Browsing by Author "Roberts, Dustin Shane"
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Item Trump and the Spiral of Silence(2022-05-12) Roberts, Dustin Shane; Madrid-Morales, Daniel; Camaj, Lindita; Archer, Allison M. N.This study explores how 14 conservative college students managed their political expressions on campus during and after the 2020 U.S. presidential election with Elizabeth Noelle-Neumann’s theory of the spiral of silence. Through conducting in-depth qualitative interviews with conservative students or alumni from the University of Houston and Texas A&M University, it was found that several participants from the University of Houston felt strong social pressure to censor their political expressions while most of the sample from Texas A&M University did not. Students in the sample reported experiencing social pressure in two primary domains: classrooms and greater campus. This paper contributes to theory by considering the role that institutions can play in peoples’ political expressions. Findings suggested a possible association between two-step flow theory and the spiral of silence theory in some outcomes. Affective social interactions with professors and other students, or “episodes” are discussed.