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For some theorists, talk about politics is infrequent, difficult, divisive, and, to be efficacious, must proceed according to special rules in protected spaces. We, however, examined ordinary political conversation in common spaces, asking Americans how freely and how often they talked about 9 political and personal topics at home, work, civic organizations, and elsewhere. Respondents felt free to talk about all topics. Most topics were talked about most frequently at home and at work, suggesting that the electronic cottage is wired to the public sphere. Political conversation in most loci correlated significantly with opinion quality and political participation, indicating that such conversation is a vital component of actual democratic practice, despite the emphasis given to argumentation and formal deliberation by some normative theorists. Given the dictum, "Two things I never talk about in public are politics and religion," the troublesome fall in news consumption, a continuing slippage in voter turnout, and the controversy swirling around citizens' distrust of government and the decline of America's "social capital" (Putnam, 1995a(Putnam, , 1995b, 1 there is little wonder that questions abound about how little, how reluctantly, and where, if at all, Americans talk about politics. This debate proceeds, incidentally, despite empirical evidence that civic participation is alive and well Disciplines Communication | Social and Behavioral Sciences

For some theorists, talk about politics is infrequent, difficult, divisive, and, to be efficacious, must proceed according to special rules in protected spaces. We, however, examined ordinary political conversation in common spaces, asking Americans how freely and how often they talked about 9 political and personal topics at home, work, civic organizations, and elsewhere. Respondents felt free to talk about all topics. Most topics were talked about most frequently at home and at work, suggesting that the electronic cottage is wired to the public sphere. Political conversation in most loci correlated significantly with opinion quality and political participation, indicating that such conversation is a vital component of actual democratic practice, despite the emphasis given to argumentation and formal deliberation by some normative theorists. Given the dictum, "Two things I never talk about in public are politics and religion," the troublesome fall in news consumption, a continuing slippage in voter turnout, and the controversy swirling around citizens' distrust of government and the decline of America's "social capital" (Putnam, 1995a(Putnam, , 1995b, 1 there is little wonder that questions abound about how little, how reluctantly, and where, if at all, Americans talk about politics. This debate proceeds, incidentally, despite empirical evidence that civic participation is alive and well Disciplines Communication | Social and Behavioral Sciences

This study reports results of an experiment in which student subjects read various types of film reviews and then reported interest in attending the film. One review had high information content about the film and no positive or negative opinion about it, while other reviews contained high or low information and either positive or negative evaluation. The study finds that higher amounts of i n formation-regard less of eval uation-leads to more interest in the film. Reviews with high information plus positive evaluation lead to most interest, but high information alone raised interest nearly as much.,Although arts reviewing in the mass media may appear to be a type of persuasive communication, leading persuasion theories are generally unenlightening in explaining how reviews influence audiences. The study of persuasion, Miller observes, has been virtually identical with the study of attitude change.' Yet most reviews are not intended to affect long-term attitudes that function as enduring filters for the whole of experience. Rather, they influence immediate interest in consuming an artistic event.Reviews do not typically present detailed arguments intended to persuade audiences to hold certain attitudes or beliefs-nor are they generally designed to generate or resolve cognitive dissonance, induce conditioned behavior, prompt elaboration of carefully phrased ratiocinations or manipulate social judgment.Most persuasion theories describe the alteration of deep cognitive predispositions which are 1) general and 2) consistent o r enduring. Thus, McGuire defines an attitude as "an intervening variable that mediates between generalized reception and response tendencies."* Petty and Cacioppo consider an attitude to be "a general and enduring positive or negative feeling about some person, object or i s~u e . "~ And Fishbein and Ajzen designate an attitude "a learned predisposition to respond in a consistently favorable or unfavorable manner with respect to a given object."( But the purpose of reviewing, a s Hohenberg notes in his recent newswriting text, is much more limited: "to provide information on a >Mr.

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