Correlates of party, ideology and issue based extremity in an era of egocentric publics

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Magdalena Wojcieszak and Hernando RojasEgocentric Publics

Correlates of Party, Ideology and Issue Based Extremity in an era of

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The International Journal of Press/Politics16(4) 488 –507© The Author(s) 2011Reprints and permission: sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.navDOI: 10.1177/1940161211418226http://ijpp.sagepub.com

1IE University, Segovia, Spain2University of Wisconsin–Madison, Madison, WI, USA

Corresponding Author:Magdalena Wojcieszak, IE University, Cardenal Zúñiga, 12 40003 Segovia, Spain Email: [email protected]

Correlates of Party, Ideology and Issue Based Extremity in an era of Egocentric Publics

Magdalena Wojcieszak1 and Hernando Rojas2

Abstract

We extend the study of political extremity to an evolving media landscape. We differentiate between political and non-political uses of both “traditional” and “new” media, and situate political extremity within a new conceptualization of public– egocentric publics –a meso-level phenomenon enabled by new communication technologies that overcomes the traditional dichotomy of small groups and mass publics. Testing the relationship between information, expression, and extremity in Colombia, a sociopolitical context with high levels of polarization and distrust, we find that traditional media use is mostly unrelated to the tested forms of extremity: party-, ideology-, or issue-based. In turn, expressive Internet use is related to extremity and—contrary to what some commentators have feared—this relationship is negative. Lower extremity associated with online expression is consistent with the notion of egocentric publics advanced in this article. The results underscore the importance of differentiating between various media formats in political communication research, reveal the media correlates of various forms of extremity can take, and provide evidence that the emerging publics made possible by new media are not necessarily polarizing.

Keywords

extremity, ideology, Internet, media effects, party identity, television, radio

Research Article



Wojcieszak and Rojas 489

Attitude extremity matters. This is not only because extreme attitudes tend to be stable and affect thoughts, behaviors, and the ways in which people interact with the world (see Visser, Bizer, and Krosnick 2006) but also because modern societies are increas-ingly polarized (see Evans 2003; Layman et al. 2010) and because deep social divisions may not always be resolved by peaceful means.

Many studies have tested various individual and communicative factors related to extremity based on partisanship (Roscoe and Christiansen 2010) and ideology (e.g., Wojcieszak, Min Baek, and Delli Carpini 2010) or on specific issues (Visser, Bizer, and Krosnick 2006). An important strain within this research has attended to the effects that the media exert on extremity (e.g., Shrum 1999), sometimes differ-entiating between media formats (e.g., Sotirovic 2001) and also scrutinizing issue-specific exposure (e.g., Binder et al. 2009). Yet, evidence is still relatively limited. As importantly, it is unclear whether these relationships depend on whether extremity is party-, ideology-, or issue-based. Are various media formats differently related to extremity in its three oft-studied guises?

Yet fewer studies have focused on another increasingly prevalent communicative factor, the Internet. Does Internet use exacerbate extremity, as an echo chamber idea would suggest (Sunstein 2001; Wojcieszak 2010), or is it an additional source that may enhance information diversity, thereby contributing to balanced views (Friedland, Hove, and Rojas 2006)? Although this question should not be posed in black-and-white terms, as the effects are contingent on what people actually do online, few stud-ies have differentiated between various Internet use patterns within one study and among a representative sample. Does extremity depend on whether people seek infor-mation online or interact with others in expressive ways? Do these associations depend on whether extremity is party-, ideology-, or issue-based?

Finally, most research on extremity has originated in North America, and it is not clear whether—in different contexts—these communicative factors are also related to extremity. Would political divides and deep polarization affect the strength with which people identify with a party or ideology or hold their views on contentious issues? Would the associations between extremity and reading newspapers or commenting on blogs differ in societies in which citizens distrust members from the opposite party but have somewhat more confidence in the news media?

This study addresses these issues. We juxtapose extremity related to partisanship, political ideology and two specific issues, same-sex marriage and internal conflict in Colombia, and systematically investigate their informational and expressive corre-lates. We take a comprehensive approach to the task. First, we focus on both “old” media and the Internet. We further differentiate between various media formats within both “old” media (i.e., radio, press, nonpolitical television, and political television) and the Internet (i.e., informational, expressive, and entertainment). The general questions we set out to answer are as follows: Which media use patterns are associated with extremity? Are these patterns differently related to party-, ideology-, and issue-based extremity? And do the emerging online expressive behaviors, both political and nonpolitical, moderate or exacerbate citizens’ views?



490 The International Journal of Press/Politics 16(4)

In approaching these questions, we posit that new communication technologies make possible the emergence of new type of publics, which we term egocentric pub-lics. These publics are sustained by online social outlets and relations, transcend both mass audience and small-group social interactions, place the individual at the center despite his or her broader networks of relations, and shift the focus from a receiver- to a sender-effects paradigm. We contend that the emergence of these egocentric publics is relevant to the study of extremity—and likely of other cognitions, attitudes, and behaviors—by altering the interpersonal/mass communication dichotomy in ways that enhance the publicness of expressive behaviors and can thus affect individual views.

