On the Reciprocal Nature of Active Publics in Divisive Social Issues: Opinion Climate and the Road to Stalled Social Conversations

Abstract

This thesis investigated active publics’ communicative course of action by evaluating variables such as individual ethical orientation and perceived opinion climate, providing insight on the justification of the communicative behavior. The Situational Theory of Problem Solving (STOPS) and the Communicative Action for Problem Solving model (CAPS) inquire about the most probable communicative action taken by the different ethical orientations – deontological and teleological. The study accounted for two types of public opinion perception bias –Hostile Media Perception and Projection Bias. Besides public opinion, the study analyzed how different active publics communicate and interact and how ethical orientation comes into play. The results show that views expressed by or projected on the media influence more communicative action, while the opinion projected unto peers in one’s circle tends to influence cross-interaction avoidance. The results suggest that, while there is a safer environment for information forwarding, under the same conditions, when communicative action increases, so does cross-interaction avoidance. Therefore, social conversations become more of a “give and give” dynamic instead of a dialogical “give and take” of information. Ethical orientation shows significant influence on communicative action. The difference between deontologists’ and teleologists’ pathways to communicative action is a phenomenon practitioners need to observe when analyzing immediate or delayed actions of their target public. Keywords: situational theory, ethical orientation, deontology, communicative behavior, publics, Black Lives Matter, cross-interaction avoidance