In our view, there is good reason to assume that the same holds true for people’s willingness to partake in political discussion. However, a considerable amount of studies also came to the opposite conclusion, that is, cross-cutting exposure encourages individuals to engage in political activities (e.g., Y. This concurs with the rationales and findings of various studies that cross-cutting exposure also decreases people’s willingness to engage in other forms of political activities such as signing petitions or attending political meetings (e.g., Dilliplane, 2011 Heatherly et al., 2017 Lupton & Thornton, 2017 Moehler & Conroy-Krutz, 2016 Mutz, 2002a, 2006). The consistent finding of studies in this area is that, when opposed to disagreement and when perceiving to be in the minority, people are rather reluctant to speak up out of a fear of social isolation (see e.g., Glynn et al., 1997 Matthes et al., 2018 Scheufele & Moy, 2000). A prominent approach dealing with exposure to dissonant views is the spiral of silence (Noelle-Neumann, 1974). To gain indicative evidence of whether cross-cutting exposure might encourage or deter individuals from engaging in a political discussion we briefly review scholarship on related concepts and processes. The relationship between the two concepts should therefore be of crucial importance for empirical deliberation research. Exposure to disagreement, that is, cross-cutting exposure, in turn, is seen as a “core requirement” of deliberation (Mutz, 2008, p.535). This is surprising insofar as, specifically from a deliberative perspective, political discussion can be seen as a vital if not the central form of political engagement (e.g., Barrett & Brunton-Smith, 2014 Delli Carpini et al., 2004 Teorell, 2006). The Impact of Cross-cutting Exposure on Political DiscussionĪlthough a whole line of research investigated the impact of cross-cutting exposure on political participation (Matthes et al., 2019), empirical evidence for its effect on political discussion is rather scarce. More specifically, in a pre-registered experiment with two different stimuli, we investigate whether mediated cross-cutting exposure (Mutz & Martin, 2001) elicited by news articles encourages or discourages citizens’ willingness to engage in political discussion via a specific pathway: deliberation within (i.e., the consideration and evaluation of different opinions along with arguments and counter-arguments e.g., Goodin, 2000 Mercier & Landemore, 2012) and argument repertoire (i.e., the number of arguments people can state for their own as well as for the opposite opinion Cappella et al., 2002). In our study, we aim to complement the list of investigated outcomes by one concern that is at the heart of deliberative democracy: to involve citizens in a political discussion (e.g., Conover et al., 2002 Fearon, 1998 Manin, 1987 Teorell, 2006). Furthermore, studies indicated that cross-cutting exposure encourages citizens to engage in specific political activities (e.g., Y.
Indeed, previous research found that cross-cutting exposure has various beneficial effects: It increases political tolerance (Lyons & Sokhey, 2017 Mutz, 2002b Robinson, 2010) and political knowledge (Kwak et al., 2005 Scheufele et al., 2006), and improves the quality of people’s political opinions (Price et al. Moreover, according to Manin ( 1987), it enables citizens to comprehend the rationales for oppositional viewpoints, which increases the legitimacy of political decisions. For example, Habermas ( 1989) assumed that the exposure to dissonant views might stimulate intrapersonal reflection as well as political discussion between citizens.
From different normative views on democracy, the positive democratic implications of cross-cutting exposure have especially been emphasized within the deliberative democratic theory.
The assumption that exposure to dissonant political opinions is beneficial for democracy can be traced back to prominent political theorists like Stuart Mill ( 1859/ 2003) and Hannah Arendt ( 1961).
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