We first briefly outline the various forms that extremity may take, focusing on party-, ideology-, and issue-based extremity. We then explicate the pertinent media correlates that—theoretically—should be associated with extremity; propose the notion of ego-centric publics; and later, present data collected in Colombia to illuminate the linkages between these factors.1

Extremity in Three GuisesIn general, extremity is conceptualized as an attitude that lies toward either a positive or negative end on a continuum, with the neutral midpoint characterizing truly moder-ate attitudes toward a person, issue, or organization (Abelson 1995). Communications and political science often focus on extremity as related to partisanship, ideology, and specific sociopolitical topics. Party-related extremity is the strength of individual party attachment. Ideological extremity, in turn, represents the strength with which a person identifies with a political ideology. In the United States, this identification is assessed by self-reported placement on a continuum where one end indicates “strong liberals,” the other indicates “strong conservatives,” and the neutral midpoint represents moder-ates or independents. In other contexts, where the labels liberal or conservative are not meaningful or have different connotations, the scale’s ends may describe the “Left” and the “Right” (e.g., Igartua and Cheng 2009). In all cases, ideological extrem-ity is then assessed by folding this continuous measure.

Mounting research on issue publics (see Converse 1964) suggests that both parti-sanship and ideological leanings, which relate to the political system in general, may be limited in explaining citizens’ cognitions and behaviors, and that it is issue-specific attitudes that should be investigated. That is, the issue publics hypothesis indicates that some people are intensely interested in and very knowledgeable about specific issues without demonstrating concern about or mastery over politics in general (for a review, see Iyengar et al. 2008). Thus, scholars focus on extremity related to such specific issues as abortion (Visser, Krosnick, and Norris 2004), sexual minority rights (e.g., Wojcieszak and Price 2010), or affirmative action and gun control (Taber and Lodge 2006), measuring extremity as the extent to which a person favors or opposes a given issue or feels favorably or unfavorably toward the issue.

Does party-, ideology-, and issue-based extremity represent the same concept or related, but different, concepts? Although, to our knowledge, no research has juxtaposed




these three extremity forms, studies on partisanship, ideology, and issue positions sug-gest that these extremity guises, although related, are distinct. On the one hand, as men-tioned, extreme attitudes are those farther from neutrality, and extremity measures are created by folding the scales that tap the strength of respondents’ party affiliation, ideo-logical leanings, and issue positions. Also, partisanship, ideology, and policy attitudes contain affective, cognitive, and motivational components, explaining behaviors, orga-nizing beliefs, and instigating action (e.g., Tedin 1987). It could thus be expected that these three extremity guises represent one underlying concept.

Furthermore, partisanship and ideology are closely linked. Partisanship is seen as a self-concept that defines individual identity and provides social validation and a frame-work for interpreting the world (see Gerber et al. 2010). Similarly, ideology is a rela-tively stable, coherent, and institutionalized system that organizes beliefs and attitudes—religious, political, or philosophical (Converse 1964; Rokeach 1968). As such, individual party identification, ideological self-placement, and vote choice are strongly related (Levendusky 2009), and “liberal” and “conservative” ideology predicts voting for Democratic and Republican candidates, respectively (Jost 2006).

Nevertheless, this close relationship may not hold for extremity. For example, although the relationships between personality traits and partisanship mirror those between personality and ideology, they differently predict the strength of party- and ideological affiliation (Gerber et al. 2010). With regard to issue-based extremity, par-tisanship and ideology (and perhaps their strength) likely precede issue positions (and issue-based extremity). For example, partisanship, rather than in issues, seems to originate in socialization processes or in occupational, religious, and ethnic affiliations (see Huber 1989). Also, because partisan and ideological identities offer frame-works for understanding the world, they may serve as basis for other political views, in that people may align their issue positions with those of their preferred party (e.g., Carsey and Layman 2006; Gerber, Huber, and Washington 2010). Some schol-ars thus note that “three aspects of individual political orientation must be kept ana-lytically distinct: issue attitudes, partisanship, and left-right self-placement” (Huber 1989, 602).2

What causes extremity? This question takes on a particular significance in a polar-ized sociopolitical climate and also because partisan and ideological extremity are linked to such outcomes as self-expression (e.g., Baldassare and Katz 1996) or par-ticipation. Here, we systematically investigate informational and expressive corre-lates of extremity, focusing both on traditional media and the Internet, while acknowledging that various individual factors also matter.

Extremity, Media, and Egocentric PublicsTraditional Media

Media, which expose people to views beyond their personal experience or associations and provide information about issues and the general public sentiment, may influence




extremity either directly or by affecting thought complexity (Sotirovic 2001), attitude accessibility (Shrum 1999), or political discussion (Binder et al. 2009). In fact, strong partisans often process and easily recall information and are more likely to read about campaigns in the newspapers and watch television programs about them (Roscoe and Christiansen 2010).

Yet, evidence suggests that these associations are quite complex. First, it is not general media exposure or even a medium per se, but rather content (Neuman, Just, and Criegler 1992; Newton 1999) and specific media formats (e.g., Tetlock 1985) that seem to be relevant in predicting media effects on extremity. Sotirovic (2001) finds that watching such “simple” formats as infotainment, pseudonews, and talk shows is positively related to attitude extremity on the death penalty and rehabilitation programs, not only directly, but also by inhibiting the complexity with which view-ers think about these issues. In turn, such “complex” media formats as hard news, which provide balanced coverage and represent diverse views on complicated issues, are related to moderate attitudes by enhancing thought complexity.

