Bridging the Spheres: Political and Personal Conversation in Public and Private Spaces

For some theorists, talk about politics is infrequent, difficult, divisive, and, to be efficacious, must proceed according to special rules in protected spaces. We, however, examined ordinary political conversation in common spaces, asking Americans how freely and how often they talked about 9 political and personal topics at home, work, civic organizations, and elsewhere. Respondents felt free to talk about all topics. Most topics were talked about most frequently at home and at work, suggesting that the electronic cottage is wired to the public sphere. Political conversation in most loci correlated significantly with opinion quality and political participation, indicating that such conversation is a vital component of actual democratic practice, despite the emphasis given to argumentation and formal deliberation by some normative theorists. Disciplines Communication | Social and Behavioral Sciences This journal article is available at ScholarlyCommons: http://repository.upenn.edu/asc_papers/245 Bridging the Spheres: Political and Personal Conversation in Public and Private Spaces By Robert O. Wyatt, Elihu Katz, and Joohan Kim For some theorists, talk about politics is infrequent, difficult, divisive, and, to be efficacious, must proceed according to special rules in protected spaces. We, however, examined ordinary political conversation in common spaces, asking Americans how freely and how often they talked about 9 political and personal topics at home, work, civic organizations, and elsewhere. Respondents felt free to talk about all topics. Most topics were talked about most frequently at home and at work, suggesting that the electronic cottage is wired to the public sphere. Political conversation in most loci correlated significantly with opinion quality and political participation, indicating that such conversation is a vital component of actual democratic practice, despite the emphasis given to argumentation and formal deliberation by some normative theorists. Given the dictum, "Two things I never talk about in public are politics and religion," the troublesome fall in news consumption, a continuing slippage in voter turnout, and the controversy swirling around citizens' distrust of government and the decline of America's "social capital" (Putnam, 1995a, 1995b), 1 there is little wonder that questions abound about how little, how reluctantly, and where, if at all, Americans talk about politics. This debate proceeds, incidentally, despite empirical evidence that civic participation is alive and well (Roper Center for Public Opinion Research, 1996; Pew Research Center for the People & the Press, 1997) and that political conversation is far from a dying art (Wyatt, Katz, & Kim, 1997). Both Roper Center (1996) and Pew Research Center (1997) studies challenge evidence for the civic decline in America proposed by Putnam (1995a, 1995b). __________________________________________________________________________________________ Robert Wyatt (PhD, Northwestern University, 1973) is a professor of journalism at Middle Tennessee State University. Elihu Katz (PhD, Columbia University, 1956) is Trustee professor at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania and a professor emeritus at Hebrew University in Jerusalem. Joohan Kim (PhD, University of Pennsylvania, 1997) is an assistant professor of communication at Yonsei University, Seoul, Korea. Some of the results in this paper were summarized in or developed from Kim's dissertation, which Katz directed. Funding for this study came from Middle Tennessee State University's John Seigenthaler Chair of First Amendment Studies and Office of Communication Research and from the Annenberg School for Communication. Tamar Liebes of Hebrew University conducted focus groups that contributed substantially to the content of the questionnaire. The issue is complicated by the imprecise and shifting nature of the terms used to describe the nature of talk about political matters. We might assume, for example, that talk about politics involves the willingness to argue with a political opponent (who may be a stranger), and that such talk would be impeded by the perception of a hostile opinion climate (e.g., Noelle-Neumann, 1993). Political talk also might mean deliberation or debate according to formal rules in protected spaces such as legislative assemblies or civic organizations (e.g., Schudson, 1997). Or, talk about politics might refer to informal conversation among acquaintances about governmental happenings reported in the news (e.g., Tarde, 1901/1989). Regardless of the democratic benefits of purposeful argumentation with ideological opponents or the merits of structured deliberation in formal assemblies, what we term ordinary political conversation within the context of daily life forms the focus of our attention. For it is in this ordinary conversation about politics which may at times include informal deliberation or spirited argumentation as well as casual discussion-that we, following Tarde, believe democratic culture receives its most concrete realization. In this study, then, we seek to chart empirically how often Americans converse about politics in various common loci, that is, at home, at work, at worship, in organizations, out in commercial spaces, even in e-mail. We seek to define what subject domains characterize political conversation in an era of shifting boundaries, whether such conversation includes crime, national or local government, the economy, education, religion, personal matters, or foreign affairs. Finally, we seek to understand how freely citizens talk about each of these conversational domains. We then employ survey data to map the shifting nature of political conversation from locus to locus and to develop a redefined, empirically based model of conversational democracy. We propose that the conversation model of democracy that we discover and explicate is appropriate for an age in which the natures of politics and public space are being reconstituted through new and ubiquitous media technologies that center in the home. In the process, we modify the important work of a number of prominent