Generating (and not just experiencing) talk about science

Abstract

We present evidence from a national sample of regular U.S. television news
viewers (n = 2,728) in support of the topical competence hypothesis, recently
posed by Southwell and Torres (2006), which suggests that interpersonal
conversation stems in part from the perceived topical understanding of
participants. Here we go beyond the Southwell and Torres evidence, however,
to directly assess a person’s conversational role in reported conversations
about science, as we hypothesize that conversation is most likely to bear a
relationship to perceived understanding of science for those who regularly take
an active part in talking (as opposed to simply being present when others talk).
Results support this hypothesis: perceived understanding of science predicts
active conversing, which is both noteworthy by itself and important to emerging
literature regarding the links between interpersonal and mass communication.