Second, in accordance with the issue publics hypothesis, issue-specific content may also affect extremity. Selectivity studies find that it is not only ideological or partisan affinity that is driving people’s media choices (Stroud 2008) but that people are espe-cially attentive to content on personally important issues. Iyengar and colleagues (2008) suggest that audiences practice selective exposure as issue publics by paying more attention to salient topics. Also, Iyengar and Hahn (2009) find that while con-servatives pay more attention to a story from an ideologically congenial source, the effect is stronger for such contentious topics as race or the Iraq war than for travel or sports. Because people seek out information and are motivated to learn about rele-vant topics (see Visser, Bizer, and Krosnick 2006), extremity should be related to exposure to issue-specific content. Contrary to this expectation, Sotirovic (2001) finds that watching crime news did not affect extremity on the death penalty and reha-bilitation programs. In turn, Binder et al. (2009) show that exposure to science news led to extreme attitudes on stem cell research through encouraging political talk with like-minded networks.

It could be expected that the three extremity guises are differently affected by media use. Issue-based extremity may be more responsive to new information or external events than party- and ideology-based extremity, which not only are more enduring but may be based on better-developed knowledge. At the same time, inasmuch as thinking about an issue increases extremity (Tesser 1978) and inasmuch as partisan-ship or ideological leanings may be more salient for a person or in a given context, media coverage, by generating thought and reflection, could more strongly affect party- and ideology-based extremity than the issue-specific one.

Together, these studies offer two guidelines. In order to shed light on the nuanced links between media use and extremity, “global” exposure measures may be limited, and studies should differentiate not only between various media (i.e., radio, press) but also between media formats (i.e., nonpolitical and political content). Also, extremity may be more strongly related to citizen attention to specific issues than to politics in general. Because extant evidence does not speak to the media correlates of the three




extremity forms and because we focus on a new sociopolitical context, we pose our first research question: Which media and which media formats are related to extrem-ity, and do these relationships depend on whether extremity is party-, ideology-, or issue-based (Research Question 1)?

It is important to note that the association between media use and extremity are reciprocal. As the knowledge gap hypothesis predicts, those endowed with knowl-edge or civic skills (who tend to have strong views) are more likely than non-informed moderates to seek out political content. Also, as the uses-and-gratification perspective suggests, people who have divergent interests, be it surveillance or escapism, make differential choices with regard to media content (Katz, Blumler, and Gurevitch 1973) and use the media for “reinforcement,” with the informed citi-zens likely to seek political messages and with the less interested avoiding such coverage (Schramm and Roberts 1971). That is, people with strong views are more likely to expose themselves to news and current-events programming (Visser, Bizer, and Krosnick 2006).

The InternetThe cited studies have shed important light on how traditional media relate to extrem-ity. Research that systematically analyzes similar relationships with Internet use has been limited, despite reasons to believe that using the Internet may influence extremity and that this influence depends on whether people go online for entertainment, to seek information, or to interact with others.

With regard to nonpolitical Internet use, it is the disinterested citizens who would seek out entertainment online, immersing themselves in news about technological gad-gets or fashion trends. Those citizens are likely to hold moderate positions and, through their online activities, further withdraw from civic life (Prior 2007). With regard to online news seeking, inasmuch as users inadvertently encounter counter-attitudinal content when surfing magazines or watching online news, they may become familiar with dissimilar views and develop more moderate positions as a result. On the other hand, political resources online primarily attract the interested and active citizens (Johnson and Kaye 1998). Also, individual tendency to maintain cognitive consis-tency may motivate those political junkies to seek consonant online sources and decrease their exposure to dissimilar perspectives. Hence, political Internet use could be related to greater party-, ideology-, or issue-specific extremity.

However, beyond the differentiation between political and nonpolitical media use, which mostly mimics the way scholars approach traditional media, new communica-tion technologies invite more nuanced differentiations between passive uses, which do not entail interactions with others, and expressive uses that place an individual in the center.3 That is, the new media lead us to reconsider some of the basic tenets involved in our understanding of the public sphere (Friedland, Hove, and Rojas 2006). Beyond the macro notion of a networked public sphere and the micro notions of inter-personal relations, an area of theorizing that has received scant attention in the literature are the new meso-level publics constituted by individuals who treat their




extended social networks as a forum for self-expression, thus creating egocentric pub-lics, a new concept that we now explain.

Egocentric publics and the Internet. In the early twentieth century, Gabriel Tarde dif-ferentiated the public from the crowd by its infusion of common information and enthu-siasm that keeps individuals who were not physically copresent mentally cohesioned. These “publics,” according to Tarde (1969), were made possible by the new means of mass communication available at the time. Likewise, we contend that in the early twenty-first century, new means of communication have enabled new types of publics. Tarde’s notion of public is prescient of Andersen’s (1991) conceptualization of imagined communities, or macro-level cultural artifacts that become “true” and to which indi-viduals develop strong emotional attachments. Debates concerning these macrolevel publics have usually centered on their potential for achieving rational solutions to collective problems (e.g., Lippmann versus Dewey). Regardless of where one falls on these debates (from elitism to deliberativeness or from individual to collective rationality), at least two issues have dominated scholarly thinking in this context: (1) the problem of scale or where the public emerges and (2) the juxtaposition of mass and interpersonal forces at play.

