The self and online politics: A social psychological approach to political computer-mediated communication in the United States

As the Internet becomes more common to everyday life, questions about its effect on the social life of its users have surfaced. These concerns serve as the starting points for the main research questions I intend to address in my dissertation. While there are an endless number of areas which the internet might affect interpersonal relationships and intrapersonal attitudes, I will focus on the area of US politics. My main concern will be on the relationship between a person's political attitudes and self-concept, and how those factors may influence how a person may approach the internet to generate, support, or possibly challenge these characteristics of the self.;The objective of this dissertation is to integrate social psychological principles into the study of computer-mediated political communication. In doing so, I hope to stimulate new areas of research and inquiry within several different disciplines of the Social Sciences, particularly among Social Psychologists, Communications Scholars, Political Scientists, and Sociologists.;This dissertation primarily focuses on online political discourse during the 2008 US Presidential campaign. I will use a combination of both qualitative and quantitative methodologies, as well as incorporate an interdisciplinary body of literature, drawing mainly from the fields of Sociology, Communications, and Social Psychology. By embracing multiple methods and disciplines within the same research project, the expected result is to achieve a more comprehensive and sophisticated understanding of political computer-mediated communication processes within the United States.;My dissertation incorporates the social psychological literature on self and identity with what others in political science and computer-mediated communication have said about the effects of the internet on contemporary political life in the USA. In particular, my objective is to address three core issues: (1) flow does the self-concept mediate the ways in which someone uses the Internet, and what implications do these findings hold in regards to political activity and discourse in the USA? (2) Are people willing to use the Internet as a communications vehicle for challenging their viewpoints and gaining exposure to a greater variety of information sources, or do people use it to reinforce previously held beliefs. Is this likely to make these users more hostile to opposing viewpoints? (3) Do politically partisan blogs and candidate e-mail messages differ significantly from the content of mainstream network news coverage in terms of their definitions of the candidates, and if so, in what ways?...