Personality and Civic Quality in Political Discussions

A Psychologial Analysis of Chinese Data

HU Yue

Tsinghua University

HE Danna

CUHK, Shenzhen

LIN Kuo

CUHK, Shenzhen

Nowadays political participations

• 60% in 12 surveyed nations post somethings about political or social topics in social media (Gubbala 2022)
• 50% in South Korean people sometimes or often post or share political issues in social media (Gubbala 2022)
• 73% online activists are also active offline (Brady 2009)
• 73.7% Internet penetration rate in China

Online political discussion has become the “strongest predictor” and a “gateway” for offline political engagement (Wojcieszak 2009, 573; See also Conroy, Feezell, and Guerrero 2012; Harlow 2012; Wang 2007)

Pew survey findings globally (Gubbala 2022) and in the US (Brady 2009)

Online participation: Known and Unknown

Young men is not good enough. Be aware that 74% penetration rate, in every four people three is online.

⇒ Debate ❓

Empower democracy
(Cai and Zhou 2019; Yang 2003; Xu, Ye, and Zhang 2018)
VS.
Techno-utopianism
(Morozov 2010; Han 2015; Leibold 2011; Shen et al. 2009)

⇒ Delibration ❓

What political dynamic emerges from online political participations?

↓
🔑 Discussion Quality

Psychological Explanation

• 经验的开放性（创造性/好奇 或 一致/谨慎）
• 尽责性（高效/有组织 或 奢侈/粗心）
• 外向性（外向/精力充沛 或 孤独/内向）
• 亲和性（友好/富有同情心 或 批判/理性）
• 神经质（敏感/紧张 或 弹性/自信）

Personality to Discussion Quality

Personality	Rational	Interactive	Equal	Civil	Constructive
Openness	+	+		+
Conscientiousness		-		+
Extraversion		+
Agreeableness		+	+	+
Neuroticism	-			-

Case Selection

33,523 discussions from Weibo among 172,697 partners

1月13日选举

Searching for relevant Weibo texts using keywords such as “Taiwan,” “election,” and “general election.”

Sina Yuqingtong

Election: Jan 13, 2024

Measurements

Outcome proxies (Friess and Eilders 2015):

• Rationality ← Topic relevance + linguistic complexity
• Interactivity ← Reply rounds
• Equality ← Ideological polariziation
• Civility ← Disrespectful language

Explanatory variable

• Text → LIWC matching → personality (Tausczik and Pennebaker 2010)

\[Score = \sum_{i=0}^{n} c_i v_i,\] \(c_i\): Matching coefficient; \(v_i\): Value of the corresponding factor in LIWC

matching: Salsabila and Setiawan (2021)

Personality on Quality

• Agreeableness & neuroticism have positive effects on rationality and equality,
• Openness & extraversion have negative effects on rationality, equality, and civility
• Conscientiousness has positive effect on interactivity

They tend to produce content that is sensitivity and less similar with official media, and hold Right-leaning ideologies

• the sensitivity of the content being posted,
• the similarity of the posted content to that of official media,
• the prevalence of offensive or uncivil content
• the ideology tendency held by the individuals.

Conclusion

• Openness and extraversion do not contribute to the quality of political discussion as expected
• Strong traits leads to more civil discussions.
• Empowerment is at least partially true.

Digitization → deliberation & modernization

Thank you

  sammo3182

  yuehu@tsinghua.edu.cn

  https://www.drhuyue.site

Reference

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Brady, Sidney Verba and Henry, Kay Lehman Schlozman. 2009. “The Demographics of Online and Offline Political Participation.” Pew Research Center. September 1, 2009.

Cai, Yongshun, and Titi Zhou. 2019. “Online Political Participation in China: Local Government and Differentiated Response.” The China Quarterly 238 (June): 331–52. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0305741019000055.

Conroy, Meredith, Jessica T. Feezell, and Mario Guerrero. 2012. “Facebook and Political Engagement: A Study of Online Political Group Membership and Offline Political Engagement.” Computers in Human Behavior 28 (5): 1535–46. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2012.03.012.

