Talk or conversation? Dimensions of interpersonal discussion and their implications for participatory democracy

Discussion among citizens has long been identified as a necessary condition for a healthy and functioning democracy. This study uses telephone survey data to examine empirically Michael Schudson's assumption that discussion is not singular, but actually a concept involving social conversation and political talk.(1) It operationalizes the concepts of political talk and conversation and examines their implications for indicators of democratic citizenship. Findings show that indeed there is a conceptual distinction between talk and conversation. Hard news media use was move strongly related to political talk than to sociable conversations. Similarly, people who talked about politics more frequently also displayed higher levels of political factual knowledge and political participation. These findings suggest interesting directions for further research about discussion and democracy.