normative theorists of the public sphere. Though we acknowledge that normative theorists may justly argue that public life would be greatly improved by more widespread formal deliberation and freer purposeful argumentation, we believe that informal conversation among people who largely agree with each other plays a more vital role in democratic processes than is usually recognized. As empiricists, we seek to describe this role; as students of normative theory, we also suggest that democracy can be enriched if the role of informal political conversation is appreciated and such conversation encouraged along with other forms of political discourse. The Literature on Talk and Politics Continuing his crusade against loose talk about "the public sphere," Michael Schudson (1997) challenges the axiom that "conversation is the soul of democracy." Political conversation, asserts Schudson, is an oxymoron. By conversation, he reminds us, we mean talk for its own sake among intimates, usually social equals, unbridled by an agenda, unrestrained by rules except those of turn taking, civility, and offering pleasure. On the other hand, talk about politics, what we term formal deliberation, is often painful, says Schudson. It implies an agenda, prescribed rules of order to protect weaker members, and purposefulness; it is oriented toward decision making and the writing of laws. It must proceed instrumentally among interlocutors who disagree-searching for solutions and resolutions. 2 Schudson is asking us, in effect, to reopen the question of whether casual conversation or organizational affiliations underwrite democratic governance. Implicitly, he is challenging our readings of Tocqueville (1840/1969), Dewey (1927), and, more recently, Putnam (1995a; 1995b; Putnam, Leonardi, & Nanetti 1993), Barber (1984), and others. For Schudson, one infers, participatory democracy is the product of deliberate talk about public affairs, not the melange of chatter that goes on in coffeehouses and offices, even if talk of politics emerges now and then along with other idle matters. As with all good theory, Schudson's challenge realigns the thought of earlier theorists who, before the challenge, all seemed to belong to one camp. Now, we can see that a spectrum of opinion about talk ranges between two poles-from those who hold that casual conversation and informal association include political topics that breed public opinion to those who hold, with Schudson, that conversation and political talk are different things. With Schudson, other important researchers conclude that politics is divisive and that it is often avoided in casual talk. This is implicit in Noelle-Neumann's (1993) silent minority and in Eliasoph's (1998) ethnography of informal associations, in which even avowedly political groups avoid politics lest they alienate each other or be alienated from the larger society. Postman's (1985) critique of television as unable to sustain a rational argument also shares this view, however implicitly. Barber (1984) is chief spokesperson of the perspective that ordinary conversation and politics are not inimical: At the heart of strong democracy is talk. As we shall see, talk is not mere speech.... Talk remains central to politics, which would ossify completely without its creativity, its variety, its openness and flexibility, its inventiveness, its capacity for discovery, its subtlety and complexity, its eloquence, its potential for empathy and affective expression, and its deeply paradoxical (some would say dialectical) character that displays man's [sic] full nature as a purposive, interdependent, and active being. (pp. 173-174) Habermas (1962/1989) seems somewhere in between. On the one hand, his "public sphere" requires participants to check their status at the door in order to nullify self-interest, ensure equality, and permit rationality to guide the discussion toward an optimal solution for the commonwealth. On the other hand, he points to London coffeehouses and French cafes and salons as the ideal loci for such conversations. As "communicative actions" in the public Schudson (1998, p. 300) acknowledges that political conversation can happen at home, prompted by news, but he seems to think of adversarial conversation when he observes that such talk has "invaded the household~ and bears the "seeds of rights-consciousness.” sphere, maintains Habermas, conversations should be altogether different from "strategic actions" in the political system, such as formal discussion and rule-based, rational debates. Also occupying a middle ground is Simonson (1996) in his analysis of several communication theorists' "dreams of democratic togetherness." For Simonson, political talk takes place variously in various spaces, including "lifestyle enclaves," voluntary associations, and community gathering places. The least amount of important political talk, he argues, takes place in lifestyle enclaves; voluntary associations are the most formal and clearly bounded spaces for significant discussion and community gathering places occupy a middle ground. Aligning themselves with Barber are other philosophers of ordinary political conversation. Here we find writers like Gabriel Tarde (1901/1989), who thought that the informal conversation of cafes and salons mediated between press reports of the political agenda and a considered public opinion, a point reiterated by Herbst (1994). This understanding of political conversation is also consistent with the observations of Tocqueville (1840/1969) and Bryce (1891), those noted 19thcentury students of American democratic life. Smith and Zipp (1983) found that informal personal relationships with party officials promoted frequent political discussions that, in turn, enhanced citizens' political participation. Lazarsfeld's (Katz & Lazarsfeld, 1955) two-step flow implies, too, that conversation about consumer behavior, fashion, movie going, and public affairs are the subjects of everyday talk among members of the public and their opinion leaders. Among contemporaries, Gamson (1992) would take this side, at least in the sense of implying that ordinary people are capable of discussing politics in the same ways that they discuss other things. In his analysis of