When Citizens Meet Experts: Effects of Issue Experts' Mental Models on Citizens' Opinion as Textual Network (Top Paper).

Despite the large volume of empirical deliberation studies, researchers have given little effort to the analysis of citizens' verbal expressions themselves. This paper connects theoretical frameworks in cognitive complexity and political sophistication (Sniderman et al., 1991; Tetlock, 2004) with methodological advances in textual network analysis (Carley & Palmquist, 1992; Popping, 2006). We examine how deliberators' mental models are transformed by the group condition. For the textual network analysis, saved transcripts of online deliberators about the health-care policy were analyzed. To warrant the validity of the properties of our textual network measures, three variables (need for cognition, health-care knowledge, and argument repertoire) are adopted as validity criteria. Our results demonstrate that ordinary citizens who met and discussed with elites in an earlier interaction ,express in the next deliberation more diverse ideas that are more complexly interconnected , whereas elites who talked with other elites depress the range of concepts and the complexity of their interconnections in subsequent interactions. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]