Abstract:

Digital media ecologies present numerous challenges to established conceptualizations and measures of public opinion: Unbounded, trans-local publics, massively uneven participation rates, inauthentic contributions and various algorithmic distortions undermine most inferences regarding the distribution of opinions held among discernible communities, and raise important concerns about the meaning of census-style big data analyses of digital media contents. Moreover, the algorithmically structured, networked discursive spaces on digital media also erode existing notions of public opinion climates, which vary from platform to platform, or even from one user’s perspective to another. While digital media constitute a key site where public opinion is formed and negotiated, theoretical conceptualizations remain too fragmentary to effectively guide empirical public opinion research relying on digital media contents.
In the present paper, we offer a comprehensive account of public opinion in a digital media environment, which we conceptualize as an ongoing discursive process distributed over numerous digital media sites. Reconnecting to pre-digital theories of public opinion as the negotiation of publicly acceptable stances in public discourse, we examine how public opinion is negotiated in a digital information ecosystem and transmedial communications environment, discussing key implications for the at-scale analysis of digital media contents in public opinion research.
At the core of our argument, we conceptualize digital media discourse on public issues as a normative, dynamic and interactive process: By presenting opinion statements and claims in public, participating actors seek to advance, negotiate or challenge specific stances, while simultaneously positioning themselves and others as more or less legitimate and authoritative voices. Through ongoing interactions, which echo memetically across a wide range of sites and platforms, different stances emerge as dominant or marginal, consensual or contested, informing and positioning public perceptions of prevalent opinion climates, as well as any ensuing contributions to the debate. In this distributed debate, any contribution can be qualified in numerous ways – from its visibility and reach, resonance and endorsement and rejection among co-present audiences, to its distinctive positioning owing to known and observable qualities of its presentation, its author, the site, and other relevant factors. Drawing upon recent theorizing on political talk in hybrid, transmedial communication ecologies and memetic political expression in the digital age, we propose four key contingencies shaping the negotiation of public opinion in digital public spheres, namely 1) the discursive positioning of opinion expressions; 2) their socio-technical embedding into networked communication spaces and communication flows; 3) the discursive-interactive resonance of presented claims; and 4) the normative governance of public discourse within interconnected digital communication spaces. In consequence, public opinion emerges not as the linear product or aggregation of included contents, but as the outcome of an ongoing dynamic process of the public presentation, endorsement and contestation, negotiation and dissemination of opinionated discourse.
With our conceptualization, we identify avenues for empirically studying public opinion negotiation processes in digital media ecologies, both in detail and at scale. At the same time, our theoretical account foregrounds the potential of studying public opinion as collaborative negotiation of societally acceptable stances on digital media, which constitutes a key venue where public opinion is formed in contemporary hybrid communication spaces.