5 - DISAGREEMENT, HETEROGENEITY, AND PERSUASION: HOW DOES DISAGREEMENT SURVIVE?

Summary

The previous chapter demonstrates that people are less likely to recognize a preference accurately if they do not hold the preference, or if they perceive the preference to be less common within their communication networks. At the same time, the presence of this autoregressive bias in patterns of communication does not protect citizens from the experience of political disagreement, and a number of questions thus arises. If campaign stimulated processes of political communication and influence do not eliminate disagreement, what are the factors that sustain political heterogeneity and disagreement? What are the consequences of political heterogeneity within these communication networks for patterns of political influence between and among citizens? Finally, in what manner is the influence of one citizen on another conditioned by the structure of communication networks and the distribution of preferences in the remainder of the these networks? We address these questions based on the study of electoral dynamics in the 1996 presidential campaign as it took place in the Indianapolis and St. Louis metropolitan areas.

Citizens are typically aware of the political disagreements that exist within their personal networks of communication, even though results in the previous chapter indicate the existence of autoregressive biases that sometimes attenuate communication effectiveness. Disagreements over politics and policy arise even in the smallest and most closely held social groups. Although the political preferences of citizens tend to reflect the partisan composition of their micro-environmental surroundings, few citizens are completely insulated from interaction with others who will disagree with them.