My journey to a completed dissertation rivals Odysseus’ return to Ithaca. Eclectic interests, adviser changes, book writing, startup dabbling … Instead of gaining more focus as the years went on, I regressed. I have now returned to my original dissertation topic, hoping I’m now leaving the Phaeacians behind me and finding my way home.
“The eternal quest of the individual human being is to shatter his loneliness.â€
—Norman Cousins“If a conservative is a liberal who’s been mugged, a liberal is a conservative who’s been arrested.â€
—Thomas Wolfe
These two quotes illustrate a paradox of American politics. As humans, we are hard-wired to connect with others. Yet our societal debates are largely characterized by barriers to connection. My doctoral research will examine political discourse through a relational lens, to understand the dynamics of political connection in the hope of improving how we discuss politics online.
Political Discourse
The first component of this research seeks to understand how Americans currently talk about politics with each other. I am focusing mainly on amateur politicians—those with great interest in politics, but for whom politics represents a small fraction of personal resources—and the different kinds of online and offline tools they use to mediate their discourse.
Our use of tools and identifying labels constrain our debates. Discussion of issue-based topics, such as abortion or taxation, typically faces communication obstacles that include an assumption of prior political opinions, inability to access new information, and a general disconnection from the people with decision-making power. These barriers can be lessened through considerate design of our political forums.
Initial analysis of an online political forum and a political wiki supports the notion that successful assimilation into an online political community is impacted by the strategies a new member initially adopts. Those strategies, in turn, are constrained by the mechanics of the technology and established behavior of the community. A framework of potential barriers—trust, conflict, expertise, activity, skills, social connection and validity—will be used to understand these circumstances.
Relational Design
The second component of this research explores how the strength of relationships impacts the quality of political discourse.
Relational-Cultural Theory (RCT) rejects of the power-over model in favor of power-with, the notion that people are at their strongest when in relation with others. The concept of mutuality—joining together in a kind of relationship in which all participants are engaged, empathic and growing—is potentially applicable to an ideal politics, where discussants embrace their differences while working toward a common understanding. Supporting the kind of relationships described by RCT are concepts like embodied interaction (users create and communicate meaning through their interaction with the system) and the phatic function of communication (convey the state of the channel by initiating, maintaining, or terminating connection).
These ideas form a lens for the critique of the dynamics of online political discourse. I hope to suggest design choices that will address the structural and cultural disincentives to engage other discussants, allowing political connections to become more meaningful.