Urban contexts, spatially dispersed networks, and the diffusion of political information

This paper examines the spatial and temporal diffusion of political information within urban areas. We construct a multi-level analysis of information and communication, dependent on time, that is based on interviews with residents of the Indianapolis and St Louis metropolitan areas during the 1996 presidential election campaign. Moreover, based on a social network name generator, interviews were also conducted with discussants of the main respondents to the survey. Both sets of interviews are spread over a period of ten months, and we are able to locate the main respondents and their discussants within the urban neighborhoods where they reside. Hence, both the individual respondents and their discussants are located in time and space. Levels of aggregation are both dynamic and spatial, based on individuals who are located within residential neighborhoods and networks of social and political communication. We draw three main conclusions. First, not all networks are spatially dispersed, but some are, and the factors that give rise to spatial dispersion are directly related to an individual’s position in social structure. Second, spatially dispersed networks produce a number of important consequences, but none is more important than decreasing the density of the respondents’ communication networks. Finally, spatially dispersed networks are not necessarily politically diverse, but they are more likely to connect individuals who reside in socially and politically divergent settings.