What Do We Fear? Expected Sanctions for Expressing Minority Opinions in Offline and Online Communication

Abstract

This work proposes the expectation of sanctions as a promising construct to advance spiral of silence research in face-to-face and computer-mediated contexts. We argue that situational factors influence people's expectations about how their social environment would punish them should they express their viewpoint in a hostile opinion climate. These expected sanctions are suggested to explain the variance in people's willingness to express a minority opinion across different social situations. An experiment showed that the expectation of being personally attacked can explain why people are more willing to voice a deviant opinion in offline rather than online environments. Findings also revealed that in contemporary social networking websites, wherein users commonly face a personally relevant audience, people are prone to hold back their opinion as they expect losing control over the reactions of their audience. This research extends previous knowledge by presenting a more differentiated theoretical view of the fear of isolation and specifying its role in different situations of public deliberation.

Understanding the role of social networking sites in the subjective well-being of users: a diary study

“…Importantly, this study is based on the assumption that social interactions on SNSs are at least non-negative. While such undesirable communication patterns as cyberbullying or hate speech have been observed in the context of SNSs (e.g., Brody & Vangelisti, 2016;Neubaum & Krämer, 2016), available evidence suggests that most interactions that take place on SNSs are positive in nature (e.g., Oh, Ozkaya, & Larose, 2014;Utz, 2015;Lenhart, Madden, Smith, Purcell, Kathryn, & Rainie, 2011). Indeed, positive feedback is common on SNSs (e.g., Barasch & Berger, 2014;Bernstein, Bakshy, Burke, & Karrer, 2013), with users striving to make each other feel good by expressing appreciation and care (Sas, Dix, Hart, & Su, 2009).…”

To whom are we polite : an examination of people’s politeness of disagreement messages amongst friends and strangers

“…This perceived loss of control is magnified on SNSs such as Facebook (boyd, 2011). Consistent with the arguments discussed above, Neubaum and Krämer (2016) found that people perceive a higher level of control in FtF settings than on Facebook. In FtF settings, people can rectify any wrong impressions, and they are more willing to express their opinions.…”

“…As such, this suggest that important work remains to be done to investigate this assumption. The present study proposes one factor, borrowed from the spiral of silence literature (e.g., Glynn, & Park, 1997;Oshagan, 1996), that can help explain the difference between the online and offline pattern when individuals express disagreements to friends and strangers online: the fear of social isolation (Neubaum & Krämer, 2016;Noelle-Neumann, 1974). In addition, context collapse (Marwick & boyd, 2011;Wesch, 2009) is explored to uncover how people may discern their audience in a mixed audience condition (i.e., friends and strangers) that potentially shape their level of politeness of disagreement messages.…”

Free Speech and Safe Spaces: How Moderation Policies Shape Online Discussion Spaces

“…The results described above suggest a greater spiral of silence in the safe space subreddit, as we see a significantly greater proportion of comment deletion. However, this must be tested experimentally, as the spiral of silence may also be affected by individual differences (Gearhart & Zhang, 2018) and social norms (Neubaum & Krämer, 2018), and we have no way to know how individuals self-sorted into these subreddits. The difference in deletion rate may be an effect of the population of the safe space having a relatively higher willingness to self-censor, or it may be that the social sanctions in the safe space for minority opinions are relatively more severe than in the free speech space.…”

“…Porten-Cheé and Eilders (2015) failed to find support for the spiral of silence, but conceded that their chosen topic of public discussion, climate change, actually had little to no moral conflict in its German context. Neubaum and Krämer (2018) propose that the social environment in which the opinion is expressed may also affect the tendency of individuals to be susceptible to the spiral of silence. Different social environments may yield different expected sanctions for transgressions, changing the situational fear of isolation and correspondingly changing the stakes in deciding to share an opinion perceived to be in the minority.…”