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Unanimity, Discord, and the Communication of Public Opinion
Author(s) -
Huckfeldt Robert
Publication year - 2007
Publication title -
american journal of political science
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 6.347
H-Index - 170
eISSN - 1540-5907
pISSN - 0092-5853
DOI - 10.1111/j.1540-5907.2007.00292.x
Subject(s) - unanimity , prior probability , public opinion , argument (complex analysis) , variance (accounting) , context (archaeology) , social psychology , politics , construct (python library) , psychology , epistemology , sociology , political science , computer science , history , law , economics , artificial intelligence , bayesian probability , philosophy , biology , biochemistry , accounting , archaeology , programming language
This article is concerned with the political communication of opinion that occurs through networks of associated citizens. Its primary attention focuses on opinion variance within populations and networks and how such variance affects communication among and between individuals. Particularly in the context of ambiguous or infrequent communication, people may experience difficulty in forming judgments regarding the opinions of others. In such situations, environmental priors become useful devices for reaching these judgments, but a problem arises related to the utility of these environmental priors when discord rather than unanimity characterizes the contextual distribution of opinion. The article's argument is that dyadic discussions between two citizens are most enlightening, and environmental priors least enlightening, when surrounding opinion is marked by higher levels of disagreement. The analyses are based on data taken from the 1996 Indianapolis‐St. Louis study .