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This article tests the cross-cultural generality of one tenet of spiral of silence theory using an individual difference approach. We argue that the spiral of silence phenomenon is, in part, a manifestation of individual differences in stable personality traits that can be measured universally regardless of country or context—specifically, fear of social isolation (FSI) and willingness to self-censor. In accordance with the theory’s predictions, we examine whether people relatively high in trait FSI are more likely to self-censor their opinions in hostile opinion environments than low FSI individuals. We tested this hypothesis using data from an international online sample of over 2,200 participants spread across four continents and nine countries. Results of partially measurement-invariant multigroup confirmatory factor analyses confirmed the prediction in all countries except for China.

In this article, we argue that recent technological developments have made Eveland's (2003) “mix‐of‐attributes” (MOAs) framework particularly useful for theorizing about effects of today's “digital” media. We use an example of political user‐generated content (UGC) to illustrate the framework's usefulness. We focus on 5 core attributes of UGC, which are important for understanding its nature and effects: search efficiency, customization, manipulability, cost reduction, and community orientation. This study advances communication theory by (a) illustrating how MOA approach can be applied to explicate an online media form through its attributes; (b) elaborating on the frequently studied, but never thoroughly examined, phenomenon of political UGC; and (c) explicating 5 novel technological attributes useful for examining effects of UGC and other media.

The goals of this study are to explore several claims about the democratizing potential of the internet and to extend gatekeeping theory into user-generated content (UGC) domain. A quantitative content analysis of the most popular YouTube political news videos during the 2008 US presidential election was conducted to investigate the degree to which nonelites were able to partake in mainstream public discourse. We found that elites dominated first and second filters (news sourcing and news production) in the flow of online news, while nonelites dominated the third filter (news distribution). These results suggest that an update to the traditional gatekeeping model is needed to reflect the realities of today’s user-driven communication environment.

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