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CHAPTER 5. MEASURING THE PUBLIC SPHERE 74 of constraints imposed on the participants. Diversity is assessed at two levels: the overall newsgroup, and within the newsgroup. Tractability measures the degree to which the volume or size of a public sphere zone changes on a day to day basis. High tractability would suggest that participants contract and expand the size of their public sphere according to their own needs and desires. Low tractability would suggest either low needs or desires to alter the size of the group, or external forces preventing the size from being altered. Tractability measures the capability of a medium to expand and contract depending on information flows. For example, the network news hole is 30 minutes, news or no news. But television networks have tractability by being able to do special live broadcasts, or to break in to other programming with really important news. On the other hand, network news is not contractable, so the volume of news has a defined floor. Newsgroups, of course, expand and contract regularly over time, without being out of the ordinary. Tractability is measured by the number of days featuring messages outside the normal bounds of activity. High tractability would suggest a high level of diversity. The second aspect of diversity measures the presence of multiple conversational patterns within threads of messages. These patterns are measured by the number of messages within a thread, the spread of days associated with the thread’s existence, the number of days on which messages were posted, and the number and type of authors posting messages. Diverse patterns would suggest that participants take advantage of their ability to shape the nature of their conversations; a lack of diversity would suggest either low desire, or external forces preventing participants from shaping their conversations. Reciprocity refers to the notion that people are engaged in conversation with each other, and that their messages are reflected upon and discussed by others. A message is considered reciprocal to a previous message if it appears in the same thread within seven days of the previous message, or if it cites the message directly by message identification number. Authors are considered to have a reciprocal relationship if their messages are reciprocated. The primary indicators of reciprocity are based on authors, and measured in terms of messages and other authors. In the idealized public sphere, reciprocity would be maximized: that is, each author would establish a reciprocal relationship with every other author. Reciprocity is operationalized as the proportion of authors with whom a reciprocal relationship is established, and the number of authors which the average message reciprocates. The final dimension concerns quality. Quality in the informal zone of the public
CHAPTER 5. MEASURING THE PUBLIC SPHERE 75 sphere requires that participants stay engaged with the topic at hand. This presents some difficulties in measurement, for it requires a subjective assessment or definition of what is “relevant” and what is “not relevant.” One of the functions of political talk, as discussed in Chapter 2, is to allow individuals to set their own agendas; that is, to decide for themselves what is relevant what should be talked about. By predetermining certain topics to represent high quality, and others to not represent high quality, removes some of the power of agenda setting from the participants. Nevertheless, it seems reasonable to suggest that within some broad boundaries, an informal zone of the public sphere, formed in this case to discuss abortion, that does not feature conversation about abortion, cannot be said to meet the demands of a quality discourse. The ideal state of the informal public sphere would have all participants talking always about abortion related matters. To the extent that the actual practice of the participants deviates from this state, the public sphere does not fulfill this particular dimension of the quality function. Quality is operationalized as the proportion of messages that are concerned with the abortion issue.
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CHAPTER 1. COMPUTERS, CONVERSATION
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APPENDIX B. DENSITY SCORES 165 Tabl
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APPENDIX C. SUPPLEMENTAL ANALYSIS 1
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BIBLIOGRAPHY 177 Best, Michael L. 1
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BIBLIOGRAPHY 179 Fisher, Bonnie, Mi
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BIBLIOGRAPHY 181 Hiltz, Starr Roxan
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BIBLIOGRAPHY 183 Mansbridge, Jane.
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BIBLIOGRAPHY 185 Pateman, Carole. 1
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BIBLIOGRAPHY 187 Savicki, Victor, D
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BIBLIOGRAPHY 189 U. S. Congress, Of
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