focus-group interchanges, Gamson finds that his subjects may not readily recall many of the "facts" of political life, but they are perfectly capable of discussing political issues that affect them with reasonable sophistication and civility. In a similar vein, Delli Carpini and Williams (1994, 1996) find that focus-group participants use both informational and fictional television programs as stimuli for talk about politicseven, on occasion, talking back to the screen-a finding that affirms the link between news, informal conversation, and the construction of public opinion. Concerning the freedom with which people speak in ordinary circumstances, Wyatt et al. (Wyatt, 1991; Wyatt, Katz, Levinsohn, & Al-Haj, 1996) measured how free respondents felt to speak up in 10 public and private communication environments in the United States and among Arabs and Jews in Israel. In all three cultures, respondents felt "very free" to speak up in their own home or the homes of intimate associates. However, they felt only "somewhat free" in more inhibiting public locales such as the workplace or meetings of civic organizations. The researchers also found that, in all three cultures, issues of sociability and the fear of harming or offending others proved generally more important in inhibiting conversation than concerns about personal disapproval, marginalization, surveillance, or punishment. Although these findings do not apply exclusively to politics, they suggest that civil conversation is the norm across cultures and that talk, even in public spaces, is not markedly impeded by internal or external restraints. If these studies provide any clue, the more intimate circles should be the loci of the greatest amount of political conversation, and it should be informal in nature. Still, surprisingly little empirical evidence exists about the nature and amount of political conversation and the relation of such conversation to news use, opinion quality, and political participation. This inattention to talk in general, and to political talk in particular, is evidenced in the General Social Survey (1999); only twice in its history stretching back to the early 1970s has the GSS included questions about political talk. Our best continuous source of data about U.S. presidential elections, the National Election Studies (1999), has included talk variables since 1984, but the items have usually been asked on the reinterview after the election, limiting their usefulness. Even these data, however, indicate that political conversation is far from infrequent among ordinary Americans (Wyatt, Katz, & Kim, 1997). The relation between news use and interpersonal communication has been probed by a number of scholars, though Chaffee and Mutz (1988) remind us that the use of noncomparable scales and varying amounts of error may make comparisons difficult. In a reexamination of the two-step flow theory, Robinson (1976) affirmed that, when interpersonal and mass media sources are compared or in conflict, interpersonal sources can be expected to exercise greater influence, though news media may produce stronger gross effects because of wider use. Interpersonal communication has also been found to enhance media agenda-setting under certain conditions (McLeod, Becker, & Byrnes, 1974), though it can also function as a better predictor of issue salience than news use does (Wanta & Wu, 1992). In addition, interpersonal communication seems capable of performing a "bridging function" between respondents' perceptions of problems as personal and as societal issues (Mutz, 1989, May; Weaver, Zhu, & Willnat, 1992). Talk about issues in the news has also been shown to increase markedly respondents' understanding of the news itself (Robinson & Levy, 1986; Robinson & Davis, 1990). Further, controversial issues that prompt wide discussion have been shown to decrease the size of knowledge gaps among populations (Tichenor, Donohue, & alien, 1980). The effect of interpersonal communication on vote choice, particularly during elections, is the focus of other studies in political communication (e.g., Huckfeldt & Sprague, 1995; Lenart, 1994; Mondak, 1995). Mondak (1995), for example, addressed the relation of news use and political talk in Pittsburgh and Cleveland during a Pittsburgh newspaper strike, finding no significant difference in frequency of interpersonal discussion or the perception of discussion quality between the newspaper city and the strike city. He did not, however, attribute great importance to this finding because Pittsburgh voters readily found substitute information for presidential and senatorial campaigns. In House races, however, where alternate information sources were scarce, Pittsburgh residents reported considerably less talk. Huckfeldt and Sprague (1995), in a neighborhood-based consideration of the role of talk in election campaigns, queried urban respondents about the people they talked with most about "events of the past election year." Political conversation, they found, is not just a family affair. More than half of frequent discussants were nonrelatives. About two thirds of their respondents reported discussing politics with contacts "only once in a while," a figure rather constant regardless of the type of relationship. Concerning the loci of political conversation, about 70% of discussants lived in the same neighborhood, worked in the same place, or both. Across relationship categories, only about 10-15% reported disagreeing with discussants "often." Clearly most of this political discussion is not rational-critical debate in rule-bound assemblies among partisans painfully divided by ideology. The researchers also discovered that discussant influence on vote choice is greatest within families, if respondents correctly perceived their discussants' preferences and if respondents agreed with those preferences. The weight of the evidence here, then, favors a model of informal political influence--of respondents behaving the way they think people of a similar social position should behave based on environmental cues-rather than a model based on rational debate, explicit persuasion, or rule-bound discourse. Unfortunately, Huckfeldt and Sprague generally ignore media use in their models.