We test the role of like-minded and cross-cutting political discussion as a facilitator of online and offline political participation and examine the role of strong versus weak network ties. Most prior research on the topic has employed cross-sectional designs that may lead to spurious relationships due to the lack of controlled variables. The findings of a two-wave panel survey controlling the autoregressive effects suggest that cross-cutting talk with weak ties significantly dampens online but not offline political participation. However, no such effects were detectable for cross-cutting talk with strong ties. In addition, we found no effect of discussions involving like-minded individuals in either weak or strong network connections on online and offline forms of political engagement. Implications are discussed.
CITATION STYLE
Matthes, J., Marquart, F., & Sikorski, C. V. (2021). Like-minded and cross-cutting talk, network characteristics, and political participation online and offline: A panel study. Communications, 46(1), 113–126. https://doi.org/10.1515/commun-2020-2080
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