A Cross-cultural Test of the Spiral of Silence Theory in Singapore and the United States1

Mobile communication and cross-cutting discussion: A cross-national study of South Korea and the US

“…Moreover, mounting evidence from cross-cultural comparisons of the spiral of silence suggests that people in collectivistic cultures are more susceptible to the opinion congruency of an immediate social network in making decisions to partake in deliberation (Dalisay et al, 2012;Huang, 2005;Lee et al, 2004;Matthes et al, 2012). Drawing on this line of research, it is conceivable that frequent relational uses of mobile telephony in Korea reinforce attitude consistency in a close tie network (Ling, 2008), which can subsequently embolden people to converse with non-likeminded others by enhancing the perception about sufficient support for their own opinion positions (Oshagan, 1996;Scheufele and Moy, 2000).…”

Problematic Instant Messaging Use

“…In addition, it is possible that Singapore campuses differ from foreign campuses in terms of the overall level of campus Internet connectedness which can potentially affect the extent to which university students are predisposed to experiencing problems with their IM use. Factors such as polychronicity are largely shaped by cultural norms (Conte, Rizzuto & Steiner, 1999; Scarborough & Lindquist, 1999) and oral communication apprehension levels have been known to differ between countries (Lee, Detenber, Willnat, Aday, & Graf, 2004). Thus, the theoretical framework from this study can be utilized for a cross‐cultural comparison of problematic IM use between different countries.…”

Social Capital and the Spiral of Silence

“…Previous research shows that those who are interested in politics (Kim et al, 2004;Lee et al, 2004), are knowledgeable (Shamir, 1997), and pay attention to media (Lasorsa, 1991) are also more likely to be outspoken. Thus, these 3 This item, along with the ''restaurant'' item, are adaptations of the hypothetical ''train'' and ''bus'' scenario question used in previous spiral of silence studies.…”