Hostname: page-component-f554764f5-nt87m Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-04-11T09:08:49.510Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Autoregressive Influence of Social Network Political Knowledge on Voting Behaviour

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 May 2008

Sean Richey
Sean Richey*
Affiliation:
Georgia State University
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Social networking has a powerful influence on voters, but we do not know enough about the mechanisms of network influence. Recent research shows that one network member's influence is highly dependent on the others in the network, i.e. autoregressive. I test whether the influence of social network political knowledge is also autoregressive. I show that a strong predictor of vote choice similarity is the level of knowledge of the discussant, but greater knowledge of the other network members lessens dyadic agreement. Data from the American National Election Study collected in 2000 show that in the presidential election of 2000 having a knowledgeable discussant increases the chance of vote similarity with that discussant by 5 percentage points, but vote similarity decreases by 10 percentage points for each level of residual network knowledge. This research confirms the autoregressive influence of social network political knowledge.

Type
Research Article
Information
British Journal of Political Science , Volume 38 , Issue 3 , July 2008 , pp. 527 - 542
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2008

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

Footnotes

This research was presented at the Hosei University Graduate School of Politics and at the Japan Election Studies Conference of 2005. It benefited from comments by Ken'ichi Ikeda, Mikiko Eto and Gill Steel.

References

1 Huckfeldt, Robert and Sprague, John, Citizens, Politics, and Social Communication: Information and Influence in an Election Campaign (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 For example, see Huckfeldt, Robert, Ikeda, Ken’ichi and Pappi, Franz, ‘Political Expertise, Interdependent Citizens, and the Value Added Problem in Democratic Politics’, Japanese Journal of Political Science, 1 (2000), 171–95CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3 Huckfeldt, Robert, Johnson, P. E. and Sprague, John D., Political Disagreement: The Survival of Diverse Opinions Within Communication Networks (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

4 The National Election Studies, Center for Political Studies, University of Michigan. Electronic resources from the NES World Wide Web site (<www.umich.edu/nes>), Ann Arbor, Mich., University of Michigan, Center for Political Studies [producer and distributor], 1995–2002.

5 Taber, Charles, ‘Information Processing and Public Opinion’, in Sears, David O., Huddy, Leonie and Jervis, Robert, eds, Oxford Handbook of Political Psychology (Oxford: Oxford Univresity Press, 2003), pp. 433–76Google Scholar.

6 Taber, ‘Information Processing and Public Opinion’, p. 458.

7 Taber, ‘Information Processing and Public Opinion’, p. 458.

8 Althaus, Scott, ‘Information Effects in Collective Preferences’, American Political Science Review, 92 (1998), 545–58CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Alvarez, R. Micheal, Information and Elections: Revised to Include the 1996 Presidential Election (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1998)Google Scholar; Carpini, Michael X. Delli and Keeter, Scott, What Americans Know about Politics and Why It Matters (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1996)Google Scholar.

9 Lau, Richard R. and Redlawsk, David P., ‘Voting Correctly’, American Political Science Review, 91 (1997), 585–99CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Page, Benjamin I. and Shapiro, Robert Y., The Rational Public: Fifty Years of Trends in American's Policy Preferences (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Popkin, Samuel, The Reasoning Voter: Communication and Persuasion in Presidential Campaign (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Sniderman, Paul M., Brody, Richard A. and Tetlock, Philip E., Reasoning and Choice: Explorations in Political Psychology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991)Google Scholar.

10 Bartels, Larry M., ‘Uninformed Votes: Information Effects in Presidential Elections’, American Journal of Political Science, 40 (1996), 194–230CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

11 Katz, Elihu and Lazarsfeld, Paul, Personal Influence (New York: The Free Press, 1955)Google Scholar.

12 Neuman, Russell W., The Paradox of Mass Politics (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1986)Google Scholar.