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Friess, Dennis, and Christiane Eilders. 2015. “A Systematic Review of Online Deliberation Research.” Policy & Internet 7 (3): 319–39. https://doi.org/10.1002/poi3.95.

Gubbala, Janell Fetterolf, Laura Silver. 2022. “Social Media Seen as Mostly Good for Democracy Across Many Nations, but u.s. Is a Major Outlier.” Pew Research Center. December 6, 2022.

Habermas, Jürgen. 1998. “Three Normative Models of Democracy: Liberal, Republican, Procedural.” In Questioning Ethics, edited by Mark Dooley and Richard Kearney, 1st ed., 10. London: Routledge.

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Salsabila, Ghina Dwi, and Erwin Budi Setiawan. 2021. “Semantic Approach for Big Five Personality Prediction on Twitter.” Jurnal RESTI (Rekayasa Sistem Dan Teknologi Informasi) 5 (4): 680–87. https://doi.org/10.29207/resti.v5i4.3197.

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Appendix

Case Selection

• 33,523 discussions from Weibo among 172,697 partners

Sina Public Opinion, Jan 12 ~ 19, 426,104 posts

Searching for relevant Weibo texts using keywords such as “Taiwan,” “election,” and “general election.”

Sina Yuqingtong

Election: Jan 13, 2024

Civic quality of political discussion

Criteria

• Rationality
• Interactivity
• Equality
• Civility
• Constructiveness

• Topic relevance refers to the coherence on the topic, ensuring that the discourse remains focused and pertinent. Linguistic complexity is a composite variable that combines logical complexity and lexical complexity, providing an assessment of the sophistication and depth of the arguments presented.
• Interactivity: captures the dynamic exchange between participants, reflecting a dialogic environment that is essential for understanding and consensus (Friess and Eilders 2015)
• Equality: all participants have an equal opportunity to contribute, preventing domination by a few public opinion leaders (Jurgen Habermas and Rehg 1998; Friess and Eilders 2015)
• Civility: pertains to the respectfulness and politeness of interactions (Friess and Eilders 2015).

Determinants

• Institutional (Aarts and Thomassen 2008; Dahlberg, Linde, and Holmberg 2015; Ezrow and Xezonakis 2011; Linde and Erlingsson 2013; Magalhães 2016)
• Cultural (Dewey 1954; Jürgen Habermas 1998; Warren 2017)
• Psychological

Previous studies have found that democratic satisfaction is related to procedural fairness (Norris 2011; Dahlberg, Linde and Holmberg 2015; Magalha ̃es 2016), electoral systems that foster cooperation through proportional representation (Aarts and Thomassen 2008), party systems that offer more choices for voters (Ezrow and Xezonakis 2011), and perceptions of corruption (Linde and Erlingsson 2013).

Contemporary democracies, however, not only depend on aggregative institutions (such as elections) to produce collective decisions, but also involve deliberative practices understood in a broad sense to encompass propositional forms of communication— that shape individual and collective preferences (Dewey 1927; Habermas 1994; Warren 2017).

Strait Watchers

Measurements

• Personality
• Lexical Complexity
• Ideology

Correlation projection (Salsabila and Setiawan 2021):

\[Score = \sum^n_{i = 1}c_iv_i,\] where \(n\) is the number of words in an entry, \(c_i\) is the coefficient, and \(v_i\) is the value of the corresponding factor in the LIWC result.

Modified Fog Index:

\[R = \frac{N + P}{2},\] where \(N\) the average number of words per clause, \(P\) is the proportion of adverbs and conjunctions in each sentence.

1. LDA topic identification
2. Conservative left (-1) ↓ liberal right (+1)
3. Close-reading coding
4. Polarization: variance of ideology

Psychological Persona

Stable Persona

Rationality

Interactivity

Equality

Communicational Diversity

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Ideological Diversity of the Strait Discussion