That is, the problem of large-scale social groups has led to different ideas of how publics can be sustained, be it mass publics sustained by media (Page 1996), the afore-mentioned issue publics involved in a particular topic, and minipublics (Goodin and Dryzek 2006) or small-scale publics brought together to represent the citizenry, such as in deliberative polls (Fishkin 1995) or in citizen juries (Gastil et al. 2008). New media make possible different publics. These publics are not issue based, although issues perthem; are not a mass public, yet their size, constitution, and geographical disgo beyond small groups or interpersonal interactions; and finally, these publics do not represent the population, but are instead based on cumulative social process as individuals traverse different facets of life. In sum: egocentric publics.

This conceptualization of publics builds on network studies that no longer define community as a spatially bounded membership of one solidarity or kinship group, but instead reformulate the nature of community to one of multiple limited memberships, a “personal community” (e.g., Fischer 1982; Wellman 1988). This shift is accomplished by looking at the type of relationships—a personal community or a network—instead of a spatial clustering of potential relations. Some research suggests that such a per-sonal community contains about 6 intimate ties and 12 active if not-so-intimate ties that are moderately knit and provide support and “imaginative flexible means for gaining access to the resources of these social systems” (Wellman 1988, 96).

That is, egocentric publics are based on social networks and on interactions and expression within these networks. Here, rather than highlighting the access to resources that such publics provide, we emphasize their communicative potential. In particular, we contend that the Internet, through blogs and social network outlets, enables the emergence of these publics that are broader than a personal community and thus less dense and more heterogeneous, which people can engage more loosely than with traditional publics.




While the effects of communicating with these emergent publics have started to appear in the literature under different rubrics (e.g., expressive participation in Puig-i-Abril and Rojas 2007, or sender effects in Pingree 2007), the passive and expressive compo-nents facilitated by new technology remain somewhat blurred. Thus, as the preceding discussion suggests, it is critical to differentiate passive new media use, akin to more traditional mass media use, from expression within egocentric publics, and to also parallel this distinction with similar nonpolitical new media uses (i.e., passive versus expressive entertainment use).

All in all, the associations between Internet use and party-, ideology-, and issue-specific extremity may differ for political and entertainment use and also for uses that are solely passive and do not entail interactions with others, and those that are expres-sive and place the user in the center of his or her egocentric publics.

Because the Internet enables exposure to both like-minded and dissimilar views, in both passive and expressive ways, it is unclear what the exact associations will be, especially bearing in mind that we focus on various extremity forms and that increased selectivity could provide a safe platform where people affirm and further strengthen their beliefs or that egocentric publics—due to their increased size, the consequent increase in heterogeneity, and the greater publicness they entail—have a moderating effect.

To comprehensively portray the tested associations, we differentiate between online activities and ask whether extremity is differently related to political and entertainment-focused Internet use patterns that are both passive and expressive (Research Question 2).

Study ContextWe rely on a nationally representative sample surveyed in Colombia, thus applying the research on extremity to a dramatically different sociopolitical context. For most of its independent life, Colombia has been a country where violence has played a critical role as a conflict resolution mechanism. Internal wars between liberals and conserva-tives characterized the nineteenth and roughly the first half of the twentieth century, and turned into a confrontation with communist guerillas in the context of the cold war. This yet-unresolved conflict has been fueled with money from illegal drugs. A failed peace process with FARC, Colombia’s oldest and most important guerrilla group, influenced the presidential election in 2002. Then, Alvaro Uribe, a right-wing politician who promised that guerrillas would be defeated through the use of force, was elected president (and reelected for a second four-year term in 2006).

Despite Uribe’s popularity, which contributed to the election of a member of his polit-ical party, Juan Manuel Santos, in 2010, various scandals involving corruption in gov-ernment contracts, human rights violations, and illegal monitoring of opposition parties have enhanced skepticism and distrust for those with differing views (Rodriguez and Seligson 2008). This distrust can be captured as an intensifying Left/Right ideological divide, which has been intensifying. People who identify with the center have decreased from 42 percent in 2006 to 35 percent in 2010. At the same time, people taking the most extreme points on the political ideology scale have grown on the Right (from 5.5 percent in 2006 to 8.2 percent for 2010) and the Left (1.5 percent in 2006 to 2.1 percent for 2010).




Colombia’s political system can be characterized as a formal democracy in which regular elections are held. A traditional conservative-liberal party divide evolved into a multiparty system with certain parties representing the Right (which support free trade and a strong military, e.g., Partido de la U, Conservative Party), others representing the political center (which seek social reforms, e.g., Partido Liberal, Partido Verde), and others the Left (proposing a wider role for government, protecting Colombian produc-tion and land redistribution, e.g., Polo Democratico Alternativo).

Colombia’s media system is mostly deregulated, with a weak public system due to limited funding that results in a limited production capacity and is coupled with small audience shares. Leading television news channels, daily newspapers, and radio sta-tions are private, advertising-based enterprises. With clear partisan origins, currently the press in Colombia tends to be closely tied to big business interests and has been described as a market-based press with a “weak legacy of media pluralism” (Waisbord 2008, 3). In this informational context, radio continues to play an important role, but by and large, private television channels are the main source of information. All in all, the analyzed sociopolitical context provides a consequential scenario to study extremity as related to traditional media use patterns and various online activities.

