ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Commun.
Sec. Culture and Communication
Testing a Cognitive-Decisional Mediation Model (CDMM) through the Integration of the Cognitive Mediation Model (CMM) and the Spiral of Silence (SOS) Theory
Provisionally accepted
- 1Gulf University for Science and Technology, Mishref District, Kuwait
- 2University of Wisconsin–Whitewater, Whitewater, Wisconsin, United States
- 3American University of Kuwait, Safat, Kuwait
- 4Independent Researcher, Kuwait, Kuwait
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This study proposes a cognitive-decisional mediation model (CDMM) to predict opinion expression as a behavioral output. The model describes a process that starts with an individual’s motives for using media (surveillance gratification-seeking and heterogeneous opinion exposure motives). The motives are mediated by cognitive activities (cognitive elaboration, perceived familiarity with an issue, and diversity of retained information). The activities are then mediated by a person’s information instrumentality (the level of confidence that retained personal information of an issue can be conducive for expressing an opinion). Information instrumentality, Fear of Social Isolation (FSI), and opinion congruency are treated as the predictors of opinion expression as set at the final stage. The outcomes of two cross-sectional survey studies (Study 1 = 502 respondents; Study 2 = 826 respondents) indicate that the surveillance motive path was stronger than the heterogenous motive path in predicting a person’s expression of opinion at the model’s final stage. In both studies, information instrumentality predicted opinion expression. But the mediation of information instrumentality of perceived familiarity was stronger than that of information diversity in both studies. This study discusses the outcomes in relation to its proposed CDMM and its theoretical contribution to political communication and behaviors.
Keywords: spiral of silence (SOS), cognitive mediation model (CMM), uses and gratifications(U&G), information instrumentality, Cognitive elaboration
Received: 23 Nov 2024; Accepted: 29 Oct 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Al-Kandari, Frederick, Alsaber, AlReshaid and Alhashem. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Ahmad Alsaber, alsaber@acs-kw.com
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