13 Lau, Geok Theng and Sophia, Ng, ‘Individual and Situational Factors Influencing Negative Word-of-Mouth Behaviour’, Canadian Journal of Administrative Sciences, 18 (2001), 163–78CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

14 For example, W. H. Whyte Jr, ‘The Web of Word of Mouth’, Fortune, November 1954, 140–3.

15 Brown, Jacqueline Johnson and Reingen, Peter H., ‘Social Ties and Word-of-mouth Referral Behavior’, Journal of Consumer Research, 14 (1987), 350–62CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Coleman, James S., Katz, Elihu and Menzel, Herbert, ‘The Diffusion of Innovations Among Physicians’, Sociometry, 20 (1957), 253–70CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Rogers, Everett M., Diffusion of Innovations (New York: The Free Press, 1962)Google Scholar; Sheth, Jagdish, ‘Word-of-mouth in Low-Risk Innovations’, Journal of Advertising Research, 11 (1971), 15–18Google Scholar; Venkatraman, Meera P., ‘Opinion Leaders, Adopters and Communicative Adopters: A Role Analysis’, Psychology and Marketing, 6 (1989), 51–68Google Scholar.

16 Katz and Lazarsfeld, Personal Influence.

17 Cox, D. F., ‘The Audience as Communicators’, in Geyser, S. A., ed., Toward Scientific Marketing (Chicago: American Marketing Association, 1963), pp. 58–72Google Scholar.

18 Herr, Paul M., Kardes, Frank R. and Kim, John, ‘Effects of Word-of Mouth and Product-Attribute Information of Persuasion: An Accessibility Diagnosticity Perspective’, Journal of Consumer Research, 17 (1991), 454–63CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

19 Huckfeldt, Johnson and Sprague, Political Disagreement.

20 Richard Lau, ‘Models of Decision Making’, in Sears, Huddy and Jervis, eds, Oxford Handbook of Political Psychology, pp. 19–59, at p. 32.

21 Zuckerman, Alan S., ‘Returning to the Social Logic of Politics’, in Zuckerman, Alan S., ed., The Social Logic of Politics: Personal Networks as Contexts for Political Behavior (Philadephia: Temple University Press, 2005), pp. 3–20Google Scholar.

22 Conover, Pamela Johnston, Searing, Donald D. and Crewe, Ivor M., ‘The Deliberative Potential of Political Discussion’, British Journal of Political Science, 32 (2002), 21–62CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Huckfeldt, Robert, Mendez, Jeanette Morehouse and Osborn, Tracy, ‘Disagreement, Ambivalence, and Engagement: The Political Consequences of Heterogeneous Networks’, Political Psychology, 25 (2004), 65–96CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Mutz, Diana C., ‘Cross-cutting Social Networks: Testing Democratic Theory in Practice’, American Political Science Review, 96 (2002), 111–26CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

23 It is important to note that research shows that discussion in formal deliberation increases political knowledge. For example, Barabas shows that deliberating with others in a controlled setting increases political knowledge, which demonstrates that citizens can transfer knowledge between each other. See Barabas, Jason, ‘How Deliberation Affects Policy Opinions’, American Political Science Review, 98 (2004), 687–701CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Gastil, John and Dillard, James, ‘Increasing Political Sophistication Through Public Deliberation’, Political Communication, 16 (1999), 3–23.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

24 Walsh, Katherine C., Talking About Politics: Informal Groups and Social Identity in America (Chicago: The University of Chicago, 2003)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

25 Bennett, Stephen E., Flickinger, Richard S. and Rhine, Staci L., ‘Political Talk Over Here, Over There, Over Time’, British Journal of Political Science, 30 (2000), 99–120CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

26 Price, Vincent, Cappella, Joseph N. and Nir, Lilach, ‘Does Disagreement Contribute to More Deliberative Opinion?’ Political Communication, 19 (2002), 95–112CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

27 Linimon, Amy and Joslyn, Mark R., ‘Trickle Up Political Socialization: The Impact of Kids Voting USA on Voter Turnout in Kansas’, State Politics and Policy Quarterly, 2 (2002)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, see <www.ipsr.ku.edu>.

