BOSTON — Using last years revelations of government surveillance of Americans phone and email records as a test issue, researchers announced Tuesday they found that the spiral of silence behavioral dynamic of the pre-internet era also held up in social media forums where participants had the opportunity to offer their views on the case of Edward Snowden and the National Security Agency.

According to a report released Tuesday, the tendency of people not to speak up about policy issues in public, or among family, friends and work colleagues, when they believe their point of view is not widely shared is called the spiral of silence.

The Pew Research Center Internet Project said it picked the issue for its research because surveys had shown Americans were closely divided over whether NSA contractor leaks about surveillance were justified and over whether the surveillance policy was a good or bad idea.

The center surveyed 1,801 adults and found people were less willing to discuss the Snowden-NSA story in social media than in person, that social media did not provide an alternative platform for those not willing to discuss the story, and that in both personal and online settings people were more willing to share their views if they thought their audience agreed with them.

Those who do not feel that their Facebook friends or Twitter followers agree with their opinion are more likely to self-censor their views on the Snowden-NSA story in many circumstances - in social media and in face-to-face encounters, the center wrote in its eight-page report.