Amidst growing concerns about the decline in the quality of political discussions in the United States, this dissertation introduces the concept of the “political discussion environment,” which is defined as the condition of a society’s discursive arena for political discussions, encompassing the associated social norms and practices. The dissertation argues that individuals assess this environment, both consciously and unconsciously, forming their own perceptions thereof. In order to empirically measure individuals’ perceptions of the political discussion environment, this dissertation develops a survey instrument based on Habermas’ communicative action theory, namely the Perceived Political Discussion Environment Scale. A communicative political discussion environment should facilitate clear and truthful communication, promote shared norms, allow genuine expression, and provide equal opportunities for participation, thereby creating a discursive space where individuals can freely and respectfully engage in dialogue. Accordingly, the Perceived Political Discussion Environment Scale incorporates 23 items to represent these aspects. Utilizing the Perceived Political Discussion Environment Scale, this dissertation surveys 600 voting-age American residents, offering insights into their perceptions of the current political discussion environment in the United States, the individual-level factors associated with these perceptions, and the relationship between their perceptions and discursive participation in politics. The survey results reveal that older populations, individuals identifying as females or third genders, and those with lower socioeconomic status tend to harbor more negative perceptions of the political discussion environment, unveiling another dimension of inequality within American society. Frequently consuming news media and possessing a strong comfort level with conflict are associated with maintaining more positive perceptions of the political discussion environment. This dissertation also discovers that individuals, when perceiving the political discussion environment as communicative, tend to exhibit higher levels of discursive participation in politics. Perceptions of a communicative political discussion environment also amplify the positive correlation between news media use and discursive participation in politics. When individuals perceive the political discussion environment as more communicative, the positive correlation between news media use and discursive participation becomes stronger. These findings suggest that fostering a communicative political discussion environment may promote active citizenship and strengthen the news media’s role within a democratic system by drawing more individuals to contribute to political discourse. / Media & Communication

This study aims to discover the perceptions of the visually disabled students at a public university in Ankara, Turkey for attending and participating in an online communication and discussion environment on the Web to access information and establish social relationships with others. The purpose of this research is six folds: (1) to investigate the current status of the visually disabled university students at a public university in Ankara, Turkey for accessing and using computers and the Internet, (2) to learn the kind of web sites that those students prefer to visit on the Internet, (3) to discover the topics and subject they prefer to see in the Web forum that will be designed and developed for them, (4) to identify the topics and subjects in the Web forum that those visually disabled university students mostly visited for reading, replying and adding new titles under them, (5) to show the effects of the Web forum on the participants for accesing information and establishing social relationships with others, (6) to learn the views and opinions of those visually v disabled university students about that Web forum after actively participating and spending meaningful time in it. In this study, mixed research method is used. The participants of this study were the visually disabled students of a public university in Ankara, Turkey and found by the researcher with the help of an academician colleague working in the Special Education Department under the Faculty of Education in that university. In that university, there were totally 39 visually disabled students and 36 of them accepted to be enrolled in this study on a voluntary basis. Within the scope of the study, &ldquo / EnabledForum - EngelsizForum&rdquo / was designed and developed by the researcher as a communication and discussion environment for those visually disabled university students for enabling them to establish social relationships with others via submitted posts for the topics and subjects of the forum. Moreover, this forum helped those visually disabled university students for accessing up-to-date information from the Web based sources. Finally, the usage logs of the &ldquo / EnabledForum - EngelsizForum&rdquo / helped the researcher to analyse and report which topics and subjects were mostly interested by those visually disabled university students.

Wikipedia är en samling digitala encyklopedier som alla får skriva på och redigera. Skrivarbasen är dock kraftigt mansdominerad, trots att Wikipedia försöker få en skrivarbas som skulle kunna ses som representativ för verkligheten. För att undersöka varför så har en mindre explorativ studie på svenska Wikipedias diskussionsklimat genomförts. Studenter vid KTH har fått läsa utdrag ur diskussioner, och svarat på frågor om hur de upplever diskussionsklimatet och hur deras motivation att delta i diskussionen påverkas av det. Resultatet visar att de kvinnor som har svarat i intervjuerna i större grad än män blir omotiverade att delta i diskussionsklimat som de upplever som obehagliga. Studien ger förslag på framtida studier som skulle kunna genomföras på området. / Wikipedia is a collection of digital encyclopedia that anyone can write and edit. The writers, however, are a male dominated group, despite the fact that Wikipedia is trying to get a writer base that could be seen as representative of society. To investigate why this is a small-scale exploratory study of Swedish Wikipedia's discussion climate has been implemented. A small group of students at KTH have been studied. The interviewees have read excerpts from discussions taken from Swedish Wikipedia and answered questions about how they perceive them and how their motivation to participate in the discussion is affected by their climate. The result shows that the women that have answered the interviews have felt unmotivated to partake in discussions they feel are being conducted poorly to a greater extent than the men who have answered. The study provides ideas for future studies on the discussion climate of Swedish Wikipedia.