社交网络与大众传媒外文文献翻译

文献出处：大卫.希格尔.社交网络和大众传媒[J].美国政治学评论, 2013, 107(04): 786-805.

Social Networks and the Mass Media

SIEGEL, DAVID

Abstract:

How do global sources of information such as mass media outlets, state propaganda, NGOs, and national party leadership affect aggregate behavior? Prior work on this question has insufficiently considered the complex interaction between social network and mass media influences on individual behavior. By explicitly modeling this interaction, I show that social network structure conditions media's impact. Empirical studies of media effects that fail to consider this risk bias. Further, social network interactions can amplify media bias, leading to large swings in aggregate behavior made more severe when individuals can select into media matching their preferences. Countervailing media outlets and social elites with unified preferences can mitigate the effect of bias; however, media outlets promulgating antistatic quo bias have an advantage. Theoretical results such as these generate numerous testable hypotheses; I provide guidelines for deriving and testing hypotheses from the model and discuss several such hypotheses.

The author thanks Jason Barabas, Jon Bendor, Ted Carmines, Jamie Druckman, John Freeman, Matt Golder, Sona Golder, Bob Jackson, Jenn Jerit, Kris Kanthak, ?zge Kemahlioglu, Charlotte Lee, Valerie Martinez-Ebers, Adam Meirowitz, Scott McClurg, Will Moore, Chris Reenock, John Ryan, John Scholz, Jake Shapiro, Anand Sokhey, Jeff Staton, Jim Stimson, Craig Volden, Jon Woon, four very helpful anonymous reviewers, and audiences in the Political Economics group at the Stanford GSB, Political Science departments at FSU, GWU, Minnesota, Pittsburgh, and Stony Brook, and the Frank Batten School of

Leadership and Public Policy at UVa. Any errors are my own.

To begin to answer this question, I develop a novel theory of aggregate opinion and behavior. The theory considers a heterogeneous population of individuals who must choose between dichotomous options. It incorporates the interaction of social network and mass media influences at the individual level; its key assumption is that the more others choose an option, the more one is apt to do so as well. In the theory, social networks provide information about the choices of those to whom one is directly connected, while the mass media provide (potentially biased) information about aggregate choice. The theory thus applies to, for example, voter turnout and political participation (e.g., Gerber, Green, and Larimer 2008; Lake and Huckfeldt 1998; Leighley 1990; McClurg 2003; Rolfe 2012), opinion formation (e.g., Beck et al. 2002; Druckman and Nelson 2003; Huckfeldt and Sprague 1995), protests and social movements (e.g., Kuran 1991; McAdam 1986), and vote choice (e.g., Beck 2002; Huckfeldt and Sprague 1995; Ryan 2011; Sinclair 2012; Sokhey and McClurg 2012).

Three major results follow from this theory. All hold both when individuals treat media identically and when they select into media in line with their preferences. First, understanding the aggregate effect of the media generally requires considering social networks, because social network structure conditions media's impact. For example, additional weak ties between disparate social groups can reduce the media's impact, and the presence of unified social elites can eliminate the media's impact entirely in the aggregate. Empirical studies of media impact that fail to consider media's interaction with social networks risk bias.

Second, social networks can amplify the effect of media bias. A biased media outlet that systematically under- or over-reports a poll of the population by a only a few percentage points can in some cases swing aggregate behavior (e.g., turnout or vote share) by over 20% in either direction due to positive

feedback within the network. Open advocates in the media can have a yet larger impact even when not comparatively influential. Unified social elites limit the effect of media bias, but cannot fully counter an advocate; selection into media, made ever easier with technological improvements, tends to enhance the effect of bias. We should therefore expect media bias to become increasingly important to aggregate behavior.

AN INDIVIDUAL-LEVEL THEORY OF AGGREGATE BEHAVIOR Though I present a theory of aggregate behavior, it is based on individual-level assumptions informed by what we know about the way personal characteristics, social networks, and mass media outlets affect individual behavior. Due to this, the theory can explore the effect that interactions between these three factors have on aggregate behavior. As importantly, the theory incorporates empirically realistic heterogeneity across people in all three factors.

Additionally, people are exposed to individuals, groups, and organizations external to one's network, such as mass media outlets, state propaganda, national party leaders, NGOs, and Internet personalities. These outlets can provide information, increasing political knowledge.

As this small sampling of large literatures indicates, individuals' decisions are influenced by the information they obtain via both local social networks and global media outlets. However, comparatively little scholarship has explored the three-way interaction of personal characteristics, social networks, and media

In the second type of bias, which I call advocacy, the media outlet simply states a preference for one of the options, providing no information about aggregate support. The goal in advocacy is to sway the population toward one or the other option. As before, many goals could underlie advocacy beyond just the support of a biased media outlet's preferences. Advocacy represents the editorial power of the media or the influence of an external actor; it is a \model (Zaller 1992). …… 此处隐藏：5217字，全部文档内容请下载后查看。喜欢就下载吧 ……