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Communication Research
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Issue Publics in the New Information Environment

Selectivity, Domain Specificity, and Extremity

Young Mie Kim

The Ohio State University

The present research revisits citizen competence in the changing political and information environment, considering citizens as pluralistic issue publics. Using 2000 and 2004 American National Election Study data, Study 1 explores the conceptual premises of issue publics and the impact of the Web on domain-specific knowledge and extremity. Study 2 uses a unique data set combining an innovative direct measure of users' Web behavior records with survey responses from those users in the context of the 2004 U.S. general election. The results shed light on issue publics' information acquisition on the Web. This complementary data set provides a more complete picture of how issue publics develop unique patterns of information acquisition and make voting decisions. The findings indicate that issue publics enhanced their domain-specific knowledge by using information highly selectively. In addition, their selective information use contributed to increases in extremity and issue voting patterns. Implications for the functioning of democracy are discussed.

Key Words: issue publics • Internet • selectivity • domain specificity • extremity • citizen competence

This version was published on April 1, 2009

Communication Research, Vol. 36, No. 2, 254-284 (2009)
DOI: 10.1177/0093650208330253
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