A100.
Brundidge, J. & Rice, R. E. (2009).
Political engagement online: Do the information rich get richer and the
like-minded become more similar? In A. Chadwick & P. N.
Howard
(Eds.), The handbook of Internet politics (pp. 144-156). London
and New York:
Routledge.
Due
to both cognitive and
traditional media processes, especially those relating to the knowledge
gap,
agenda setting and framing, the internet seems to reinforce rather than
significantly change established patterns of individuals’ political
communication
and engagement. A new area for research, however, is the extent to
which the
internet contributes to one particular form of political engagement:
political
discussion among heterogeneous networks of citizens. While it may be
that the
“information rich” continue to get “richer,” it is far less clear that
the
politically “similar” continue to become more “similar”. This chapter
thus
discusses research on the extent to which internet use affects
individual-level
political engagement and examines the possible role of the internet in
exposing
people to politically dissimilar others. A sample analysis follows,
which finds
that online political discussion is significantly and positively
associated
with politically heterogeneous individual discussion networks. Finally,
the
discussion considers normative implications and future research
concerning
political landscapes with varying interactions between knowledge gaps
and
heterogeneous political discussion.
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