The Role of Interpersonal Political Communication in the Process of Media Effects

开创性的《人民选择研究》（Lazarsfeld, Berelson, and Gaudet, 1944）得出以下结论：(1)人际沟通比大众传播更广泛地用于政治信息；(2)人际沟通对投票决策的影响更大。与此同时，大众传媒已经取代政治对话成为公民最重要的政治信息来源。然而，更强的说服力仍然归于人际沟通。然而，人际传播只会阻碍媒体报道的说服效果，如果人际传播和大众传播通常是分开的。反之，如果人际传播和大众传播通常是一致的，则可以假设人际传播加强了大众媒体的说服效果。下面的研究项目解决了这个问题。该项目旨在(1)发展一种理论方法来解释人际政治传播对媒体效应的影响；(2)从经验上回答人际传播是加强还是阻碍媒体报道对政治观点、态度和行为的影响。强制效果是由于使用和引用的媒体内容的高度一致性以及对话伙伴对媒体引用的肯定反应。阻碍效应是由于使用和引用的媒体内容的高度不协调或他人对媒体引用的轻蔑反应。媒体内容在政治对话中被修改到什么程度，取决于媒体的功能。例如，如果某人的目的是向对话伙伴简要介绍事实，那么他或她可能会比那些旨在说服对话伙伴对某个问题的某种观点并因此只利用媒体报道中的特定论点的人更少地修改所提到的媒体内容。反过来，媒体内容的功能取决于媒体报道的特征、对话伙伴的特征以及整个群体的特征。该研究项目将通过结合对政治谈话的非参与者和隐藏的现场观察，对观察到的谈话伙伴的后续调查以及对他们在谈话前使用的媒体内容的内容分析来经验地实现。

The groundbreaking People's Choice Study (Lazarsfeld, Berelson, and Gaudet, 1944) led to the conclusions that (1) interpersonal communication is used more intensively for political information than mass communication and (2) that its effects on voting decisions are stronger. In the meantime mass media have replaced political conversation as citizens' most important political information source. However, the stronger persuasive power is still attributed to interpersonal communication. Though, interpersonal communication would only hinder persuasion effects of media coverage if interpersonal and mass communication usually diverged. Vice versa, it can be assumed, that interpersonal communication enforces persuasion effects of mass media, if interpersonal and mass communication were usually consonant. The following research project addresses this issue. The project aims for (1) developing a theoretical approach that explains effects of interpersonal political communication on media effects and (2) for empirically answering the question if interpersonal communication enforces or hinders effects of media coverage on political opinions, attitudes and behavior. Enforcing effects are due to a high accordance of used and referred media contents as well as to affirmative responses to media references by conversational partners. Hindering effects are due to a high dissonance of used and referred media contents or to dismissive responses to media references by others. To what extent media contents are modified within political conversations depends on their functions. If someone aims to brief a conversational partner on facts, for example, he or she will presumably modify the referred media contents less than someone who aims to convince a conversational partner of a certain view on an issue and therefore exploits only particular arguments of the media coverage. In turn, the functions of media contents depend on characteristics of media coverage, characteristics of the conversational partners, and of the group as a whole. The research project will be empirically realized by the combination of a non-participant and hidden field observation of political talk, a following survey of the observed conversational partners and a content analysis of the media contents they used in the run-up to the conversation.