28 McAdam, Doug and Paulsen, Ronnelle, ‘Specifying the Relationship between Social Ties and Activism’, American Journal of Sociology, 99 (1993), 640–67CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

29 Brown, R. Khari and Brown, Ronald E., ‘Faith Church-based Social Capital Resources and African American Political Activism’, Social Forces, 82 (2003), 617–42.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

30 Ikeda, Ken’ichi and Huckfeldt, Robert, ‘Political Communication and Disagreement Among Citizens in Japan and the United States’, Political Behavior, 23 (2001), 23–51.Google Scholar

31 Huckfeldt, Johnson and Sprague, Political Disagreement.

32 Beck, Paul Allen, Dalton, Russell J., Greene, Steven and Huckfeldt, Robert, ‘The Social Calculus of Voting: Interpersonal, Media, and Organizational Influences on Presidential Choices’, American Political Science Review, 96 (2002), 57–73Google Scholar.

33 Cooke, Maeve, ‘Five Arguments For Deliberative Democracy’, Political Studies, 48 (2000), 947–69.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

34 Zuckerman, ‘Returning to the Social Logic of Politics’.

35 Huckfeldt, Johnson and Sprague, Political Disagreement.

36 Petty, Richard E., Cacioppo, John T. and Schumann, David, ‘Central and Peripheral Routes to Advertising Effectiveness: The Moderating Role of Involvement’, Journal of Consumer Research, 10 (1983), 135–46.Google Scholar

37 Huckfeldt, Robert, Sprague, John and Levine, Jeffrey, ‘The Dynamics of Collective Deliberation in the 1996 Election: Campaign Effects on Accessibility, Certainty, and Accuracy’, American Political Science Review, 94 (2000), 641–51CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

38 See also Huckfeldt, Johnson and Sprague, Political Disagreement, p. 36.

39 Note that this is defined as the respondent's network, but not that these are necessarily interconnected relationships. The hypothesis does not imply or require that these network members know each other to influence the respondent. They are simply people that the respondent knows.

40 Not shown, I also included models with the order the discussant was listed. This had no impact, and was removed.

41 Huckfeldt, Johnson, and Sprague, Political Disagreement, pp. 46–67.

42 Huckfeldt, Robert, Ikeda, Ken’ichi and Pappi, Franz, ‘Patterns of Disagreement in Democratic Politics: Comparing Germany, Japan, and the United States’, American Journal of Political Science, 49 (2005), 497–514.Google Scholar

43 Huckfeldt, Johnson and Sprague, Political Disagreement, p. 55; see also Rogers, William, ‘Regression Standard Errors in Clustered Samples’, Stata Technical Bulletin, 13 (1962), 19–23.Google Scholar

44 For details of the estimation process, see Maddala, G. S., Limited-Dependent and Qualitative Variables in Econometrics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), pp. 247–52CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Newey, Whitney, ‘Simultaneous Estimation of Limited Dependent Variable Models with Endogenous Explanatory Variables’, Journal of Econometrics, 36 (1987), 231–50.Google Scholar

45 For more on CLARIFY, see King, Gary, Tomz, Michael and Wittenberg, Jason, ‘Making the Most of Statistical Analyses: Improving Interpretation and Presentation’, American Journal of Political Science, 44 (2000), 347–61CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

46 Percentage points effects are calculated from CLARIFY.

47 Huckfeldt, Johnson and Sprague, Political Disagreement.

48 These results are available upon request.

49 Jeffrey Levine, ‘Choosing Alone: The Social Network Basis of Modern Political Choice’, in Zuckerman, ed., The Social Logic of Politics, pp. 132–51, at p. 135.

50 Levine, ‘Choosing Alone’, p. 135.

51 Huckfeldt, Robert, ‘The Social Communication of Political Expertise’, American Journal of Political Science, 45 (2001), 425–38.CrossRefGoogle Scholar