MethodData

This study relies on national survey data collected between July 29 and August 20, 2010, in ten cities in Colombia, by the Universities of Wisconsin and Externado de Colombia as part of their biennial study of communication and political attitudes in Colombia. The sample was designed to represent Colombia’s adult urban population; 76 percent of Colombia’s 44.5 million inhabitants live in urban areas (DANE 2008). Respondents were selected using a multistep, stratified, random sample procedure that selected households randomly on the basis of city size and census data. Once the number of households was allocated for a given city, a number of city blocks were selected ran-domly according to housing district and strata. Then, individual households were randomly selected within each block. Finally, the study used the technique involving “adult in the household who most recently celebrated a birthday” to identify an indi-vidual respondent. Up to three visits to each household were made (if needed) to increase participation. A local professional polling firm, Deproyectos Limitada, collected the data, and 1,064 face-to-face completed responses were obtained for a response rate of 85 percent.4

MeasuresExtremity. Following extant research, we conceptualize extremity as the absolute

deviation from the scale midpoint and apply this conceptualization to our measures, when possible.




Partisanship extremity. The survey asked respondents to select which political party they supported (five main Colombian parties listed and an open-ended option, other). Those who reported supporting one of the parties (61 percent of the sample, n = 647) were subsequently asked whether their support was “not very strong” or “strong,” and the strong supporters were assigned a score of 1 (M = 0.46, SD = 0.50) on the Partisanship extremity measure.

Ideological extremity. Respondents were asked to identify their ideological leanings on an 11-point scale (from 0 = Left to 10 = Right; M = 6.32, SD = 2.37). The final mea-sure was created by folding the scale (M = 2.00, SD = 1.84; range = 0 to 5, with 0 being moderate and 5 indicating most extreme).

Issue position extremity. We tested two contentious issues relevant in Colombia: internal conflict and same-sex marriage. The internal conflict has occupied the public for decades, leading to polarization between those who support reaching peace through negotiations and those who favor a military solution to the problem. In turn, sexual minority rights are consequential, as this issue relates to equal rights and prejudice against de facto existing minority groups.

Internal conflict. Respondents indicated their opinion on resolving the guerilla prob-lem on a 7-point scale, where 1 indicated support for military solution and 7 indicated support for negotiation solution (M = 4.32, SD = 2.52). The extremity measure was created by folding this item, with the answer 4 recoded to 0, 1 and 7 recoded as 3, and so on (M = 2.32, SD = 1.03).

Same-sex marriage. On a parallel 7-point scale, where 1 indicated that homosexual persons cannot marry and 7 indicating that they can, respondents placed their views on same-sex marriage. As above, the final measure was created by folding the scale (M = 2.36, SD = 1.06; higher values indicate greater extremity).

Media exposure. The questionnaire contained multiple items that tapped respondents’ medium- and content-specific exposure. Respondents were asked to report the fre-quency with which they turned to ten media sources (from 0 = never to 5 = frequently), and four measures were created: Nonpolitical television use averaged watching soap operas and televised contests (M = 2.67, SD = 1.68; r = .40, p < .000). Radio use rep-resents one item that asked respondents about their exposure to radio news (M = 2.31, SD = 1.97). Press use averaged reading national daily newspapers, local newspapers, and weekly news magazines (M = 1.83, SD = 1.17; Cronbach’s α = .58). Last, Politi-cal television use averaged national network news, television programs about current events, local news, and international cable news, such as CNN or Telesur (M = 2.63, SD = 1.23; Cronbach’s α = .59).

News attention. We also assessed respondents’ attention to political and issue-specific news. Respondents indicated, on a scale from 0 (not at all) to 5 (a lot), how much attention they paid to news about national politics (political attention, M = 2.95, SD = 1.71), “public order and internal conflict” (internal conflict attention, M = 3.32, SD = 1.57), and “the gay community” (same-sex marriage attention, M = 1.39, SD = 1.70).

Internet use. On 6-point scales (0 = never, 5 = frequently), respondents indicated the frequency with which they used the Internet for various activities. We created four




measures: Egocentric expressive political use averaged e-mailing about politics and current events, visiting political blogs, participating in discussion forums, and com-menting on articles or opinion pieces in online newspapers (M = 0.80, SD = 1.09). Passive political use averaged looking for news and information online and consulting governmental information online (M = 1.69, SD = 1.55). Expressive entertainment use measures included using e-mail to stay in touch with family and friends as well as a binary item indicating whether respondents used Facebook (M = 2.22, SD = 0.93).5 Last, passive entertainment use was one item that asked respondents about the fre-quency with which they seek entertainment online (M = 2.48, SD = 2.04).

Controls. Extremity may be linked to various individual characteristics, and we con-trolled for the usual suspects. Age was constructed by subtracting the respondent’s year of birth from 2010, when the survey was conducted (M = 41.63, SD = 16.25). Gender was coded with males as 0 and females as 1 (61 percent female). Education was mea-sured on a 7-point scale (1 = attended elementary school, 7 = attended 5-8 years of college/graduate school; median = 5.00, graduated from high school/attended trade school; SD = 1.17). Political knowledge was tested by fourteen multiple-choice ques-tions about domestic and international issues, which included both political and issue-based questions (e.g., “Who is Angela Merkel [or Vladimir Putin]?”) as well as soft news questions (e.g., “Why did Tiger Woods discontinue his professional career”?). Correct answers were scored as 1 and added (M = 5.0, SD = 3.0; Cronbach’s α = .79).

