From Podium to Living Room: Elite Debates as an Emotional Catalyst for Citizen Communicative Engagements.

The primary goal of this study is to investigate whether and how elite debates stimulate citizens to take part in information seeking and conversation, two common forms of citizen communication that have been theorized as crucial to public deliberation and political engagement. Drawing on national survey data, this study finds that debate viewing was positively related to news consumption and political conversation. The data further suggest that part of these debate effects is mediated by either campaign interest or negative emotions and that the pattern of indirect debate effects is contingent on viewers’ partisanship. Negative emotional responses to candidates among partisans play a key role in mediating debate effects on communication behaviors, whereas negative emotions are of little consequence for nonpartisan viewers. For nonpartisan viewers, indirect effects of debate viewing on communication behavior operate only through campaign interest. Implications of these findings for debate research and deliberative democracy are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]