Author's Keywords: personaility strength, mass media, civic engagement, social capital,	Convention Convention is an application service for managing large or small academic conferences, annual meetings, and other types of events! Submission - Custom fields, multiple submission types, tracks, audio visual, multiple upload formats, automatic conversion to pdf. Review - Peer Review, Bulk reviewer assignment, bulk emails, ranking, z-score statistics, and multiple worksheets! Reports - Many standard and custom reports generated while you wait. Print programs with participant indexes, event grids, and more! Scheduling - Flexible and convenient grid scheduling within rooms and buildings. Conflict checking and advanced filtering. Communication - Bulk email tools to help your administrators send reminders and responses. Use form letters, a message center, and much more! Management - Search tools, duplicate people management, editing tools, submission transfers, many tools to manage a variety of conference management headaches! Click here for more information.
Association: Name: International Communication Association URL: http://www.icahdq.org
Citation: URL: http://www.allacademic.com/meta/p112047_index.html Direct Link: HTML Code:

Scheufele, Dietram. and Shah, Dhavan. "Opinion Leaders as Information Seekers: Communication Pathways to Civic Participation" Paper presented at the annual meeting of the International Communication Association, Marriott Hotel, San Diego, CA, May 27, 2003 <Not Available>. 2009-05-26 <http://www.allacademic.com/meta/p112047_index.html>

Scheufele, D. A. and Shah, D. V. , 2003-05-27 "Opinion Leaders as Information Seekers: Communication Pathways to Civic Participation" Paper presented at the annual meeting of the International Communication Association, Marriott Hotel, San Diego, CA Online <.PDF>. 2009-05-26 from http://www.allacademic.com/meta/p112047_index.html

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript Review Method: Peer Reviewed Abstract: In recent years, many scholars have bemoaned declining levels of social trust and civic engagement in our society, yet there is a group of citizens that does participate actively in civic life and that is strongly involved in the community — opinion leaders. Scheufele and Shah (2000) found that opinion leadership, or personality strength, is linked to civic engagement both directly and indirectly, mediated by various communication variables. However, they do not offer a complete theoretical account explaining the nature of these influences that relates them to the specific patterns of media use that foster participation. Accordingly, we explicate the construct of opinion leadership, outline it causes and consequences, and then examine hypothesized relationships using data from a large national survey conducted in 1998. We examine opinion leadership as an endogenous variable within a structural equation model. Our analyses show that opinion leadership is less a function of demographic variables than a number of psychological factors related to levels of self-esteem and confidence in one’s own abilities. In addition, we find opinion leaders are strategic in their media use, with television hard news use prompting newspaper hard news use and subsequent on-line information search. Particularly important, the link between opinion leadership and media use is largely mediated by interest in politics, which triggers information seeking across all types of media. In turn, interest in politics, newspaper reading, and on-line searching are significant direct predictors of civic engagement. Implications for future research and practice are discussed.

Ballot Propositions and Political Interest: Information, Engagement and Participation

Social structure and citizenship: Examining the impacts of social setting, network heterogeneity, and informational variables on political participation

Structural Access to Local News, Political Interest, and Civic Engagement

Measuring Race as a Cultural Component of Social Capital: Black Religiosity, Political Participation, and Civic Engagement