Expression Affordances of Digital Media: Implications for Political Knowledge, Attitude, Affect, and Willingness to Deliberate
Open Access
- Author:
- Wang, Jinping
- Graduate Program:
- Mass Communications
- Degree:
- Doctor of Philosophy
- Document Type:
- Dissertation
- Date of Defense:
- June 09, 2020
- Committee Members:
- S. Shyam Sundar, Dissertation Advisor/Co-Advisor
S. Shyam Sundar, Committee Chair/Co-Chair
Michael Grant Schmierbach, Committee Member
Fuyuan Shen, Committee Member
John W Gastil, Outside Member
Matthew Paul Mcallister, Program Head/Chair - Keywords:
- Self-expression
Affordance
Interactive media
Expression effects
Political attitude
Affective polarization
Willingness to deliberate - Abstract:
- From “liking” and commenting to sharing, expressing oneself about ongoing news and public affairs information has become an integral part of online interactive media. How do such acts of expression affect online users? Past research has shown that public self-expression on political issues can shape individuals’ self-concept as well as their political attitudes. But, it is not clear if this is true only for effortfully composed commentary or applies also to low-effort, one-click actions such as thumbs up/down. This dissertation addresses this issue by exploring how psychological effects vary as a function of different expression affordances (e.g., liking vs. commenting) that are currently available in online news media technologies. In particular, based on the theory of interactive media (TIME), it proposes two distinct routes by which an expression affordance may affect individuals’ perceptions, attitudes, and behavioral intentions: on the one hand, the physical presence (absence) of the expression affordance on the media interface may influence user psychology (cue effects); on the other hand, users’ active actions on the affordance may affect their attitudes and behaviors (action effects). A between-subjects online experiment (N = 368) was conducted in the context of online political news, wherein all participants read identical stories on a news website, but with different expression affordances. Specifically, two aspects of the expression affordance were manipulated, including the effort level of the expression (2: low-effort thumbs up/down vs. high-effort comment), and how it allowed actions (3: cue vs. forced action vs. voluntary action). A control condition with no expression affordances was also included as a base-line comparison. The data showed that the sheer presence of the commenting affordance cue (vs. control) increased perceived interactivity of the site, which tended to mitigate affective polarization among individuals. In terms of action effects, the results indicated that taking actions on the expression affordance (vs. being exposed to cues) reinforced pre-existing opinions, supporting the proposed hypothesis. However, counter to expectations, actions (vs. cues) lowered cognitive involvement with the issue featured in the news and diminished users’ hopes for encountering meaningful deliberation. More importantly, the study revealed that the effort level of the expression affordance made a difference, such that the low-effort affordance (i.e., thumbs up/down) led to more affective polarization than the high-effort affordance (i.e., commenting). Moreover, the commenting affordance (vs. thumbs up/down) allowed users to acquire a stronger sense of agency, which was positively associated with their willingness to deliberate. This dissertation study offers several theoretical and methodological implications for the study of expression effects and psychological effects of communication technologies, by theorizing and linking affordances of expression with political outcomes at the individual level (political knowledge, affect, attitude, and willingness to deliberate). It also provides practical guidelines for digital platform designers regarding deployment of different opinion-expression affordances in their online public forums.