Political interest. We averaged three items that asked about respondents’ level of inter-est (0 = not at all, 5 = very much) in local politics, national politics, and international politics (M = 2.2, SD = 1.6).

We also controlled for two items that may affect individual extremity as well as media use: social capital and institutional trust.

Social capital. Respondents indicated whether they belonged to any of fourteen orga-nizations (e.g., cultural, professional, environmental, or educational). Active member-ship was coded as 2, nonactive membership as 1 (i.e., belonging but not being active), and not being a member as a 0, and the average was taken (M = 0.12, SD = 0.20, Cronbach’s α = .75).

Institutional trust. Respondents indicated, on a scale from 0 (not at all) to 5 (a lot) how much trust they had in seven institutions (e.g., Congress, the army, political par-ties, national and local government, etc.), and the mean was taken (M = 1.92, SD = 1.06; Cronbach’s α = .88).

ResultsTo reveal whether various media use patterns are linked with extremity and, as impor-tantly, whether these patterns are differently associated with the tested extremity forms, we constructed three hierarchical regression models predicting ideological and issue-specific extremity and one logistic regression model predicting the binary party-based extremity. Each model included individual controls: age, gender, education, knowl-edge, political interest, social capital, and institutional trust. These were followed by




the traditional media measures: radio use, press readership, exposure to nonpolitical television, and exposure to political television as well as the issue-specific media attention items. The third block entered the four Internet use items.

Which traditional media are associated with extremity in its three guises? As Table 1 shows, ideologically extreme respondents reported greater exposure to nonpolitical television formats, such as soap operas, than did moderates, and also greater reliance on newspapers and magazines. In contrast, turning to political television was nega-tively related to ideological extremity. Media use did not predict extremity as related to partisanship, internal conflict, and same-sex marriage. Addressing our first research

Table 1. Ordinary Least Squares Regression Predicting Extremity

Partisanship (n = 370)

Ideology (n = 548)

Internal conflict (n = 560)

Same-sex marriage (n = 558)

Individual factors Gender −.26 (.25) −.05 (.16) .19* (.10) .01 (.10) Age .00 (.01) .02*** (.00) .01** (.00) .01*** (.00) Education −.19† (.11) −.16† (.08) −.02 (.04) −.03 (.05) Political knowledge −.07 (.06) −.09* (.04) −.04† (.02) −.01 (.02) Institutional trust −.03 (.11) −.16* (.08) −.10* (.04) −.06 (.05) Social capital .34 (.49) .47 (.35) −.23 (.20) −.23 (.22) Political interest .34*** (.09) .05 (.06) .03 (.03) −.01 (.04)First block R2 (%) 10.3 5.1 4.6 4.2Traditional media Nonpolitical TV use

−.11 (.07) .11* (.05) −.01 (.03) −.02 (.03)

Radio use .06 (.06) .03 (.04) .02 (.03) .02 (.03) Press use .00 (.09) .15* (.07) .02 (.04) .02 (.04) Political TV use .10 (.12) −.16* (.08) .04 (.05) .04 (.05) Issue-specific news attention

.05 (.09) .09 (.06) .05 (.04) .02 (.03)

R2 change (%) 1.0 2.6* 0.1 0.02New media Egocentric political expressive

.21 (.13) .09 (.09) −.12* (.05) −.18** (.06)

Political passive −.24* (.09) −.05 (.06) .05 (.04) −.03 (.04) Entertainment expressive

−.09 (.13) .09 (.09) .08 (.05) .03 (.06)

Entertainment passive

.00 (.06) .01 (.04) .05* (.02) .03 (.03)

Incremental R2 (%) 2.5** 0.4 2.5** 1.8*Final R2 (%) 13.8 8.10 8.20 6.3

Note: Entries are final unstandardized regression coefficients with standard errors in parentheses. ***p < .001. **p < .01. *p < .05. †p < .10.




question, these results suggests that different media use patterns are differently related to the tested extremity forms and, it is not necessarily the case that extreme citizens seek out and attend to political content, as the knowledge gap and uses-and-gratifica-tions hypotheses would suggest. In Colombia, it is rather the ideological moderates who turn to nightly news and political shows. Yet, reliance on other hard formats, such as radio news, newspapers, or magazines, is not asssociated with moderate positions.

Are various online activities related to extremity in its three forms? Table 1 suggests answers to our second research question. Whereas Internet use was unrelated to ideol-ogy-based extremity, partisan moderates reported seeking information online more often than did the extreme ones. Also, respondents with extreme views on internal con-flict reported seeking entertainment online to a greater extent than moderates.6 A strik-ingly different pattern emerged for issue-based extremity. Egocentric expressive political Internet use, unrelated to party-based and ideological extremity, was negatively associ-ated with extremity on internal conflict and same-sex marriage. This suggests that those more likely to engage their egocentric publics by e-mailing them information, com-menting on blogs, or joining online forums were more likely to have moderate views on these issues, despite claims that online activities could result in exacerbated extremity.

Last, Table 1 also shows that older respondents were more extreme when it comes to ideology, the guerilla problem, and same-sex marriage than their younger counter-parts. Other characteristics were less consistently asssociated with extremity: women were more likely than man to hold extreme views on the internal conflict, the better educated citizens were slightly more ideologically moderate and held weaker parti-san leanings, and the knowledgeable ones were more moderate when it comes to ideology and internal conflict. Furthermore, political trust was negatively related to ideology- and guerilla-based extremity, and political interest demonstrated a positive association with party-based extremity.

ConclusionPrevious studies examining factors linked with political extremity have provided important insights into the dynamics involved in attitude polarization. However, these studies need to be extended to the evolving media landscape and its relationship with the different guises that extremity may take. This is especially because increasing media choice makes it possible for individuals to avoid news and political content altogether, if they so choose, and also because the Internet is gaining relevance as an information and communication platform. Both trends invite such questions as the following: How do “old” versus “new” media relate to extremity? Are political versus nonpolitical uses differently related to extremity? Do these relationships depend on whether extremity is party-, ideology-, or issue-based? In particular, are expres-sive actions, under the logic of egocentric publics, associated with increased or decreased extremity?




To comprehensively address these questions, we focused on both traditional media and the Internet and also differentiated between political and nonpolitical media use as well as political, nonpolitical, passive, and expressive online activities. Importantly, we tested these patterns for the three extremity guises.

This study offers several noteworthy findings. First, watching entertainment televi-sion and seeking entertainment online are positively related to instances of political extremity. While this relationship is not present across all the extremity forms we con-sidered, it is present for ideological extremity (extreme ideologues tend to watch soft television programs) and for extremity on internal conflict (those with extreme views turn to the Internet for entertainment). Future studies that examine entertainment con-tent are needed to explain this relationship: is it that characters in entertainment content, in traditional media or online espouse more extreme and stereotyped ideologies from which the viewers “learn,” or does such content present issues in simplified ways, thus fostering a white/black worldview?

Our results also suggest complex relationships between extremity and using tradi-tional media for information (news consumption and attention): while hard television news is negatively associated with ideological extremity, newspaper use has a positive association. The first relationship is in line with the notion of “mainstreaming,” in that television may foster moderate attitudes that are well aligned with uncontroversial and widely accepted perspectives (Shanahan 1998). Also, such hard formats as nightly news and political shows may lead to cognitive complexity, familiarity with diverse viewpoints, and ultimately, less extreme positions (Sotirovic 2001). Because we did not measure complexity, this explanation is open to scrutiny. To disentangle the unclear finding that reading newspapers or weekly magazines—also hard media formats—is related to ideological extremity, we conducted additional analyses that found that it is the local newspapers and not the national press that drive this relationship.7 This may suggest that while the national press has been able to effectively move from partisan coverage to a more objective reporting, local press continues to foster partisan worldviews.

Third, our results provide evidence that despite fears that echo chamber effects based on selective exposure to consonant ideas could lead to political polarization (Sunstein 2001) or that increased audience concentration in the online domain could diminish users’ exposure to various perspectives (Hindman 2009), information seeking online, as well as egocentric expressive behaviors online, are in fact related to reduced extremity. That is, increased passive Internet use (i.e., seeking information online) is coupled with diminished party extremity, and expressive uses are related to more mod-erate attitudes, on both internal conflict and same-sex marriage. These results chal-lenge the notion that endogenous linking patterns or like-minded online associations provide little space for counterattitudinal exposure or heterogeneous conversations to occur. They also highlight the importance of new communication technologies in explaining extremity. This is especially central given that, as the additional analyses suggest, it is the younger cohorts who are driving these results and who also dispropor-tionally turn to the Internet and are forming their political views. Inasmuch as these




two factors are related, testing media use patterns and their effects among the youth may reveal crucial information about the political future.

The fact that increased political expression within egocentric publics is associated with reduced issue-based extremity may be the most notable finding in this study, a finding that provides initial evidence of the importance of the egocentric publics out-line here. More broadly, we consider that the implications of these new publics include (1) the need to consider sender effects, or changes in the sender of a message by virtue of communicating this message to others, alongside more traditional concep-tualizations of receiver effects (Rojas and Puig-i-Abril 2009); (2) the recognition that exposure to diverse views will not necessarily continue to be a mass media function, but instead can become a network function; and (3) increased importance of com-mon understanding for action coordination (Rojas 2008; Wojcieszak 2009), as we replace the strong ties for mobilization and weak ties for information dichotomy with a modest-tie communicative action paradigm.

Nevertheless, some caveats moderate our excitement with these results. First, because we rely on cross-sectional data, we present informational correlates of extrem-ity rather than establish causality among these factors; and while we use tests that imply a causal ordering, the tested relationships are likely bidirectional. This issue is both conceptual and methodological. Conceptually, attitudes do not solely result from the relatively stable sociodemographic characteristics but are also affected by new infor-mation, external events, and so forth. Similarly, individual information acquisition patterns are colored by preexisting views. As mentioned, extremity drives and also results from media exposure. For example, selecting consonant opinions may enhance extremity, which would drive further exposure to old and new media. Methodologically, these reciprocal relationships can be detected using longitudinal panel designs that capture attitudes and communicative patterns over time, thus shedding light on the nuanced changes in both. Cross-sectional surveys cannot detect such changes, and experiments, although more suited to determine causality, rarely capture voluntary message selection.

Also, our models have relatively low predictive power, suggesting that other factors related to extremity remain to be advanced, in particular, political socialization, inter-personal networks, and personality traits. That is, party attachments are formed pri-marily within closely tied family groups (Lazarsfeld, Berelson, and Gaudet 1948), and political talk with family, friends, and acquaintances not only affects extremity directly (Binder et al. 2009) but may also interact with media use as well as online activities (Wojcieszak 2010). Similarly, partisanship, ideology, and issue positions, and their strength, are affected by openness or emotional stability, among other per-sonality traits (e.g., Gerber et al. 2010). Lastly, while extending the extremity research from its North American cradle is one of the contributions of this study, the results could be driven by some singularities of the Colombian case. Comparative studies should assess whether similar patterns emerge in other countries and also whether and how differing media systems or Internet penetration levels affect these patterns.




Despite these limitations, we are confident to conclude that communication scholars and political scientists should systematically differentiate between party-, ideology-, and issue-based extremity since their informational correlates differ, and so would—we suppose—their various cognitive, attitudinal, and behavioral effects. This finding speaks to the scholarship on issue publics, suggesting that the mechanisms underlying attitudes on specific topics differ from those driving individual ideological leanings or party attach-ments, and that the various extremity guises do not represent one underlying concept.

As importantly, our results suggest that research on exposure to specific media, or even to ideologically consistent or inconsistent sources, should yield to research on format- and issue-specific exposure, both strictly political and entertainment related, in traditional as well as new media environment. Based on our findings, it is clear that increasing the number and variety of media platforms as well as emerging forms of publics is critical to our understanding of how communication factors affect and relate to extremity and—most likely—to other outcomes.

This should give a pause to communication and political science scholars, leading us to refine the methods and measures used to study these effects and associations. That is, we point toward a need for increased differentiation and, most importantly, a need to account for specific media content, concrete interactions with content, and reconceptualizations of the public in political communication research. Future studies in this area will need to progressively combine survey techniques with content analysis, differentiated patterns of use, and social network analysis in order to establish the boundaries of egocentric publics and to shed light on how interactions with information and with other citizens moderate or exacerbate attitude extremity. Distinguishing between various extremity guises as well as between the myriad old and new media use patterns, and also examining their relationships, warrants our close attention in a contemporary sociopolitical climate, where the issues of polarization, conflict, and frag-mentation become increasingly relevant.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The authors disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: The survey on which the article is based was funded through a research grant awarded to Hernando Rojas by the Graduate School of the University of Wisconsin Madison.

Notes

1. Here it is essential to note that extremity per se is not negative. Whether it is evaluated as optimistic or problematic often is context dependent. On the one hand, extreme citizens are committed to their views, publicly express their opinions, and take part in politics. On the other hand, extremity feeds polarization and creates a situation in which extreme




views are disproportionately represented in the political process. In some contexts, this may prove disadvantageous. Within old democracies, there are cases in which civil society contains elements that are an anathema to democratic values, such as groups promoting hatred or xenophobia. Within young democracies or unstable societies, such as the one analyzed here, extremism might be problematic when a system lacks traditions that channel conflicts, when elites are not committed to civil rights, and when violence fueled by extrem-ism is used as conflict resolution mechanisms (Chambers and Kopstein 2001).

2. Inasmuch as political context and electoral systems affect the meaning and understanding of party or ideological identification, these relationships may be specific to the United States, where most of the evidence originates. Also, although issue attitudes may be more volatile than partisanship or ideology, there are certainly differences within issues, attributable to issue novelty and salience (e.g., in the Colombian context, same-sex marriage is relatively new as compared with the internal conflict).

3. The term “passive” may not accurately describe individual online interactions, which entail purposive decisions and active clicking. This label is used to suggest that such online activities as seeking political or entertainment content is more passive than such interactive online behaviors as blogging or discussing politics in chat rooms (which we term “expressive”).

4. Response rate (1) calculated using American Association for Public Opinion Research guidelines.

5. People also use social networking sites for political purposes. However, subjecting all the items to factor anal found that Facebook use loaded together with other entertainment-related measures.

6. The Internet is mainly the domain of the youth, who still might be forming their politi-cal views. To test whether the detected patterns are driven by the young respondents, we conducted subgroup analyses among respondents 30 years old and older. The models found that expressive political uses were positively related to party-based extremism, unlike in the original models (b = .44, p < .05), while passive political use was a negative predictor (b = –.00, p < .05). In turn, expressive political use was unrelated to extremism on internal conflict and same-sex marriage, which indicates that expressive political use is negatively associated with issue-specific extremism among the younger respondents only.

7. We retested the model including the individual items that composed the “press readership” scale (i.e., reading national and local newspapers and weekly magazines). We found that it was only the local newspapers that positively predicted ideological extremism (b = .14, p < .001), with the other two items not being related.

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Bios

Magdalena Wojcieszak (PhD, communication, Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania; MA, sociology, University of Warsaw) is an assistant professor at the IE School of Communication, IE University.

Hernando Rojas (PhD, University of Wisconsin–Madison; MA, University of Minnesota–Twin Cities) is an associate professor in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication, University of Wisconsin–Madison.



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Correlates of party, ideology and issue based extremity in an era of egocentric publics

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