive responses to media references by others. To what extent media contents are modified within political conversations depends on their functions. If someone aims to brief a conversational partner on facts, for example, he or she will presumably modify the referred media contents less than someone who aims to convince a conversational partner of a certain view on an issue and therefore exploits only particular arguments of the media coverage. In turn, the functions of media contents depend on characteristics of media coverage, characteristics of the conversational partners, and of the group as a whole. The research project will be empirically realized by the combination of a non-participant and hidden field observation of political talk, a following survey of the observed conversational partners and a content analysis of the media contents they used in the run-up to the conversation.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants