WorldWideScience

Sample records for political attention people

  1. Apathy, alienation and young people: the political engagement of British millennials

    OpenAIRE

    Fox, Stuart

    2015-01-01

    Conventional wisdom holds that today’s young people, often known as ‘the Millennials’, are a politically alienated generation. Their hostility towards political parties, association with protest movements, and low electoral turnout are all said to indicate their alienation from the processes and institutions of Western democracy. This conventional wisdom stands, however, on shaky ground. Previous research has given too little attention to the definition and measurement of political alienation...

  2. The broadcast of shared attention and its impact on political persuasion.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Shteynberg, Garriy; Bramlett, James M; Fles, Elizabeth H; Cameron, Jaclyn

    2016-11-01

    In democracies where multitudes yield political influence, so does broadcast media that reaches those multitudes. However, broadcast media may not be powerful simply because it reaches a certain audience, but because each of the recipients is aware of that fact. That is, watching broadcast media can evoke a state of shared attention, or the perception of simultaneous coattention with others. Whereas past research has investigated the effects of shared attention with a few socially close others (i.e., friends, acquaintances, minimal ingroup members), we examine the impact of shared attention with a multitude of unfamiliar others in the context of televised broadcasting. In this paper, we explore whether shared attention increases the psychological impact of televised political speeches, and whether fewer numbers of coattending others diminishes this effect. Five studies investigate whether the perception of simultaneous coattention, or shared attention, on a mass broadcasted political speech leads to more extreme judgments. The results indicate that the perception of synchronous coattention (as compared with coattending asynchronously and attending alone) renders persuasive speeches more persuasive, and unpersuasive speeches more unpersuasive. We also find that recall memory for the content of the speech mediates the effect of shared attention on political persuasion. The results are consistent with the notion that shared attention on mass broadcasted information results in deeper processing of the content, rendering judgments more extreme. In all, our findings imply that shared attention is a cognitive capacity that supports large-scale social coordination, where multitudes of people can cognitively prioritize simultaneously coattended information. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved).

  3. Is that disgust I see? Political ideology and biased visual attention.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Oosterhoff, Benjamin; Shook, Natalie J; Ford, Cameron

    2018-01-15

    Considerable evidence suggests that political liberals and conservatives vary in the way they process and respond to valenced (i.e., negative versus positive) information, with conservatives generally displaying greater negativity biases than liberals. Less is known about whether liberals and conservatives differentially prioritize certain forms of negative information over others. Across two studies using eye-tracking methodology, we examined differences in visual attention to negative scenes and facial expressions based on self-reported political ideology. In Study 1, scenes rated high in fear, disgust, sadness, and neutrality were presented simultaneously. Greater endorsement of socially conservative political attitudes was associated with less attentional engagement (i.e., lower dwell time) of disgust scenes and more attentional engagement toward neutral scenes. Socially conservative political attitudes were not significantly associated with visual attention to fear or sad scenes. In Study 2, images depicting facial expressions of fear, disgust, sadness, and neutrality were presented simultaneously. Greater endorsement of socially conservative political attitudes was associated with greater attentional engagement with facial expressions depicting disgust and less attentional engagement toward neutral faces. Visual attention to fearful or sad faces was not related to social conservatism. Endorsement of economically conservative political attitudes was not consistently associated with biases in visual attention across both studies. These findings support disease-avoidance models and suggest that social conservatism may be rooted within a greater sensitivity to disgust-related information. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

  4. Politeness Principle in Cross-Culture Communication

    Science.gov (United States)

    Huang, Yongliang

    2008-01-01

    As we all know, different people hold different views about politeness. To be polite, Leech thinks you should follow "Politeness Principle" while Levinson suggests paying attention to others' "Face Wants". Sometimes what the Chinese people considered to be polite may not be true according to western culture. In order to…

  5. Obama cares about visuo-spatial attention: perception of political figures moves attention and determines gaze direction.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Mills, Mark; Smith, Kevin B; Hibbing, John R; Dodd, Michael D

    2015-02-01

    Processing an abstract concept such as political ideology by itself is difficult but becomes easier when a background situation contextualizes it. Political ideology within American politics, for example, is commonly processed using space metaphorically, i.e., the political "left" and "right" (referring to Democrat and Republican views, respectively), presumably to provide a common metric to which abstract features of ideology can be grounded and understood. Commonplace use of space as metaphor raises the question of whether an inherently non-spatial stimulus (e.g., picture of the political "left" leader, Barack Obama) can trigger a spatially-specific response (e.g., attentional bias toward "left" regions of the visual field). Accordingly, pictures of well-known Democrats and Republicans were presented as central cues in peripheral target detection (Experiment 1) and saccadic free-choice (Experiment 2) tasks to determine whether perception of stimuli lacking a direct association with physical space nonetheless induce attentional and oculomotor biases in the direction compatible with the ideological category of the cue (i.e., Democrat/left and Republican/right). In Experiment 1, target detection following presentation of a Democrat (Republican) was facilitated for targets appearing to the left (right). In Experiment 2, participants were more likely to look left (right) following presentation of a Democrat (Republican). Thus, activating an internal representation of political ideology induced a shift of attention and biased choice of gaze direction in a spatially-specific manner. These findings demonstrate that the link between conceptual processing and spatial attention can be totally arbitrary, with no reference to physical or symbolic spatial information. Published by Elsevier B.V.

  6. Powerlessness of older people in Hong Kong: a political economy analysis.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kam, Ping-kwong

    2003-01-01

    Gerontologists agree that old age can be associated with an increase in powerlessness both in the personal domain and in the social and political fields. This paper is an attempt to understand the concept of powerlessness in old age within a political economy theoretical framework. The paper argues that the powerlessness of older people is not biologically determined. Rather, it is socially constructed. It has its roots in the social, economic, and political structure of society. For this reason, the paper argues that (a) the capitalist economic system discriminates against and marginalizes older people in the labor market. The current unfavorable economic climate will make the economic situation of older people worse. (b) The residual welfare system does not counteract the unfavorable impact of the economic system. Rather, it deprives older people of the necessary financial resources and social service supports that would enable them to lead independent and dignified lives. (c) The authoritarian political system creates adverse conditions that make it very difficult for older people to participate in the decision-making process on issues that affect their lives, as well as on broader political issues that affect the whole of society. It is the interplay among these economic, social, and political forces in Hong Kong that creates the political economy of powerlessness in old age and prevents older people from using their powers to master and control their lives.

  7. Engaging Young People: Deliberative Preferences in Discussions About News and Politics

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Cynthia Peacock

    2016-03-01

    Full Text Available The Internet affords users a unique and low-cost way to engage with news, politics, and one another. Although young people are the most likely age cohort to go online, it is questionable whether young people take advantage of the Internet as a deliberative space. We examine the way college students perceive the online world as a venue for political discussion by analyzing responses from six focus groups conducted with college students across the United States. Using deliberative theory as a guide, we examine focus group participants’ thoughts about political discussion both online and offline. Our findings indicate that young people’s preferences for online discussions about politics and the news consistently link to the ideals of deliberation. Young people prefer engaging with others who are knowledgeable and remain flexible and calm during discussions. Goals for engaging in conversations about politics primarily revolved around sharing information and opinions. Participants preferred civil discourse that focuses on commonalities rather than differences between people. This study provides greater insight into how the rising generation currently engages with politics and the news and reasons why many people hesitate to participate in online discussions about public affairs.

  8. Engagement, Passivity and Detachment: 16-Year-Old Students' Conceptions of Politics and the Relationship between People and Politics

    Science.gov (United States)

    Mathé, Nora Elise Hesby

    2018-01-01

    While there is a wealth of literature on young people and politics, most studies have examined their interest, trust and participation in politics as well as their attitudes toward and knowledge about formal politics. Little is known, however, about young people and the concept of politics. This article investigates 16-year-old students'…

  9. Young People and Political Campaigning on the Internet. CIRCLE Fact Sheet.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Levine, Peter; Lopez, Mark Hugo

    2004-01-01

    This fact sheet discusses young people and political campaigning on the Internet. It explains how the Internet has become a powerful force in political campaigns. A survey released by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press on January 11, 2004 found that the Internet is gaining importance as a source of political news, especially for…

  10. Images of Famous People in Political Advertising: Youth Perceptions and Position

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Liubov I. Ryumshina

    2013-01-01

    Full Text Available The article touches upon the issues of youth awareness about the recent political events and its attitude to the political advertising, examines youth perception and position in respect of famous people, as well as candidates participation in political advertising on the example of the last presidential campaign. The study describes the most attractive elements of the political advertising for youth

  11. The political left rolls with the good and the political right confronts the bad: connecting physiology and cognition to preferences

    Science.gov (United States)

    Dodd, Michael D.; Balzer, Amanda; Jacobs, Carly M.; Gruszczynski, Michael W.; Smith, Kevin B.; Hibbing, John R.

    2012-01-01

    We report evidence that individual-level variation in people's physiological and attentional responses to aversive and appetitive stimuli are correlated with broad political orientations. Specifically, we find that greater orientation to aversive stimuli tends to be associated with right-of-centre and greater orientation to appetitive (pleasing) stimuli with left-of-centre political inclinations. These findings are consistent with recent evidence that political views are connected to physiological predispositions but are unique in incorporating findings on variation in directed attention that make it possible to understand additional aspects of the link between the physiological and the political. PMID:22271780

  12. Events and the means of attention

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Richards, G.W.

    2013-01-01

    In the contemporary network society, attracting public attention has become more challenging as the supply of information increases. Events arguably play an essential role in synchronizing personal, social and political agendas, helping to focus attention and frame places, objects and people. The

  13. Public attention to science and political news and support for climate change mitigation

    Science.gov (United States)

    Hart, P. Sol; Nisbet, Erik C.; Myers, Teresa A.

    2015-06-01

    We examine how attention to science and political news may influence public knowledge, perceived harm, and support for climate mitigation policies. Previous research examining these relationships has not fully accounted for how political ideology shapes the mental processes through which the public interprets media discourses about climate change. We incorporate political ideology and the concept of motivated cognition into our analysis to compare and contrast two prominent models of opinion formation, the scientific literacy model, which posits that disseminating scientific information will move public opinion towards the scientific consensus, and the motivated reasoning model, which posits that individuals will interpret information in a biased manner. Our analysis finds support for both models of opinion formation with key differences across ideological groups. Attention to science news was associated with greater perceptions of harm and knowledge for conservatives, but only additional knowledge for liberals. Supporting the literacy model, greater knowledge was associated with more support for climate mitigation for liberals. In contrast, consistent with motivated reasoning, more knowledgeable conservatives were less supportive of mitigation policy. In addition, attention to political news had a negative association with perceived harm for conservatives but not for liberals.

  14. Power to the People: An Inverse Role in Nigeria’s Politics and Governance

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Onyemekara Emecheta Kingsley Onyemekara

    2016-12-01

    Full Text Available An attempt to contextualize the political power structure in Nigeria exposes an orientation and practice that directly negates the democratic norm of power belonging to the people. Today, power belongs entirely to government officials who use it to advance the course of their political and economic interests. The people are thus, subjected to the point and path of complete alienation from the demands and benefits of their democratic citizenship. Given the weakness of the rule of law and institutions of check in Nigeria, established statutes and legislation have not been able to stand tall to relevance in dislodging the hegemony of the ruling elites as is evident in our case study-Imo State. This has since 1999, propped up a telling political effect, which also spirals to the arena of development, and quakes the stability of the state, and the nation at large. The paper examines the current domiciliation of political power, its potential effect on the people, and on service delivery in the country. A case is made for recovery of power for the people and reasserting the law as a balancing force and as means of providing check against breach of constitutionally prescribed political power structure and configuration.

  15. Good news for the future? Young people, Internet use and political participation

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Bakker, T.P.; de Vreese, C.H.

    2011-01-01

    The role of traditional media and the Internet in relation to young people’s political participation has attracted a great deal of scholarly attention. Starting from a notion of differential media use and an encompassing notion of political participation, this article tests the relationships between

  16. Book Review:The forgotten people: Political banishment under ...

    African Journals Online (AJOL)

    Book Review:The forgotten people: Political banishment under apartheid. H MacDonald. Abstract. No abstract. Full Text: EMAIL FREE FULL TEXT EMAIL FREE FULL TEXT · DOWNLOAD FULL TEXT DOWNLOAD FULL TEXT · AJOL African Journals Online. HOW TO USE AJOL... for Researchers · for Librarians · for Authors ...

  17. Young People's Voluntary and Campaigning Activities as Sources of Political Education.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Roker, Debi; Player, Katie; Coleman, John

    1999-01-01

    Discusses political apathy and alienation among youth, challenging this negative image. Describes empirical research that demonstrates a high level of engagement by young people in social activism and community activities, focuses on factors influencing young people's participation, and demonstrates that volunteering and campaigning affect young…

  18. Young people navigating political engagement through post-war instability and mobility

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Korzenevica, Marina

    2016-01-01

    The everyday politics of rural young people who live in post-war settings in the Global South is poorly explored. In the aftermath of a recent civil war in Nepal (1996-2006), villages have been operating without elected bodies, and poorly functioning local governance has been concentrated around ......, as well as by involving themselves in disruptive events and seeking personal benefit from them. Secondly, young men and women negotiate their political motivations in community development politics primarily through household dynamics adjusted to their mobile lifestyle....... activists balance their daily lives, mobility and household obligations with involvement in party and local development politics? By exploring their motivations and engagement, I come to two conclusions. Firstly, young men navigate party politics by juggling the legacy of patronage and rejecting parties...

  19. “Some of the Best Movement People Are Political Ecologists at Heart”: An Interview About Political Ecology With Nancy Peluso

    OpenAIRE

    Melanie Pichler

    2016-01-01

    Nancy Peluso pioneered political ecology research in Southeast Asia with her book on Rich Forest, Poor People (1992) that untangles peasant resistance and state control in Indonesian forest politics. Since then, the professor of political ecology at UC Berkeley, California, has done extensive ethnographic research on the effects of social difference (ethnic identity, class, gender) on resource access and control, dealing with forests, land, mining, and water conflicts in Indonesia and Malays...

  20. Political Participation as Public Pedagogy--The Educational Situation in Young People's Political Conversations in Social Media

    Science.gov (United States)

    Andersson, Erik; Olson, Maria

    2014-01-01

    In this article we argue that young people's political participation in the social media can be considered "public pedagogy". The argument builds on a previous empirical analysis of a Swedish net community called Black Heart. Theoretically, the article is based on a particular notion of public pedagogy, education and Hannah Arendt's…

  1. Theoretical bases of formation of political consciousness of the citizens of Ukraine - as the actual direction of the development of the mainstreaming political sociology

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    K. U. Kublik

    2013-12-01

    Full Text Available Analyzing the political life through political ideology and political culture should pay attention to political consciousness, which presents set of theoretical positions, views, opinions, attitudes, values orientation, etc. that are implemented in the process of implementing functions of political power. Because postulates political ideology are implemented using some mechanism, election campaigns and public opinion, their analysis is undoubtedly one of the major directions of political sociology. At the present stage of creation of the state of Ukraine, formation of the Institute of civil society is important to the study of the mechanism of formation of political consciousness of the nation. On the state of political consciousness influenced by processes not only within the country but also in the international arena. The growing interdependence of countries and peoples, General threat to the existence of humans and the General difficulties on the path of human progress lead to the «globalization» of all the forms of public consciousness, including political. A shift from confrontation to mutual understanding and cooperation means considerable changes in the political consciousness and politics subjects of international cooperation. These are not only the state but also directly peoples, peace­loving democratic mass movements, people of good will on all continents. Consolidation of their efforts is able to resist all forms of hegemony and dictates, any policy which is conducted from a position of strength.

  2. Factors associated with Spanish older people's membership in political organizations: the role of active aging activities.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Serrat, Rodrigo; Villar, Feliciano; Celdrán, Montserrat

    2015-09-01

    This study explores older people's membership in political organizations by using data from the Survey on older people 2010, carried out by Spain's National Institute for older people and social services. The objectives were to describe the extent of this kind of participation among Spaniards aged 65 and over, and to analyze the factors that are associated with it. Results show that only slightly less than 7 % of the sample belonged to a political organization. To analyze the factors related to this membership, a set of models of multivariate analyses were run, including socioeconomic resources and participation in other types of active aging activity (participation in leisure, learning, and productive activities). Educational level, leisure activities, learning activities, and only volunteering in the case of productive activities were found to be associated with membership in political organizations. Results provide partial support for the socioeconomic resources model and suggest that engagement in leisure activities, learning activities, and volunteering might have an enhancing effect on membership in political organizations.

  3. Engaging and Disengaging with Political News

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Ørmen, Jacob; Linaa Jensen, Jakob

    (most notably by Prior, 2007; Stromback, Djerf-Pierre, & Shehata, 2012) that this development also can lead to an increase in the number of people who utilize this enhanced media choice to skip news altogether. One area that merits special attention in this context is political news. Critical engagement......, 1992) and 'performance of identity' (Madianou, 2009) that take place throughout people's everyday life. To further understand these processes it is important to attend to how users engage – or disengage – with political news. To do this we present a typology of news users based on an exploratory...... and conversing face-to-face) that users engage in for political discussion, and compare these across demographics as well as relevant media use patterns. The findings from the survey will be supplemented by results from a series of qualitative interviews that shed light on the motivations users have for engaging...

  4. Political and Legal Consciousness of Young People in the Region (a Case Study of Jewish Autonomous Region)

    Science.gov (United States)

    Lutsenko, Ekaterina; Tyurina, Yulia; Korolyova, Irina; Shishmakov, Stanislav; Shishmakov, Vladimir; Nikolaeva, Natalia

    2016-01-01

    The paper deals with particularities of political and legal consciousness of young people in view of a region against the background of the general standpoint of the Russian citizens and Russian youth in questions of the political and legal spheres. The opinion of the young people and citizens of the country as a whole is evaluated based on the…

  5. Attentional Bias Associated with Habitual Self-Stigma in People with Mental Illness.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Chan, Kevin K S; Mak, Winnie W S

    2015-01-01

    As habitual self-stigma can have a tremendous negative impact on people with mental illness, it is of paramount importance to identify its risk factors. The present study aims to examine the potential contributory role of attentional bias in habitual self-stigma. People with mental illness having strong (n = 47) and weak (n = 47) habitual self-stigma completed a computerized emotional Stroop task which included stigma-related, positive, and non-affective words as stimuli. The strong habit group was found to exhibit faster color-naming of stigma-related words (compared to non-affective words), whereas the weak habit group showed no difference in the speed of response to different stimuli. These findings suggest that people with stronger habitual self-stigma may be more able to ignore the semantic meaning of stigma-related words and focus on the color-naming task. Moreover, people with stronger habitual self-stigma may have greater attentional avoidance of stigma-related material. The present study is the first to demonstrate a specific relationship between habitual self-stigma and biased processing of stigma-related information. In order to further determine the role and the nature of attentional bias in habitual self-stigma, future research should employ a broader range of experimental paradigms and measurement techniques to examine stigma-related attentional bias in people with mental illness.

  6. “Some of the Best Movement People Are Political Ecologists at Heart”: An Interview About Political Ecology With Nancy Peluso

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Melanie Pichler

    2016-06-01

    Full Text Available Nancy Peluso pioneered political ecology research in Southeast Asia with her book on Rich Forest, Poor People (1992 that untangles peasant resistance and state control in Indonesian forest politics. Since then, the professor of political ecology at UC Berkeley, California, has done extensive ethnographic research on the effects of social difference (ethnic identity, class, gender on resource access and control, dealing with forests, land, mining, and water conflicts in Indonesia and Malaysia. Her recent work investigates the relationships between migration and environmental change. Melanie Pichler spoke with her during the International Conference of the European Network of Political Ecology (ENTITLE from 20 to 24 March in Stockholm where she delivered a keynote lecture on the unexpected impacts of women’s migration on the environment in a forest village in East Java. During the interview, Nancy reflected on current trends in political ecology research, the potential pitfalls of indigenous peoples’ rights, the contradictory role of NGOs in socio-ecological conflicts, and the potential of political ecology research beyond academia.

  7. Seeing People, Seeing Things: Individual Differences in Selective Attention.

    Science.gov (United States)

    McIntyre, Miranda M; Graziano, William G

    2016-09-01

    Individuals differ in how they deploy attention to their physical and social environments. These differences have been recognized in various forms as orientations, interests, and preferences, but empirical work examining these differences at a cognitive level is scarce. To address this gap, we conducted two studies to explore the links among attentional processes and interests in people and things. The first study measured selective visual attention toward person- and thing-related image content. In the second study, participants were randomly assigned to describe visually presented scenes using either an observational or narrative story format. Linguistic analyses were conducted to assess attentional bias toward interest-congruent content. Outcomes from both studies suggest that attention and motivational processes are linked to differential interests in physical and social environments. © 2016 by the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, Inc.

  8. Neoliberalism and the Unfolding Patterns of Young People’s Political Engagement and Political Participation in Contemporary Britain

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    James Hart

    2017-11-01

    Full Text Available Recent trends suggest that young people in Britain are increasingly rejecting electoral politics. However, evidence suggests that British youth are not apolitical, but are becoming ever more sceptical of the ability of electoral politics to make a meaningful contribution to their lives. Why young people are adopting new political behaviour and values, however, is still a point of contention. Some authors have suggested that neoliberalism has influenced these new patterns of political engagement. This article will advance this critique of neoliberalism, giving attention to three different facets of neoliberalism and demonstrate how they combine to reduce young people’s expectations of political participation and their perceptions of the legitimacy of political actors. We combine ideational and material critiques to demonstrate how young people’s political engagement has been restricted by neoliberalism. Neoliberalism has influenced youth political participation through its critiques of collective democracy, by the subsequent transformations in political practice that it has contributed to, and through the economic marginalisation that has resulted from its shaping of governments’ monetary policy. This approach will be conceptually predicated on a definition of neoliberalism which acknowledges both its focus on reducing interventions in the economy, and also its productive capacity to modify society to construct market relations and galvanise competition amongst agents. From this definition, we develop the argument that neoliberal critiques of democracy, the subsequent changes in political practices which respond to these criticisms and the transformation in socioeconomic conditions caused by neoliberalism have coalesced to negatively influence young people’s electoral participation.

  9. Imitating the newcomer. How, when and why established political parties imitate the policy positions and issue attention of new political parties in the electoral and parliamentary arena : the case of the Netherlands

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Otjes, Simon Pieter

    2012-01-01

    This thesis studies, how, when and why established political parties imitate new political parties. It examines new party effects on both the policy positions of established parties and the attention established political parties spend on issues. It examines this effect in both the electoral and

  10. Politics of civility: the case of the Association of Undocumented People of Madrid

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Agustin, Oscar Garcia

    2013-01-01

    The mobilization of undocumented immigrants in civil society reflects the politics of civility, defined by Balibar as the creation of a space for an inclusive political community based on equality. The case analysed in this article, the Association of Undocumented People of Madrid, refers......, they also require a more radical change in society (i.e. ‘societal change’). Thinking beyond the framework of national citizenship, migrants, as workers, attempt to foster alternative economic and social conditions....

  11. Twitter-Based Analysis of the Dynamics of Collective Attention to Political Parties.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Eom, Young-Ho; Puliga, Michelangelo; Smailović, Jasmina; Mozetič, Igor; Caldarelli, Guido

    2015-01-01

    Large-scale data from social media have a significant potential to describe complex phenomena in the real world and to anticipate collective behaviors such as information spreading and social trends. One specific case of study is represented by the collective attention to the action of political parties. Not surprisingly, researchers and stakeholders tried to correlate parties' presence on social media with their performances in elections. Despite the many efforts, results are still inconclusive since this kind of data is often very noisy and significant signals could be covered by (largely unknown) statistical fluctuations. In this paper we consider the number of tweets (tweet volume) of a party as a proxy of collective attention to the party, identify the dynamics of the volume, and show that this quantity has some information on the election outcome. We find that the distribution of the tweet volume for each party follows a log-normal distribution with a positive autocorrelation of the volume over short terms, which indicates the volume has large fluctuations of the log-normal distribution yet with a short-term tendency. Furthermore, by measuring the ratio of two consecutive daily tweet volumes, we find that the evolution of the daily volume of a party can be described by means of a geometric Brownian motion (i.e., the logarithm of the volume moves randomly with a trend). Finally, we determine the optimal period of averaging tweet volume for reducing fluctuations and extracting short-term tendencies. We conclude that the tweet volume is a good indicator of parties' success in the elections when considered over an optimal time window. Our study identifies the statistical nature of collective attention to political issues and sheds light on how to model the dynamics of collective attention in social media.

  12. Twitter-Based Analysis of the Dynamics of Collective Attention to Political Parties.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Young-Ho Eom

    Full Text Available Large-scale data from social media have a significant potential to describe complex phenomena in the real world and to anticipate collective behaviors such as information spreading and social trends. One specific case of study is represented by the collective attention to the action of political parties. Not surprisingly, researchers and stakeholders tried to correlate parties' presence on social media with their performances in elections. Despite the many efforts, results are still inconclusive since this kind of data is often very noisy and significant signals could be covered by (largely unknown statistical fluctuations. In this paper we consider the number of tweets (tweet volume of a party as a proxy of collective attention to the party, identify the dynamics of the volume, and show that this quantity has some information on the election outcome. We find that the distribution of the tweet volume for each party follows a log-normal distribution with a positive autocorrelation of the volume over short terms, which indicates the volume has large fluctuations of the log-normal distribution yet with a short-term tendency. Furthermore, by measuring the ratio of two consecutive daily tweet volumes, we find that the evolution of the daily volume of a party can be described by means of a geometric Brownian motion (i.e., the logarithm of the volume moves randomly with a trend. Finally, we determine the optimal period of averaging tweet volume for reducing fluctuations and extracting short-term tendencies. We conclude that the tweet volume is a good indicator of parties' success in the elections when considered over an optimal time window. Our study identifies the statistical nature of collective attention to political issues and sheds light on how to model the dynamics of collective attention in social media.

  13. Deaf Culture and the Cochlear Implant Debate: Cyborg Politics and the Identity of People with Disabilities.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Cherney, James L.

    1999-01-01

    Examines the potential benefits and limitations of cyborg politics. Explores depictions of cyborgs in science fiction stories and examines the deaf culture's arguments in the cochlear-implant debate. Investigates the current viability of cyborg politics as a mode of advocacy for people with disabilities. (SC)

  14. Political innovations

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Sørensen, Eva

    2017-01-01

    are mainly interested in assessing and promoting innovations in public service delivery, but have paid little or no attention to the need for innovations in polity, politics and policy. This article develops a research agenda for studying innovations in political institutions, in the political process...... and in policy outputs. It proposes a number of research themes related to political innovations that call for scholarly attention, and identifies push and pull factors influencing the likelihood that these themes will be addressed in future research....

  15. Formation of the Institute of Youth Political Elite in the Context of Political Transformation in the Russian Federation

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Виктория Александровна Мясоедова

    2016-12-01

    Full Text Available The article discusses the features of the formation of the institute of youth political elite in the Russian Federation. The author proved that the formation of youth political elites directly dependent on the fulfillment of opportunities and professional development of representatives of the youth community and requires a systematic campaign in the formation of the young man and his political socialization. Revealed aspects in the context of which it is necessary to consider the formation of the institute of youth political elite: the socio-economic, political, cognitive. Proposed key methods and forms of interaction between state institutions with the younger generation. The conditions, the implementation of which is necessary for the formation of the institute of youth political elites in Russia: the current administrative and managerial elite has to be aware of the need to create such an elite institution for young people; the existence of regulatory and organizational methods of the activities of youth leaders; a reflection of the youth leader action together communicative interactions; subject-object position of the individual in the current political process of socialization; foster civic political culture, "foundation" which are the concepts of citizenship and patriotism. In conclusion, it is concluded that the development of the political system of education and the building of the Institute of Youth elites should be based on scientific and sociological studies of actual data, reflecting the dynamics of the youth mentality and preferences. A special attention on the part of government actors should be given new urgency to inclusion of young people in the processes of formation of state policy.

  16. Hmong Across Borders or Borders Across Hmong? Social and Political Influences Upon Hmong People

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Prasit Leepreecha

    2014-12-01

    Full Text Available The Hmong are a transnational ethnic people, because of their dispersal from China into Southeast Asia in the early 19th century and from Southeast Asia to Western countries from 1975 onward. However, even within the context of Southeast Asia and southern China, the Hmong are a transnational ethnic group, due to state boundaries and the enforcement of international laws.Scholars speak as though the Hmong population has crossed political and legal borders by their movement across state boundaries and international borders. However, I argue that it is the political, social, and legal borders that have cut across the Hmong people and subjected them to be citizens of different modern nation-states. Even in the present time, these borders still, and continuously, play important roles that cross and divide the Hmong people into distinctive subgroups and fragments. In this article, I will start by describing the generally understood situation of Hmong being across national borders, and then will explain my argument that borders are across the Hmong.

  17. Reviews on Rzewski’s Leftist Political Piano Variations: ‘The People United Will Never Be Defeated’

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Deng Liang

    2017-02-01

    Full Text Available ‘The People United Will Never Be Defeated (1975 is an one-hour epic modern piano variations, is one with an exquisite structure as well as a humanistic content. As a political context, this could be a legendary piece as well, in its creation in Chile just before Pinochet's military regime and the music's subsequent meaning for so many leftist political enthusiasts. In his approach the author highlighted the role of music, i.e. the role of cultural power in crating consciousness and attracting masses of people to political causes inspiring them to fight for better future. In addition, the author opened a number of questions on performance of contemporary music on the basis of Rzewski’s own DVD recording, the analyzing of which revealed an interesting phenomenon because when Rzewski played his own music, his playing differentiated from his own score.

  18. Political-pedagogical unfoldings of bilingualism for deaf people: reflexions and directing

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Sueli Fernandes

    2009-09-01

    Full Text Available The article talks about bilingualism for deaf people, it’s implications in the educational process, as well as in some of the inclusive linguistic politics unfoldings proposed officially from the end of the decade of 1990 for this segment. The sociocultural and linguistic characteristics of the Brazilian deaf people communities are argued and also the importance of the same ones to be known and socially valued. Some lines of direction and challenges are pointed for the access and remaining of the deaf students in the school educational process. Finally, the text reflects about the bilingual education programs for deaf students, considering that these are complex, specially because it crosses economic ideological, cultural contradictory and heterogeneous interests.

  19. Policy Ideas, Knowledge Regimes and Comparative Political Economy

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Campbell, John L.; Pedersen, Ove K.

    2015-01-01

    Despite much attention to how ideas affect policy making, where these ideas come from is a blind spot in comparative political economy. We show that an important source of policy ideas are knowledge regimes—fields of policy research organizations. We show as well that the organization of knowledge...... to restore it by transforming their knowledge regimes, albeit in ways that are still shaped by the surrounding political and economic institutions. The effectiveness of their efforts is not guaranteed. The argument is based on an analysis of the evolution of knowledge regimes since the 1970s in the USA...... regimes is heavily influenced by the organization of their surrounding political economies such that knowledge regimes have particular national characters. Furthermore, when people perceive that the utility of their knowledge regime for the rest of the political economy breaks down, they often try...

  20. Struggle for Autonomy and Ethno-Religious Factor in Political Life of the People's Republic of Bangladesh

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    М С Хак

    2009-06-01

    Full Text Available The article is devoted to the problem of struggle for autonomy in the context of ethno-religious factor in the political life of the People's Republic of Bangladesh. The historical roots and contemporary features of the conflict between the government and the representatives of Jumma peoples compactly inhabited in the Hill area bordered upon India and Burma named Chittagong Hill Tracts are investigated. The different conceptions, methods and mechanisms of settlement of the conflict are considered, the role of local as well as international factors in the achievement of political consensus are evaluated. The conclusion about a necessity of the subsequent searching of the most optimal tools and methods of solving of such deep-rooted conflicts is made.

  1. "Polite People" and Military Meekness: the Attributes of Military Ethics

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Pavel V. Didov

    2016-12-01

    Full Text Available The article analyzes the phenomenon of "polite people" from the point of view of the history and theory of ethical thought. Identify and specify ethical principles that form the basis of military courtesy. On the basis of the revealed regularities, the study proves that ethics is impossible without a certain power attributes, which constitute its core. In relation to the traditions of Russian warriors revealed the key role to their formation of the Orthodox ethics and the military of meekness. The obtained results can serve as material for educational activities for the formation of fighting spirit.

  2. Astronomy and Politics

    Science.gov (United States)

    Steele, John M.

    The relationship between astronomy and politics is a complex but important part of understanding the practice of astronomy throughout history. This chapter explores some of the ways that astronomy, astrology, and politics have interacted, placing particular focus on the way that astronomy and astrology have been used for political purposes by both people in power and people who wish to influence a ruler's policy. Also discussed are the effects that politics has had on the development of astronomy and, in particular, upon the recording and preservation of astronomical knowledge.

  3. Tracking the visual focus of attention for a varying number of wandering people.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Smith, Kevin; Ba, Sileye O; Odobez, Jean-Marc; Gatica-Perez, Daniel

    2008-07-01

    We define and address the problem of finding the visual focus of attention for a varying number of wandering people (VFOA-W), determining where the people's movement is unconstrained. VFOA-W estimation is a new and important problem with mplications for behavior understanding and cognitive science, as well as real-world applications. One such application, which we present in this article, monitors the attention passers-by pay to an outdoor advertisement. Our approach to the VFOA-W problem proposes a multi-person tracking solution based on a dynamic Bayesian network that simultaneously infers the (variable) number of people in a scene, their body locations, their head locations, and their head pose. For efficient inference in the resulting large variable-dimensional state-space we propose a Reversible Jump Markov Chain Monte Carlo (RJMCMC) sampling scheme, as well as a novel global observation model which determines the number of people in the scene and localizes them. We propose a Gaussian Mixture Model (GMM) and Hidden Markov Model (HMM)-based VFOA-W model which use head pose and location information to determine people's focus state. Our models are evaluated for tracking performance and ability to recognize people looking at an outdoor advertisement, with results indicating good performance on sequences where a moderate number of people pass in front of an advertisement.

  4. The "politics of the queue": the politicization of people living with HIV/AIDS in Tanzania.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Beckmann, Nadine; Bujra, Janet

    2010-01-01

    Starting from a body of literature on movements around "biological citizenship," this article analyses the political significance of HIV-positive people's collective action in Tanzania. We explore reasons for the limited impact of Tanzanian AIDS activism on the wider political scene, concluding that the formation of a "movement" is still in its infancy and faces many constraints, though some breakthroughs have been made. Participation in PLHA groups in Tanzania encourages politicizing struggles over representation, democratic forms and gender that can lead to a process of political socialization in which members learn to recognize and confront abuses of power. It is in such low-level, less visible social transformations that the greatest potential of participation in collective action around HIV/AIDS in Tanzania lies.

  5. Political Crowdfunding as concept of political technologies

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Valeria GOLKA

    2016-09-01

    Full Text Available Political crowdfunding is analyzed as a new concept of political science. The justification of use of crowdfunding technologies not only in business but also in the political sphere is argued. The efficiency, availability, low cost of the new forms of political investment through the development of information and communication technologies are noted. The typology of political crowdfunding is proposed. Political projects promoting domestic crowdfunding platforms are analyzed. Attention is drawn to the problem of legal gaps in the regulation of crowdfunding is studied. The foreign experience of organizing public support (mikroinvestment political projects. It is emphasized that in terms of political theory crowdfunding is based on solidarity. The crowdfunding properties of transforming social capital accumulated by social networks into financial capital are mentioned.

  6. Education and Political Development

    Science.gov (United States)

    Massialas, Byron G.

    1977-01-01

    Considers how education is related to politics with the focus on political socialization, political recruitment, i.e., the selection and training of political elites, and political integration or nation building of groups of people. (Author/RK)

  7. Attentional and evaluative biases help people maintain relationships by avoiding infidelity.

    Science.gov (United States)

    McNulty, James K; Meltzer, Andrea L; Makhanova, Anastasia; Maner, Jon K

    2018-02-12

    Two longitudinal studies of 233 newlywed couples suggest that automatic attentional and evaluative biases regarding attractive relationship alternatives can help people maintain relationships by avoiding infidelity. Both studies assessed participants' tendency to automatically disengage attention from photos of attractive, opposite sex individuals; one study assessed participants' tendency to devalue those individuals by comparing their attractiveness evaluations to evaluations made by single people, and both studies assessed infidelity and relationship status multiple times for approximately three years. Several sources of devaluation emerged, but only participants' history of short-term sex predicted both biases; having more short-term sexual partners was associated with being slower to disengage attention from attractive alternatives, and, among men, evaluating such individuals more positively. In turn, both processes exerted indirect effects on relationship dissolution by predicting infidelity; being 100 ms faster to disengage attention from attractive alternatives or rating them 2 scale points lower in attractiveness was associated with a decrease in the odds of infidelity of approximately 50%; the effect of devaluation on infidelity was stronger among participants who evidenced steeper declines in marital satisfaction. These associations emerged because unfaithful individuals took longer to disengage attention from attractive alternatives compared with other social targets and did not differ from singles in their evaluations of those alternatives. Among several other predictors of infidelity, partner attractiveness was associated with a decrease in the odds of infidelity among men but not women. These findings suggest a role for basic psychological processes in predicting infidelity, highlight the critical role of automatic processes in relationship functioning, and suggest novel ways to promote relationship success. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2018 APA

  8. Catalan brinkmanship tool for political rivalry in Spain

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Górnicka Weronika

    2017-12-01

    Full Text Available The aim of this article is to analyze the independence activities undertaken by the Catalan government in the context of the brinkmanship strategy and the assumptions of game theory based on “the game of chicken”. It allows us to put the issue of Catalan’s claims in a different context than to refer to political, historical or cultural grounds for self-determination. By adopting this approach to the problem and putting it in the field of political competition at central and national level, it is possible to expose the elements that treat the whole problem as a political game, rather than a real endeavor to reach a consensus between the parties and finally solve the problem. In addition, from the point of view of party interests, it is beneficial that the problem of Catalan independence, absorbing much public attention, continues to function in the political sphere and in the consciousness of the people.

  9. Political epidemiology: strengthening socio-political analysis for mass immunisation - lessons from the smallpox and polio programmes.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Taylor, S

    2009-01-01

    Control and reduction of infectious diseases is a key to attaining the Millennium Development Goals. An important element of this work is the successful immunisation, especially in resource-poor countries. Mass immunisation, most intensively in the case of eradication, depends on a combination of reliable demand (e.g. public willingness to comply with the vaccine protocol) and effective supply (e.g. robust, generally state-led, vaccine delivery). This balance of compliance and enforceability is, quintessentially, socio-political in nature - conditioned by popular perceptions of disease and risk, wider conditions of economic development and poverty, technical aspects of vaccine delivery, and the prevailing international norms regarding power relations between states and peoples. In the past 100 years, three out of six disease eradication programmes have failed. The explanations for failure have focused on biotechnical and managerial or financial issues. Less attention is paid to socio-political aspects. Yet socio-political explanations are key. Eradication is neither inherently prone to failure, nor necessarily doomed in the case of polio. However, eradication, and similar mass immunisation initiatives, which fail to address social and political realities of intervention may be. A comparison of the smallpox and polio eradication programmes illustrates the importance of disease-specific socio-political analysis in programme conceptualisation, design, and management.

  10. Uncovering the political in non-political young muslim immigrant identities

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Niels Nørgaard Kristensen

    2011-01-01

    Full Text Available The theme of this paper is political identity and participation amongMuslim migrant young people in Denmark. Political identity is analysedby examining students’ political interests and perception of themselves as participants in politics, as well as their rationalities for politics. In order to address the research question ‘What characterizes political identities among Muslim immigrant young people in schools?’ we interviewed eight Muslim students from a Danish upper secondary school and from different national origins. The students’ political orientations seemed quite contradictory, even among those who might readily have been identified as a-political. Despite moderate political interest, all students showed some inclinations to participate in elections or in particular issues. However, they emphasized that their social studies classes primarily provided them with factual knowledge experience, and some students found this knowledge useful. None of the students seemed to experience school as an arena for participation. Consequently, there is first a need to emphasize the significance of a dynamic perspective on the phenomenon of political identity, and second, we need to know how students in school should be regarded as citizens in ‘the making’ or as equal citizens in a participatory arena.

  11. Office Politics

    Science.gov (United States)

    Storm, Paula; Kelly, Robert; deVries, Susann

    2008-01-01

    People and organizations are inherently political. Library workplace environments have zones of tension and dynamics just like any corporation, often leading to the formation of political camps. These different cliques influence productivity and work-related issues and, at worst, give meetings the feel of the Camp David negotiations. Politics are…

  12. Young people's anticipation regarding education and job

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Juul, Tilde Mette; Lundby, Astrid Arbjerg

    ’ decision making competences, but also to an guide the students towards certain educations that is seen to fit the society’s future need for work force, especially vocational education and science education. Despite these initiatives increasing number of students choose to go to gymnasium – and less......In Denmark there is significant political attention towards leading young people faster through the education system. Through new policies and benefit structures the government aims to reduce the number of gap years in the transition between general upper secondary education (‘gymnasium......’) and higher education. At the same time a political reform has made it more difficult to take on leave, switch education and do work experience during the studies. Simultaneously there is increasing attention on student guidance on all educational levels. The aim is on one hand to improve the students...

  13. Inclusion in political and public life: the experiences of people with intellectual disability on government disability advisory bodies in Australia.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Frawley, Patsie; Bigby, Christine

    2011-03-01

    Civil and political participation lies at the core of citizenship. Increasingly, people with intellectual disability are members of disability advisory bodies. This study investigated the political orientations of advisory body members with intellectual disability, their participatory experiences, and the types of support they received. The 9 people with intellectual disability who in 2005 were members of disability advisory bodies at a state, national, and Victorian local government level were interviewed, together with 12 other members or secretariat staff of these bodies. Observations were also conducted of advisory body meetings. The political perspective of members with intellectual disability varied, but all had a background in self-advocacy. They found the work hard but rewarding and encountered both practical and intangible obstacles to participation. Members received varying types of practical support, but a supportive collegial milieu was characteristic among members who felt most confident about their participation. The milieu, structures, and processes of advisory bodies must all be adjusted to accommodate people with intellectual disability if they are to participate meaningfully.

  14. An outline for Serbian political tradition in the work of Slobodan Jovanović

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Bazić Jovan R.

    2016-01-01

    Full Text Available The paper presents considerations of the research on the Serbian political tradition in the work of Slobodan Jovanović (1869-1958, a famous Serbian lawyer, historian, writer and politician, who had a very important role in the development of the Serbian political thought. His work is extensive and varied, but in essence, it relates to the whole of political life in Serbia in the second half of the nineteenth and the first half of the twentieth century. Almost all the elements that make up the Serbian political tradition can be observed in his work. All these elements are contained in the discussion of political institutions in the 19th century Serbia, the rule of the Obrenović dynasty, political parties and party leaders, political ideas and movements in Serbia and Yugoslavia, extreme political behavior and Serbian national character. Jovanović found the origins of Serbian political tradition in the epic poetry and the Kosovo myth, as well as in the poetry of Njegoš. This was a decisive factor in the formation of general ideas about the Serbs as a freedom-loving, heroic and justice-loving people. At the same time, this is where the origins of the idea of Serbs as a disunited nation can be found. Jovanović paid the greatest attention to issues concerning the content of Serbian political tradition, namely: constitutional system, political institutions, parliamentary life, inter-party struggles, political events, the role of the individual in politics and culture, authoritarianism and political violence. He pointed to the political ideas that were coming from the West and which were accepted with mistrust by the patriarchal Serbian society. He appreciated the role of political parties in the democratization of political life, but he also warned of the dangers that threatened national unity: party favouritism and intolerance. In the analyses of the Serbian national character, Jovanović was of the opinion that the Serbs are predominantly a

  15. The Study of LGBT Politics and Its Contributions to Political Science

    Science.gov (United States)

    Mucciaroni, Gary

    2011-01-01

    Although the study of LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender) politics appears to be widely accepted within political science, a recent survey of political scientists reported some skepticism about its legitimacy and scholarly worth (Novkov and Barclay 2010). This article examines potential concerns about LGBT studies and draws attention to the…

  16. "Enemies of the People?" Public Health in the Era of Populist Politics

    Science.gov (United States)

    McKee, Martin; Stuckler, David

    2017-01-01

    In this commentary, we review the growth of populist politics, associated with exploitation of what has been termed fake news. We explore how certain words have been used in similar contexts historically, in particular the term "enemy of the people," especially with regard to public health. We then set out 6 principles for public health professionals faced with these situations. First, using their epidemiological skills, they can provide insights into the reasons underlying the growth of populist politics. Second using their expertise in modelling and health impact assessment, they can anticipate and warn about the consequences of populist policies. Third, they can support the institutions that are necessary for effective public health. Fourth they can reclaim the narrative, rejecting hatred and division, to promote social solidarity. Fifth, they can support fact checking and the use of evidence. Finally, they should always remember the lessons of history, and in particular, the way that public health has, on occasions, collaborated with totalitarian and genocidal regimes. PMID:29179293

  17. An attentional bias for LEGO® people using a change detection task: Are LEGO® people animate?

    Science.gov (United States)

    LaPointe, Mitchell R P; Cullen, Rachael; Baltaretu, Bianca; Campos, Melissa; Michalski, Natalie; Sri Satgunarajah, Suja; Cadieux, Michelle L; Pachai, Matthew V; Shore, David I

    2016-09-01

    Animate objects have been shown to elicit attentional priority in a change detection task. This benefit has been seen for both human and nonhuman animals compared with inanimate objects. One explanation for these results has been based on the importance animate objects have served over the course of our species' history. In the present set of experiments, we present stimuli, which could be perceived as animate, but with which our distant ancestors would have had no experience, and natural selection could have no direct pressure on their prioritization. In the first experiment, we compared LEGO® "people" with LEGO "nonpeople" in a change detection task. In a second experiment, we attempt to control the heterogeneity of the nonanimate objects by using LEGO blocks, matched in size and colour to LEGO people. In the third experiment, we occlude the faces of the LEGO people to control for facial pattern recognition. In the final 2 experiments, we attempt to obscure high-level categorical information processing of the stimuli by inverting and blurring the scenes. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved).

  18. Attentional Blink in Young People with High-Functioning Autism and Asperger's Disorder

    Science.gov (United States)

    Rinehart, Nicole; Tonge, Bruce; Brereton, Avril; Bradshaw, John

    2010-01-01

    The aim of the study was to examine the temporal characteristics of information processing in individuals with high-functioning autism and Asperger's disorder using a rapid serial visual presentation paradigm. The results clearly showed that such people demonstrate an attentional blink of similar magnitude to comparison groups. This supports the…

  19. “The whisper of silent youth: memory and politics among young people during the 60s (Mar del Plata – Argentina

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Bettina Favero

    2016-01-01

    Full Text Available This paper examines images and representations of the politics of Argentinian youth during the sixties in the XXth century, through oral interviews and publications of that period. The analyzed archive takes into account young people who were neither involved in a political party, nor did they participate in armed groups. After inishing school, this “other youth” went into the labor market and did not develop a college degree, traversing different cultural and political paths. In this way, an analysis of the social attitudes and political behavior of these subjects will be made, taking into account the political and institutional processes that characterized the decade of the sixties in Argentina.

  20. Political institutions since 1820

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Foldvari, Peter; Buzasi, Katalin

    2014-01-01

    Political institutions determine the degree of freedom people enjoy and their capacity to influence their social and political environment. This chapter provides historical evidence on the evolution of political institutions drawing upon two major research projects: the PolityIV dataset and the

  1. Selective Attention in Web Forms: An Exploratory Case Study with Older People

    Science.gov (United States)

    Sayago, Sergio; Guijarro, Jose-Maria; Blat, Josep

    2012-01-01

    This article reports on an exploratory study aimed to identify which ways of marking required and optional fields help older people fill in web forms correctly. Drawing on a pilot study and selective attention research in ageing, modified versions of widely used forms were created, in which standard asterisks were replaced with one of three…

  2. Political CSR

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Jeppesen, Søren; Morsing, Mette

    We engage a discussion of political CSR in SMEs in an African context. Based on critical observations on Western MNC CSR action in emerging economies that holds counterproductive implications for social development, political economists have argued that business profit far more than society...... development in local African communities. Our findings extend political CSR research by directing attention to how the corporate influence in developing economies does not only emerge from MNCs but is also established and retained by SMEs CSR work....

  3. The Pragmatics of Political Apology in Ghana’s Contemporary Politics

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Kofi Agyekum

    2015-05-01

    Full Text Available The paper discusses political apology in the 4 the republic of Ghanaian contemporary politics from 2013 to 2015. It taps its data from apologetic speeches by political officials and from apologies rendered to politicians. The paper discusses the semantics and pragmatics of political apology. It examines the use of the language of apology, paying attention to expressives, commissives and persuasion, by drawing on the speech act of apology and political discourse analysis (PDA. It concludes that the obligation on the part of the offender to apologise and for the offended to accept the apology and to forgive for socio-political harmony is driven by both the social pact and the Ghanaian communalistic context.

  4. Political Education in School

    Science.gov (United States)

    Dag, Nilgun; Sozer, Mehmet Akif; Sel, Burcu

    2015-01-01

    Political education is a term with negative associations and triggering prejudiced approaches and discourses--maybe some paranoid thoughts--like "keep politics away from education!" in the minds of several people. This article deals with "political education" phenomenon almost never discussed and made subject to scientific…

  5. The faces of God in America: Revealing religious diversity across people and politics.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Joshua Conrad Jackson

    Full Text Available Literature and art have long depicted God as a stern and elderly white man, but do people actually see Him this way? We use reverse correlation to understand how a representative sample of American Christians visualize the face of God, which we argue is indicative of how believers think about God's mind. In contrast to historical depictions, Americans generally see God as young, Caucasian, and loving, but perceptions vary by believers' political ideology and physical appearance. Liberals see God as relatively more feminine, more African American, and more loving than conservatives, who see God as older, more intelligent, and more powerful. All participants see God as similar to themselves on attractiveness, age, and, to a lesser extent, race. These differences are consistent with past research showing that people's views of God are shaped by their group-based motivations and cognitive biases. Our results also speak to the broad scope of religious differences: even people of the same nationality and the same faith appear to think differently about God's appearance.

  6. Political Correctness and the System of Education: Selected Examples and Consequences

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Marcin Rojek

    2012-11-01

    Full Text Available This paper aims at analysing political correctness in the context of education. Political correctness has already been widely studied and commented on; however, the phenomenon has received surprisingly little attention in relation to schooling and, particularly, teachers. In the Polish system of education, political correctness is manifest first of all in the overt policy applied by people in charge of education, who refrain from using terminology of e.g. “free market,” “commercial value,” “product,” “competition,” or “profit,” which could be unfavourably received or assessed by teachers. It turns out that political correctness, though founded upon proper assumptions and ideally contributing to common good, can be incorrectly understood or used for political purposes, and thus lose its initial sense, thwart communication between politicians and teachers and hinder their mutual understanding or even render it impossible. This paper attempts to reveal yet another set of conditions, this time the language-related ones, in which contemporary teachers work.

  7. eParticipation for Political Education: Challenges and Opportunities

    Science.gov (United States)

    Maier-Rabler, Ursula; Neumayer, Christina

    This paper argues, that the incorporation of eParticipation into political education at schools will broaden the chances of young people for political and societal engagement and strengthen civil society of a country or state. Frustration with traditional party politics especially of the younger generation is increasing in contemporary society. Since the voting age in Austria was lowered to 16, new ways of learning for political education by utilizing information and communication technologies (ICTs) that have the potential to increase participation of young people are considered. However, Austrian young people are not yet educated in developing and expressing political perspectives and therefore not prepared for actively taking part in politics. Exemplified on the project Polipedia.at, a collaborative online textbook on political education, this paper aims to give recommendations from a social science perspective for integration of ICTs into political education in order to enhance political participation of youth.

  8. Environmental change in south-east Asia. People, politics and sustainable development

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Parnwell, M.J.G.; Bryant, R.L.

    1996-01-01

    The interaction of politics and ecology in the quest for sustainable development in South East Asia is explored in this book by contributors who provide a broad range of perspectives. In the first of the four main sections, the political context of ecological change is examined. The topics discussed are: Indonesia and Thailand in a globalising pulp and paper industry; environmental organisations and different political contexts in Malaysia, Indonesia and Vietnam; Japan and South East Asia's environment. Some of the processes and forms of human-induced environmental change are illustrated in the second section. These include: the search for sustainable livelihoods in Indonesian transmigration settlements; the 210 MW hydro-power project on the Theun river in Laos which illustrates the tensions between environmental costs and potential economic benefits; forest management in Laos. Discussion of the various methods which strengthen understanding of human-induced environmental change in the region is integrated with further illustrations of its process and context in the third section where the following are considered: environmental change in Malaysian Borneo; the value of remote sensing and geographical information systems in mapping the environment; the weakness of Vietnam's tropical forestry action plan. In the final section, an examination of some of the options for change which are necessary if sustainable development is to become a reality includes: the sustainability of ecotourism in Indonesia; the potential stewardship role of the Bajau people in Indonesia's proposed marine parks; environmental degradation, non-timber forest products and Iban communities in Sarawak; conservation and development in Brunei's rainforests; Philippine community-based forest management. (27 figures; 23 tables; 752 references) (UK)

  9. Religion and Politics

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Bandak, Andreas

    2018-01-01

    Religion and politics provide an interesting juxtaposition. On the one hand, both may initially come across as rather self-evident categories, with religion dealing with human perceptions and what people hold as sacred, and politics addressing the control and governance of fellow human beings....... Nonetheless, such a simple opposition should only work as a starting point for an interrogation of both terms and how they have come to look and function as empirical and analytical categories. Focusing on the ways that religion is played out in relation to politics reveals different historical and cultural...... constellations and positions, which can be highlighted as variations of religion as politics, religion in politics, religion out of politics, and religion not politics....

  10. A case-matched study of neurophysiological correlates to attention/working memory in people with somatic hypervigilance.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Berryman, Carolyn; Wise, Vikki; Stanton, Tasha R; McFarlane, Alexander; Moseley, G Lorimer

    2017-02-01

    Somatic hypervigilance describes a clinical presentation in which people report more, and more intense, bodily sensations than is usual. Most explanations of somatic hypervigilance implicate altered information processing, but strong empirical data are lacking. Attention and working memory are critical for information processing, and we aimed to evaluate brain activity during attention/working memory tasks in people with and without somatic hypervigilance. Data from 173 people with somatic hypervigilance and 173 controls matched for age, gender, handedness, and years of education were analyzed. Event-related potential (ERP) data, extracted from the continuous electroencephalograph recordings obtained during performance of the Auditory Oddball task, and the Two In A Row (TIAR) task, for N1, P2, N2, and P3, were used in the analysis. Between-group differences for P3 amplitude and N2 amplitude and latency were assessed with two-tailed independent t tests. Between-group differences for N1 and P2 amplitude and latency were assessed using mixed, repeated measures analyses of variance (ANOVAs) with group and Group × Site factors. Linear regression analysis investigated the relationship between anxiety and depression and any outcomes of significance. People with somatic hypervigilance showed smaller P3 amplitudes-Auditory Oddball task: t(285) = 2.32, 95% confidence interval, CI [3.48, 4.47], p = .026, d = 0.27; Two-In-A-Row (TIAR) task: t(334) = 2.23, 95% CI [2.20; 3.95], p = .021, d = 0.24-than case-matched controls. N2 amplitude was also smaller in people with somatic hypervigilance-TIAR task: t(318) = 2.58, 95% CI [0.33, 2.47], p = .010, d = 0.29-than in case-matched controls. Neither depression nor anxiety was significantly associated with any outcome. People with somatic hypervigilance demonstrated an event-related potential response to attention/working memory tasks that is consistent with altered information processing.

  11. Is the political animal politically ignorant? Applying evolutionary psychology to the study of political attitudes.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Petersen, Michael Bang; Aarøe, Lene

    2012-12-20

    As evidenced by research in evolutionary psychology, humans have evolved sophisticated psychological mechanisms tailored to solve enduring adaptive problems of social life. Many of these social problems are political in nature and relate to the distribution of costs and benefits within and between groups. In that sense, evolutionary psychology suggests that humans are, by nature, political animals. By implication, a straightforward application of evolutionary psychology to the study of public opinion seems to entail that modern individuals find politics intrinsically interesting. Yet, as documented by more than fifty years of research in political science, people lack knowledge of basic features of the political process and the ability to form consistent political attitudes. By reviewing and integrating research in evolutionary psychology and public opinion, we describe (1) why modern mass politics often fail to activate evolved mechanisms and (2) the conditions in which these mechanisms are in fact triggered.

  12. Political goals during liquidation of masonic organizations by Joint State Political Directorate – People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs in USSR in the 1920s–1930s

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Ermakov V.A.

    2017-04-01

    Full Text Available this research is dedicated to the political specificity of elimination of «masonic underground organization» by soviet special forces in USSR. The issue of relations between communist movements with political masonry was also considered in the article. It appears that in the beginning of 1920s «freemasons» planned prospects in cooperation with Bolsheviks, while having hidden goal to «cover» Soviet government with masonic ideas. Masons of 1920s were quite satisfied with Bolshevism as a weapon to eradicate Russian national self-awareness and its Orthodox religion. Liquidation process of masonic underground, which started in 1925, was conditioned by inner-party strife between «Stalinists», conducting anti-masonic and anti-Zionist campaigns, and «Trotskyists», who appeared to be a weapon of international masonic politics in Soviet Russia. Authors conclude that liquidation of occult-masonic underground in USSR had several political goals: covering communist party leaders' masonic past, elimination masons as potential western secret service agents, threatening conservative intelligentsia, exposure masonic people from the environment of Soviet officials and cultural elites, extermination masonic alternative of communistic ideology and preparation of «grand terror» against «Lenin's guard».

  13. The political reference point: How geography shapes political identity.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Feinberg, Matthew; Tullett, Alexa M; Mensch, Zachary; Hart, William; Gottlieb, Sara

    2017-01-01

    It is commonly assumed that how individuals identify on the political spectrum-whether liberal, conservative, or moderate-has a universal meaning when it comes to policy stances and voting behavior. But, does political identity mean the same thing from place to place? Using data collected from across the U.S. we find that even when people share the same political identity, those in "bluer" locations are more likely to support left-leaning policies and vote for Democratic candidates than those in "redder" locations. Because the meaning of political identity is inconsistent across locations, individuals who share the same political identity sometimes espouse opposing policy stances. Meanwhile, those with opposing identities sometimes endorse identical policy stances. Such findings suggest that researchers, campaigners, and pollsters must use caution when extrapolating policy preferences and voting behavior from political identity, and that animosity toward the other end of the political spectrum is sometimes misplaced.

  14. Political-Security, Economy, and Culture within the Dynamics of Geopolitics and Migration: On Philippine Territory and the Filipino People

    OpenAIRE

    John X. LAMBINO

    2015-01-01

    The paper considers the interaction of the dual elements of the nation-state: territory and people. Particularly, it discusses the interaction of geopolitics and migration, i.e. the non-mobile territory and the mobile people, from the perspectives of political-security, economy, and culture, and how the interactions influence government policy focusing on the case of the Philippines.The paper ferrets-out the major factors in the geopolitical transformation of the Philippine Is-lands into the ...

  15. Redefining the political moment

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    James Arvanitakis

    2011-07-01

    Full Text Available On 16 February 2003, more than half a million people gathered in Sydney, Australia, as part of a global anti-war protest aimed at stopping the impending invasion of Iraq by the then US Administration. It is difficult to estimate how many millions marched on the coordinated protest, but it was by far the largest mobilization of a generation. Walking and chanting on the streets of Sydney that day, it seemed that a political moment was upon us. In a culture that rarely embraces large scale activism, millions around Australian demanded to be heard. The message was clear: if you do not hear us, we would be willing to bring down a government. The invasion went ahead, however, with the then Australian government, under the leadership of John Howard, being one of the loudest and staunchest supporters of the Bush Administrations drive to war. Within 18 months, anti-war activists struggled to have a few hundred participants take part in anti-Iraq war rallies, and the Howard Government was comfortably re-elected for another term. The political moment had come and gone, with both social commentators and many members of the public looking for a reason. While the conservative media was often the focus of analysis, this paper argues that in a time of late capitalism, the political moment is hollowed out by ‘Politics’ itself. That is to say, that formal political processes (or ‘Politics’ undermine the political practices that people participate in everyday (or ‘politics’. Drawing on an ongoing research project focusing on democracy and young people, I discuss how the concept of ’politics‘ has been destabilised and subsequently, the political moment has been displaced. This displacement has led to a re-definition of ‘political action’ and, I argue, the emergence of a different type of everyday politics.

  16. The political reference point: How geography shapes political identity

    Science.gov (United States)

    Feinberg, Matthew; Tullett, Alexa M.; Mensch, Zachary; Hart, William; Gottlieb, Sara

    2017-01-01

    It is commonly assumed that how individuals identify on the political spectrum–whether liberal, conservative, or moderate–has a universal meaning when it comes to policy stances and voting behavior. But, does political identity mean the same thing from place to place? Using data collected from across the U.S. we find that even when people share the same political identity, those in “bluer” locations are more likely to support left-leaning policies and vote for Democratic candidates than those in “redder” locations. Because the meaning of political identity is inconsistent across locations, individuals who share the same political identity sometimes espouse opposing policy stances. Meanwhile, those with opposing identities sometimes endorse identical policy stances. Such findings suggest that researchers, campaigners, and pollsters must use caution when extrapolating policy preferences and voting behavior from political identity, and that animosity toward the other end of the political spectrum is sometimes misplaced. PMID:28207906

  17. The political reference point: How geography shapes political identity.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Matthew Feinberg

    Full Text Available It is commonly assumed that how individuals identify on the political spectrum-whether liberal, conservative, or moderate-has a universal meaning when it comes to policy stances and voting behavior. But, does political identity mean the same thing from place to place? Using data collected from across the U.S. we find that even when people share the same political identity, those in "bluer" locations are more likely to support left-leaning policies and vote for Democratic candidates than those in "redder" locations. Because the meaning of political identity is inconsistent across locations, individuals who share the same political identity sometimes espouse opposing policy stances. Meanwhile, those with opposing identities sometimes endorse identical policy stances. Such findings suggest that researchers, campaigners, and pollsters must use caution when extrapolating policy preferences and voting behavior from political identity, and that animosity toward the other end of the political spectrum is sometimes misplaced.

  18. Discourse, ideas and power in global health policy networks: political attention for maternal and child health in the millennium development goal era.

    Science.gov (United States)

    McDougall, Lori

    2016-05-18

    Maternal and child health issues have gained global political attention and resources in the past 10 years, due in part to their prominence on the Millennium Development Goal agenda and the use of evidence-based advocacy by policy networks. This paper identifies key factors for this achievement, and raises questions about prospective challenges for sustaining attention in the transition to the post-2015 Sustainable Development Goals, far broader in scope than the Millennium Development Goals. This paper relies on participant observation methods and document analysis to develop a case study of the behaviours of global maternal and child health advocacy networks during 2005-2015. The development of coordinated networks of heterogeneous actors facilitated the rise in attention to maternal and child health during the past 10 years. The strategic use of epidemiological and economic evidence by these networks enabled policy attention and promoted network cohesion. The time-bound opportunity of reaching the 2015 Millennium Development Goals created a window of opportunity for joint action. As the new post-2015 goals emerge, networks seek to sustain attention by repositioning their framing of issues, network structures, and external alliances, including with networks that lay both inside and outside of the health domain. Issues rise on global policy agendas because of how ideas are constructed, portrayed and positioned by actors within given contexts. Policy networks play a critical role by uniting stakeholders to promote persuasive ideas about policy problems and solutions. The behaviours of networks in issue-framing, member-alignment, and strategic outreach can force open windows of opportunity for political attention -- or prevent them from closing.

  19. Political Market Orientation: A Framework for Understanding Relationship Structures in Political Parties

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Ormrod, Robert P.; Savigny, Heather

    2012-01-01

    This article is motivated by the growing need to integrate the current political science and marketing literature in order to provide a deeper understanding of the behaviour of political actors and their relationships with relevant stakeholder groups. In our article, we demonstrate how Ormrod...... strive for contextual sensitivity. By adopting this approach it is hoped that the fears noted by political scientists that political marketing is solely concerned with applying standard management models to political parties with the resulting emphasis on communication tactics at election time, together......’s conceptual model of political market orientation complements political science models of party organization by drawing attention to the competing interests of stakeholders in shaping party strategy and organizational structure. We treat parties as a multitude of actors rather than as monolithic entities...

  20. The quest for young eyes. Attention to news among young people in the Low Countries

    OpenAIRE

    Van Cauwenberge, Anna

    2015-01-01

    This dissertation started off with the observation that attention for news among young people decreases. More precisely, previous survey studies outlined a triple shift in the current young generation’s use of news: from more to less news, from offline to online news, and from professional to non-professional news sources. Underlying these three trends, was the finding that news does not constitute a substantial part of the daily routines of young people. This finding is disturbing given news...

  1. Tobacco Control in Africa: People, Politics and Policies | IDRC ...

    International Development Research Centre (IDRC) Digital Library (Canada)

    2011-10-15

    Oct 15, 2011 ... Although the policy interventions are well understood, the political economy ... case studies – representing diverse linguistic, geographic, political, legal and ... Addressing Africa's unmet need for family planning by intensifying ...

  2. Analyzing online political discussions: Methodological considerations

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Vergeer, M.R.M.; Hermans, E.A.H.M.

    2008-01-01

    Online political discussions are thought to lead to more political engagement and empowerment of peripheral groups in society and thereby contributing to deliberative citizenship. Because people have increased opportunities to voice their political opinions and publish these for a potentially large

  3. Relationships between divided attention and working memory impairment in people with schizophrenia.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Gray, Bradley E; Hahn, Britta; Robinson, Benjamin; Harvey, Alex; Leonard, Carly J; Luck, Steven J; Gold, James M

    2014-11-01

    Recent studies suggest that people with schizophrenia (PSZ) have difficulty distributing their attention broadly. Other research suggests that PSZ have reduced working memory (WM) capacity. This study tested whether these findings reflect a common underlying deficit. We measured the ability to distribute attention by means of the Useful Field of View (UFOV) task, in which participants must distribute attention so that they can discriminate a foveal target and simultaneously localize a peripheral target. Participants included 50 PSZ and 52 healthy control subjects. We found that PSZ exhibited severe impairments in UFOV performance, that UFOV performance was highly correlated with WM capacity in PSZ (r = -.61), and that UFOV impairments could not be explained by either impaired low-level processing or a generalized deficit. These results suggest that a common mechanism explains deficits in the ability to distribute attention broadly, reduced WM capacity, and other aspects of impaired cognition in schizophrenia. We hypothesize that this mechanism may involve abnormal local circuit dynamics that cause a hyperfocusing of resources onto a small number of internal representations. © The Author 2014. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Maryland Psychiatric Research Center. All rights reserved. For permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oup.com.

  4. CSR as Corporate Political Activity

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Morsing, Mette; Roepstorff, Anne

    2015-01-01

    –image dynamics of political CSR’. Concretely, we describe in two vignettes how IKEA’s declared ‘apolitical and neutral’ CSR identity becomes entangled with national and international socio-political events that critically challenge the corporate engagement prior national understandings of citizenship rights....... In this process, IKEA’s CSR identity becomes defined as a political and non-neutral activity. Our article contributes by bringing attention to the organizational level dynamics of political CSR by offering a conceptualization of how global and local socio-political events may disturb the alignment between CSR...

  5. Tobacco, politics and economics: implications for global health.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Stebbins, K R

    1991-01-01

    This paper examines the expanding presence of multinational cigarette companies into almost every country in the world, and discusses the health implications of this global penetration. Cigarettes deserve special attention because tobacco is the only legally available consumer product that is harmful to one's health when used as intended. A temptation exists to blame governments for the existence of health-threatening products within their borders. However, this paper illustrates the extent to which extra-national forces influence domestic policies and circumstances. Cigarette smokers are often blamed for their lethal habit, despite billion-dollar promotional schemes which attract people to smoking, obscuring the harmful consequences of consuming a highly addictive drug. Multinational cigarette companies are increasingly targeting Asian and Third World populations. To facilitate this market penetration, political avenues are often pursued with considerable success, disregarding the health implications associated with cigarette tobacco. The use of tobacco in development programs (e.g. the U.S. 'Food for Peace' program) has political and economic implications for donor and recipient countries, and lucrative advantages for the tobacco companies. However, this paper recommends that corporate profits and foreign policy should not be pursued at the expense of tobacco-related diseases and premature deaths among Third World peoples.

  6. Defining Functions of Danish Political Commentary

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Bengtsson, Mette

    2011-01-01

    In Denmark political commentary is still a relatively new phenomenon. This paper analyzes the metadiscourse in relation to political commentary to identify the different understandings that have coalesced around political commentary as a genre. I argue that people in different positions (e.......g. citizens, politicians, journalists, political editors, chief editors and political commentators themselves) emphasize different explanations for the rise of the genre and thereby functions of political commentary as part of an argumentative strategy favouring their own interests...

  7. The Engaging Effect of Exemplars: How an Emotional Reaction to (Dis)Similar People in the News Media Affects Political Participation

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Andersen, K.; Skovsgaard, M.; Albæk, E.; de Vreese, C.H.

    2017-01-01

    Journalists use ordinary people as exemplars in their news stories to make their reports more interesting and understandable for the audience. This journalistic practice has often been discussed as a potential democratic problem because of its effects on perceptions of and attitudes toward political

  8. Multimodality, politics and ideology

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Machin, David; Van Leeuwen, T.

    2016-01-01

    This journal's editorial statement is clear that political discourse should be studied not only as regards parliamentary type politics. In this introduction we argue precisely for the need to pay increasing attention to the way that political ideologies are infused into culture more widely...... of power, requires meanings and identities which can hold them in place. We explain the processes by which critical multimodal discourse analysis can best draw out this ideology as it is realized through different semiotics resources. © John Benjamins Publishing Company....

  9. MARKETING ON POLITICS AND PUBLIC LEADERSHIP

    OpenAIRE

    Purwanto Purwanto; Eddy Madiono Sutanto; Asmara Indahingwati

    2018-01-01

    This study examines the influence of political marketing and political will on public leadership and individual performance. The sample used is the people in Surabaya as many as 265 with a random sampling method. Amos 21 is used to test the indirect effect by using bootstrap test. The result of the research shows that political marketing and political will have a significant influence to the success of gaining public leadership, political marketing and marketing will have no significant effec...

  10. The Automatic Conservative: Ideology-Based Attentional Asymmetries in the Processing of Valenced Information

    Science.gov (United States)

    Carraro, Luciana; Castelli, Luigi; Macchiella, Claudia

    2011-01-01

    Research has widely explored the differences between conservatives and liberals, and it has been also recently demonstrated that conservatives display different reactions toward valenced stimuli. However, previous studies have not yet fully illuminated the cognitive underpinnings of these differences. In the current work, we argued that political ideology is related to selective attention processes, so that negative stimuli are more likely to automatically grab the attention of conservatives as compared to liberals. In Experiment 1, we demonstrated that negative (vs. positive) information impaired the performance of conservatives, more than liberals, in an Emotional Stroop Task. This finding was confirmed in Experiment 2 and in Experiment 3 employing a Dot-Probe Task, demonstrating that threatening stimuli were more likely to attract the attention of conservatives. Overall, results support the conclusion that people embracing conservative views of the world display an automatic selective attention for negative stimuli. PMID:22096486

  11. From NGO activism to party politics : the prospects for the emergence of an Indonesian Green Political Party.

    OpenAIRE

    Nerbråten, Gisle

    2005-01-01

    Politically, 2004 was an important year for Indonesia, the world s third largest, at least nominal, democracy. Faced with elections for the national Peoples Representative Assembly (DPR), the national Regional Representative Council (DPD), the Provincial and Regency/City Peoples Representative Assemblies (DPRDs), as well as two rounds of direct presidential elections, the country has in many ways shown political maturity. They have accomplished these challenges and avoided some of the pitfa...

  12. How mass media attract political elites' attention

    OpenAIRE

    Sevenans, Julie

    2018-01-01

    Abstract: Political agenda-setting research has shown that policy makers are responsive vis-à-vis media priorities. However, the mechanisms behind this effect have remained understudied so far. In particular, agenda-setting scholars have difficulties determining to what extent politicians react to media coverage purely because of the information it contains (information effect), and to what extent the effect is driven not by what the media say but by the fact that certain information is in th...

  13. E-PR technologies in political party activities

    OpenAIRE

    Tereshchuk Vitaliy Ivanovych

    2016-01-01

    The article discusses the role of the Internet as an important communicative tool in the field of political PR. The article reviews the characteristics of PR-activities on the Internet and the features of e-PR in the political sphere. Particular attention is paid to the system of political party’s e-PR tools.

  14. Attention deficits and divorce.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Bouchard, Geneviève; Saint-Aubin, Jean

    2014-09-01

    Building on previous work on the role of attention deficits associated with the regulation of executive control in psychiatric disorders, we examine whether these attention deficits are related to an interpersonal disturbance, the experience of divorce. Attentional capacities of 95 randomly selected couples from the general population were measured with a well-established task, the Attentional Network Task, which assesses the efficiency of 3 attention networks (that is, alerting, orienting, and executive control). Among the 190 participants, 32 had experienced a divorce in the past. ANCOVAs were used to compare divorced people in marital or cohabiting unions with people in first unions in their performance on this purely cognitive task. Our findings indicate that divorced people who are currently living in a cohabiting relationship show significantly lower executive control than other adults living as couples, after controlling for sex, age, income, and education. This subgroup of divorced people not only exhibit greater difficulty in responding to some stimuli while ignoring irrelevant ones but also manifest cognitive deficits in conflict resolution. This study highlights the links between attention and the long-term maintenance of intimate relationships. Our results may have important implications for the identification of people at risk for divorce.

  15. Gateway Political Behaviors: The Frequency and Consequences of Low-Cost Political Engagement on Social Media

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Leticia Bode

    2017-11-01

    Full Text Available The purpose of this article is to determine to what extent engagement in easy political behaviors on social media occurs across the range of political interest, what predicts such engagement, and what effect such engagement may have on other political behaviors. It pits the idea that social media may activate the politically uninterested against the idea that social media is just another outlet for the politically interested to demonstrate their engagement. Analyzing survey data collected by the Pew Research Center, it concludes that many people, including the politically uninterested, do engage in easy political behaviors like liking and commenting on political content on social media. When they do, it can lead to greater political activity offline. However, those most likely to engage in easy political behaviors are also those who engage in harder political behaviors, offering support for both the interest and activation hypotheses.

  16. How to Teach Political Advice

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Mouritzen, Poul Erik

    in close cooperation with the ministries and the mayor’s office. Besides training students to work under pressure, to write short and precise memos, to work in groups as well as on their own, to assess the political aspects of an issue, the course had some rather positive side effects in terms of student......, staffed with permanent civil servants rather than politically appointed persons. The aim of the course is to train the students in servicing the political and administrative top leaders of a politically led organization that is exposed to daily attention from the public, media and opposition. The course...

  17. People's Education (for People's Power

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Thokozani Mathebula

    2013-01-01

    Full Text Available The central feature of Athenian citizens' rights, that is, people's participation in government, is also enshrined in the South African Constitution. This article argues for the Athenian style of participatory democracy as a viable model of participation in governing South African schools. The author claims that 'people's education', which had its origins in the principles of the Freedom Charter¹ - was diluted during the negotiationsfor South Africa's new democratic government. As a result, the political and educational ideal of 'people's education for 'people's power' has given way to democratic elitism in post-apartheid South African schools.

  18. Politics and nursing | Van Niekerk | Health SA Gesondheid

    African Journals Online (AJOL)

    Politics implies the art of influencing people, and nurses have the political responsibility to influence the allocation of scarce resources. The concept of power and politics in nursing entails the reform of health issues, socio-political issues such as facilities for effective higher education in nursing, and facilities to enable ...

  19. Spiritual Politics

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Frédéric Rambeau

    2015-01-01

    Full Text Available According to Foucault, the uprising of the Iranian people in the seventies reveals how much the political force of Islam is due precisely to the fact that it is not principally located in the field of politics, but in that of ethics. Religion (Shiite Islam appears as the guarantee of real change in the very mode of existence. This spiritual politics is marginalized by Marxism, where it is understood as a discontinuity in relation to proper politics, given that the latter is necessarily linked to a strategic rationalization. By indicating, at this juncture of what is intolerable, the living source and the critical impulse of the Foucauldian ethics, this spiritual politics also leads to recognize in the concept of “subjectivation” a dimension that might escape the circle of freedom as determined by a total immanence to power. This conceptual possibility is highly present in the aporias of the Foucauldian concept of the “relation to oneself”, both as a first condition of governmentality and the ultimate point of resistance against any governmentality. It thus reveals the difficulties in relating political to ethical subjectivation.

  20. Digital Trace Data in the Study of Public Opinion : An Indicator of Attention Toward Politics Rather Than Political Support

    OpenAIRE

    Jungherr, Andreas; Schoen, Harald; Posegga, Oliver; Jürgens, Pascal

    2017-01-01

    In this article, we examine the relationship between metrics documenting politics-related Twitter activity with election results and trends in opinion polls. Various studies have proposed the possibility of inferring public opinion based on digital trace data collected on Twitter and even the possibility to predict election results based on aggregates of mentions of political actors. Yet, a systematic attempt at a validation of Twitter as an indicator for political support is lacking. In this...

  1. Cognitive Rehabilitation for Attention and Memory in people with Multiple Sclerosis: study protocol for a randomised controlled trial (CRAMMS).

    Science.gov (United States)

    Lincoln, Nadina B; das Nair, Roshan; Bradshaw, Lucy; Constantinescu, Cris S; Drummond, Avril E R; Erven, Alexandra; Evans, Amy L; Fitzsimmons, Deborah; Montgomery, Alan A; Morgan, Miriam

    2015-12-08

    People with multiple sclerosis have problems with memory and attention. Cognitive rehabilitation is a structured set of therapeutic activities designed to retrain an individual's memory and other cognitive functions. Cognitive rehabilitation may be provided to teach people strategies to cope with these problems, in order to reduce the impact on everyday life. The effectiveness of cognitive rehabilitation for people with multiple sclerosis has not been established. This is a multi-centre, randomised controlled trial investigating the clinical and cost-effectiveness of a group-based cognitive rehabilitation programme for attention and memory problems for people with multiple sclerosis. Four hundred people with multiple sclerosis will be randomised from at least four centres. Participants will be eligible if they have memory problems, are 18 to 69 years of age, are able to travel to attend group sessions and give informed consent. Participants will be randomised in a ratio of 6:5 to the group rehabilitation intervention plus usual care or usual care alone. Intervention groups will receive 10 weekly sessions of a manualised cognitive rehabilitation programme. The intervention will include both restitution strategies to retrain impaired attention and memory functions and compensation strategies to enable participants to cope with their cognitive problems. All participants will receive a follow-up questionnaire and an assessment by a research assistant at 6 and 12 months after randomisation. The primary outcome is the Multiple Sclerosis Impact Scale (MSIS) Psychological subscale at 12 months. Secondary outcomes include the Everyday Memory Questionnaire, General Health Questionnaire-30, EQ-5D and a service use questionnaire from participants, and the Everyday Memory Questionnaire-relative version and Carer Strain Index from a relative or friend. The primary analysis will be based on intention to treat. A mixed-model regression analysis of the MSIS Psychological

  2. Political elite of modern Russia: crisis of formation

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Michail A. Burda

    2017-01-01

    Full Text Available Author analyzes the practice of functioning of political elite of modern Russia, the phenomenon of high rating of one of its actors and the crisis of alternative political leaders. The article pays special attention to the existing, in accordance with the Constitution of the Russian Federation, the breadth of presidential powers. Separately discusses the features of current and in General closed for the controlled companies to the private process of formation of the Russian political elite. According to the author, this process takes the form of selection of candidates by a narrow circle of senior officials for subjective reasons, in connection with which the political elite even more segregated from the controlled companies and rising to a new, unattainable level of elitism. Referring to the existing practice of the presidential elections in Russia in the early 90-ies of XX century to the present focuses on the stagnation of the political opposition, lack of political competition among major political parties and their low electoral support in view of the existing political absenteeism. In the article the author considers the historical context of the formation of elite groups and privileged minorities, and draws attention to features of "technocratic parliamentarism", which is inherent in States with a parliamentary form of government and does not implement at present in Russia, with its prevailing system of governance by public authorities. In conclusion, the special attention of author is turned on the existing in society political absenteeism, latent protest potential and, as a consequence, the request for the renewal of political elites, particularly in the framework of the upcoming presidential elections of the Russian Federation in 2018, the participation of new candidates. According to the author of the inventory of such social demand companies will allow to stop the risks enhance the destructive part of economic and regional political

  3. Contextualism in Normative Political Theory

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Lægaard, Sune

    2016-01-01

    Contextualism denotes a set of ideas about the importance of attention to context. The topic of the article is contextualism in normative political theory/philosophy, in relation to the part of political theory concerned with systematic political argument for normative claims—evaluative claims...... that can be invoked to contextualize a specific object of political discussion such as a law, an institution, or the like. Contextualism denotes any view that political theory should take context into account, but there are many different views about what this means. Contextualism can be characterized...... by way of different contrasts, which imply that the resulting conceptions of contextualism are views about different things, such as justification, the nature of political theory, or methodology. Here the focus is on characterizations of contextualism in terms of methodology and justification...

  4. Philosophy and Politics: The anti-political character of Socrates’ philosophy and Plato ’s project of making philosophy political

    OpenAIRE

    Hrvoje Cvijanović

    2016-01-01

    The intention of this research is to elaborate on Socrates’ philosophy and its serious consequences for the relationship between philosophy and politics, hence making them hostile to each other, and Socrates an enemy of the people. The author explores the tension between philosophy and public life by comparing and contrasting two opposing philosophical projects – Socrates and Plato’s – while illuminating different methods and paths they follow in their understanding of philosophy and politics...

  5. “I Can Share Politics But I Don’t Discuss It”: Everyday Practices of Political Talk on Facebook

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Giovanna Mascheroni

    2017-12-01

    Full Text Available The article explores how a group of young people in Germany, Italy, and the United Kingdom experience and manage informal political talk on Facebook. Based on 60 interviews with 14- to 25-year-olds with diverse interest and participation in politics, it understands political talk as a social achievement dependent on the situational definition, shaped by the perceived imagined audiences, shared expectations, and technological affordances. Results show that young people construct different interactional contexts on Facebook depending on their political experiences, but also on their understanding of the affordances of networked publics as shaped by the social norms of their peer groups. Many youth define Facebook as an unsafe social setting for informal political discussions, thus adhering to a form of “publicness” aimed at neutralizing conflicts. Others, instead, develop different forms of “publicness” based on emergent communicative skills that help them manage the uncertainty of social media as interactional contexts.

  6. Political Representation in Africa: Towards a Conceptual Framework*

    African Journals Online (AJOL)

    sulaiman.adebowale

    2006-08-29

    Aug 29, 2006 ... Political representation as a central component of democratic ... require attention from African scholars, civil society, political leaders and policy- ..... and their constituents' attitudes to representation, from style of doing poli-.

  7. Political Rationality

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Solhaug, Trond; Kristensen, Niels Nørgaard

    The very idea about democracies is public participation in elections, decision-making and/or public engagement. The democratic participation distributes power among ordinary people and serve to legitimize decisions in public affairs and is a vital characteristic of a political culture.”The term...

  8. People, Place, and Time: How Structural Fieldwork Helps World-Systems Analysis

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Paul K. Gellert

    2015-08-01

    Full Text Available Some of the most insightful work in the political economy of the world-system area has been produced by researchers whose extensive fieldwork offers them deep familiarity with people and locales. Few other methods are as useful to understand the impacts of structural change on daily life and the ways agents resist, alter, and shape emerging structures. Yet such structural fieldwork is marginalized by the over-reliance of pedagogical materials on social constructionist, social psychological, or interactionist perspectives and also in world-systems research and writing by the privileging of long durée historical or quantitative cross-national methods. This paper introduces the concept of structural fieldwork to describe a qualitative field methodology in which the researcher is self-consciously guided by considerations emerging out of macro-sociological theories. We identify four advantages of structural fieldwork: the illumination of power’s multiple dimensions; examination of agency and its boundaries or limitations within broad political and economic structures; attention to nuances of change and durability, spatial and temporal specificities, and processes of change and durability; and challenging and extending social theory. These advantages are illustrated in select examples from existing literature and by discussion of the two author’s fieldwork-based research. The paper concludes that explicit attention to fieldwork may strengthen political economy and world-systems research and also de-marginalize political economy informed by structural fieldwork.

  9. Political trust as a rational attitude: a comparison of the nature of political trust across different levels of education

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    van Elsas, E.

    2015-01-01

    This article examines whether political trust is a relatively more rational attitude for citizens with a higher level of education. Previous research has found the higher educated to have greater political attentiveness, knowledge and understanding. The proposition that they, consequently, trust

  10. MARKETING ON POLITICS AND PUBLIC LEADERSHIP

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Purwanto Purwanto

    2018-03-01

    Full Text Available This study examines the influence of political marketing and political will on public leadership and individual performance. The sample used is the people in Surabaya as many as 265 with a random sampling method. Amos 21 is used to test the indirect effect by using bootstrap test. The result of the research shows that political marketing and political will have a significant influence to the success of gaining public leadership, political marketing and marketing will have no significant effect on performance, and public le­a­dership has a significant effect on performance. For the indirect influence, political marketing and political will on individual performance are mediated by public leadership.

  11. Interactive communication and political consciousness

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Pikula Mykola Mykolayovych

    2015-07-01

    Full Text Available The article presents the research of the new communication technologies’ influence on the political consciousness formation. According to the author, today the Internet has become a kind of environment where people spend a lot of time and where the huge flow of information streams, unlimited with national borders and language barriers. This gives the Internet communication a mediating role in the display of the real world in people's minds. Such forms of interactive communication like social networks, blogs, forums and chats have a particularly important role in development of the society political consciousness.

  12. Political crisіs and compromise as the casual determinants in the process of political decisions making

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Shkuro Anton Sergiyovich

    2013-12-01

    Full Text Available There is a risk of certain ineffective results in the system of political decisions making. That’s why we should pay a special attention to the criteria of political crisis evaluation. Today the problem of national politics lies only in an adequate raising of questions about the way out of the political crisis using the mechanism of compromise achieving. The article is about the fundamental role of the crisis and the compromise and about their influence on the formation of the strategic development of policy.

  13. Political discussions with family and friends

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Levinsen, Klaus; Yndigegn, Carsten

    2015-01-01

    Young people's engagement in political discussions with parents and friends represents a significant component of the political socialization process and can be seen as an activity where they learn some very basic democratic skills. Based on data from qualitative interviews and a questionnaire su...

  14. Nationalist movement’s trends in contemporary Nigerian government and politics

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Shittu, M

    2013-06-01

    Full Text Available This study seeks to understand the contemporary issues in Nigerian Government and Politics through an assessment of the nationalist movement and its persistent and recurrent trends in the contemporary Nigeria, and how these trends continue to affect the present socio-political issues in the country. This is carried out through mobilization of certain variables of political development theory despite its inability to explain the position of indigenous African people in the alien Western political institutions. Based on this, it is revealed that everything went well until that time the ground was made for power politics in which indigenous African people became players.

  15. Political rationality: Young Danish and Norwegian immigrant citizens and their political reasoning

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Solhaug, Trond; Kristensen, Niels Nørgaard

    2012-01-01

    combining identities, emotions, and information is suggested and examined empirically. In a qualitative study the reflectivity of the students and their willingness to act as rational and responsible citizens is evaluated. Based on a selection of young Danish and Norwegian immigrant students, the dynamics......This article aims to uncover the dynamics of political reasoning among young immigrants. How do they people reason about the larger social and political world around them and what rationalities are in play? A dynamic approach is used to analyze cognitive functioning. A model of political reasoning...... between the elements of the model are explored. In the analysis, some identities play a decisive role, while emotions seem fairly often to be the trigger and the mechanism of political action....

  16. Selective attention and control of action: comparative psychology of an artificial, evolved agent and people.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Ward, Robert; Ward, Ronnie

    2008-10-01

    This study examined the selective attention abilities of a simple, artificial, evolved agent and considered implications of the agent's performance for theories of selective attention and action. The agent processed two targets in continuous time, catching one and then the other. This task required many cognitive operations, including prioritizing the first target (T1) over the second (T2); selectively focusing responses on T1, while preventing T2 from interfering with responses; creating a memory for the unselected T2 item, so that it could be efficiently processed later; and reallocating processing towards T2 after catching T1. The evolved agent demonstrated all these abilities. Analysis shows that the agent used reactive inhibition to selectively focus behavior. That is, the more salient T2, the more strongly responses towards T2 were inhibited and the slower the agent was to subsequently reallocate processing towards T2. Reactive inhibition was also suggested in two experiments with people, performing a virtually identical catch task. The presence of reactive inhibition in the simple agent and in people suggests that it is an important mechanism for selective processing.

  17. Attentive Reading With Constrained Summarization Adapted to Address Written Discourse in People With Mild Aphasia.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Obermeyer, Jessica A; Edmonds, Lisa A

    2018-03-01

    The purpose of this study was to examine the preliminary efficacy of Attentive Reading and Constrained Summarization-Written (ARCS-W) in people with mild aphasia. ARCS-W adapts an existing treatment, ARCS (Rogalski & Edmonds, 2008), to address discourse level writing in mild aphasia. ARCS-W focuses on the cognitive and linguistic skills required for discourse production. This study was a within-subject pre-postdesign. Three people with mild aphasia participated. ARCS-W integrates attentive reading or listening with constrained summarization of discourse level material in spoken and written modalities. Outcomes included macro- (main concepts) and microlinguistic (correct information units, complete utterances) discourse measures, confrontation naming, aphasia severity, and functional communication. All 3 participants demonstrated some generalization to untrained spoken and written discourse at the word, sentence, and text levels. Reduced aphasia severity and/or increased functional communication and confrontation naming were also observed in some participants. The findings of this study provide preliminary evidence of the efficacy of ARCS-W to improve spoken and written discourse in mild aphasia. Different generalization patterns suggest different mechanisms of improvement. Further research and replication are required to better understand how ARCS-W can impact discourse abilities.

  18. People\\'s Participation in Rural Development: The Examples from ...

    African Journals Online (AJOL)

    People\\'s Participation in Rural Development: The Examples from Mafikeng. PG Mpolokeng. Abstract. No Abstract Available African Journal of Political Science Vol.8(2) 2003: 55-86. Full Text: EMAIL FULL TEXT EMAIL FULL TEXT · DOWNLOAD FULL TEXT DOWNLOAD FULL TEXT. Article Metrics. Metrics Loading .

  19. Rights of nature and the indigenous Peoples in Bolivia and Ecuador: a Straitjacket for Progressive development Politics?

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Rickard LALANDER

    2014-11-01

    Full Text Available Is it possible to justify resource extractivism to provide progressive welfare politics and still respect the constitutional rights of nature? The Indigenous concept of Sumak Kawsay on human beings living in harmony with each other and the environment is the fundamental framing of the new constitutions of Ecuador and Bolivia. These constitutional reforms embrace strengthened proper rights of nature and similarly of ethnic rights. However, the same constitutions grant the State the right to exploit and commercialize natural resources and extractivism has increased. This study revises the tensions between welfare politics, extractivism and the rights of nature and the Indigenous peoples in the new constitutional settings of Bolivia and, particularly, Ecuador. The article argues that Sumak Kawsay challenges dominating understandings of the concepts of welfare, common good and development, and likewise that a pragmatic approach is applied by national governments towards the constitutional rights of nature amidst other human values.

  20. A Comparing and Contrasting Analysis of Cooperation and Politeness

    Institute of Scientific and Technical Information of China (English)

    杨菁; 黄大鹏

    2014-01-01

    <正>Language is the basic tool of communication between human beings and the society.In communication or social interaction,people should follow some principles such as Cooperation and Politeness,in order to achieve the goal of successful communication.As two of the communicative principles,Cooperation and Politeness have been widely accepted by people,especially

  1. Territorial Rights, Political Association, and Immigration

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Lægaard, Sune

    2013-01-01

    argues that state legitimacy and freedom of political association fail to connect in the way required to justify a right to control immigration. Wellman’s argument conflates the state as an institution and the people as a political collective and elides the difference between territorial jurisdiction...

  2. Political and news media factors shaping public awareness of the HPV vaccine.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Gollust, Sarah E; Attanasio, Laura; Dempsey, Amanda; Benson, Allison M; Fowler, Erika Franklin

    2013-01-01

    In 2006, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration licensed a vaccine for the human papillomavirus (HPV) that prevents the strains of HPV that cause 70% of cervical cancers. Within months, many states introduced legislation requiring the vaccine for girls, prompting controversy and heightened political and media attention to the issue. Previous research has shown differences in HPV vaccine awareness by individual-level characteristics such as race/ethnicity, income, and education levels. We examined how individual political orientation and exposure to media coverage can also shape awareness of the vaccine. Using data from a 2009 Internet survey of 1,216 nationally representative adult respondents linked to data on state-specific news coverage, we assessed how political orientation, media exposure, and state political context predicted HPV vaccine awareness. Younger people, women, and those with more education were significantly more likely to be aware of the vaccine. Even after controlling for these characteristics, we found that exposure to news media was associated with higher HPV vaccine awareness. Whereas liberals and conservatives were both more aware of the vaccine compared with moderates, the data are suggestive that liberals were more sensitive to news coverage. These findings suggest that individual-level political identities and their interaction with the informational environment may be important factors to consider in evaluating the determinants of individuals' attitudes and behaviors related to politically charged women's health issues. Copyright © 2013 Jacobs Institute of Women's Health. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

  3. "Taking the problem to the people": traffic safety from public relations to political theory, 1937-1954.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Bernardin, Stève

    2015-04-01

    The slogan "taking the problem to the people" nicely summarizes U.S. traffic safety campaigns of the 1950s. It refers to the goal of awareness and self-discipline for drivers through education and law enforcement. A detailed analysis of the campaigns, however, shows a subtler objective of the motor interests that promoted it. They wanted to overcome political indifference through a civic mobilization of drivers as citizens, persuading drivers to lobby for traffic control. The analysis of their efforts leads us to question the role-or lack of role-of politicians in scientific and technological controversies.

  4. Interplay Between Politics and Sport in Political Science Theories

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Simona Kustec Lipicer

    2010-01-01

    Full Text Available Times when relations between politics and sports did not exist – be it in everyday practices or within scientific research – is definitely long gone, if they ever even existed. Nevertheless, it seems today that, especially within scientific research, these relations do not receive appropriate attention in the territories of former socialist sports superpowers, being a priori denied and considered as unimportant. That is why the key motive of this article is to initiate a discussion about the relevance of knowledge and research of the relations between politics and sport from two perspectives – the existing world-wide political science research experiences gained so far and already conducted researches in the territory of former Yugoslavia. In doing so, we first theoretically define the context of sports and politics, and then with the use of the literature review method analyse their mutual connectivity in the world and, more narrowly, within the work of the scientific community in the region of former Yugoslavia. Based on the gained conclusions which confirm a tight and constant, but also often abstract and flat-rate understood interplay between both analysed phenomena, a special typology for their in-depth and political-science-focused study is delivered. It is believed that distinctions between political, polity and policy approaches to sport decisively influence the mode of their future interplay.

  5. A POLITICAL AGENDA OF SPORTS?

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Irina-Ana DROBOT

    2017-08-01

    Full Text Available The purpose of this paper is to analyze the most recent running marathons in Bucharest to see whether they are part of a political agenda or not, and if yes, what are the reasons for this. Is this a way of allowing people to bond together, and to take part in charity? Is this part of the way media imposes its agenda on people, or vice-versa? Is it a way of political elites to control the masses and make them take part in welfare activities? The paper will take into account the hypothesis of sports and welfare holding communities together.

  6. Etzioni’s communitarian realism as a guide to foreign politics?

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Kamminga, M.R.

    2009-01-01

    Sociologist Amitai Etzioni has gained much attention for his communitarian realist theory of foreign politics. Etzioni’s conception of an adequate, principled and pragmatic, foreign politics emphasizes both empirical and moral factors. This article analyses Etzioni’s foreign politics view from a

  7. PATTERNS OF INTERNET AND TRADITIONAL MEDIA USE FOR POLITICAL INFORMATION AND POLITICAL PARTICIPATION IN MALAYSIA

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Mohamad Zaini Abu Bakar

    2011-06-01

    Full Text Available There has been a growing academic interest in the role of new communication technology in the political process in Asia. The increasing influence of the Internet to diffuse political information may have facilitated high voter involvement in the political process in this region. This study examines patterns of on-line and traditional news media use among people who have access to the Internet in Malaysia. The results show an association between the use of the Internet and traditional media -- newspapers, television, and radio -- for political information among the respondents interviewed. This study suggests that the Internet is widely used to gather political information, but its use for this purpose is not replacing the newspapers and television. There is also an indication that the Internet users participate online in a limited number of political activities. However, the political knowledge gained from the Internet does not seem to influence the respondents’ choice of political candidate in elections.

  8. An Appraisal of the Utilisation of Social Media for Political ...

    African Journals Online (AJOL)

    Prof

    The influence of new media technology in political communication across the globe .... what people do with the media instead of what the media do to people. ... their information need, and thus make them active participants in the political ... is a medium that allows individuals to share important information with friends.

  9. Electoral Politics in Zimbabwe: Authoritarianism Versus the People

    African Journals Online (AJOL)

    sulaiman.adebowale

    2006-08-31

    Aug 31, 2006 ... ZANU-PF party. Human rights groups in Zimbabwe report that the majority of .... both the Zimbabwe Constitution and the Electoral Act (1990) have been ... The political environment did not accord the eligible voters their basic.

  10. Restoring Politics to Political History

    OpenAIRE

    Kousser, J. Morgan

    1982-01-01

    If history ever was simply the study of past politics, it is no longer. Dissatisfied with narratives of Great Men, more interested in analyzing the impact of larger forces and in tracing out patterns of the lives of the masses of people, skeptical that a recounting of election campaigns and a counting of votes reveals much about social thought or action, strongly affected by currents of opinion which have long run deep in France, American historians have turned increas...

  11. Political participation of older adults in Scandinavia - the civic voluntarism model revisited? A multi-level analysis of three types of political participatio

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Mikael Nygård

    2013-02-01

    Full Text Available This article examines political participation among older adults in Österbotten, Finland, and Västerbotten, Sweden. Two specific hypotheses are tested. First, we anticipate that older adults are loyal voters but less avid in engaging in politics between elections. Second, we expect individuallevel resources to explain why older people participate in politics. The article offers two contributions to the literature on political participation of older adults. First, it corroborates earlier findings by showing that older adults indeed have a higher inclination to vote than to engage in political activities between elections, but it also shows that the latter engagement is more diversified than one could expect. Second, although the findings largely support the resource model, they suggest that we need to consider also other factors such as the overall attitude towards older people.

  12. The Life of the Elderly in Residential Care Facilities - A Study of Autonomy and Life Situation of Elderly People in the Context of the Political Organisation of the Facilities

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Skjødt, Ulla

    as mutually informing each other. Empirical material is generated by participant observation studies and interviews in residential care facilities as well as policy documents concerning the arrangement of public help to impaired elderly people are analysed. Results: Analysis of the empirical material...... and of pertinent policy documents reveal that elderly are politically valued, when they manage to avoid drawing on the public services that are available to them. A current dominant political standardised concept of autonomy is rendered visible. In its generalised form this concept turns out to be contradictory......Abstract: Bridging the gap – in Public Health Nursing September 19th and 20th 2016 Organised by: Global Network of Public Health Nursing The Life of the Elderly in Residential Care Facilities - A Study of Autonomy and Life Situation of Elderly People in the Context of the Political Organisation...

  13. Political conservatism predicts asymmetries in emotional scene memory.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Mills, Mark; Gonzalez, Frank J; Giuseffi, Karl; Sievert, Benjamin; Smith, Kevin B; Hibbing, John R; Dodd, Michael D

    2016-06-01

    Variation in political ideology has been linked to differences in attention to and processing of emotional stimuli, with stronger responses to negative versus positive stimuli (negativity bias) the more politically conservative one is. As memory is enhanced by attention, such findings predict that memory for negative versus positive stimuli should similarly be enhanced the more conservative one is. The present study tests this prediction by having participants study 120 positive, negative, and neutral scenes in preparation for a subsequent memory test. On the memory test, the same 120 scenes were presented along with 120 new scenes and participants were to respond whether a scene was old or new. Results on the memory test showed that negative scenes were more likely to be remembered than positive scenes, though, this was true only for political conservatives. That is, a larger negativity bias was found the more conservative one was. The effect was sizeable, explaining 45% of the variance across subjects in the effect of emotion. These findings demonstrate that the relationship between political ideology and asymmetries in emotion processing extend to memory and, furthermore, suggest that exploring the extent to which subject variation in interactions among emotion, attention, and memory is predicted by conservatism may provide new insights into theories of political ideology. Published by Elsevier B.V.

  14. Public sphere of politics: between classical grounds and new political actuality

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    O. A. Tretyak

    2016-10-01

    Full Text Available The public sphere of politics as a theoretical concept of modern political science has been discussed in the article. The reasons of the increasing interest to the public sphere is a dominating subject. Studied The phenomenon of the public sphere being a tool of theoretical and methodological definition of the political world’s boundaries has been studied. The value aspects of media activity in the contemporary politics has been investigated. An attempt has been made to establish the potential of political publicity for the qualitative understanding of participatory democracy. The potential of the public sphere in the development of civil society and social capital has been described. The distinction between the public sphere of politics and political communication in the specific conditions of modern transformational societies has been reasonably grounded. The importance of the presence of state power in all spheres of life of the transformational society has been stressed. Such transformation has not been stoped after the liberal market reforms, which had to ensure the existence of a formal representative democracy. The influence of the elite and expert groups being the reason of the absence of really functioning future civil society has been considered. The features of the formation of civil and social activities as a precondition for the democratic political class’ functioning have been studied. The specifics of public political activity being the prerogative of the competent entities’ political broadcasting have been analyzed. The gradual formation of cyber public sphere and its political branch segment has been revealed. Thorough attention has been given to the processes of the public sphere’s politicization which are usual for primarily authoritarian and closed societies.

  15. Relative deprivation and political protest

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    R. M. Kliuchnyk

    2017-03-01

    Examples of anti-system political parties and movements have been given. Many of them have changed the political disposition in Europe. Lega Nord (Italy, PEGIDA (Germany, Movimento 5 Stelle (Italy, Front National (France, Ataka (Bulgaria, etc are between them. These parties and movements influence increasingly on the European political process. Nativism and populism are marked as main peculiarities of such right parties. According to the author, Anti-Trump protests in the USA are the examples of the relative deprivation of numerous groups of people that feel their rights and freedoms being threatened.

  16. Hidden consequences of political efficacy: Testing an efficacy-apathy model of political mobilization.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Osborne, Danny; Yogeeswaran, Kumar; Sibley, Chris G

    2015-10-01

    Political efficacy-the belief that one can influence politics-is a key predictor of people's involvement in social movements. Political institutions that are open to change should, however, be seen as just. Thus, political efficacy may ironically undermine minority group members' support for collective action by simultaneously increasing their belief in the fairness of the system. The current study aims to examine this possibility in a national sample of Māori-New Zealand's indigenous minority population. Participants (N = 399) were Māori (Mage = 44.22; SD = 13.30) women (n = 272) and men (n = 115; unreported = 12) who completed a survey assessing their levels of (a) political efficacy, (b) system justification, and (c) support for the political mobilization of their group, as well as relevant demographic covariates. Consistent with past research, political efficacy had a positive direct effect on participants' support for the political mobilization of Māori. Nevertheless, political efficacy also had a negative indirect effect on political mobilization support via increases in system justification. These results held after controlling for participants' ethnic identification, self-efficacy, and conservatism. Our findings uncover a hidden consequence of political efficacy and show that, while believing that the political system is receptive to change predicts political mobilization, it can also undermine minorities' support for the mobilization of their group. Thus, our results uncover a previously unknown process that maintains inequality between ethnic minority and majority group members. (c) 2015 APA, all rights reserved).

  17. The new urban politics as a politics of carbon control.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Jonas, Andrew E G; Gibbs, David; While, Aidan

    2011-01-01

    The new urban politics (NUP) literature has helped to draw attention to a new generation of entrepreneurial urban regimes involved in the competition to attract investment to cities. Interurban competition often had negative environmental consequences for the urban living place. Yet knowledge of the environment was not very central to understanding the NUP. Entrepreneurial urban regimes today are struggling to deal with climate change and reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. Carbon reduction strategies could have profound implications for interurban competition and the politics of urban development. This paper explores the rise of a distinctive low-carbon urban polity—carbon control—and examines its potential ramifications for a new environmental politics of urban development (NEPUD). The NEPUD signals the growing centrality of carbon control in discourses, strategies and struggles around urban development. Using examples from cities in the US and Europe, the paper examines how these new environmental policy considerations are being mainstreamed in urban development politics. Alongside competitiveness, the management of carbon emissions represents a new yet at the same time contestable mode of calculation in urban governance.

  18. Political Repressions in USSR (Against Speculations, Perversion and Mystifications

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Viktor N. Zemskov

    2012-12-01

    Full Text Available In the article the great numbers of political repressions, which were exaggerated by authors: R.A. Medvedev, A.I. Solzhenitsyn, O.G. Shatunovskoy, A.V. Antonov-Ovseenko in 80-90s are criticized. The author characterizes figures given in tens and even in hundreds of millions of victims as a statistical charlatanism.After checking up the KGB archives, and documents of division responsible for NKVD-MVD special settlements, the author spills the light on real numbers of political repressions in USSR. In his view, the total number of political victims does not exceed 2, 6 million people. This number implies over 800 thousand of death sentenced for political reasons, around 600 thousand political prisoners who died in labor camps, and about 1, 2 million people died in exile (including ‘Kulak Exile’ and during transportation (deported ethnic groups and others.

  19. Environmental groups in politics

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Lowe, P.; Goyder, J.

    1983-01-01

    The subject is covered in chapters, entitled: introduction; (Part I) the environmental movement (environmental groups and the attentive public; the episodic development of the environmental movement; the underlying values of environmentalism; the roots of environmental concern; the social limits to growth; elite manipulation of values); the organisation of environmental groups; environmental groups in national politics; environmental groups in local politics; (Part II) the Henley Society; Friends of the Earth; the National Trust; the Royal Society for Nature Conservation; the European Environmental Bureau. (U.K.)

  20. Perceiving political polarization in the United States: party identity strength and attitude extremity exacerbate the perceived partisan divide.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Westfall, Jacob; Van Boven, Leaf; Chambers, John R; Judd, Charles M

    2015-03-01

    An important component of political polarization in the United States is the degree to which ordinary people perceive political polarization. We used over 30 years of national survey data from the American National Election Study to examine how the public perceives political polarization between the Democratic and Republican parties and between Democratic and Republican presidential candidates. People in the United States consistently overestimate polarization between the attitudes of Democrats and Republicans. People who perceive the greatest political polarization are most likely to report having been politically active, including voting, trying to sway others' political beliefs, and making campaign contributions. We present a 3-factor framework to understand ordinary people's perceptions of political polarization. We suggest that people perceive greater political polarization when they (a) estimate the attitudes of those categorized as being in the "opposing group"; (b) identify strongly as either Democrat or Republican; and (c) hold relatively extreme partisan attitudes-particularly when those partisan attitudes align with their own partisan political identity. These patterns of polarization perception occur among both Democrats and Republicans. © The Author(s) 2015.

  1. The Ontological Politics of Evidence and Policy Enablement

    Science.gov (United States)

    Carusi, F. Tony; Rawlins, Peter; Ashton, Karen

    2018-01-01

    Ontological politics has received increasing attention within education policy studies, particularly as a support for the notion of policy enactment. While policy enactment offers serious challenges to traditional approaches toward policy implementation, this paper takes up ontological politics as a concept that extends beyond implementation and…

  2. The politics of digits

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Olsen, Asmus Leth

    2013-01-01

    -endings data. Second, nine-ending and other higher-end decimals are found to be over-represented which echoes odd pricing research. It suggests that incumbents take voters’ biases into account and apply odd taxes to minimize the political costs of taxation while maximizing revenue. Attention should be given......From the concept of odd pricing, i.e., setting rightmost price digits below a whole number, this paper advances the political counterpart of odd taxation using a panel of Danish municipal taxes. First, the distribution of tax decimals is non-uniform and resembles the distribution of price...

  3. DEMOCRACY AND POLITICAL PARTICIPATION IN NIGERIA: THE ...

    African Journals Online (AJOL)

    FBL

    The study revealed that many people within the voting age did not vote and were ... known American political scientist, as quoted in Cayne (1993:777) as “an implicit bargain ..... Functional democracy requires strong/effective political institutions and basic rights ... Experience” African Journal of Social Science and Humanity.

  4. GENDERLECT AFFECTING ON POLITENESS STRATEGIES AND LANGUAGE

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Nurfisi Arriyani

    2017-03-01

    Full Text Available Since language is a system of spoken sounds or conventional symbols for communicating thought, we use language to express our thoughts, feelings, ideas, etc to make a communication. We communicate to other people by using language. Therefore, the way we speak is influenced by the culture belonged to social group where we interact. Language reflects the context in which it is used. People use language differently in formal and casual context. Besides, people adapt their talk to suit their audience and talk differently to children, friends, customers and colleagues. The linguistics’ form will also be affected by the purpose of people’s talk. They use variety of ways to express the ‘same’ message. Thus, this small project was done by interviewing two friends who had ever stayed abroad before, male and female (appendix to see whether both of them use different politeness strategy in speaking English. They are coming from different origin, thus, the writer also wanted to see whether their L1 and their culture influence ways of their speaking. It is stated on Politeness theory that gender plays more prominently in the field of politeness but politeness theory has ignored the fact that based on gender, women and men will also perform politeness differently and it was proved in this small project. The writer interviewed two interviewees, male and female, by asking them to answer three questions prepared by the writer. The conversation was recorded and the writer analyzed the ways of their speech by listening to the recording. The writer found that both of them did not use any certain politeness strategies. The female friend talked more confident, were better in grammar and did not use more fillers or hedges. Vice versa, the male friend talked nicely, made many mistakes in grammar and use many fillers or hedges.

  5. Political legitimacy and European monetary union: contracts, constitutionalism and the normative logic of two-level games

    Science.gov (United States)

    Bellamy, Richard; Weale, Albert

    2015-01-01

    ABSTRACT The crisis of the euro area has severely tested the political authority of the European Union (EU). The crisis raises questions of normative legitimacy both because the EU is a normative order and because the construction of economic and monetary union (EMU) rested upon a theory that stressed the normative value of the depoliticization of money. However, this theory neglected the normative logic of the two-level game implicit in EMU. It also neglected the need for an impartial and publically acceptable constitutional order to acknowledge reasonable disagreements. By contrast, we contend that any reconstruction of the EU's economic constitution has to pay attention to reconciling a European monetary order with the legitimacy of member state governance. The EU requires a two-level contract to meet this standard. Member states must treat each other as equals and be representative of and accountable to their citizens on an equitable basis. These criteria entail that the EU's political legitimacy requires a form of demoicracy that we call ‘republican intergovernmentalism’. Only rules that could be acceptable as the product of a political constitution among the peoples of Europe can ultimately meet the required standards of political legitimacy. Such a political constitution could be brought about through empowering national parliaments in EU decision-making. PMID:26924935

  6. Political legitimacy and European monetary union: contracts, constitutionalism and the normative logic of two-level games.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Bellamy, Richard; Weale, Albert

    2015-02-07

    The crisis of the euro area has severely tested the political authority of the European Union (EU). The crisis raises questions of normative legitimacy both because the EU is a normative order and because the construction of economic and monetary union (EMU) rested upon a theory that stressed the normative value of the depoliticization of money. However, this theory neglected the normative logic of the two-level game implicit in EMU. It also neglected the need for an impartial and publically acceptable constitutional order to acknowledge reasonable disagreements. By contrast, we contend that any reconstruction of the EU's economic constitution has to pay attention to reconciling a European monetary order with the legitimacy of member state governance. The EU requires a two-level contract to meet this standard. Member states must treat each other as equals and be representative of and accountable to their citizens on an equitable basis. These criteria entail that the EU's political legitimacy requires a form of demoi cracy that we call 'republican intergovernmentalism'. Only rules that could be acceptable as the product of a political constitution among the peoples of Europe can ultimately meet the required standards of political legitimacy. Such a political constitution could be brought about through empowering national parliaments in EU decision-making.

  7. The mainstreaming of verbally aggressive online political behaviors.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Cicchirillo, Vincent; Hmielowski, Jay; Hutchens, Myiah

    2015-05-01

    The purpose of this paper was to investigate the relationship between verbal aggression and uncivil media attention on political flaming. More specifically, this paper examines whether the use of uncivil media programming is associated with the perceived acceptability and intention to engage in aggressive online discussions (i.e., online political flaming) and whether this relationship varies by verbal aggression. The results show that individuals less inclined to engage in aggressive communication tactics (i.e., low in verbal aggression) become more accepting of flaming and show greater intention to flame as their attention to uncivil media increases. By contrast, those with comparatively higher levels of verbal aggression show a decrease in acceptance and intention to flame as their attention to these same media increases.

  8. Concern with falls in elderly people attended in an Integral Attention Center

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Elizandro Correia de Araújo

    2016-11-01

    Full Text Available Falls are concerning factors in elderly people, because they cause diverse complications. The objective of this study was to identify the level of concern with falls, associating them with self-reported diseases and history of falls of elderly attended in an Integral Attention Center. This was a descriptive study with 80 elderly. The results demonstrated an extreme concern regarding the possibility of falling for most female, married, of 60-79 years and receiving low monthly income; there is also extreme concern for those with hypertension and arthrosis. Nursing should establish integral actions to map elderly with risk of falling and, that promote awareness for these elderly and their family members regarding fall prevention measures, to prevent falls and to reduce the fear of falling.

  9. Moral foundations and political attitudes: The moderating role of political sophistication.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Milesi, Patrizia

    2016-08-01

    Political attitudes can be associated with moral concerns. This research investigated whether people's level of political sophistication moderates this association. Based on the Moral Foundations Theory, this article examined whether political sophistication moderates the extent to which reliance on moral foundations, as categories of moral concerns, predicts judgements about policy positions. With this aim, two studies examined four policy positions shown by previous research to be best predicted by the endorsement of Sanctity, that is, the category of moral concerns focused on the preservation of physical and spiritual purity. The results showed that reliance on Sanctity predicted political sophisticates' judgements, as opposed to those of unsophisticates, on policy positions dealing with equal rights for same-sex and unmarried couples and with euthanasia. Political sophistication also interacted with Fairness endorsement, which includes moral concerns for equal treatment of everybody and reciprocity, in predicting judgements about equal rights for unmarried couples, and interacted with reliance on Authority, which includes moral concerns for obedience and respect for traditional authorities, in predicting opposition to stem cell research. Those findings suggest that, at least for these particular issues, endorsement of moral foundations can be associated with political attitudes more strongly among sophisticates than unsophisticates. © 2015 International Union of Psychological Science.

  10. Generation of political priority for global health initiatives: a framework and case study of maternal mortality.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Shiffman, Jeremy; Smith, Stephanie

    2007-10-13

    Why do some global health initiatives receive priority from international and national political leaders whereas others receive little attention? To analyse this question we propose a framework consisting of four categories: the strength of the actors involved in the initiative, the power of the ideas they use to portray the issue, the nature of the political contexts in which they operate, and characteristics of the issue itself. We apply this framework to the case of a global initiative to reduce maternal mortality, which was launched in 1987. We undertook archival research and interviewed people connected with the initiative, using a process-tracing method that is commonly employed in qualitative research. We report that despite two decades of effort the initiative remains in an early phase of development, hampered by difficulties in all these categories. However, the initiative's 20th year, 2007, presents opportunities to build political momentum. To generate political priority, advocates will need to address several challenges, including the creation of effective institutions to guide the initiative and the development of a public positioning of the issue to convince political leaders to act. We use the framework and case study to suggest areas for future research on the determinants of political priority for global health initiatives, which is a subject that has attracted much speculation but little scholarship.

  11. The Game Frame and Political Efficacy

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Pedersen, Rasmus Tue

    2012-01-01

    Several observational and experimental studies have confirmed the ‘spiral of cynicism’ hypothesis: the tendency of the news media to cover politics through a game frame, which focuses on political strategy instead of political issues, leads to cynicism about election campaigns and politicians amo...... on a survey among the electorate and a content analysis of political coverage in newspapers. The study shows that exposure to the game frame is indeed associated with lower levels of internal efficacy, even when controlling for potentially confounding variables.......Several observational and experimental studies have confirmed the ‘spiral of cynicism’ hypothesis: the tendency of the news media to cover politics through a game frame, which focuses on political strategy instead of political issues, leads to cynicism about election campaigns and politicians among...... the electorate. However, such cynicism may in itself be somewhat inconsequential, and so this article suggests that we move beyond cynicism regarding specific electoral campaigns or politicians, and that we turn our attention towards political efficacy. This is done in an empirical study, which is based...

  12. Effects of attention manipulations on motivated attention to feared and nonfeared negative distracters in spider fear.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Norberg, Joakim; Wiens, Stefan

    2013-11-09

    When people view emotional and neutral pictures, the emotional pictures capture more attention than do neutral pictures. In support, studies with event-related potentials have shown that the early posterior negativity (EPN) and the late positive potential (LPP) to emotional versus neutral pictures are enhanced when pictures are attended. However, this motivated attention decreases when voluntary attention is directed away from the pictures. Most previous studies included only generally emotional pictures of either negative or positive valence. Because people with spider fear report intense fear of spiders, we examined whether directing attention away from emotional pictures at fixation decreases motivated attention less strongly for spiders than for generally negative distracters. We recorded event-related potentials from 128 channels to study whether manipulations of attention (i.e., spatial attention and perceptual load) decrease the EPN and the LPP to emotional distracters less strongly for spiders than for fear-irrelevant negative pictures in people with spider fear. Results confirmed that the EPN and the LPP to spiders (vs. neutral pictures) were particularly enhanced in participants with spider fear compared to participants without spider fear. When attention was directed away from the pictures, the EPN and the LPP to spiders (vs. neutral pictures) decreased similarly in fearful and nonfearful participants. Further, in fearful participants, the decrease in the EPN and the LPP was similar for spiders and for fear-irrelevant negative pictures. Our findings suggest that for people with spider fear, directing attention away from emotional pictures at fixation decreases motivated attention to these distracters similarly for spiders as for fear-irrelevant negative pictures. These findings imply that attention to spiders in spider fear does not exceed the level of attention expected from the spider pictures' high arousal and negative valence (i.e., their intrinsic

  13. Political violence, collective functioning and health: a review of the literature.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Sousa, Cindy A

    2013-01-01

    Political violence is implicated in a range of mental health outcomes, including PTSD, depression, and anxiety. The social and political contexts of people's lives, however, offer considerable protection from the mental health effects of political violence. In spite of the importance of people's social and political environments for health, there is limited scholarship on how political violence compromises necessary social and political systems and inhibits individuals from participating in social and political life. Drawing on literature from multiple disciplines, including public health, anthropology, and psychology, this narrative review uses a multi-level, social ecological framework to enhance current knowledge about the ways that political violence affects health. Findings from over 50 studies were analysed and used to build a conceptual model demonstrating how political violence threatens three inter-related domains of functioning: individual functioning in relationship to their environment; community functioning and social fabric; and governmental functioning and delivery of services to populations. Results illustrate the need for multilevel frameworks that move beyond individual pathology towards more nuanced conceptualizations about how political violence affects health; findings contribute to the development of prevention programmes addressing political violence.

  14. Protest Demonstrations, Political Partici

    African Journals Online (AJOL)

    DR Nneka

    2015-04-14

    Apr 14, 2015 ... the Era of Terrorism: Nigeria's Public Order Act and the ... Charter on Human and Peoples' Rights and other international laws. But owing to the .... little sense to limit analysis of political participation to voting and electoral.

  15. POLITICAL TRADITIONS: THE CONCEPT AND STRUCTURE

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Наталья Алексеевна Мамина

    2013-05-01

    Full Text Available The article refers to the theoretical aspects of the study of the political traditions phenomenon. The influence of traditional components of the political culture on the current political process is recognized in contemporary literature, but political traditions rarely become the original subject of a scientific research, which explains the vagueness of their interpretation and the need of their system understanding.The author analyzes existing interpretations of the concept "tradition", on which formulates the definition of "political traditions" as (1 a form of fixation for meaningful content of the nation’s socio-political experience and as (2 a mechanism of political-cultural continuity.The author identifies mental, behavioral and institutional levels in the structure of political traditions. Mental level consists of political symbols, myths and stereotypes, which form the image of political reality and authority, and values and norms, which affect the motivation of political behavior. Behavioral level includes models of behavior and patterns of action, such as political habits and rituals. Institutional level reflects historical features of interaction between branches of power and relations between the state and society.The author pays attention to the influence of structural elements of political traditions on the political consciousness and behavior of individuals and social groups. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.12731/2218-7405-2013-4-25

  16. Dynamics of Media Attention

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Traag, V.A.; Reinanda, R.; Hicks, J.; van Klinken, G.; Aziz-Alaoui, M.A.; Bertelle, C.; Liu, X.; Olivier, D.

    2014-01-01

    Studies of human attention dynamics analyses how attention is focused on specific topics, issues or people. In online social media, there are clear signs of exogenous shocks, bursty dynamics, and an exponential or powerlaw lifetime distribution. We here analyse the attention dynamics of traditional

  17. How Different Forms of Health Matter to Political Participation

    Science.gov (United States)

    Burden, Barry C.; Fletcher, Jason M.; Herd, Pamela; Jones, Bradley M.; Moynihan, Donald P.

    2018-01-01

    Physical and mental health is known to have wide influence over most aspects of social life—be it schooling and employment or marriage and broader social engagement—but has received limited attention in explaining different forms of political participation. We analyze a unique dataset with a rich array of objective measures of cognitive and physical well-being and two objective measures of political participation, voting and contributing money to campaigns and parties. For voting, each aspect of health has a powerful effect on par with traditional predictors of participation such as education. In contrast, health has little to no effect on making campaign contributions. We recommend additional attention to the multifaceted affects of health on different forms of political participation. PMID:29503463

  18. Listening for Noise in Political Thought

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Bruce Buchan

    2012-11-01

    Full Text Available The acoustic dimension of political philosophy has rarely attracted serious attention, in part because scholars have tended to assume that political theories, ideas, and concepts, exist as abstract entities that are often noiselessly communicated in written texts. And yet, the noisy communication of political ideas whether in the form of Socratic dialogues, Churchillian orations, or in the hushed tones of focus group conversations treasured by deliberative democrats today, has a rich political history and a continuing relevance. This paper will focus on five performative modes for the communication of political ideas: the monologue, the dialogue, the oration, the interjection, and the noisy crowd. While this list may not be exhaustive, it will be used here as a starting point for further exploration. I will contend that in each of these performative modes, the communication of political ideas is framed by the noise of actual, or textually imagined kinds of political speech designed to underscore the validity of the ideas conveyed. One of the most important reasons for traversing this variable performative and acoustic terrain today is to enable us to hear and to listen to political speech amid the potentially polluting hum of political white noise.

  19. The genetics of politics: discovery, challenges, and progress.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Hatemi, Peter K; McDermott, Rose

    2012-10-01

    For the greater part of human history, political behaviors, values, preferences, and institutions have been viewed as socially determined. Discoveries during the 1970s that identified genetic influences on political orientations remained unaddressed. However, over the past decade, an unprecedented amount of scholarship utilizing genetic models to expand the understanding of political traits has emerged. Here, we review the 'genetics of politics', focusing on the topics that have received the most attention: attitudes, ideologies, and pro-social political traits, including voting behavior and participation. The emergence of this research has sparked a broad paradigm shift in the study of political behaviors toward the inclusion of biological influences and recognition of the mutual co-dependence between genes and environment in forming political behaviors. Copyright © 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

  20. The Starting Point of Hobbes’s Science of Politics

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Luka Ribarević

    2008-01-01

    Full Text Available As a logical starting point structuring the entire theoretical field of political analysis, Hobbes’s definition of the state of nature is a key for understanding his science of politics. The paper shows that the concept of the state of nature implies two fundamentally distinct types of states in which neither people nor troubles with which they are faced are identical. In the original state of nature conflicts among people stem directly from their nature. Based on the analysis of Hobbes’s understanding of human nature and critical reading of his interpretation of the state of nature by Jean Hampton, the paper identifies the mechanism by which reason and passion turn the state of nature into a state of war. However, alongside the original state of nature, a historical state of nature also coexists, in which conflicts spring from religious views and political beliefs immanent to people as religious and political beings, and as beings of language and conscience. What is crucial for conflicts in this historical state of nature is the influence exerted by language as a discursive context on human action. As the state of war feeds from both human nature and history, any attempt of overcoming the state of nature must abandon them: the state is necessarily an artificial and ahistorical project, based on science of politics as a new political language appropriate for human self-preservation.

  1. Political attitudes bias the mental representation of a presidential candidate's face.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Young, Alison I; Ratner, Kyle G; Fazio, Russell H

    2014-02-01

    Using a technique known as reverse-correlation image classification, we demonstrated that the face of Mitt Romney as represented in people's minds varies as a function of their attitudes toward Mitt Romney. Our findings provide evidence that attitudes bias how people see something as concrete and well learned as the face of a political candidate during an election. Practically, our findings imply that citizens may not merely interpret political information about a candidate to fit their opinion, but also may construct a political world in which they literally see candidates differently.

  2. Are people more connective than political actions?

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Shehata, Mostafa

    2017-01-01

    The recent wave of Internet-based social movements in the Arab Spring countries and elsewhere has considerably changed the organizational structure of contentious action. One of the current and most significant theories that has handled this change is the logic of connective action, which...... distinguishes between two major types of contentious action: collective and connective. In the context of this theory, this article puts forward a new conception of political action participants and attempts to classify them along the categories of collective or connective. This conception, which consists...

  3. The science and politics of targeting: who gets what, when, and how.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Pelletier, David L

    2005-04-01

    Targeting has been defined as a method by which goods, services, or other programmatic actions are delivered to groups or individuals who have specific characteristics. Similarly, politics refers to the social processes that determine who gets what, when, and how. This similarity suggests there may be utility in undertaking an explicit analysis of how the science and the politics of targeting relate to one another. Accordingly, this article outlines a technical/scientific framework regarding targeting and, using one element of this framework [sensitivity and specificity analysis], demonstrates that recent shifts in politics and policy in the United States can be more clearly understood when viewed from this angle. Then, the article outlines a basic framework on politics and uses it to demonstrate that one of the most fundamental features of our training, practices, and outlook (specialization) holds obvious benefits for advancing research but has three undesirable effects in the realm of policy: 1) it directly or indirectly encourages narrow, partial solutions to complex problems, some of which may have unintended effects on health or well-being for the very people we seek to help; 2) it creates a cumulative demand for research dollars, specialized interventions, and policy attention that far exceeds available resources and capabilities; and 3) it often prevents us from developing and advancing the common agendas and mutual support required to be effective in political and policy realms. The article concludes that more explicit analysis along these lines could strengthen our effectiveness in the policy realm.

  4. Political Events through Image and Ritual

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Mirela Arsith

    2013-07-01

    Full Text Available Governing people, the manifestation of the political power event creates beliefs and ideas - power which represent variables of belief systems or existing rules in any society. Some promote emancipation, freedom and justice, others propagate retaliation, revenge and oppression. All, however, serve the approaches to mobilize and unite people through images and speech. The image is a global view of the person. It comes from personal experience and from the information received from the media and is the synthesis of all we know, true or false, on the subject which it represents. The citizens perceive the politician, the party, the political organization or institution according to the promoted image. The unique form of political discourse in the minds of the audience induces in the mind of the auditory the faith in the ability of the orator to provide optimal solutions to the problems manifested in the society. The charismatic leader acquires much of his power from the fact that it is perceived by many as being simultaneously above others and as others. The charismatic leader knows that energy of the masses is extracted from the emotions, illusions, beliefs, expectations, ideals and dreams; thus energized, people believe they know who to follow and who to devote.

  5. Entanglements of Politics and Education in Sri Lanka

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Sørensen, Birgitte Refslund

    2011-01-01

    In this article I argue that in Sri Lanka the field of education has been a constant and significant element in the relationship between population and politicians, and it plays an important role in most people's experiences and understandings of politics, just as it affects their own political...

  6. Political Expertise and Affect: Effects on News Processing.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Hsu, Mei-Ling; Price, Vincent

    1993-01-01

    Investigates interactions between political expertise and affect in shaping cognitive strategies people employ in forming reactions to newspaper stories. Finds that, in processing the news articles, political experts produced a greater number of thoughts and a larger share of arguments than did novices. Observes no predicted main effects of…

  7. Stability and change in political conservatism following the global financial crisis.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Milojev, Petar; Greaves, Lara; Osborne, Danny; Sibley, Chris G

    2015-01-01

    The current study analyzes data from a national probability panel sample of New Zealanders (N = 5,091) to examine stability and change in political orientation over four consecutive yearly assessments (2009-2012) following the 2007/2008 global financial crisis. Bayesian Latent Growth Modeling identified systematic variation in the growth trajectory of conservatism that was predicted by age and socio-economic status. Younger people (ages 25-45) did not change in their political orientation. Older people, however, became more conservative over time. Likewise, people with lower socio-economic status showed a marked increase in political conservatism. In addition, tests of rank-order stability showed that age had a cubic relationship with the stability of political orientation over our four annual assessments. Our findings provide strong support for System Justification Theory by showing that increases in conservatism in the wake of the recent global financial crisis occurred primarily among the poorest and most disadvantaged.

  8. Color-Coding Politics

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Benjamin Gross

    2013-02-01

    Full Text Available During the 2000 Presidential election between George H. W. Bush and Al Gore, journalists often used the terms blue states and red states to describe the political landscape within the United States. This article studies the framing of these terms during the years 2004 through 2007. Using latent and manifest qualitative content analyses, six different news media frames were found in a sample of 337 newspaper articles. Two hypotheses were also tested indicating that framing patterns varied slightly by time period and article types. However, the argument that increased levels of political polarization in the United States have been created by predominantly conflict-oriented coverage may not be true. Instead, these terms became journalistic heuristics that were used to organize how people think about politics in a way that fit with contemporary media practices, and there is no single agreed upon interpretation of these terms within this reporting.

  9. Politics of Sustainability in the Arctic

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Gad, Ulrik Pram; Jakobsen, Uffe; Strandsbjerg, Jeppe

    2017-01-01

    The concept of sustainability has become central in arctic politics. However, there is little agreement on what ‘sustainable’ means. For different actors (governments, indigenous people, NGOs, etc.) the concept implies different sets of opportunities and precautions. Sustainability, therefore...... the role of sustainability in political and economic strategies in the Arctic. Sustainability has become a fundamental concept that orders the relationship between the environment (nature) and development (economy), however, in the process rearticulating other concepts such as identity (society). Hence, we...... to outline an agenda for how to study the way in which sustainability works as a political concept....

  10. JOURNALISTIC COVERAGE OF POLITICAL AND FINANCIAL CRISES AND THE “ISSUE” OF POLITICAL CORRUPTION

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Isabel Ferin Cunha

    2013-06-01

    Full Text Available This article analyzes the relationship between news coverage, political communication, crises and corruption, focusing on Western democracies and particularly Portugal. Firstly, political communication and news coverage are discussed, based on the assumption that the commoditisation of the goals of media and information companies has resulted in changes in the balance between the political and media fields. Within this perspective, attention is devoted to the consequences of these changes in Western democracies, taking into consideration not only certain aspects that tend to subvert underlying principles of representative democracy, but also the emergence of new social movements craving greater democratic participation in the public sphere. In addition, this study examines the concepts of crisis and political corruption, seeking to identify the historical and cultural elements that correlate the two phenomena in Western democracies, especially in Portugal. Finally, it addresses the processes of exposing corruption phenomena and their legal implications, as well as the principles of transparency of information and the consequences upon democracy.

  11. Journalistic coverage of political and financial crises and the “issue” of political corruption

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Isabel Ferin Cunha

    2013-06-01

    Full Text Available This article analyzes the relationship between news coverage, political communication, crises and corruption, focusing on Western democracies and particularly Portugal. Firstly, political communication and news coverage are discussed, based on the assumption that the commoditisation of the goals of media and information companies has resulted in changes in the balance between the political and media fields. Within this perspective, attention is devoted to the consequences of these changes in Western democracies, taking into consideration not only certain aspects that tend to subvert underlying principles of representative democracy, but also the emergence of new social movements craving greater democratic participation in the public sphere. In addition, this study examines the concepts of crisis and political corruption, seeking to identify the historical and cultural elements that correlate the two phenomena in Western democracies, especially in Portugal. Finally, it addresses the processes of exposing corruption phenomena and their legal implications, as well as the principles of transparency of information and the consequences upon democracy.

  12. Politics of sustainability in the Arctic (POSUSA)

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Gad, Ulrik Pram; Jakobsen, Uffe; Strandsbjerg, Jeppe

    The concept of sustainability is of central importance in Arctic politics. However, for different actors (governments, indigenious peoples, NGOs) the concept implies different sets of precautions and opportunities. Sustainability, therefore, is much more a fundamental concept to be further...... elaborated than a definable term with a specific meaning. This is the core hypothesis in a collective research project, the POSUSA project (Politics of Sustainability in the Arctic) that aims to map and analyse the role of sustainability in various political and economic strategies in the Arctic....

  13. Improving community mental health services for people affected by political violence in Ayacucho, Perú.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Rivera-Holguin, Miryam; Velazquez, Tesania; Custodio, Elba; Corveleyn, Jozef

    2018-01-01

    This study describes a model to intervene in communities affected by the political violence impacting the Ayacucho region of Peru since 1980s. Many community members still experience psychosocial consequences to this day due primarily to grief. Thirty-eight professionals from different sectors in the area received specialized training and implemented five community projects that were accompanied and monitored in the field by a team of community psychologists. This article is grounded on the principles of participation, building community capacity, and community strengthening. We present the analysis of five community action plans implemented over a period of 14 months. The results show a process of internal strengthening of community services and the identification of new social and community resources among the people involved in the action plans. The implications of capacity building for improving community mental health are discussed.

  14. Energy-political stagnation or innovation

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Kitschelt, H.

    1982-01-01

    The author discusses the enquete report 1980. He makes an inventory for a political and sociological interpretation of the interim report between meaningful innovation and political insignificance as well as intellectual stagnation. The report is considered as an indicator for the transformation of the energy-political arena in the Federal Republic of Germany over the last years. ''Stagnation'' or ''innovation'' of the argumentation patterns in the report of the enquete commission relate to the question whether the analyses in that document are rather a brake or a motor to a shift of political perspectives in energy policy. A progress can be seen in the report regarding political debate about energy-options in the semi-official political spectrum of the Federal Republic of Germany, in as far as differring options of energy-political development are being acknowledged for the first time. At the same time, debate inside the commission directs the attention to issues of institutional policy in the energy sector. Considering the fights within the commission before the report was agreed on, it seems doubtful if its proposals for compromise will prove a sound political basis. The tensions inside the commission are just a first sign of the power conflicts due above all if the recommendations for energy conservation are intransigently carried out. (orig./HSCH) [de

  15. Political participation as public pedagogy : The Educational Situation in Young People´s Political Conversations in Social Media

    OpenAIRE

    Olson, Maria; Andersson, Erik

    2014-01-01

    In this article we argue that young people’s political participation in the social media can be considered ‘public pedagogy’. The argument builds on a previous empirical analysis of a Swedish net community called Black Heart. Theoretically, the article is based on a particular notion of public pedagogy, education and Hannah Arendt’s expressive agonism. The political participation that takes place in the net community builds up an educational situation that involves central characteristics: co...

  16. Means of discourse manipulations in political party programs in Spain

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Irina V. Smirnova

    2014-01-01

    Full Text Available Thanks to different mass media sources, members of any society are well aware of political developments and events and politicians. Every person has his or her own formed political beliefs and affirmations, interpreters other people's actions during political developments and evaluates events that take place. Political forces, in turn, see a person (a potential elector as an object of external information influence. This lets them use political communication when competing for the power. In the modern democratic society this competition is carried out via parliamentarian debates, politicians' speeches, examining political parties' programs, political agitation and voting. General audience-oriented political discourse implements its function of political information influence. As the goal of any political party's program (as an independent form of text in the system of political discourse is to win the elections and come to power, thus the audience influence function is one of the most fundamental and serve as the basis for the text. The text of a program itself is characterized by its persuasive orientation towards the audience, which reveal itself in such methods as convincing, argumentation, manipulation and evaluation. All the political programs pertain to parties which are at the power or which are in opposition. The main characteristic of oppositional programs is the criticism of the power, vice versa, the dominant party's programs confirm the correctness of their policy. All the political programs are multi-authored. The written form of any political program lets put into practice a detailed text analysis. This article presents the analysis of the texts of two leading Spanish political parties (the Spanish socialist worker's party and the people's party of Spain.

  17. Rethinking political correctness.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Ely, Robin J; Meyerson, Debra E; Davidson, Martin N

    2006-09-01

    Legal and cultural changes over the past 40 years ushered unprecedented numbers of women and people of color into companies' professional ranks. Laws now protect these traditionally underrepresented groups from blatant forms of discrimination in hiring and promotion. Meanwhile, political correctness has reset the standards for civility and respect in people's day-to-day interactions. Despite this obvious progress, the authors' research has shown that political correctness is a double-edged sword. While it has helped many employees feel unlimited by their race, gender, or religion,the PC rule book can hinder people's ability to develop effective relationships across race, gender, and religious lines. Companies need to equip workers with skills--not rules--for building these relationships. The authors offer the following five principles for healthy resolution of the tensions that commonly arise over difference: Pause to short-circuit the emotion and reflect; connect with others, affirming the importance of relationships; question yourself to identify blind spots and discover what makes you defensive; get genuine support that helps you gain a broader perspective; and shift your mind-set from one that says, "You need to change," to one that asks, "What can I change?" When people treat their cultural differences--and related conflicts and tensions--as opportunities to gain a more accurate view of themselves, one another, and the situation, trust builds and relationships become stronger. Leaders should put aside the PC rule book and instead model and encourage risk taking in the service of building the organization's relational capacity. The benefits will reverberate through every dimension of the company's work.

  18. [Demographic pressure: a factor in political instability].

    Science.gov (United States)

    Tallon, F

    1991-01-01

    A review of population trends in Rwanda is presented. They include the growing pressure on available land and resources due to an increase in the numbers of people and cattle. The author finds that this pressure, combined with ethnic tensions, has created an explosive political situation. He concludes that political stability is possible only if a vigorous population policy is implemented.

  19. Housing accessibility problems for people with Parkinson's disease.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Slaug, B; Iwarsson, S; Ayala, J A; Nilsson, M H

    2017-11-01

    Promoting accessible housing for all citizens is high on the political agenda. Knowledge is, however, limited regarding housing accessibility problems for people with Parkinson's disease (PD). The objectives were to investigate housing accessibility problems among people with PD at different stages of disease severity and to analyze the potential impact of improved functional ability on accessibility problems. The study included 253 participants with PD (61% men; mean age 70 years). Disease severity was assessed by the Hoehn and Yahr (HY) I-V stages: HY I, n=50; II, n=73, III, n=66; IV-V, n=64. Using the Housing Enabler (HE) instrument, accessibility problems were investigated by combining assessments of the person's functional capacity with assessments of physical barriers in the housing environment into a person-environment fit measure (HE-score). To analyze potential impact of improved functional ability on housing accessibility problems, data simulation was applied. HE-scores differed significantly (Phousing accessibility problems for people with PD. The study also details environmental barriers that need specific attention when providing housing adaptation services. © 2017 John Wiley & Sons A/S. Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

  20. Targeting Political Communications: A Problem in Market Segmentation.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Markwart, Richard I.

    Political campaigns are major, high-budget marketing efforts, but because they are usually managed by people with little training in either marketing or communications, they fail to persuade voters to vote in the desired way. Political targeting can be treated as a segmentation problem, one of identifying and responding to the specific qualities…

  1. Underground Politics

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Galis, Vasilis; Summerton, Jane

    Public spaces are often contested sites involving the political use of sociomaterial arrangements to check, control and filter the flow of people (see Virilio 1977, 1996). Such arrangements can include configurations of state-of-the-art policing technologies for delineating and demarcating borders...... status updates on identity checks at the metro stations in Stockholm and reports on locations and time of ticket controls for warning travelers. Thus the attempts by authorities to exert control over the (spatial) arena of the underground is circumvented by the effective developing of an alternative...... infrastructural "underground" consisting of assemblages of technologies, activists, immigrants without papers, texts and emails, homes, smart phones and computers. Investigating the embedded politics of contested spatial arrangements as characteristic of specific societies one can discover not only the uses...

  2. Becoming independent: political participation and youth transitions in the Scottish referendum.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Breeze, Maddie; Gorringe, Hugo; Jamieson, Lynn; Rosie, Michael

    2017-12-01

    Sociological debates on youth engagement with electoral politics play out against a backdrop of supposed 'decline' in civic participation (e.g. Putnam , Norris, ), in turn contextualized by theories of individualization in 'late' or 'reflexive' modernity (Beck, Giddens). However, the enfranchisement of 16 and 17 year olds in the 2014 Scottish Independence Referendum catalysed remarkably high levels of voter turnout among this youngest group, and was accompanied by apparently ongoing political engagement. We explored this engagement among a strategic sample of young 'Yes' voters, in the immediate aftermath of this exceptional political event. Analysis of qualitative interview data generated an unanticipated finding; that interviewees narrated their political engagement biographically, articulated their referendum participation reflexively, and located their new political ideas, allegiances and actions in the context of their own transitions to 'independent' adulthood. This inspired us to rethink young people's political engagement in relation to youth transitions. Doing so enables a synthesis of divergent strands in the sociology of youth, and offers new insights into the combinations of 'personal' agentic and 'political' structural factors involved in young people's politicization. © London School of Economics and Political Science 2017.

  3. The Persistence of Gender Differences in Political Interest

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    TÀNIA VERGE MESTRE

    2012-01-01

    Full Text Available This article explores the role of individual resources, situational factors, and the socialization process in the persistence of a gender gap in political dispositions, principally in political interest. We pay special attention to situational factors, especially those related to the time devoted to housework and caring responsibilities. Despite the growing participation of women in the labor market and increasingly comparable levels of male and female educational attainment, the enduring unequal sexual division of household tasks reduces women?s time availability as well as the pool of skills, resources and social networks which could foster their political engagement, thus helping to sustain the gender gap in political interest.

  4. Detecting Bots on Russian Political Twitter.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Stukal, Denis; Sanovich, Sergey; Bonneau, Richard; Tucker, Joshua A

    2017-12-01

    Automated and semiautomated Twitter accounts, bots, have recently gained significant public attention due to their potential interference in the political realm. In this study, we develop a methodology for detecting bots on Twitter using an ensemble of classifiers and apply it to study bot activity within political discussions in the Russian Twittersphere. We focus on the interval from February 2014 to December 2015, an especially consequential period in Russian politics. Among accounts actively Tweeting about Russian politics, we find that on the majority of days, the proportion of Tweets produced by bots exceeds 50%. We reveal bot characteristics that distinguish them from humans in this corpus, and find that the software platform used for Tweeting is among the best predictors of bots. Finally, we find suggestive evidence that one prominent activity that bots were involved in on Russian political Twitter is the spread of news stories and promotion of media who produce them.

  5. The People Are Missing: Cramped Space, Social Relations, and the Mediators of Politics

    OpenAIRE

    Thoburn, Nicholas

    2016-01-01

    This article investigates the place of social relations in Deleuze and Guattari’s figure of ‘cramped space’, a figure integral to their ‘minor politics’. Against social and political theories that seek the source of political practice in a collective identity, the theory of cramped space contends that politics arises among those who lack and refuse coherent identity, in their encounter with the impasses, limits, or impossibilities of individual and collective subjectivity. Cramped space, as D...

  6. The effects of emotional and rational news appeals on political attitudes

    OpenAIRE

    Ryffel, Fabian A

    2016-01-01

    The present study investigates how emotional and rational appeals in political news media stories interact with preexisting attitudes in changing citizens’ political attitudes. It is hypothesized that news media appeals that match predispositions are more likely to affect attitudes than mismatching media appeals. That is, people holding attitudes primarily based on affect should be more susceptible to emotionally arousing media content than to rational appeals. For people holding attitudes pr...

  7. Political culture in Romania - past, present and future

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Nicolae FRIGIOIU

    2009-01-01

    Full Text Available The aim of the study is to tersely present the situation of the political culture in Romania after 1989. The comprehension of the political culture seen as a result of a valorous past full of religious content constitutes the single path that can reveal the imaginary of the Romanian people; moreover, the study has as a purpose to improve the understanding of the political and cultural values which are linked to the consolidation of a democratic system in a similar manner to the connection between the forms and the causes of any social and political change in the country.

  8. Political Socialization in the Family and Young People's Educational Achievement and Ambition

    Science.gov (United States)

    Lauglo, Jon

    2011-01-01

    Using data from a large-scale survey of Norwegian youth, the study examines the relationships that the performance in key academic subjects and aiming for higher education have with political socialization at home. The more often adolescents aged 13-16 talk with parents about politics and social issues, the better their performance is and the more…

  9. Cognitive Ability, Principled Reasoning and Political Tolerance

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Hebbelstrup Rye Rasmussen, Stig; Nørgaard, Asbjørn Sonne

    Individuals are not equally politically tolerant. To explain why, individual differences in emotions and threat have received much scholarly attention in recent years. However, extant research also shows that psychological dispositions, habitual cognitive styles, ideological orientation...... and ‘principled reasoning’ influence political tolerance judgments. The extent to which cognitive ability plays a role has not been entertained even if the capacity to think abstractly, comprehend complex ideas and apply abstract ideas to concrete situations is inherent to both principled tolerance judgment...... and cognitive ability. Cognitive ability, we argue and show, adds to the etiology of political tolerance. In Danish and American samples cognitive ability strongly predicts political tolerance after taking habitual cognitive styles (as measured by personality traits), education, social ideology, and feelings...

  10. Betwixt Droughts and Floods: Flood Management Politics in Thailand

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Naila Maier-Knapp

    2015-01-01

    Full Text Available Attempting to create greater understanding of the political dynamics that influence domestic disaster relief and management (DRM in Thailand, this article takes a closer look at these dynamics by outlining the main actors involved in flood-related DRM. It acknowledges the importance of international and military actors but emphasises the role of national and subnational authorities. The article then identifies the central issues of DRM governance as capacity and bureaucracy and discusses these through a chronological assessment of the flood crisis in Thailand in 2011, interweaving the colourful domestic politics with various political cleavages and dichotomies, and thereby distinguishing between three main dichotomies which it considers as the central drivers of the political dynamics and institutional development of DRM. These issues can be summarised as old versus new institutions, technocracy versus bureaucracy and centralised (but with direct people-orientation through greater channels of citizenry participation versus decentralised bureaucracy with an indirect orientation towards people.

  11. Reform despite politics? The political economy of power sector reform in Fiji, 1996–2013

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Dornan, Matthew

    2014-01-01

    Attempts to reform the electricity sector in developing countries have achieved mixed results, despite the implementation of similar reforms in many developed countries, and concerted effort by donors to transfer reform models. In many cases, political obstacles have prevented full and effective implementation of donor-promoted reforms. This paper examines the political economy of power sector reform in Fiji from 1996 to 2013. Reform has been pursued with political motives in a context of clientelism. Policy inconsistency and reversal is explained by the political instability of ethnic-based politics in Fiji. Modest success has been achieved in recent years despite these challenges, with Fiji now considered a model of power sector reform for other Small Islands Developing States (SIDS) in the Pacific. The experience demonstrates that reform is possible within difficult political environments, but it is challenging, takes time and is not guaranteed. The way in which political motives have driven and shaped reform efforts also highlights the need for studies of power sector reform to direct greater attention toward political drivers behind reform. - Highlights: • This is the first study of power sector reform in Fiji or other Small Island Developing States (SIDS) of the Pacific. • The clientelist nature of politics in Fiji is found to have both driven and shaped reform efforts. • There has been modest success in recent years despite these obstacles, with Fiji now considered a model for other SIDS. • The experience demonstrates that reform is possible within difficult political environments, but it is challenging, takes time and is not guaranteed

  12. Perceptions of others' political affiliation are moderated by individual perceivers' own political attitudes.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    John Paul Wilson

    Full Text Available Previous research has shown that perceivers can accurately extract information about perceptually ambiguous group memberships from facial information alone. For example, people demonstrate above-chance accuracy in categorizing political ideology from faces. Further, they ascribe particular personality traits to faces according to political party (e.g., Republicans are dominant and mature, Democrats are likeable and trustworthy. Here, we report three studies that replicated and extended these effects. In Study 1a, we provide evidence that, in addition to showing accuracy in categorization, politically-conservative participants expressed a bias toward categorizing targets as outgroup members. In Study 1b, we replicate this relationship with a larger sample and a stimulus set consisting of faces of professional politicians. In Study 2, we find that trait ascriptions based on target political affiliation are moderated by perceiver political ideology. Specifically, although Democrats are stereotyped as more likeable and trustworthy, conservative participants rated faces that were categorized as Republicans in Study 1a as more likeable and trustworthy than faces categorized as Democrats. Thus, this paper joins a growing literature showing that it is critical to consider perceiver identity in examining perceptions of identities and traits from faces.

  13. Perceptions of others' political affiliation are moderated by individual perceivers' own political attitudes.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Wilson, John Paul; Rule, Nicholas O

    2014-01-01

    Previous research has shown that perceivers can accurately extract information about perceptually ambiguous group memberships from facial information alone. For example, people demonstrate above-chance accuracy in categorizing political ideology from faces. Further, they ascribe particular personality traits to faces according to political party (e.g., Republicans are dominant and mature, Democrats are likeable and trustworthy). Here, we report three studies that replicated and extended these effects. In Study 1a, we provide evidence that, in addition to showing accuracy in categorization, politically-conservative participants expressed a bias toward categorizing targets as outgroup members. In Study 1b, we replicate this relationship with a larger sample and a stimulus set consisting of faces of professional politicians. In Study 2, we find that trait ascriptions based on target political affiliation are moderated by perceiver political ideology. Specifically, although Democrats are stereotyped as more likeable and trustworthy, conservative participants rated faces that were categorized as Republicans in Study 1a as more likeable and trustworthy than faces categorized as Democrats. Thus, this paper joins a growing literature showing that it is critical to consider perceiver identity in examining perceptions of identities and traits from faces.

  14. Perceptions of Others' Political Affiliation Are Moderated by Individual Perceivers' Own Political Attitudes

    Science.gov (United States)

    Wilson, John Paul; Rule, Nicholas O.

    2014-01-01

    Previous research has shown that perceivers can accurately extract information about perceptually ambiguous group memberships from facial information alone. For example, people demonstrate above-chance accuracy in categorizing political ideology from faces. Further, they ascribe particular personality traits to faces according to political party (e.g., Republicans are dominant and mature, Democrats are likeable and trustworthy). Here, we report three studies that replicated and extended these effects. In Study 1a, we provide evidence that, in addition to showing accuracy in categorization, politically-conservative participants expressed a bias toward categorizing targets as outgroup members. In Study 1b, we replicate this relationship with a larger sample and a stimulus set consisting of faces of professional politicians. In Study 2, we find that trait ascriptions based on target political affiliation are moderated by perceiver political ideology. Specifically, although Democrats are stereotyped as more likeable and trustworthy, conservative participants rated faces that were categorized as Republicans in Study 1a as more likeable and trustworthy than faces categorized as Democrats. Thus, this paper joins a growing literature showing that it is critical to consider perceiver identity in examining perceptions of identities and traits from faces. PMID:24781819

  15. Undergraduate Research-Methods Training in Political Science: A Comparative Perspective

    Science.gov (United States)

    Parker, Jonathan

    2010-01-01

    Unlike other disciplines in the social sciences, there has been relatively little attention paid to the structure of the undergraduate political science curriculum. This article reports the results of a representative survey of 200 political science programs in the United States, examining requirements for quantitative methods, research methods,…

  16. Political participation as an integral part of individuals’ identity

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    G. G. Udzhmadzhuridze

    2014-07-01

    Author examined the main types and forms of political participation. The most common types are involved in the elections, the relationship with political organizations and visiting congresses of political organizations. It is established that political participation of individuals across the all variety of its manifestations, is an expression of civic culture of a particular society. In many states for citizens there is the usual practice of political participation, but only in democratic countries individuals will do this voluntarily and without coercion. Only voluntary political participation and awareness of it, is a manifestation of personal attitudes and beliefs. The author traced that political participation as an integral part of political culture is transmitted from generation to generation through the institutions of socialization in society. The most effective institutions of socialization influence on young people. The political socialization research has revealed the transfer of political ideals and habits between generations.

  17. Iran: Politics, Gulf Security, and U.S. Policy

    Science.gov (United States)

    2016-03-30

    U.S. Policy Congressional Research Service Contents Political History ...Research Service 1 Political History Iran is a country of nearly 80 million people, located in the heart of the Persian Gulf region. The United...Iran government figure was 27), including a 19-year-old woman , Neda Soltani, who subsequently became an emblem of the uprising. The opposition

  18. Political view of youth voters in surabaya

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kartikasari, M. M.; Suwanda, I. M.; Adi, A. S.

    2018-01-01

    In the study of political socialization, youth voters are one of the targets of political parties in obtaining constituents. This article will reveal the views of youth voters in interpreting politics. Youth voters who are the subject of the study are college students in the first year. In general, they have different social life backgrounds but are in the same environment, the life of urban people, where their involvement with information technology is high. Political knowledge of youth voters is widely gained through mass media, where information is produced based on market needs. It encourages inconsistency in the direction of thinking that develops by voters. On the one hand, politics is seen as an activity based on ideal democratic values, but on the other hand politics is also seen as a practice that focuses on winning the battle of interests. This suggests that the youth voter political views are oriented toward superficial knowledge directed more by the mass media, not from experience gained through the process of political socialization.

  19. Political parties in the Sverdlovsk region: stages of development

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Mukhametov Ruslan Salikhovich

    2013-12-01

    Full Text Available This article analyzes the processes of party building in the Russian Federation. On the example of a single region – the Sverdlovsk region – we study the evolution of political parties. The factors favoring the process of formation and functioning of regional political parties and political movements in the Middle Urals are identified and classified. Much attention is paid to such factors of development of the parties in the region as a party-electoral law and the electoral system view.

  20. Tobacco Control in Africa: People, Politics and Policies | CRDI ...

    International Development Research Centre (IDRC) Digital Library (Canada)

    15 oct. 2011 ... Tobacco use in Sub-Saharan Africa is growing rapidly as a result of strong economic growth and the aggressive marketing tactics of tobacco multinationals. Although the policy interventions are well understood, the political economy of tobacco control in Sub-Saharan Africa is not, and this volume is a timely ...

  1. A Survey on Power and Political Culture in Kalile va Demne

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    J Dehghanian

    2011-04-01

    Postmodernist thinkers, especially Michel Foucault, make it clear that power and political culture are so complicated and affect private and social life. It is possible to claim that there is a meaningful relationship between people’s deed and power in each society. In this article, we take a look at political culture and power in Kalile va Demne and will analyze its effects on people’s thoughts and deeds.

  2. Animal Ethics and Politics Beyond the Social Contract

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Alan Reynolds

    2014-09-01

    Full Text Available This paper is divided into three sections. First, I describe the wide plurality of views on issues of animal ethics, showing that our disagreements here are deep and profound. This fact of reasonable pluralism about animal ethics presents a political problem. According to the dominant liberal tradition of political philosophy, it is impermissible for one faction of people to impose its values upon another faction of people who reasonably reject those values. Instead, we are obligated to justify our political actions to each other using reasons that everyone can accept. Thus, in the second section I suggest that our condition of reasonable pluralism inspires us to turn toward some form of contractarianism. The social contract tradition emerged precisely as an attempt to think about how a society characterized by deep moral disagreement could nonetheless agree about the basic principles of justice. I will show, in this section, that although the social contract tradition would seem to contain the best tools for thinking about how to deal with moral disagreement, it fails to help us think through the important issues of animal ethics. In the concluding section, I suggest some ways in which political philosophy might move beyond contractarianism when thinking about this issue, including embracing an agonistic style of politics.

  3. Social innovation for People-Centred Development

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Hulgård, Lars; P.K., Shajahan

    2013-01-01

    Social innovation is closely related to the people-centred development (PCD) framework of knowledge production. The discussion of PCD in this chapter particularly expands on the feature of empowerment and socio-political mobilization of people in social innovation...

  4. Complicated and messy politics of inclusion: Michfest and the Boston Dyke March.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Trigilio, Jo

    2016-01-01

    To illustrate the challenge of political organizing that grapples with identity politics and inclusion, I focus on two women-centered annual events with very different politics of inclusion: the Michigan Womyn's Music Festival and the Boston Dyke March. (1) arguments made by marginalized people for inclusion into established oppressed identity groups must be constructed with due care to avoid further marginalizing yet other liminal identities; (2) protesting/boycotting other oppressed groups for the purpose of achieving inclusion is often a problematic strategy; (3) the most effective strategy for honoring all people is to support organizations committed to the ideal of inclusion.

  5. Why people see things that are not there: a novel Perception and Attention Deficit model for recurrent complex visual hallucinations.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Collerton, Daniel; Perry, Elaine; McKeith, Ian

    2005-12-01

    As many as two million people in the United Kingdom repeatedly see people, animals, and objects that have no objective reality. Hallucinations on the border of sleep, dementing illnesses, delirium, eye disease, and schizophrenia account for 90% of these. The remainder have rarer disorders. We review existing models of recurrent complex visual hallucinations (RCVH) in the awake person, including cortical irritation, cortical hyperexcitability and cortical release, top-down activation, misperception, dream intrusion, and interactive models. We provide evidence that these can neither fully account for the phenomenology of RCVH, nor for variations in the frequency of RCVH in different disorders. We propose a novel Perception and Attention Deficit (PAD) model for RCVH. A combination of impaired attentional binding and poor sensory activation of a correct proto-object, in conjunction with a relatively intact scene representation, bias perception to allow the intrusion of a hallucinatory proto-object into a scene perception. Incorporation of this image into a context-specific hallucinatory scene representation accounts for repetitive hallucinations. We suggest that these impairments are underpinned by disturbances in a lateral frontal cortex-ventral visual stream system. We show how the frequency of RCVH in different diseases is related to the coexistence of attentional and visual perceptual impairments; how attentional and perceptual processes can account for their phenomenology; and that diseases and other states with high rates of RCVH have cholinergic dysfunction in both frontal cortex and the ventral visual stream. Several tests of the model are indicated, together with a number of treatment options that it generates.

  6. Individual differences in political ideology are effects of adaptive error management.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Petersen, Michael Bang; Aarøe, Lene

    2014-06-01

    We apply error management theory to the analysis of individual differences in the negativity bias and political ideology. Using principles from evolutionary psychology, we propose a coherent theoretical framework for understanding (1) why individuals differ in their political ideology and (2) the conditions under which these individual differences influence and fail to influence the political choices people make.

  7. Political motivations for intra-European migration.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Bygnes, Susanne; Flipo, Aurore

    2017-08-01

    Motivations for migrating within the European Union have mainly been attributed to economic, career and lifestyle choices. This article suggests that political dissatisfaction is also an important motivator of recent intra-European migration. In our analysis of in-depth interviews with Romanian migrants in Spain and with Spanish migrants in Norway, we found a common emphasis on the political dimensions of their decision to migrate. In the interviews, the economic component of migration was often related to bad governance and negative perceptions of the state. The similarities of Spanish and Romanian migration narratives are especially striking because Spain and Romania represent substantially different migratory, political and economic contexts. However, migration is more obviously intertwined with conventional acts of political protest in the Spanish case. We suggest that differences in democratic contexts are pivotal in people's reactions to and framing of their deep dissatisfaction with domestic politics, as found in many European countries today.

  8. Political instability and economic growth: an empirical evidence from the Baltic states

    OpenAIRE

    Ladislava Grochová; Luděk Kouba

    2011-01-01

    For more than last 20 decades, new political economics has been dealing with theories of economic growth (for example influential contributions by Mancur Olson, Dani Rodrik). However, less attention has been paid to their empirical verification. The new political economics growth theory defines some factors that are necessary for economic growth among which political stability. Our aim is to test the theory focused on political stability empirically in order to enrich the studies with recent ...

  9. The self-control consequences of political ideology.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Clarkson, Joshua J; Chambers, John R; Hirt, Edward R; Otto, Ashley S; Kardes, Frank R; Leone, Christopher

    2015-07-07

    Evidence from three studies reveals a critical difference in self-control as a function of political ideology. Specifically, greater endorsement of political conservatism (versus liberalism) was associated with greater attention regulation and task persistence. Moreover, this relationship is shown to stem from varying beliefs in freewill; specifically, the association between political ideology and self-control is mediated by differences in the extent to which belief in freewill is endorsed, is independent of task performance or motivation, and is reversed when freewill is perceived to impede (rather than enhance) self-control. Collectively, these findings offer insight into the self-control consequences of political ideology by detailing conditions under which conservatives and liberals are better suited to engage in self-control and outlining the role of freewill beliefs in determining these conditions.

  10. Politics and Power in Global Health: The Constituting Role of Conflicts

    Science.gov (United States)

    Askheim, Clemet; Heggen, Kristin; Engebretsen, Eivind

    2016-01-01

    In a recent article, Gorik Ooms has drawn attention to the normative underpinnings of the politics of global health. We claim that Ooms is indirectly submitting to a liberal conception of politics by framing the politics of global health as a question of individual morality. Drawing on the theoretical works of Chantal Mouffe, we introduce a conflictual concept of the political as an alternative to Ooms’ conception. Using controversies surrounding medical treatment of AIDS patients in developing countries as a case we underline the opportunity for political changes, through political articulation of an issue, and collective mobilization based on such an articulation. PMID:26927399

  11. Reframing political violence and mental health outcomes: outlining a research and action agenda for Latin America and the Caribbean region

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Duncan Pedersen

    Full Text Available In recent decades, the number of people exposed to traumatic events has significantly increased as various forms of violence, including war and political upheaval, engulf civilian populations worldwide. In spite of widespread armed conflict, guerrilla warfare and political violence in the Latin American and Caribbean region, insufficient attention had been paid in assessing the medium and long-term psychological impact and additional burden of disease, death, and disability caused by violence and wars amongst civilian populations. Following a review of the literature, a few central questions are raised: What is the short, medium and long-term health impact of extreme and sustained forms of violence in a given population? How political violence is linked to poor mental health outcomes at the individual and collective levels? Are trauma-related disorders, universal outcomes of extreme and sustained violence? These questions lead us to reframe the analysis of political violence and mental health outcomes, and reexamine the notions of trauma, after which a research and action agenda for the region is outlined. In the concluding sections, some basic principles that may prove useful when designing psychosocial interventions in post-conflict situations are reviewed.

  12. Politics at the interface

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Kannabiran, Gobinaath; Petersen, Marianne Graves

    2010-01-01

    At the birth of participatory design, there was a strong political consciousness surrounding the design of new technology, the design process in particular, establishing a rich set of methods and tools for user-centered design. Today, the term design has extended its scope of concern beyond...... the process of design and into how users interact with the designed product on a day-to-day basis. This paper is an attempt to call to attention the need for a new set of methods, attitudes and approaches, along with the existing, to discuss, analyze and reflect upon the politics at the interface....... By presenting a critical analysis of two design cases, we elicit the importance of such an agenda and the implications for design in doing so. We use the Foucauldian notion of power to analyze the power relationships in these two cases and to articulate the politics at the interface. We conclude by emphasizing...

  13. Citizenship Education as a Panacea for Political Stability in Nigeria ...

    African Journals Online (AJOL)

    In order to address this prevailing condition, the paper believed that citizenship education is a veritable tool for solving the problem of political instability in Nigeria. The paper adopted descriptive and content analysis method. The paper opined that lack of political stability in Nigeria is due to lack of adequate attention to ...

  14. Communicating Politics: Using Active Learning to Demonstrate the Value of the Discipline

    Science.gov (United States)

    Johnson, Matthew

    2016-01-01

    In the context of higher tuition fees, the Government's employability agenda and growing concern for defined career development strategies among young people, there is a need more effectively for Politics programmes to foster the capacity to communicate politics. Without communicating the implications and relevance of politics the subject and the…

  15. Spatial Regulation, Politics of Access and Informal economic Policy ...

    African Journals Online (AJOL)

    ... to draw attention to the political contestation over space. The city was 'invaded' and 'conquered' by traders who were formerly excluded (Nesvag, 2000, 2001; Tsoeu, 2003). At the same time, attention is drawn to the current attempts by city managers to control and regulate this contested space in an environment of flux.

  16. Toward a new institutional strategy framework for political marketing

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Nielsen, Sigge Winther

    2013-01-01

    The present literature on political marketing strategy has provided important knowledge about how the material context of technologies, polls or competitors influences strategy formulation. However, less attention has been directed to the constraints facing a political organization from the social...... context related to habits, norms or social conventions. This article thus aims at bringing organizational new institutional theory into the field of political marketing strategy. Accordingly, it is investigated how political organizations when initiating marketing strategies act or react toward...... that decision makers will (1) scan information from their environment, (2) interpret this incoming information in available cognitive categories and (3), finally, select a strategy premised on their cognitive interpretations. On this ground, we build a novel typology that specifies which political marketing...

  17. Learning to echolocate in sighted people: a correlational study on attention, working memory and spatial abilities.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Ekkel, M R; van Lier, R; Steenbergen, B

    2017-03-01

    Echolocation can be beneficial for the orientation and mobility of visually impaired people. Research has shown considerable individual differences for acquiring this skill. However, individual characteristics that affect the learning of echolocation are largely unknown. In the present study, we examined individual factors that are likely to affect learning to echolocate: sustained and divided attention, working memory, and spatial abilities. To that aim, sighted participants with normal hearing performed an echolocation task that was adapted from a previously reported size-discrimination task. In line with existing studies, we found large individual differences in echolocation ability. We also found indications that participants were able to improve their echolocation ability. Furthermore, we found a significant positive correlation between improvement in echolocation and sustained and divided attention, as measured in the PASAT. No significant correlations were found with our tests regarding working memory and spatial abilities. These findings may have implications for the development of guidelines for training echolocation that are tailored to the individual with a visual impairment.

  18. A Study on the Application of Politeness Strategies in International Business Negotiation

    Institute of Scientific and Technical Information of China (English)

    张栋栋

    2016-01-01

    #%Under the influence of economic globalization, international business negotiation is becoming more and more fre-quent. Politeness principle is an important pragmatic strategy in international business negotiation, representing good cultural quality and professional ethics image. In the course of business negotiation, how to properly use politeness language and pay at-tention to politeness strategy will affect the result of negotiation.

  19. Class and Politics in Denmark: Are Both Old and New Politics Structured by Class?

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Harrits, Gitte Sommer; Prieur, Annick; Rosenlund, Lennart

    2010-01-01

    The trend within studies of voting and political attitudes has been to give less attention to class as a structuring dimension and more to post-material values. The basic argument of this article is that this is a false opposition: The adherence to different sets of values is related to social...... background, although in complex ways, which can only be discovered with a multidimensional conception of what class is. This conception may be found in Pierre Bourdieu's analytical approach, which we here apply in an analysis of survey data from a Danish city, Aalborg. Data from a survey of political...... the constructed space of attitudes to a set of indicators based on a two-dimensional conception of social class. On the basis of this analysis the article concludes that the political landscape appears as highly structured by the two principles of social differentiation from Bourdieu’s class model: volume...

  20. Political Correctness—Between Fiction and Social Reality

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Valeri Lichev

    2017-07-01

    Full Text Available Nowadays political correctness (PC is blamed by its opponents because of a failed model of multiculturalism, an influx of migrants and the threat of terrorist acts. Obviously, a definition of tolerance given by UNESCO in 1995 has lost its meaning. In order to argue a possibility of a global ethos based on new understandings of PC, the authors refer to contemporary achievements of semiotics, hermeneutics and philosophical anthropology. We use a critical method developed in the hermeneutical tradition of P. Ricoeur, J. Kristeva, Tz. Todorov and others. Criticism is directed at (1 paradoxes of postmodern philosophical attempts for justification the idea of political correctness; (2 the way of introducing new terminology, as on a language level it leads, not to inclusion, but to exclusion, of disadvantaged people because as E. Benveniste states, the third person is rather the non-person. The conclusion is that politically correct speech should be grounded on a basis which takes into account the three persons of verb conjugation. Similar philosophical and ethical ideas can be found in works of J. Kristeva, Tz. Todorov, P. Ricoeur. An example is given for how these ideas can be implemented in the fields of film and art. This is one of the possible ways of overcoming the exclusion of disadvantaged people who are only named in politically correct terms, and not as participants, in social and political dialogue.

  1. Bringing Women in: Gender and American Government and Politics Textbooks

    Science.gov (United States)

    Olivo, Christiane

    2012-01-01

    This study of 12 introductory American government and politics textbooks shows that their main narratives still focus largely on men's experiences as political actors and pay little attention to women's experiences. While on average just 9% of pages included in-text references to women, 28% of images and 17% of sidebars, tables, figures, and…

  2. A Matter of Politics: The Effects of the Political Context on Social Work in Norway and Bolivia

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Svein Tuastad

    2017-04-01

    Full Text Available To which extent do dysfunctional political systems lead to everyday challenges for social workers? Moreover, how do social workers benefit from working in well-ordered democracies?  The purpose of this paper is to gain insights into how the interplay between the political context and social work actually operates. Our main question is: How do accountability and state capacity levels affect daily social work? This interplay frequently becomes associated with levels of democracy and redistribution. We also draw attention to how social workers’ are dependent on the capacity of the state to implement policies. We compare social work and the political and legal contexts in two widely different polities – Norway and Bolivia. Our primary findings indicate that the effects of generally unfavourable political conditions permeate the possibilities for effective social work in previously unforeseen ways. Coordination problems, clientelism and political rivalry lead to everyday challenges on the ground, as many problems seem to reflect the overall institutional system and political culture. In well-ordered political systems, these problems are hardly an issue. In our concluding discussion, we address how the nature of the institutional system and political culture apparently might call for a differentiated approach towards reform strategies. For instance, progressive politicians, citizens and social workers advocating a policy transfer could face severe hindrances in polities, thus comprising weak state capacities.

  3. Measuring the effects of social media participation on political party communities

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Effing, Robin; van Hillegersberg, Jos; Huibers, T.; Reddick, C.; Aikins, S.K.

    2012-01-01

    Political parties can potentially benefit from Social Media to shape interactions between their members. This chapter presents the Social Media Participation Model (SMPM), which measures the effects of Social Media Participation on political party communities. As people and politicians increasingly

  4. Writing autobiographical narratives increases political conservatism

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Lammers, J.; Proulx, T.

    2013-01-01

    Two experiments show that writing chronological autobiographical narratives increases political conservatism, defined as an ideology of resistance to social change. When writing chronological autobiographical narratives, we hypothesized that people would re-experience the events of their life in a

  5. Hydrosocial territories: a political ecology perspective

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Boelens, Rutgerd; Hoogesteger, Jaime; Swyngedouw, Erik; Vos, Jeroen; Wester, Philippus

    2016-01-01

    We define and explore hydrosocial territories as spatial configurations of people, institutions, water flows, hydraulic technology and the biophysical environment that revolve around the control of water. Territorial politics finds expression in encounters of diverse actors with divergent spatial

  6. The Politics of Self-Esteem.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kahne, Joseph

    1996-01-01

    Before analysts can assess self-esteem as a goal for policy and practice, they must consider the ideological orientations of those who use the term and the cultural norms that shape the debate. Explicit attention to the politics surrounding self-esteem is needed to evaluate the use of the term in policy contexts. (Author/SLD)

  7. Polarization in the media during an election campaign: A dynamic network model predicting support and attack among political actors

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    De Nooy, W.; Kleinnijenhuis, J.

    2013-01-01

    In multiparty election campaigns, many political parties and candidates compete for media attention, voters, and a government majority. Negative campaigning, which is often newsworthy, is an attractive strategy in the competition for media attention. However, political support for another party

  8. Polarization in the media during an election campaign: a dynamic network model predicting support and attack among political actors

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    de Nooy, W.; Kleinnijenhuis, J.

    2013-01-01

    In multiparty election campaigns, many political parties and candidates compete for media attention, voters, and a government majority. Negative campaigning, which is often newsworthy, is an attractive strategy in the competition for media attention. However, political support for another party

  9. Practising Political Care Ethics: Can Responsive Evaluation Foster Democratic Care?

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Visse, M.A.; Abma, T.; Widdershoven, G.

    2015-01-01

    This paper examines if and how responsive evaluation as a deliberative approach can serve as a guide for a politically oriented care ethics. A political care ethics puts the assignment of responsibilities and the inclusion of multiple perspectives of people at the centre of care. It honours the

  10. Analysis of the Russian political tolerance in society-government relations

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    A. V. Korolevska

    2014-08-01

    Full Text Available The high culture of tolerance accelerates political socialization, improves the qualities of a citizen, a sense of ownership of public affairs, instilling respect for democratic values. Relevance of the work is determined by processes that occur in today’s society and that lead not only to confusion but to destruction of public relations. The article reviews the state of political tolerance in the system of relations society – authorities in Russia. Based on opinion polls statistical analyzes to determine trends in contemporary ensure political tolerance is conducted. Due to correlation between support for Putin and the perception of the political situation in the country as well is determined existence. Fixes sustainable public discontent actual situation in the country, however, people do not use the opportunities for political activism. Almost two thirds of Russians believe that the interests of the government and society in do not match. The low percentage of respondents believe that the political course of the country’s leadership in the interests of ordinary people. There is a steady trend to an agreement among the Russian population to concentrate power in his hands. There is a slight increase of the population of those who are ready to connect to solve their problems in life forms of protest activity.

  11. Political Show-Technology in the Post-Soviet Space

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    O. E. Grishin

    2015-01-01

    Full Text Available In the modern political process of Russia actively used technology show. With their help, political actors can influence public opinion and shape the public interest in certain issues. In Russia, these technologies are relevant, and are especially well developed. The pressing of the problem is due to a new round of information war on the territory of Ukraine. Inclusion in the information space, and discuss the pressing issues of modern Ukraine by media people such as C. Shuster and V. Solovyov, suggests that the political show has entertainment figures, actuality, the ambiguity of the proposed conclusions. At the same time it becomes part of the information war and political reality of the normal state.

  12. Networks in Political Science: Back to the Future

    Science.gov (United States)

    Lazer, David

    2011-01-01

    What are the relational dimensions of politics? Does the way that people and organizations are connected to each other matter? Are our opinions affected by the people with whom we talk? Are legislators affected by lobbyists? Is the capacity of social movements to mobilize affected by the structure of societal networks? Powerful evidence in the…

  13. Flexible or leaky attention in creative people? Distinct patterns of attention for different types of creative thinking.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Zabelina, Darya; Saporta, Arielle; Beeman, Mark

    2016-04-01

    Creativity has been putatively linked to distinct forms of attention, but which aspects of creativity and which components of attention remains unclear. Two experiments examined how divergent thinking and creative achievement relate to visual attention. In both experiments, participants identified target letters (S or H) within hierarchical stimuli (global letters made of local letters), after being cued to either the local or global level. In Experiment 1, participants identified the targets more quickly following valid cues (80% of trials) than following invalid cues. However, this smaller validity effect was associated with higher divergent thinking, suggesting that divergent thinking was related to quicker overcoming of invalid cues, and thus to flexible attention. Creative achievement was unrelated to the validity effect. Experiment 2 examined whether divergent thinking (or creative achievement) is related to "leaky attention," so that when cued to one level of a stimulus, some information is still processed, or leaks in, from the non-cued level. In this case, the cued stimulus level always contained a target, and the non-cued level was congruent, neutral, or incongruent with the target. Divergent thinking did not relate to stimulus congruency. In contrast, high creative achievement was related to quicker responses to the congruent than to the incongruent stimuli, suggesting that real-world creative achievement is indeed associated with leaky attention, whereas standard laboratory tests of divergent thinking are not. Together, these results elucidate distinct patterns of attention for different measures of creativity. Specifically, creative achievers may have leaky attention, as suggested by previous literature, whereas divergent thinkers have selective yet flexible attention.

  14. Social Background, Civic Education and Political Participation of Young People--The German Case

    Science.gov (United States)

    Onken, Holger; Lange, Dirk

    2014-01-01

    Due to social and political change the process of young citizens' political socialization was put on a new basis in West European democracies over the last decades. In this article we discuss some aspects of this development and show their consequences. We analyse empirical findings from Germany, focussing on the relevant social factors which…

  15. Askesis and Politics: A Preliminary Look at the Impact of Christian Spiritual Practices on One’s Political Outlook

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Amir Azarvan

    2016-11-01

    Full Text Available Is Christian spirituality systematically associated with patterns in people’s political attitudes and worldview? Are spiritually active Christians predominantly conservative or liberal? If so, does this imply anything about the correctness of their political views? Is greater spiritual involvement associated with a friendlier disposition towards those with whom one otherwise strongly disagrees on social and political matters? In my review of the Orthodox spiritual literature, as well as my survey analysis of Orthodox Christians throughout the United States, I make a preliminary effort to address these and other questions. I point to the importance of transcending the liberal-conservative ideological dichotomy when studying Christians’ political outlooks. Communitarians, in particular, merit greater attention, given their apparently large size and high level of spiritual commitment. I also presents findings that suggest that spiritual commitment can result in friendlier attitudes towards those viewed as sociopolitical threats.

  16. TEACHER’S POLITENESS IN EFL CLASS

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Ayfer Sülü

    2015-10-01

    Full Text Available Politeness is considered to promote effective interaction between people. In the context of language teaching, it is believed to enhance learning by providing a lively and friendly atmosphere in classroom (Jiang, 2010. This study investigates an EFL classroom in terms of interaction between English learners and a native English speaking teacher. The aim of the study is to see whether the effects of politeness strategies differ when students and teacher do not share the same culture and native language. Two hours of classes were observed and taperecorded by the researcher. The recordings were transcribed and analyzed by making use of related politeness strategies and functions of speech. Also, three randomly chosen students were interviewed after the class. The findings showed that politeness existed in that EFL classroom and it helped students to have positive feelings towards the lesson and motivated them to participate more in classes.

  17. On the effects of advertising on the political behaviour of the individual

    OpenAIRE

    Kazdanyan S.; Yengoyan P.; Akopyan G.

    2017-01-01

    The article is devoted to questioning the impact of advertising on the political behavior of the individual. Several methods and technologies used in political advertising to influence the consciousness and behavior of people. The article describes the stages of the creation of political advertising and the elements of campaign strategy and noted components of the structure of political advertising. The authors believe that it is necessary to study advertising for minimizing influence and con...

  18. “People”, constitutions and politics in Antioquia, 1810-1877

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Renzo Ramírez Bacca

    2014-07-01

    Full Text Available This article analyzes the term people which is used in the provincial constitutions of Antioquia and Colombia. The interest lies on presenting their representations and usage in different phases of the Colombian political and constitutional history. The intention is to understand its correlation with the electoral and participative citizenship practice with respect to the State, and also to point out contradictions between different discourses (the constitutional and the political party ones around the people and its actors: women, artisans and farmers. This is a hermeneutic understanding with a historicist focus which, in turn, develops a diachronic analysis based on constitutionals texts and primary sources.

  19. Preferential attention to animals and people is independent of the amygdala

    Science.gov (United States)

    Tsuchiya, Naotsugu; New, Joshua; Hurlemann, Rene; Adolphs, Ralph

    2015-01-01

    The amygdala is thought to play a critical role in detecting salient stimuli. Several studies have taken ecological approaches to investigating such saliency, and argue for domain-specific effects for processing certain natural stimulus categories, in particular faces and animals. Linking this to the amygdala, neurons in the human amygdala have been found to respond strongly to faces and also to animals. However, the amygdala’s necessary role for such category-specific effects at the behavioral level remains untested. Here we tested four rare patients with bilateral amygdala lesions on an established change-detection protocol. Consistent with prior published studies, healthy controls showed reliably faster and more accurate detection of people and animals, as compared with artifacts and plants. So did all four amygdala patients: there were no differences in phenomenal change blindness, in behavioral reaction time to detect changes or in eye-tracking measures. The findings provide decisive evidence against a critical participation of the amygdala in rapid initial processing of attention to animate stimuli, suggesting that the necessary neural substrates for this phenomenon arise either in other subcortical structures (such as the pulvinar) or within the cortex itself. PMID:24795434

  20. The role of political affiliation in the beliefs and discourses legitimising corruption

    OpenAIRE

    Wilson López-López; Diana Roa; María Alejandra Roa; Andrea Correa-Chica; Claudia Pérez-Durán; Claudia Pineda-Marín

    2016-01-01

    Corruption is defined as the abuse of power in order to obtain personal benefit. Central and South America, with the exception of Chile, Uruguay and the French Guiana, show high rates of corruption. This study sought to find the meanings that ordinary people attach to corruption as well as the relationship between their narratives and sociodemographic characteristics, such as sex and educational level, and political standpoints, such as their political party affiliation. A total of 325 people...

  1. The politics of representing the past

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Wagoner, Brady; Awad, Sarah H.; Brescó, Ignacio

    2018-01-01

    This chapter presents narratives and symbols as cultural tools that position their audience as agentic actors in political conflicts. Using examples from narratives in the context of the Basque country conflict as well as street art in the Egyptian revolution, we will discuss how these symbolic...... tools prescribe certain actions to be conducted according to certain political goals as well as trigger response actions from authority. Both graffiti and historical accounts remind us of what happened, what the current situation is, thus somehow pointing to what people should do in such a depicted...

  2. Brexit and the Politics of UK Growth Models

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Rosamond, Ben

    2018-01-01

    Brexit has reopened and repoliticized the debate about future growth models for the UK economy. This contribution argues that this debate is built around historically specific path dependencies that reflect the particular character of public debate about British political economy, while also...... particular attention to the importance of the politics of support. It suggests that recent debate about growth models has been largely subsumed within the politics of Brexit, which has politicized that debate, albeit through the emergent political economy frames that Brexit has provoked. The paper explores...... suggesting that the debate around Brexit takes place at a very distinctive moment in the history of democratic capitalism in Europe. This combination gives the renewed politicization a specific and perhaps perverse character. The paper considers how we should approach debates about growth models, paying...

  3. Estimation of several political action effects of energy prices

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Andrew B. Whitford

    2016-01-01

    Full Text Available One important effect of price shocks in the United States has been increased political attention paid to the structure and performance of oil and natural gas markets, along with some governmental support for energy conservation. This article describes how price changes helped lead to the emergence of a political agenda accompanied by several interventions, as revealed through Granger causality tests on change in the legislative agenda.

  4. How Internal Political Efficacy Translates Political Knowledge Into Political Participation

    Science.gov (United States)

    Reichert, Frank

    2016-01-01

    This study presents evidence for the mediation effect of political knowledge through political self-efficacy (i.e. internal political efficacy) in the prediction of political participation. It employs an action theoretic approach—by and large grounded on the Theory of Planned Behaviour—and uses data from the German Longitudinal Election Study to examine whether political knowledge has distinct direct effects on voting, conventional, and/or unconventional political participation. It argues that political knowledge raises internal political efficacy and thereby indirectly increases the chance that a citizen will participate in politics. The results of mediated multiple regression analyses yield evidence that political knowledge indeed translates into internal political efficacy, thus it affects political participation of various kinds indirectly. However, internal political efficacy and intentions to participate politically yield simultaneous direct effects only on conventional political participation. Sequentially mediated effects appear for voting and conventional political participation, with political knowledge being mediated by internal political efficacy and subsequently also by behavioural intentions. The mediation patterns for unconventional political participation are less clear though. The discussion accounts for restrictions of this study and points to questions for answer by future research. PMID:27298633

  5. Political construction of technology

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Bruheze, A.A.A. de la.

    1992-01-01

    In the 1970s radioactive waste disposal became a controversial scientific and social issue in the United States, after the US Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) charged with the development, regulation and promotion of nuclear technology, had tried to implement its disposal technology near Lyons, Kansas. This study traces the emergence of this controversy as part of the long-term development of the US radioactive waste disposal technology. Radioactive waste was not always considered a problem, and different meanings were attached to radwaste in the 1940s and early 1950s. Problem definitions and technical designs that underlaid this technology can be reconstructed, and its possible to show how some definitions received attention and others not, and how some became, and remained, dominant. During the process of problem definition, views compete, agendas are built, resources are allocated, and boundaries are created and maintained between 'inside' and 'outside world'. This is a political process, and by heuristically using concepts from political science and recent technology studies, the Political Construction of US radioactive waste disposal technologically can be reconstructed. (author). 301 refs.; 3 figs.; 15 tabs

  6. Political communication in a high-choice media environment: a challenge for democracy?

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Van Aelst, P.; Strömbäck, J.; Aalberg, T.; Esser, F.; de Vreese, C.; Matthes, J.; Hopmann, D.; Salgado, S.; Hubé, N.; Stępińska, A.; Papathanassopoulos, S.; Berganza, R.; Legnante, G.; Reinemann, C.; Sheafer, T.; Stanyer, J.

    2017-01-01

    During the last decennia media environments and political communication systems have changed fundamentally. These changes have major ramifications for the political information environments and the extent to which they aid people in becoming informed citizens. Against this background, the purpose of

  7. Against liberal pluralist political practice in South Africa

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Pieter Coetzee

    1997-03-01

    Full Text Available In this article I take issue with liberal pluralist political practice in South Africa. Multicultural civil society requires the recognition of cultural categories which modernity, in the shape of liberal pluralism, cannot accommodate and therefore ignore in the interests of fostering a single monocultural politics. In South Africa this trend has taken the usual route of difference-blind, assimilationisl political programmes aimed at nation building (under the slogan “one people - one nation". I attempt to show that liberal pluralist practice can be adapted to make space for cultural and ethnic categories, and that a nation of a common political identity can be constructed out of this adaptation, but that a re-interpretaiion of liberal notions of liberty and equality is required.

  8. Political Marketing Activity In Simultaneous Regional Elections 2015

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    AMA Suyanto

    2017-06-01

    Full Text Available Regional head election system was change in 2015. It has impact on political marketing strategy to all stake holders, such as political party and candidatures.The purposes of this research is to analyzeashifting ofpolitical marketing issueson regional election 2015. The research approach uses the mix method with the type of sequential explanatory. The subjects of this research are the candidates, election successful teams or supporting team, and young voters. Location of research based on cluster system district and sub district in Bandung, Cianjur, Magelang, Sleman, and Medan. The data are collected through techniques of questionnaires to young voters; interview to candidates, election successful teams and young voters, as well as the documentation of media and data on Regional General Elections Commission (KPUD. There are also triangular data techniqueinterviews with the General Elections Commission (KPU, the community and supporting team, and documentation and questionnaire form. The result shows that the system of political marketing has already started shifting from product, promotion, price, place, and people known as the 5Ps from mostly dominated by Political Partyinto the role of PEOPLE as candidature in influensing the voters. The Result also tells that shifting from using convetional media into almost using digital media was powerfull.

  9. Godfatherism in the Politics of Nigeria: An Exposé | Ishaku ...

    African Journals Online (AJOL)

    There is a new political phenomenon that is becoming a thing of concern to all and sundry; this emergent phenomenon is the concept of “godfatherism.” It is an ideology which deprives the people of their fundamental human rights of not benefiting from the dividends of democracy. This practice is rapidly converting politics ...

  10. A Critical Analysis of the Role of Moral Values as a Catalyst for Social and Political Development among People in Nigeria

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Dr. Kehinde E. Obasola

    2015-02-01

    Full Text Available The modern global dispensation has had its toll on the moral lives of the people and this has brought about a dwindling in the perception of people on what constitute morality. In this regard, there has been series of criminal activities and particularly crimes and violence of different magnitude which today has been the hall-mark of the Nigerian nation. There have been cases of militancy, insurgencies and other criminal groups parading themselves around the country. Hence, this show that moral laxity has become the order of the day. Even those in government are also culpable as many of them are corrupt and inept. The situation is rather pathetic and the average Nigerian feels insecure in his own land. The purport of this is that morality which should have been the parameter for controlling these vices are no longer functioning. Therefore, this paper argues that for there to be sanity in our social and political lives as a nation, we must covet the principles enshrined in our moral values. The paper posited that there cannot be development where morality is not given prominence among the people

  11. Does Family Experience Influence Political Beliefs? Relation between Interparental Conflict Perceptions and Political Efficacy in Late Adolescence

    Science.gov (United States)

    Serek, Jan; Lacinova, Lenka; Macek, Petr

    2012-01-01

    The study examined the relation between adolescents' interparental conflict perceptions and their political efficacy regarding local issues. Longitudinal data (age 15 and 17) from 444 adolescents were analyzed using structural equation modeling. Results showed that young people experiencing frequent interparental conflict reported an increase in…

  12. Employees' Political Skill and Job Performance

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Zettler, Ingo; Lang, Jonas W.B.

    2015-01-01

    skill received higher job performance ratings compared to those with lower and higher levels, respectively. In addition, the nature of the relationships between employees and their raters was found to moderate this curvilinear effect. Specifically, besides the fact that employees who had close working......During the past decade, the construct of political skill has attracted a lot of attention. In particular, its relation to job performance has been examined. With regard to this link, it is typically proposed that political skill affects job performance in a positive linear manner. However......, in this article it is suggested that intermediate levels of employees' political skill yield the highest job performance, implying that this association is in fact represented by an inverted U-shape. Findings from two field studies (N = 178, N = 115 employee-supervisor-colleague triads) that incorporated...

  13. Mapping the online communication patterns of political conversations

    Science.gov (United States)

    Borondo, J.; Morales, A. J.; Benito, R. M.; Losada, J. C.

    2014-11-01

    The structure of the social networks in which individuals are embedded influences their political choices and therefore their voting behavior. Nowadays, social media represent a new channel for individuals to communicate, what together with the availability of the data, makes it possible to analyze the online social network resulting from political conversations. Here, by taking advantage of the recently developed techniques to analyze complex systems, we map the communication patterns resulting from Spanish political conversations. We identify the different existing communities, building networks of communities, and finding that users cluster themselves in politically homogeneous networks. We found that while most of the collective attention was monopolized by politicians, traditional media accounts were still the preferred sources from which to propagate information. Finally, we propose methods to analyze the use of different languages, finding a clear trend from sympathizers of several political parties to overuse or infra-use each language. We conclude that, on the light of a social media analysis perspective, the political conversation is constrained by both ideology and language.

  14. The influence of attention on value integration.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kunar, Melina A; Watson, Derrick G; Tsetsos, Konstantinos; Chater, Nick

    2017-08-01

    People often have to make decisions based on many pieces of information. Previous work has found that people are able to integrate values presented in a rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) stream to make informed judgements on the overall stream value (Tsetsos et al. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 109(24), 9659-9664, 2012). It is also well known that attentional mechanisms influence how people process information. However, it is unknown how attentional factors impact value judgements of integrated material. The current study is the first of its kind to investigate whether value judgements are influenced by attentional processes when assimilating information. Experiments 1-3 examined whether the attentional salience of an item within an RSVP stream affected judgements of overall stream value. The results showed that the presence of an irrelevant high or low value salient item biased people to judge the stream as having a higher or lower overall mean value, respectively. Experiments 4-7 directly tested Tsetsos et al.'s (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 109(24), 9659-9664, 2012) theory examining whether extreme values in an RSVP stream become over-weighted, thereby capturing attention more than other values in the stream. The results showed that the presence of both a high (Experiments 4, 6 and 7) and a low (Experiment 5) value outlier captures attention leading to less accurate report of subsequent items in the stream. Taken together, the results showed that valuations can be influenced by attentional processes, and can lead to less accurate subjective judgements.

  15. Ethics and Body Politics: Interdisciplinary Possibilities for Embodied Psychotherapeutic Practice and Research

    Science.gov (United States)

    Allegranti, Beatrice

    2011-01-01

    Ethical approaches to practice and research in counselling and arts/psychotherapies demand an urgent attention to body politics. Bodies are not neutral; gender, sexuality, ethnicity and class are socio-political aspects that shape our mental, emotional and physical selves and inform our ethical values. Drawing from the author's embodied practice…

  16. Organizing homeless people

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Anker, Jørgen

    2008-01-01

    People who are homeless belong to some of the most vulnerable, dispersed and disorganized groups in welfare societies. Yet in 2001, a national interest organization of homeless people was formed for the first time in Denmark. This article identifies the processes that facilitated the formation...... of the organization. It focuses on the importance of ideological and institutional conditions and changes, and it stresses the importance of alliances between progressive actors in the field and in the political-administrative system, in addition to the presence of dedicated activists among people who are or have...... been homeless. The analysis may thus serve as a case of inspiration for activists and professionals who want to improve homeless people's opportunities for participation in other national settings....

  17. Political transition of Albania 1985-1991

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Brunilda Duriçi

    2017-03-01

    Full Text Available Political transition of Albania is a phenomenon that started since the death of Enver Hoxha, the dictator of communist regime in Albania. After the death of Enver Hoxha on 11 April 1985, Ramiz Alia was appointed as his successor, who for 40 years had been at Enver Hoxha’s side as his most trusted man. He succeeded Hoxha for nearly 6 years believing that he would maintain the communist system. Ramiz Alia came on duty as the head of the Albanian state when the economic situation was very precarious. Political and economic legacy led by Hoxha was almost miserable. The country had the severest political system throughout the communist bloc. In a political point of view, the country’s new leader was elected precisely to continue the political legacy of former leader Hoxha. Ramiz Alia was forced to take immediate measures to change the degraded situation. He undertook several reforms to improve the situation in the country. Among other things, Alia expressed the equality of Albanian citizens, freedoms and human rights. Events were passing each other, marking a great historical importance. Among other things, Alia approved the political pluralism giving way to significant social changes. Echoes of these events and the positive developments in the country do not remain outside the attention of internationals. The arrival of political pluralism and the establishment of Democratic Party, the first opposition party in the country and other political entities exposed the European dream of Albanians. Massive movements in the form of protests and rallies, aimed at overturning the communist regime in the country Main objective of this paper is the analysis of the Political transition of Albania 1985-1991.

  18. Complicated Politics to the Core

    Science.gov (United States)

    McGuinn, Patrick

    2015-01-01

    People dislike the Common Core for several different reasons, and so it is important to disaggregate the sources of opposition and to assess and then to dispel some of the myths that have built up around it. It also is important to understand the unusual political alliances that have emerged in opposition to Common Core implementation and how they…

  19. The Internet, Political Participation, and E-Government in Comparative Perspective

    Science.gov (United States)

    Sharma, Mukul

    2010-01-01

    This dissertation addresses three important questions, together with optimistic and pessimistic views, about people's access/use of the Internet, its ability to promote their participation in politics, and its role in government provision of information and public services. Chapter Two addresses the question of the determinants of people's access…

  20. Search, Read and Write: An Inquiry into Web Accessibility for People with Dyslexia.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Berget, Gerd; Herstad, Jo; Sandnes, Frode Eika

    2016-01-01

    Universal design in context of digitalisation has become an integrated part of international conventions and national legislations. A goal is to make the Web accessible for people of different genders, ages, backgrounds, cultures and physical, sensory and cognitive abilities. Political demands for universally designed solutions have raised questions about how it is achieved in practice. Developers, designers and legislators have looked towards the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) for answers. WCAG 2.0 has become the de facto standard for universal design on the Web. Some of the guidelines are directed at the general population, while others are targeted at more specific user groups, such as the visually impaired or hearing impaired. Issues related to cognitive impairments such as dyslexia receive less attention, although dyslexia is prevalent in at least 5-10% of the population. Navigation and search are two common ways of using the Web. However, while navigation has received a fair amount of attention, search systems are not explicitly included, although search has become an important part of people's daily routines. This paper discusses WCAG in the context of dyslexia for the Web in general and search user interfaces specifically. Although certain guidelines address topics that affect dyslexia, WCAG does not seem to fully accommodate users with dyslexia.

  1. Politics, Economics, and Testing: Some Reflections

    Science.gov (United States)

    Feuer, Michael J.

    2011-01-01

    In this keynote address, the author shares his reflections on politics, economics, and testing. He focuses on assessment and accountability and begins with some data from large scale written educational testing, "circa 1840". The author argues that people's penchant for accountability and their appetite for standardized testing are, in…

  2. Political Socialization, Tolerance, and Sexual Identity

    Science.gov (United States)

    Avery, Patricia G.

    2002-01-01

    Key concepts in political socialization, tolerance, groups, rights and responsibilities can be used to understand the way in which young people struggle with sexual identity issues. Educators may promote greater tolerance for homosexuality among heterosexuals by situating sexual identity issues within a broader discussion of democratic principles.…

  3. Attention and the Art of Scientific Publishing

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    A. Klamer (Arjo); H.P. van Dalen (Hendrik)

    2001-01-01

    textabstractAttention is the coordination device, which makes modern science work the way it does. A typical characteristic of attention in the scientific world is that those who seek attention are the same people who are giving it. Another important feature within groups is the skewed distribution

  4. Preferential attention to animals and people is independent of the amygdala.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Wang, Shuo; Tsuchiya, Naotsugu; New, Joshua; Hurlemann, Rene; Adolphs, Ralph

    2015-03-01

    The amygdala is thought to play a critical role in detecting salient stimuli. Several studies have taken ecological approaches to investigating such saliency, and argue for domain-specific effects for processing certain natural stimulus categories, in particular faces and animals. Linking this to the amygdala, neurons in the human amygdala have been found to respond strongly to faces and also to animals. However, the amygdala's necessary role for such category-specific effects at the behavioral level remains untested. Here we tested four rare patients with bilateral amygdala lesions on an established change-detection protocol. Consistent with prior published studies, healthy controls showed reliably faster and more accurate detection of people and animals, as compared with artifacts and plants. So did all four amygdala patients: there were no differences in phenomenal change blindness, in behavioral reaction time to detect changes or in eye-tracking measures. The findings provide decisive evidence against a critical participation of the amygdala in rapid initial processing of attention to animate stimuli, suggesting that the necessary neural substrates for this phenomenon arise either in other subcortical structures (such as the pulvinar) or within the cortex itself. © The Author (2014). Published by Oxford University Press. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oup.com.

  5. On US politics and IMF lending

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Andersen, Thomas Barnebeck; Harr, Thomas; Tarp, Finn

    2006-01-01

    The political factors shaping IMF lending to developing countries have attracted attention in recent empirical work. This goes in particular for the role and influence of the US. However, scant formal modelling makes interpretation of empirical results difficult. In this paper, we propose a model...... in which the US acts as principal within the IMF and seeks to maximize its impact on the policy stance of debtor countries. We derive an optimal loan allocation mechanism, which leads to the testable hypothesis that the probability of an IMF loan is increasing in the amount of political concessions...... countries make. A political concession is defined as the distance between a country's bliss point and its actual policy stance measured relative to the US. We introduce a bliss-point proxy and demonstrate that our hypothesis is strongly supported in the data. Moreover, we show that not accounting for bliss...

  6. Politics and Power in Global Health: The Constituting Role of Conflicts: Comment on "Navigating Between Stealth Advocacy and Unconscious Dogmatism: The Challenge of Researching the Norms, Politics and Power of Global Health".

    Science.gov (United States)

    Askheim, Clemet; Heggen, Kristin; Engebretsen, Eivind

    2015-10-15

    In a recent article, Gorik Ooms has drawn attention to the normative underpinnings of the politics of global health. We claim that Ooms is indirectly submitting to a liberal conception of politics by framing the politics of global health as a question of individual morality. Drawing on the theoretical works of Chantal Mouffe, we introduce a conflictual concept of the political as an alternative to Ooms' conception. Using controversies surrounding medical treatment of AIDS patients in developing countries as a case we underline the opportunity for political changes, through political articulation of an issue, and collective mobilization based on such an articulation. © 2016 by Kerman University of Medical Sciences.

  7. Implementing the Kyoto mechanisms. Political barriers and path dependence

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Woerdman, E.

    2002-01-01

    The objective of the research on the title thesis is to identify and explain political barriers as well as the opportunities to overcome them. Special attention is paid to permit trading, because it is the superior alternative according to neo-classical economic theory. The author's approach is a combination of (1) political science, (2) (neo-)institutional economics and (3) law and economics. An innovative theoretical framework is presented by transforming lock-in theory from a technological and economic context to an institutional context against the background of the political barrier model. This theoretical framework allows to explain the functioning of these political barriers (including institutional, legal and cultural ones), for instance in terms of path-dependencies, positive feedbacks and set-up costs. Empirical analyses are performed to test (parts of) the theory

  8. Public attitudes toward biofuels. Effects of knowledge, political partisanship, and media use.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Cacciatore, Michael A; Binder, Andrew R; Scheufele, Dietram A; Shaw, Bret R

    2012-01-01

    Despite large-scale investments and government mandates to expand biofuels development and infrastructure in the United States, little is known about how the public conceives of this alternative fuel technology. This study examines public opinion of biofuels by focusing on citizen knowledge and the motivated processing of media information. Specifically, we explore the direct effects of biofuels knowledge and the moderating effect of partisanship on the relationship between media use and benefit vs. risk perceptions in the following four domains: environmental impacts, economic consequences, ethical/social implications, and political ramifications. Our results suggest that more knowledgeable respondents see fewer benefits of biofuels relative to risks, and that Democrats and Republicans are affected differently by media use when forming opinions about biofuels. Among Democrats, greater attention to political media content leads to a more favorable outlook toward the technology across several domains of interest, while among Republicans, an increase in attention to political content has the opposite effect. Possible reasons for these results, as well as implications of the findings at the intersection of politics and the life sciences, are discussed.

  9. The online citizen-consumer: Addressing young people's political consumption through technology

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Ward, J.

    2008-01-01

    With youth, in particular, there are perceptions of declining political interest; at the same time the world where normative democratic ideals were formed is rapidly changing. Globalization results in unclear boundaries between nation states. Consequentially corporations gain power, and advances in

  10. Social capital, political trust, and health locus of control: a population-based study.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Lindström, Martin

    2011-02-01

    To investigate the association between political trust in the Riksdag and lack of belief in the possibility to influence one's own health (external locus of control), taking horizontal trust into account. The 2008 public health survey in Skåne is a cross-sectional postal questionnaire study with a 55% participation rate. A random sample of 28,198 persons aged 18-80 years participated. Logistic regression models were used to investigate the associations between political trust in the Riksdag (an aspect of vertical trust) and lack of belief in the possibility to influence one's own health (external locus of control). The multiple regression analyses included age, country of birth, education, and horizontal trust in other people. A 33.7% of all men and 31.8% of all women lack internal locus of control. Low (external) health locus of control is more common in higher age groups, among people born outside Sweden, with lower education, low horizontal trust, low political trust, and no opinion concerning political trust. Respondents with not particularly strong political trust, no political trust at all and no opinion have significantly higher odds ratios of external locus of control throughout the multiple regression analyses. Low political trust in the Riksdag seems to be independently associated with external health locus of control.

  11. The Politics and Practice of Archaeology in Conflict

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Linde, van der S.J.; Perring, D.

    2010-01-01

    This introductory paper reviews recent writings on archaeology and conflict, setting the other contributions to this volume into context. We draw attention to the political nature of archaeological work, and to the problems of reconciling professional interest in the protection and management of

  12. Emotions, Public Opinion, and U.S. Presidential Approval Rates: A 5-Year Analysis of Online Political Discussions

    Science.gov (United States)

    Gonzalez-Bailon, Sandra; Banchs, Rafael E.; Kaltenbrunner, Andreas

    2012-01-01

    This article examines how emotional reactions to political events shape public opinion. We analyze political discussions in which people voluntarily engage online to approximate the public agenda: Online discussions offer a natural approach to the salience of political issues and the means to analyze emotional reactions as political events take…

  13. Correlation not Causation: The Relationship between Personality Traits and Political Ideologies

    Science.gov (United States)

    Verhulst, Brad; Eaves, Lindon J.; Hatemi, Peter K.

    2013-01-01

    The assumption in the personality and politics literature is that a person's personality motivates them to develop certain political attitudes later in life. This assumption is founded on the simple correlation between the two constructs and the observation that personality traits are genetically influenced and develop in infancy, whereas political preferences develop later in life. Work in psychology, behavioral genetics, and recently political science, however, has demonstrated that political preferences also develop in childhood and are equally influenced by genetic factors. These findings cast doubt on the assumed causal relationship between personality and politics. Here we test the causal relationship between personality traits and political attitudes using a direction of causation structural model on a genetically informative sample. The results suggest that personality traits do not cause people to develop political attitudes; rather, the correlation between the two is a function of an innate common underlying genetic factor. PMID:22400142

  14. Correlation not causation: the relationship between personality traits and political ideologies.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Verhulst, Brad; Eaves, Lindon J; Hatemi, Peter K

    2012-01-01

    The assumption in the personality and politics literature is that a person's personality motivates them to develop certain political attitudes later in life. This assumption is founded on the simple correlation between the two constructs and the observation that personality traits are genetically influenced and develop in infancy, whereas political preferences develop later in life. Work in psychology, behavioral genetics, and recently political science, however, has demonstrated that political preferences also develop in childhood and are equally influenced by genetic factors. These findings cast doubt on the assumed causal relationship between personality and politics. Here we test the causal relationship between personality traits and political attitudes using a direction of causation structural model on a genetically informative sample. The results suggest that personality traits do not cause people to develop political attitudes; rather, the correlation between the two is a function of an innate common underlying genetic factor.

  15. Attention, People of Earth! Aristotelian Ethics and the Problem of ...

    African Journals Online (AJOL)

    Growth in human happiness seems to do in part with insights gained through attentive emotional engagement with fictional characters and their identities. For this reason it is important to pay attention to the critique that founding ethics on what we cannot but affirm of ourselves, our identity (rationality and sociability, ...

  16. Understanding of Democracy among Young People in Croatia

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Vladimir Vujčić

    2005-01-01

    Full Text Available The task of this paper was to explore how young people understand the values of democracy, how much they believe in democracy as a political system, how much they are satisfi ed with the way democracy works (“constitution at work”, and how much they trust government institutions. It is important to analyse the understanding of democracy, for democracy is dependent on the citizens’ opinions and the level of their political culture rather than on its normative constitution and formal value system. Thus, this analysis joins in the debate between foundationalists and antifoundationalists on democracy and its functioning. The present model of research has provided insights into the relationship between so-called diff use and specifi c support of democracy (D. Easton and an explanation of that which R. Dahl defi nes as the “democratic paradox” in contemporary democracies. This scrutiny shows that young people in Croatia understand democracy within the framework of liberal values, but also that they largely tend towards so-called consensual democracy and a socialist syndrome involving a prevalent aspiration to social equality and an economically interventionist state. Moreover, the analysis shows that young people in Croatia have a low level of democratic legitimation and an even lower level of trust in government institutions. This is not a good basis for the development of stable and well-functioning democracy in Croatian society. It all warns against serious shortcomings in the political education of young people in Croatia and in the development of democratic political culture and democratic citizenship.

  17. Explaining Sad People's Memory Advantage for Faces.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Hills, Peter J; Marquardt, Zoe; Young, Isabel; Goodenough, Imogen

    2017-01-01

    Sad people recognize faces more accurately than happy people (Hills et al., 2011). We devised four hypotheses for this finding that are tested between in the current study. The four hypotheses are: (1) sad people engage in more expert processing associated with face processing; (2) sad people are motivated to be more accurate than happy people in an attempt to repair their mood; (3) sad people have a defocused attentional strategy that allows more information about a face to be encoded; and (4) sad people scan more of the face than happy people leading to more facial features to be encoded. In Experiment 1, we found that dysphoria (sad mood often associated with depression) was not correlated with the face-inversion effect (a measure of expert processing) nor with response times but was correlated with defocused attention and recognition accuracy. Experiment 2 established that dysphoric participants detected changes made to more facial features than happy participants. In Experiment 3, using eye-tracking we found that sad-induced participants sampled more of the face whilst avoiding the eyes. Experiment 4 showed that sad-induced people demonstrated a smaller own-ethnicity bias. These results indicate that sad people show different attentional allocation to faces than happy and neutral people.

  18. Debating poverty porn on Twitter:social media as a place for everyday socio-political talk

    OpenAIRE

    Brooker, Phil; Vines, John; Sutton, Selina; Barnett, Julie; Feltwell, Tom; Lawson, Shaun

    2015-01-01

    This paper presents an empirical investigation of how people appropriated Twitter for socio-political talk in response to a television (TV) portrayal of people supported by state welfare and benefits. Our findings reveal how online discussion during, and in-between, TV broadcasts was characterised by distinctly different qualities, topics and user behaviours. These findings offer design opportunities for social media services to (i) support more balanced real-time commentaries of politically-...

  19. Conceptual metaphors in South African political speeches (1994 ...

    African Journals Online (AJOL)

    KATEVG

    The widely discussed conceptual metaphor POLITICS IS WAR, for example, surfaces ..... By conceptualising democracy as a child or person people perceive it as something which .... hoist the racist and sexist standards of the pasttm01b ...

  20. Food safety and the reversed political consumer

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Christensen, Tove; Denver, Sigrid; Mørkbak, Morten Raun

    We address the question of whether people act as political consumers in relation to food safety. By linking evidence from economic valuation studies on consumers' willingness to pay with sociological studies on consumer behaviour and market studies, we find that food safety does not call...

  1. Beyond the negative: political attitudes and ideologies strategically manage opportunities, too.

    Science.gov (United States)

    White, Andrew Edward; Neuberg, Steven L

    2014-06-01

    Hibbing et al. use evolutionarily derived logic to suggest that political attitudes are related to responses to negative features of the environment. We suggest that the authors focus too narrowly on the negative and contend, instead, that a more comprehensive evolutionary approach focusing on people's responses to threats and opportunities will better account for variation in political attitudes.

  2. A judicial review of political questions under Islamic law

    OpenAIRE

    Abdulfatai O. Sambo; Hunud Abia Kadouf

    2014-01-01

    The contemporary Arab world has witnessed uprisings and turmoil as a result of alleged power-overreaching by political elites. Consequently, people call for democracy with emphasis on constitutionalism, accountability and protection of human rights. Yet, the voice of the judiciary seems not to be heard in championing these values in many Muslim nations despite the clear roles Islam places on the judiciary regarding political matters. This paper therefore analyses the power of judicial review ...

  3. Retrospective accounts of self-stigma experienced by young people with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) or depression.

    Science.gov (United States)

    McKeague, Lynn; Hennessy, Eilis; O'Driscoll, Claire; Heary, Caroline

    2015-06-01

    Little is known about self-stigma experienced by young people with mental health problems, despite the fact that research has demonstrated its existence. In the present study, we sought to investigate the experiences of self-stigma in childhood and adolescence, and particularly the nature of change in self-stigma across this developmental period. Young adults diagnosed with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) or depression before their 18th birthdays were interviewed about their experiences within their peer groups during childhood and adolescence. This qualitative study involved open-ended interviews with 16 young adults aged 18-30 years. Interviews focused on the experience of stigmatization, responses to stigma, and how these changed over time. Three main themes pertaining to self-stigma emerged: (a) being different, (b) peer stigmatization and associated experiences of self-stigma, and (c) selective disclosure and a move toward greater openness. The findings also suggested that the passing of time and changes in young people's social networks and/or degrees of recovery were associated with changes in their experiences of self-stigma. During childhood and adolescence, self-stigma is characterized by a sense of being different from peers and negative self-evaluation as a consequence of that difference. However, our findings also demonstrated that some young people were prepared to challenge the stigma they experienced. Further research is needed to understand the factors that contribute to these differing responses and to develop antistigma interventions that facilitate the inclusion of young people with mental health problems in their peer groups. (c) 2015 APA, all rights reserved).

  4. Left or right? Teachers, political options and history didactics.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Caroline Pacievitch

    2017-01-01

    Full Text Available In this text we discuss the political options of history teachers and its consequences to teaching. We ask if there are relations between political options and didactical choices of the history teacher. The data were obtained from the project “Youth and History in MERCOSUR”, that uses a questionnaire which was responded by a sample of 288 history teacher of Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Chile and Paraguay. A descriptive and inferential statics treatment was given to the answers, with special attention to political options of the teachers, and crossing general information with stances about didactical aspects.  Norberto Bobbio’s notion about left and right was used. It was noted that the teachers, regardless of political opinion, defend the history teaching importance and care about their own political participation. There are subtle differences about the  teaching objectives evaluation and about professional difficulties among teachers, that also interpret sensitive historical themes coherently to their political stances. These findings invite to think more about the role of those professors who performs history teachers training, as to reinforce the importance of connecting politics and didactics in the making of teaching responsibility.

  5. Partisan strength, political trust and generalized trust in the United States: An analysis of the General Social Survey, 1972-2014.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Hooghe, Marc; Oser, Jennifer

    2017-11-01

    The literature on political parties suggests that strong partisan identities are associated with citizens' effective interaction with the political system, and with higher levels of political trust. Traditionally, party identity therefore is seen as a mechanism that allows for political integration. Simultaneously, however, political parties have gained recent attention for their role in promoting societal polarization by reinforcing competing and even antagonistic group identities. This article uses General Social Survey data from 1972 - 2014 to investigate the relationship between partisan strength and both political and generalized trust. The findings show that increases in partisan strength are positively related to political trust, but negatively related to generalized trust. This suggests that while partisan strength is indeed an important linkage mechanism for the political system, it is also associated with a tendency toward social polarization, and this corrosive effect thus far has not gained sufficient attention in literature on party identity. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

  6. Effects of attention manipulations on motivated attention to feared and nonfeared negative distracters in spider fear

    OpenAIRE

    Norberg, Joakim; Wiens, Stefan

    2013-01-01

    Background When people view emotional and neutral pictures, the emotional pictures capture more attention than do neutral pictures. In support, studies with event-related potentials have shown that the early posterior negativity (EPN) and the late positive potential (LPP) to emotional versus neutral pictures are enhanced when pictures are attended. However, this motivated attention decreases when voluntary attention is directed away from the pictures. Most previous studies included only gener...

  7. Alteration of political belief by non- invasive brain stimulation

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Caroline eChawke

    2016-01-01

    Full Text Available People generally have imperfect introspective access to the mechanisms underlying their political beliefs, yet can confidently communicate the reasoning that goes into their decision making process. An innate desire for certainty and security in ones beliefs may play an important and somewhat automatic role in motivating the maintenance or rejection of partisan support. The aim of the current study was to clarify the role of the DLPFC in the alteration of political beliefs. Recent neuroimaging studies have focused on the association between the DLPFC (a region involved in the regulation of cognitive conflict and error feedback processing and reduced affiliation with opposing political candidates. As such, this study used a method of non- invasive brain simulation (tRNS to enhance activity of the bilateral DLPFC during the incorporation of political campaign information. These findings indicate a crucial role for this region in political belief formation. However, enhanced activation of DLPFC does not necessarily result in the specific rejection of political beliefs. In contrast to the hypothesis the results appear to indicate a significant increase in conservative values regardless of participant’s initial political orientation and the political campaign advertisement they were exposed to.

  8. Alteration of Political Belief by Non-invasive Brain Stimulation

    Science.gov (United States)

    Chawke, Caroline; Kanai, Ryota

    2016-01-01

    People generally have imperfect introspective access to the mechanisms underlying their political beliefs, yet can confidently communicate the reasoning that goes into their decision making process. An innate desire for certainty and security in ones beliefs may play an important and somewhat automatic role in motivating the maintenance or rejection of partisan support. The aim of the current study was to clarify the role of the DLPFC in the alteration of political beliefs. Recent neuroimaging studies have focused on the association between the DLPFC (a region involved in the regulation of cognitive conflict and error feedback processing) and reduced affiliation with opposing political candidates. As such, this study used a method of non-invasive brain simulation (tRNS) to enhance activity of the bilateral DLPFC during the incorporation of political campaign information. These findings indicate a crucial role for this region in political belief formation. However, enhanced activation of DLPFC does not necessarily result in the specific rejection of political beliefs. In contrast to the hypothesis the results appear to indicate a significant increase in conservative values regardless of participant's initial political orientation and the political campaign advertisement they were exposed to. PMID:26834603

  9. Politics of environmental regulation: acid rain in Ontario

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Hogarth Wood, G P

    1984-01-01

    This study looks at the case of the Ontario government and Inco Limited in order to explain political responses to the acid rain issue and to generalize about the dynamics of environmental regulation. Existing accounts of the acid rain situation neglect a systematic explanation of the political processes that guide the selection of policy. This reflects a tendency in Canadian public policy analysis generally. Most literature in this field is both apolitical and atheoretical. In addition, most models of public policy focus attention on a narrow range of policy determinants, making the models inappropriate as exclusive guides for public policy analysis. This study follows an approach that assumes that no variable can, a priori, be viewed as the primary determinant of a policy choice. Instead, relevant features of the economic, social, and political environment surrounding the policy process have to be examined in addition to that process itself. Accordingly, a number of potential influences on the acid rain policy outcome in Ontario are explored: the economic structure of Ontario, political-geographic factors, the role of science and technology, political power in the province, political values and attitudes, the institutional structure of Ontario politics, and finally, the policy process itself. This exercise points to the overriding influence of the political system environment, particularly the economic structure of the province, in explaining the policy choice. The findings of this study can be extended to explain regulatory responses to the issue in other political jurisdictions.

  10. Political elites and China's search of modernity in twentieth century

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Daniel Lemus Delgado

    2016-02-01

    Full Text Available This article analyzes the relationship between the foundation, consolidation and reinvention of the political elite in the People's Republic of China and the search to modernization from an historical perspective. To do this, this article proposes that modernity is a political project that has been an important ideological justification. This justification allowed that Chinese Communist Party took the political power. Also, the project of modernization has favored the reinvention of the political elite. The contribution of this paper is to present this process and the particular characteristics of Chinese history. In conclusion, this paper suggests that the search to modernization has been a constitutive element with deep historical roots.

  11. Foucault's contributions for understanding power relations in British classical political economy

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Danielle Guizzo

    2015-05-01

    Full Text Available This paper analyzes the strategic role played by British classical political economy in constructing new technologies of power. Michel Foucault drew attention to a change that political economists promoted concerning the role of the state, which has been overlooked by historians of economic thought. This paper explores the main arguments provided by the most important British political economists of the 18th and 19th centuries on what concerns population management, State's role and economic dynamics in order to examine Foucault's considerations. Although British classical political economy consolidated the mechanism of markets and economic individuality, thus creating a system of truth that changed economic norms and practices, its discourse also established a political conduct that was responsible for creating mechanisms of control that disseminated new forms of power relations.

  12. Money, morality, and politics in the slums of Buenos Aires

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Ariel Wilkis

    2016-06-01

    Full Text Available Abstract Studies on the political life of the poor in Latin American have rarely focused on money, although there have been works focused on the survival strategies of the poor; political clientelism; and collective mobilizations. In this article, I analyze political life in the poor neighborhoods of Greater Buenos Aires through the lens of money that circulates within the Peronist networks. I conducted ethnography fieldwork between 2006 and 2010. Does money have a legitimate role in politics? Has the monetization of political activities dissolved values, commitments, and loyalties among the poor? Is this corruption, or is this an ethical exchange among people who lack cash but possess moral capital? Here, I analyze how money becomes necessary to strengthen commitments, loyalties, obligations, expectations, and plans for both leaders and activists. Reconstructing this process can provide a foundation for the revision of place of money in political life.

  13. The costs of switching attentional sets

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Dombrowe, I.C.; Donk, M.; Olivers, C.N.L.

    2012-01-01

    People prioritize those aspects of the visual environment that match their attentional set. In the present study, we investigated whether switching from one attentional set to another is associated with a cost. We asked observers to sequentially saccade toward two color-defined targets, one on the

  14. The costs of switching attentional sets

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Dombrowe, I.C.; Donk, M.; Olivers, C.N.L.

    2011-01-01

    People prioritize those aspects of the visual environment that match their attentional set. In the present study, we investigated whether switching from one attentional set to another is associated with a cost. We asked observers to sequentially saccade toward two color-defined targets, one on the

  15. The Role of the Expert’s Ratings in Political Activity in Modern Russia

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Марина Васильевна Носкова

    2016-12-01

    Full Text Available The article is the short review of the ratings, which are carried out by expert structures and their influence both on image of the countries, and on image of political leaders (leaders of political parties and heads of regions of the Russian Federation. The attention is paid to influence from any expert consultants regarding preparation and maintenance of election campaigns, connection of expert ratings with adoption of political decisions by public authorities is shown.

  16. The impact of political culture on the functioning of democracy: analysis of ideas of Alexis de Tocqueville

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    I. I. Prokopchuk

    2014-09-01

    Full Text Available Based on the works of the French scientist A. de Tocqueville analyzed systematically constructive and destructive influence on political culture and the institutionalization of democracy in the society. In Tocqueville’s works may be divided into 2 patterns of political culture: a American liberal-democratic; b French authoritarian. Generalized thinker idea of values, based on which the American political culture of his time as follows: 1. Man put on an equal footing with the public. 2. Spread «spirit of the law» for all American society in general. 3. Understanding people, which is the main subject of politics and power source, as a combination of highly developed, independent, self-sufficient individuals. 4. Policy - one of the areas of self-realization and even for the average individual. In the system of value orientations policy covers the Americans first place or not. 5. Antypaternalizm in settings in which people, to the government and its agencies include disbelief, with potential worries, turning to government assistance only when absolutely can not do without it. 6. Social life is characterized by pluralism. In civil Sus-ety, there are many «power points» impact on the state by the parties, associations, media, opposition. 7. The political behavior of Americans is characterized by an open, constructive. A common policy is not the only type of collective participation (through parties and associations, but also individual. 8. The tendency of American political culture to the center, which was manifested in the unpopularity of political extremism as a type of political behavior on the part of leaders, parties, mass. 9. Legitimate functioning of the political opposition. This opposition political organizations in the United States in peace and enjoy his political activities only through legal means. 10. Formation of «money» elite and its deliberate removal of professions-term politics. Generalized Tocqueville features that define

  17. Women's Political Representation and Participation in Decentralized ...

    International Development Research Centre (IDRC) Digital Library (Canada)

    Huairou Commission User

    facilitate people's participation in national development through ensuring sound local level politics. • RC evolved into local councils which then led to the implementation of decentralization through the local government act (1997). • This policy has provided opportunities for women to participate in local leadership from.

  18. National Integration, Citizenship, Political Participation and ...

    African Journals Online (AJOL)

    A united country and people are in a better position to ably confront its crises of development, nationhood and stability. The desire and consciousness of the political leaders and the entire citizenry to do this with the appropriate frame of mind and instrumentalities is imperative for a successful and durable result. This paper ...

  19. Hidden Transcripts from “Below” in Rural Politics of the Philippines: Interpreting the Janus-facedness of Patron-Client Ties and Tulong (Help)

    OpenAIRE

    Soon Chuan Yean

    2012-01-01

    This paper argues that ordinary people often contest rather than submit to the powerful elites to gain material interests and political favoritism. Ordinary people are both shrewd and critical in making judgments and evaluations on politicians as well as the (unequal) relation of powers. Based on fieldwork interviews in the Philippines, this paper identifies the perception of (local) politics from ordinary people’s point of view in a seemingly mundane political environment. If the political e...

  20. A History of Experiences and Thinking Men. The History of Political Thought according to Michael Oakeshott

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Spartaco Pupo

    2014-12-01

    Full Text Available Michael Oakeshott conceives the history of European political thought as a structuring of ideas and arguments of the practical experience aimed to understanding political expressions in vogue in the culture of a people. It is not a continuous and cumulative history of abstract and disembodied ideas, as it is wrongly conceived, but of some men who thought politics in a certain way on the basis of the language and of the set of actions, moral beliefs and contingencies of the people which they belong to. The article highlights the comparison between Oakeshott, Quentin Skinner and Gianfranco Miglio on the search for the most appropriate method to be applied in the study of the history of political thought.

  1. Student Youth: Dynamics of Political Interests (Regional Aspect

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Morozova Galina Viktorovna

    2015-12-01

    Full Text Available The article presents the main results of the research of interests and political orientations of student youth which was carried out in 2014 at the Kazan federal university and its branches in the territory of the Republic of Tatarstan. The choice of student youth as a reference group is caused by a number of factors, among which we should name the status of intellectual elite, social and political mobility that allows to consider students as the potential actors of socio-political transformations in the country. The data obtained during poll compared with the results of last research allow defining the dynamics of development of student youth’s political sentiment in the region. The study of political attitudes, preferences of students was based on the identification of a number of indicators (degree of interest in politics, the level of personal involvement in political life and on the study of factors that determine the motivation of political behavior of students. Empirical studies make it possible to rank the problems that dominate the political consciousness of students in the region. These include a high level of corruption in the government, inflation, rising prices, the state of health and education systems and the growing income inequality. Particular attention is accented on the problems associated with the foreign policy aspects, threats, aggression from abroad. The study showed that most young people’s interest in politics is limited primarily by informational level, rarely they have desire to express their own position or judgments in political situations. The level of real political participation, socio-political activity of students is low. Obtained results let us notice the increasing trend of demonstration of protest behavior among certain part of the students.

  2. Relationship between Political Discrimination Level Perceived by Teachers and Teachers' Organizational Cynicism Levels

    Science.gov (United States)

    Keskinkilic Kara, Sultan Bilge; Oguz, Ebru

    2016-01-01

    Problem Statement: Political discrimination is directed against individuals on the basis of their political party membership and views, including their sociopolitical and moral attitudes. People subjected to discrimination have a high level of professional exhaustion, slow upward career mobility, low morale and performance, less initiative,…

  3. The auditory attention status in Iranian bilingual and monolingual people

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Nayiere Mansoori

    2013-05-01

    Full Text Available Background and Aim: Bilingualism, as one of the discussing issues of psychology and linguistics, can influence the speech processing. Of several tests for assessing auditory processing, dichotic digit test has been designed to study divided auditory attention. Our study was performed to compare the auditory attention between Iranian bilingual and monolingual young adults. Methods: This cross-sectional study was conducted on 60 students including 30 Turkish-Persian bilinguals and 30 Persian monolinguals aged between 18 to 30 years in both genders. Dichotic digit test was performed on young individuals with normal peripheral hearing and right hand preference. Results: No significant correlation was found between the results of dichotic digit test of monolinguals and bilinguals (p=0.195, and also between the results of right and left ears in monolingual (p=0.460 and bilingual (p=0.054 groups. The mean score of women was significantly more than men (p=0.031. Conclusion: There was no significant difference between bilinguals and monolinguals in divided auditory attention; and it seems that acquisition of second language in lower ages has no noticeable effect on this type of auditory attention.

  4. Bangladesh: National Political Econmic Strategies in Perilous Times

    OpenAIRE

    Khan, Haider A.

    2011-01-01

    Bangladesh is potentially capable of rapid, self-reliant and equitable development under the present AL leadership. But the combination of strategic openness and self-reliance requires firm, skillful and committed leadership at all levels. Our current situation is perilous precisely because the tentative moves towards a self-reliant and pro-people political and economic system have made powerful anti-liberation and anti-people elements in our country desperate. In addition to confronting the...

  5. Life satisfaction across nations: the effects of women's political status and public priorities.

    Science.gov (United States)

    York, Richard; Bell, Shannon Elizabeth

    2014-11-01

    Feminist scholars suggest that improving the quality of life of individuals living in nations around the world may be more readily achieved by increasing women's political power and by reorienting public-policy priorities, than by focusing primarily on economic growth. These considerations raise the question of which characteristics of societies are associated with the quality of life of the people in those societies. Here, we address this issue empirically by statistically analyzing cross-national data. We assess the effects of gender equality in the political sphere, as well as a variety of other factors, on the subjective well-being of nations, as indicated by average self-reported levels of life satisfaction. We find that people report the highest levels of life satisfaction in nations where women have greater political representation, where military spending is low, and where health care spending is high, controlling for a variety of other factors. GDP per capita, urbanization, and natural resource exploitation are not clearly associated with life satisfaction. These findings suggest that nations may be able to improve the subjective quality of life of people without increasing material wealth or natural resource consumption by increasing gender equality in politics and changing public spending priorities. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

  6. Transgender inclusion in state non-discrimination policies: The democratic deficit and political powerlessness

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Andrew R Flores

    2015-10-01

    Full Text Available Transgender people—people whose gender identity or expression is different from their assigned sex at birth—and their allies advocate for the inclusion of gender identity or transgender in state non-discrimination policies. These policies generally proscribe discrimination in employment, housing, and public accommodations. Courts and administrative agencies have determined discrimination against transgender people is a violation of existing statutes, but there remain efforts by advocates to seek policies that explicitly prohibit discrimination on the basis of transgender status, which are often the result of legislation going through the political process. A pluralist understanding of the political process theorizes that a majority coalition of minorities can offer social groups policies they support. This rests on the presumption that a majority coalition of minorities should rule. Any indication to the contrary may suggest a democratic deficit, whereby more than a majority is necessary for policy introduction. We find that there is a substantial democratic deficit regarding the inclusion of gender identity or transgender in employment non-discrimination policies. On average, state support for the policy must be 81% in order for the state to have a policy reflecting such sentiment. This leaves substantial implications for the political powerlessness of transgender people in the political process.

  7. The Hour of God? : People in Guatemala Confronting Political Evangelicalism and Counterinsurgency (1976-1990)

    OpenAIRE

    Melander, Veronica

    1999-01-01

    This dissertation is focused on one of many aspects of religion and politics in Guatemala in recent history (1976-1990). This period is characterized by unequal wealth distribution, ethnic divisions, civil war, and U.S. influence. It is a contemporary mission history examining missionary efforts directed from the United States, Guatemalan responses, and indigenous initiatives. The problem concerns a movement within Protestant evangelicalism, which in this study is called Political Evangelical...

  8. DAN DIACONESCU: THE POLITICS OF BREAD AND CIRCUSES

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    VALENTIN QUINTUS NICOLESCU

    2013-05-01

    Full Text Available Founder and owner of two television stations, Dan Diaconescu found the opportunity to rise the electoral support for his anti-system party through media channels in the circumstances of a tumultuous political year and a bitterly personal power struggle between President Traian Băsescu and Prime Minister Victor Ponta. He described the victory in the upcoming parliamentary elections as a start of the battle against the post-communist Romanian political class that impoverished the country. Through this battle lead by him and other members of his party, his „army of angels”1, Dan Diaconescu says he can liberate the Romanian people and install „people’s dictatorship” that will punish all the political class for the injustices suffered by them. In a context of highly visible and influential populist discourse, this paper considers the self-representation of Dan Diaconescu and his People’s Party – Dan Diaconescu during parliamentary election campaign in 2012. First of all, a multi-methodological approach was adopted to examine the key elements of national populist discourse: antagonistic struggle between politicians and citizens, popular sovereignty, corruption of the political class and popular mobilization for political change. After that, I will examine how this Romanian form of populism represents the rival version of western representative democracy, the populist democracy specific to Latin America based on direct representation embodied by a leader or a party capable to symbolize the power of the people. Within this frame, I will try to analyse to what degree Dan Diaconescu’s populism enrolls in the logic of Latin American populism instead of a cultural or ethnic populism dominant in Europe.

  9. Noticing the self: Implicit assessment of self-focused attention using word recognition latencies

    OpenAIRE

    Eichstaedt, Dr Jan; Silvia, Dr Paul J.

    2003-01-01

    Self-focused attention is difficult to measure. Two studies developed an implicit measure of self-focus based on word recognition latencies. Self-focused attention activates self-content, so self-focused people should recognize self-relevant words more quickly. Study 1 measured individual-differences in self-focused attention. People scoring high in private self-consciousness recognized self-relevant words more quickly. Study 2 manipulated objective self-awareness with a writing task. People ...

  10. FENOMENA, FEMINISME DAN POLITICAL SELF SELECTION BAGI PEREMPUAN

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Nurwani Idris - -

    2012-05-01

    Full Text Available Abstract Democracy needs all participation people in the country, women and men.  The political right for women, as we know was feminism hard and long time struggled, therefore now the women have the high quality live in politic, the economic and social.  All the country in the world have ratificated the PBB of law for political freedom for women as the same as men. Especially in Indonesia now there’s no formal barriers for women leadership, if they select to participate in politics but it was the phenomenon for the women among self selection in politics, the freedom to be participating and children, husband, housing, that still stronger; from which one barrier “self selection” or “culture and religion” responsibility where significantly. Minangkabau women, forward analysis we can aim self selection or children, husband and family responsibility.  It is indisputable that the women’s awareness and struggle in the politics are debt to the feminists’ endless efforts. The feminists have fostered the women to empower themselves by which they reach equal position compared with their counterparts, in nearly all aspects of the social life.   Keywords:  phenomenon, feminism, and political self selection.

  11. Cultural, Social and Political Perspectives in Science Education

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    education research to question whether conventional research approaches, foci and theoretical approaches are sufficient in a world of science education that is neither politically neutral, nor free of cultural values. Attention is not only on the individual learner but on the cultural, social and political......This book presents a collection of critical thinking that concern cultural, social and political issues for science education in the Nordic countries. The chapter authors describe specific scenarios to challenge persisting views, interrogate frameworks and trouble contemporary approaches...... to researching teaching and learning in science. Taking a point of departure in empirical examples from the Nordic countries the collection of work is taking a critical sideways glance at the Nordic education principles. Critical examinations target specifically those who are researching in the fields of science...

  12. Political Vector of Northern Sea Route Development

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Andrei A. Fomichev

    2015-01-01

    Full Text Available In this article the author considers the issue of exploitation of Arctic region, especially of NSR. This transport corridor is very important from geopolitical point of view. The future of NSR will be thoroughly considered and the author will pay attention to the political horizons that opens as far as the interest of international community to Arctic rises and socio-economical processes are accelerating. The political institutions which regulate exploitation of NSR, legal framework, estimations of experts from different relevant fields and the problems of exploitation of Arctic region that have emerged on grounds of the current political situation in the world - all these aspects will be considered in the article. The special attention will be paid to the possible Russian self-determined exploitation of Arctic and NSR. Even though there are considerable reserves of natural resources in Arctic, its' capacity does not afford carry out its' active exploitation in short-term. Consequently, its' capacity does not permit exclusion of exploitation of NSR on account of transit route. Saving of the current relations with Western partners and development of opportunities to exploit Arctic region on our own - the main political goals of Russia. Recent events of this year demonstrate two important forces which have an impact on the exploitation of NSR. Firstly, an important role of Russia in international exploitation of Arctic, understanding of that at the international level and interest of foreign partners in cooperation with Russia in Arctic including over the question of NSR despite exacerbation of relation with the West. Secondly, present state of Arctic territories in terms of economics and socio-political aspect does not correspond to the boost of geopolitical power of Russia in Arctic. Western sanctions seriously harm sustainable development of Arctic in short-term. However, they will accelerate political processes in the region in case Russia

  13. 'Can I be bridesmaid?' Combining the personal and political in same-sex weddings

    OpenAIRE

    Smart, Carol

    2008-01-01

    The availability of same-sex weddings poses a number of personal and political dilemmas for couples who decide that they wish to go through a ceremony of recognition or civil partnership. In this article I argue that British couples are acutely aware of the political ramifications of their decisions and I focus attention on the interplay between the personal and political in decisions that couples make on the types of ceremony they want. For example, some couples want very prominent, high pro...

  14. Statistics and Politics in the 18th Century

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Behrisch, Lars

    2016-01-01

    The article first gives an overview over the early history of statistics in politics, and then zooms in on the first attempts at establishing a nationwide agrarian statistics in pre-revolutionary France. Attention is given to the obstacles as well as to the long-term successes in standardizing and

  15. Attentional Lapses in Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder: Blank Rather Than Wandering Thoughts.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Van den Driessche, Charlotte; Bastian, Mikaël; Peyre, Hugo; Stordeur, Coline; Acquaviva, Éric; Bahadori, Sara; Delorme, Richard; Sackur, Jérôme

    2017-10-01

    People with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) have difficulties sustaining their attention on external tasks. Such attentional lapses have often been characterized as the simple opposite of external sustained attention, but the different types of attentional lapses, and the subjective experiences to which they correspond, remain unspecified. In this study, we showed that unmedicated children (ages 6-12) with ADHD, when probed during a standard go/no-go task, reported more mind blanking (a mental state characterized by the absence of reportable content) than did control participants. This increase in mind blanking happened at the expense of both focused and wandering thoughts. We also found that methylphenidate reverted the level of mind blanking to baseline (i.e., the level of mind blanking reported by control children without ADHD). However, this restoration led to mind wandering more than to focused attention. In a second experiment, we extended these findings to adults who had subclinical ADHD. These results suggest that executive functions impaired in ADHD are required not only to sustain external attention but also to maintain an internal train of thought.

  16. The role of political affiliation in employment decisions: A model and research agenda.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Roth, Philip L; Goldberg, Caren B; Thatcher, Jason B

    2017-09-01

    Organizational researchers have studied how individuals identify with groups and organizations and how this affiliation influences behavior for decades (e.g., Tajfel, 1982). Interestingly, investigation into political affiliation and political affiliation similarity in the organizational sciences is extremely rare. This is striking, given the deep political divides that exist between groups of individuals described in the political science literature. We draw from theories based on similarity, organizational identification, and person-environment fit, as well as theoretical notions related to individuating information, to develop a model, the political affiliation model (PAM), which describes the implications of political affiliation and political similarity for employment decisions. We set forth a number of propositions based on PAM, to spur future research in the organizational sciences for a timely topic which has received little attention. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2017 APA, all rights reserved).

  17. Notes towards an Anthropology of Political Revolutions

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Thomassen, Bjørn

    2012-01-01

    apparatus and ethnographic efforts towards revolutionary events. This article advances a series of reasons why anthropology can enrich and supplement existing political science and history traditions in the study of political revolutions. Anthropology can do so via key concepts developed by Victor Turner......While resistance and rebellion have remained core themes in anthropology at least since the 1960s, anthropologists have paid much less attention to the study of political revolutions as real historical events. Yet there are compelling real-world reasons why they should orient their analytical......: “liminality,” “social drama,” “communitas,” “frame,” and “play.” Turner's ritual approach gains further relevance when linked to another series of concepts developed by Marcel Mauss, Gabriel Tarde, Georg Simmel, and Gregory Bateson, such as “imitation,” “trickster,” “schismogenesis,” and “crowd behavior...

  18. The Internet, Political Communications Research and the Search for a New Information Paradigm

    Science.gov (United States)

    Chiu, William Franklin

    2013-01-01

    The Internet, as a digital record of human discourse, provides an opportunity to directly analyze political communicative behavior. The rapid emergence of social online networks augurs a transformation in the quality and quantity of information people have to evaluate their political system. Digital formats instantiate new categories of actors and…

  19. China Update: Economic Reforms and Political Realities.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Eaton, Jana Sackman

    1999-01-01

    Illustrates that China has been undergoing an unprecedented rapidity of change. Discusses the high unemployment rates, job markets, reform movements, differences in economic equality, the role of the National People's Congress, and the changing political climate. Reveals that freedom is subtly beginning to permeate the lives of Chinese citizens.…

  20. Social Background, Civic Education and Political Participation of Young People – the German Case

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Holger Onken

    2014-04-01

    Full Text Available Due to social and political change the process of young citizens’ political socialization was put on a new basis in West European democracies over the last decades. In this article we discuss some aspects of this development and show their consequences. We analyse empirical findings from Germany, focussing on the relevant social factors which influence the individual propensity to participate in politics. The impact of the financial and economic crisis in Europe on political attitudes will also be considered, taking in account sociological aspects. Based on the empirical findings we discuss implications for civic education. In contrast to many discussions in literature about this issue, in which the focus is on the need to put the various influences of political socialization into a broader context, we argue that the parental social background is the crucial upstream factor, prior to e.g. civic education. The conclusion indicates that a group‐specific educational approach, taking into account the social background, is the most promising one for reaching the normative goal of civic education: Politically self‐determined citizens. Aufgrund der sozialen und politischen Veränderungen ist die politische Sozialisation Jugendlicher in den Westeuropäischen Demokratien auf eine neue Grundlage gestellt worden. In diesem Beitrag diskutieren wir Aspekte dieser Entwicklung und zeigen, welche Folgen sich aus diesen ergeben. Wir analysieren empirische Befunde aus Deutschland mit dem Schwerpunkt auf die Frage, welche sozialen Faktoren relevant sind für die individuelle politische Partizipationsbereitschaft. Der Einfluss der Finanz‐ und Wirtschaftskrise in Europa auf politische Einstellungen wird dabei ebenfalls betrachtet. Dies geschieht unter Berücksichtigung der soziologischen Aspekte. Auf Grundlage der Ergebnisse Fragen wir nach den Folgen für die politische Bildung. Im Gegensatz zu dem in der Literatur häufig vertretenen Ansatz, die politische

  1. The Impact of Politics 2.0 in the Spanish Social Media: Tracking the Conversations around the Audiovisual Political Wars

    Science.gov (United States)

    Noguera, José M.; Correyero, Beatriz

    After the consolidation of weblogs as interactive narratives and producers, audiovisual formats are gaining ground on the Web. Videos are spreading all over the Internet and establishing themselves as a new medium for political propaganda inside social media with tools so powerful like YouTube. This investigation proceeds in two stages: on one hand we are going to examine how this audiovisual formats have enjoyed an enormous amount of attention in blogs during the Spanish pre-electoral campaign for the elections of March 2008. On the other hand, this article tries to investigate the social impact of this phenomenon using data from a content analysis of the blog discussion related to these videos centered on the most popular Spanish political blogs. Also, we study when the audiovisual political messages (made by politicians or by users) "born" and "die" in the Web and with what kind of rules they do.

  2. Politics drives human functioning, dignity, and quality of life.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Barber, Brian K; Spellings, Carolyn; McNeely, Clea; Page, Paul D; Giacaman, Rita; Arafat, Cairo; Daher, Mahmoud; El Sarraj, Eyad; Mallouh, Mohammed Abu

    2014-12-01

    Too little is known about human functioning amidst chronic adversity. We addressed that need by studying adult Palestinians in the occupied Palestinian territories (oPt), a population that has experienced longstanding economic and political hardships. Fourteen group interviews were conducted in February, 2010 in Arabic by local fieldworkers with 68 participants representing the main stratifications of Palestinian society: gender, region, refugee status, and political affiliation. Interview tasks included each participant: describing someone doing well and not well, free listing domains of functioning, and prioritizing domains to the three most important. Thematic analyses highlighted the dominating role of the political domain of functioning (e.g., political structures, constraints, effects, identity, and activism) and the degree to which political conditions impacted all other realms of functioning (economic, education, family, psychological, etc.). The discussion links the findings to relevant theory and empirical work that has called attention to the need to include the political in frameworks of quality of life. It also emphasized that values, such as justice, rights, dignity and self-determination, that underlie political structures and policies, are key elements of human functioning. This is the case not only in the oPt, but in any society where power imbalances marginalize segments of the population. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

  3. Attention to information in working memory

    OpenAIRE

    Oberauer Klaus; Hein Laura

    2012-01-01

    Working memory retains information and makes it available for processing. People often need to hold several chunks of information available while concentrating on only one of them. This process requires selective attention to the contents of working memory. In this article we summarize evidence for both a broad focus of attention with a capacity of approximately four chunks and a narrow focus of attention that selects a single chunk at a time.

  4. Political Attitudes Develop Independently of Personality Traits

    Science.gov (United States)

    Hatemi, Peter K.; Verhulst, Brad

    2015-01-01

    The primary assumption within the recent personality and political orientations literature is that personality traits cause people to develop political attitudes. In contrast, research relying on traditional psychological and developmental theories suggests the relationship between most personality dimensions and political orientations are either not significant or weak. Research from behavioral genetics suggests the covariance between personality and political preferences is not causal, but due to a common, latent genetic factor that mutually influences both. The contradictory assumptions and findings from these research streams have yet to be resolved. This is in part due to the reliance on cross-sectional data and the lack of longitudinal genetically informative data. Here, using two independent longitudinal genetically informative samples, we examine the joint development of personality traits and attitude dimensions to explore the underlying causal mechanisms that drive the relationship between these features and provide a first step in resolving the causal question. We find change in personality over a ten-year period does not predict change in political attitudes, which does not support a causal relationship between personality traits and political attitudes as is frequently assumed. Rather, political attitudes are often more stable than the key personality traits assumed to be predicting them. Finally, the results from our genetic models find that no additional variance is accounted for by the causal pathway from personality traits to political attitudes. Our findings remain consistent with the original construction of the five-factor model of personality and developmental theories on attitude formation, but challenge recent work in this area. PMID:25734580

  5. Political attitudes develop independently of personality traits.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Hatemi, Peter K; Verhulst, Brad

    2015-01-01

    The primary assumption within the recent personality and political orientations literature is that personality traits cause people to develop political attitudes. In contrast, research relying on traditional psychological and developmental theories suggests the relationship between most personality dimensions and political orientations are either not significant or weak. Research from behavioral genetics suggests the covariance between personality and political preferences is not causal, but due to a common, latent genetic factor that mutually influences both. The contradictory assumptions and findings from these research streams have yet to be resolved. This is in part due to the reliance on cross-sectional data and the lack of longitudinal genetically informative data. Here, using two independent longitudinal genetically informative samples, we examine the joint development of personality traits and attitude dimensions to explore the underlying causal mechanisms that drive the relationship between these features and provide a first step in resolving the causal question. We find change in personality over a ten-year period does not predict change in political attitudes, which does not support a causal relationship between personality traits and political attitudes as is frequently assumed. Rather, political attitudes are often more stable than the key personality traits assumed to be predicting them. Finally, the results from our genetic models find that no additional variance is accounted for by the causal pathway from personality traits to political attitudes. Our findings remain consistent with the original construction of the five-factor model of personality and developmental theories on attitude formation, but challenge recent work in this area.

  6. Political Economies Come Home: On the Political Economies of Housing

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Alexander, Catherine; Bruun, Maja Hojer; Koch, Insa

    2018-01-01

    to assert rights or engage with authorities. Two final characteristics are the loss of a perceived moral right to a secure home and a sense of betrayal. In some places, housing conflicts lead to protests and resistance as people perform this sense that political and economic elites have violated or reneged...... obligations at multiple levels. Second, several actors appear, or are invoked as authorities to be appealed or performed to for satisfaction of rights, from state bodies and individuals to banks, third sector and collective organisations and social movements. Third there is often lack of clarity over how...

  7. Destructiveness in Political Discourse

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Яна Александровна Волкова

    2016-12-01

    Full Text Available Destructiveness is among the fundamental discourse categories that play a significant role in the organization of communicative interaction and define the pragmatics of discourse; its study helps to understand some mechanisms and principles of communication, identify strategies and tactics used by a destructive communicative personality. The relevance of this study is determined by the increasing aggressiveness in various types of discourse, and, accordingly, by the need to extend the knowledge of destructive behavior of a communicative personality. The study is based on the theory of discourse-analysis and theory of destructiveness (Z. Harris, T. van Dijk, A. Buss, E. Fromm, D. Ponton, K. Hacker, R. Wodak. N. Arutyunova, V. Karasik, M. Makarov, E. Sheigal et al. Developing the theory of destructiveness and relying on Erich Fromm’s research (1973, we specify the concept of “destructiveness” in relation to the political discourse and compare it with the related concept of aggressiveness. The paper analyses the category of destructiveness in modern US political discourse, using excerpts from the speeches of the candidates for presidency of 2016. Particular attention is paid to the dominant destructive intention - to harm the reputation of the opponent and reduce his political chances, as well as to the functions of verbal aggression: on the one hand - to discredit the opponent, bring accusations, on the other hand - to poison the audience mind against him/her and arouse the feeling of danger posed by a political opponent. The analysis of verbal and nonverbal means of destructiveness in the US political discourse is carried out. The article concludes that abusive remarks of politicians do not result from spontaneous emotional outburst, but from an elaborated destructive strategy where the agonistic nature of political discourse stipulates the use of instrumental aggression (Buss, 1971 for the sake of the conquest of power, lowering the

  8. Arctic indigenous peoples as representations and representatives of climate change.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Martello, Marybeth Long

    2008-06-01

    Recent scientific findings, as presented in the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment (ACIA), indicate that climate change in the Arctic is happening now, at a faster rate than elsewhere in the world, and with major implications for peoples of the Arctic (especially indigenous peoples) and the rest of the planet. This paper examines scientific and political representations of Arctic indigenous peoples that have been central to the production and articulation of these claims. ACIA employs novel forms and strategies of representation that reflect changing conceptual models and practices of global change science and depict indigenous peoples as expert, exotic, and at-risk. These portrayals emerge alongside the growing political activism of Arctic indigenous peoples who present themselves as representatives or embodiments of climate change itself as they advocate for climate change mitigation policies. These mutually constitutive forms of representation suggest that scientific ways of seeing the global environment shape and are shaped by the public image and voice of global citizens. Likewise, the authority, credibility, and visibility of Arctic indigenous activists derive, in part, from their status as at-risk experts, a status buttressed by new scientific frameworks and methods that recognize and rely on the local experiences and knowledges of indigenous peoples. Analyses of these relationships linking scientific and political representations of Arctic climate change build upon science and technology studies (STS) scholarship on visualization, challenge conventional notions of globalization, and raise questions about power and accountability in global climate change research.

  9. Citizenship Education and the Politics of Public Participation: The Case of Same-Sex Marriage

    Science.gov (United States)

    Diorio, Joseph A.

    2011-01-01

    Citizenship education programs promote political participation by young people. These programs risk misrepresenting politics to students by encouraging them to believe that there are universally accepted principles which govern the definition of citizenship and who is entitled to participate in its various dimensions. The article argues that…

  10. Young people, parents and radical right voting. The case of the Swiss People's Party

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Coffé, H.R.; Voorpostel, M.B.J.

    2010-01-01

    It is commonly found that young people tend to adopt the political party choice of their parents. However, far less is known about the applicability of this theory when investigating radical right support. Using the Swiss Household panel data (1999e2007), this study empirically identifies the

  11. Understanding political development through an intersectionality framework: Life stories of disability activists

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Akemi Nishida

    2016-05-01

    Full Text Available This article explores how those who do not share their marginalized identities with their surrounding people (e.g., family members and thus community resources relating to these identities, initiate and experience political development. The concept of intersectionality is used as an analytical tool to examine how one's political development is mediated via one's intersecting identities, communities, and experience of social in/justices. Life story interviews were conducted with disabled activists to explore this question. The stories reveal how these activists, who had initially resisted identifying as disabled for various reasons, eventually used the politicizing experiences from nondisability identities and communities to reframe and reclaim their disability status. By tracing the political developments of disabled people, this article places importance on understanding the process in a holistic way and on developing activist communities and movements that acknowledge intersecting identities and in/justices.

  12. Latin American integration and sub-regionalization: political and ideological dimension

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    D. A. Kuznetsov

    2015-01-01

    Full Text Available The article analyses regionalism and regionalization in modern Latin America paying special attention to political and ideological factors, which have already shifted political and economic landscape of Latin America and encouraged sub-regional differentiation, with each of the sub-regional integration association following its own (and sometimes competing development pattern. At the same time the region witnesses the consolidation of UNASUR that assumes a leading role trying to converge the sub-regional alternative patterns and to strengthen political and economic ties, based on regional leadership of Brazil, civilizational unity and imminent security threats. The author also uses comparative method to speculate on the model of Latin American integration. 

  13. Exploring Students’ Politeness Perspectives at the State University Of Makassar

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Murni Mahmud

    2018-02-01

    Full Text Available This paper’s main focus is to explore the perspectives of politeness practices of the English students at the State University of Makassar. The main questions to be explored are the important roles of politeness in the class and indicators of polite and impolite behaviors in the class. The subject of this research is the English Literature students of Faculty of Languages and Literature, State University of Makassar. To collect data, an open-ended questionnaire was distributed to one class of English Literature department, consisting of 20 students. This questionnaire was analyzed descriptively. Students’ perspectives of politeness practices were discussed in relation to politeness framework of Brown and Levinson (1987. The results of the research show that English students perceived that politeness has important roles in the classroom interaction. According to them, politeness is a need in education, a strategy to build character, and as a motivation. In addition, the students perceived some impolite and polite behaviors in the class which should be given attention in order to create effective learning and teaching process such as being on time and not getting angry in the class. Findings from this study become input for teachers and students in an effort to create effective classroom interaction.

  14. Ideologies' Role in Africa's Political Underdevelopment | Dukor ...

    African Journals Online (AJOL)

    Ideology is the theoretical and practical mirror through which the society is viewed. It gives social, political and economic direction to governments and their policy makers. But a particular ideology could be of disservice to a particular people at a particular time. And in the. African situation, some ideologies, instead of serving ...

  15. "The Politics of Location": Text as Opposition.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Moreno, Renee

    Eduardo Galeano's "Memory of Fire: Genesis" raises a number of questions concerning the "politics of location," a term that may be defined as the intersections, tensions, and complications that people of color bring to space and what space means in terms of hierarchies and power, racial and gender stratifications. Text can also…

  16. Western Political Consulting Techniques and Post-Soviet Political Technology in Political Campaigns in Latvia

    OpenAIRE

    Bērziņa, Ieva

    2012-01-01

    Western Political Consulting Techniques and Post-Soviet Political Technology in Political Campaigns in Latvia Ieva Dmitričenko Keywords: political campaignsm political consulting, political technology, parties, marketing, media Political campaigning is an international phenomenon, because there is a free flow of information, knowledge and human resource among practitioners of political campaigning in various countries. As a result political campaigning techniques that have proven to ...

  17. THE EFFECT OF IRANIAN FEMALE EFL LEARNERS’ POLITENESS STRATEGIES AWARENESS ON THEIR LETTER WRITING ABILITY

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Faezeh Yousefian Dastmalchi

    2014-12-01

    Full Text Available This research examines the effect of teaching politeness strategies based on the models proposed by Brown and Levinson (1987 and Leech (1983 to intermediate English learners on their ability in writing more polite letters. The instrumentation includes an IELTS test, used as a placement test, an inventory, used to measure learners’ awareness of politeness strategies, and a letter-writing test, used as a measurement of learners’ ability in using politeness strategies. Among all the participants, twenty of them were put in the control group, and twenty-four of them in the experimental group, who went under the treatment. They were taught how to write politely based on the politeness strategy models proposed by Brown and Levinson (1987 and Leech (1983. After the treatment, learners wrote letters to the same people with the same situations. Comparing the twenty learners in the control group with the twenty-four learners in experimental group, the researchers concluded that the treatment had a significant effect on the learners’ ability in writing more polite letters. They selected to use more formal strategies with those who they saw further distance with, and more informal strategies with more intimate people. Furthermore, the answers the learners provided to the questions of the inventory offered more awareness of politeness strategies. This implies that they were more aware of various choices of polite language that were available for them to use in the given situations.

  18. Ambiguity Produces Attention Shifts in Category Learning

    Science.gov (United States)

    Vadillo, Miguel A.; Orgaz, Cristina; Luque, David; Nelson, James Byron

    2016-01-01

    It has been suggested that people and nonhuman animals protect their knowledge from interference by shifting attention toward the context when presented with information that contradicts their previous beliefs. Despite that suggestion, no studies have directly measured changes in attention while participants are exposed to an interference…

  19. Automata for the People: Machine Noise and Attention

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    David Ellison

    2012-11-01

    Full Text Available This article examines the production and reception of incidental machine noise, specifically the variably registered sounds emanating from automata in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The argument proposed here is that the audience for automata performances demonstrated a capacity to screen out mechanical noise that may have otherwise interfered with the narrative theatricality of their display. In this regard the audience may be said to resemble auditors at musical performances who learned to suppress the various noises associated with the physical mechanics of performance, and the faculty of attention itself. For William James among others, attention demands selection among competing stimuli. As the incidental noise associated with automata disappears from sensibility over time, its capacity to signify in other contexts emerges. In the examples traced here, such noise is a means of distinguishing a specifically etherealised human-machine interaction. This is in sharp distinction from other more degrading forms of relationship such as the sound of bodies labouring at machines. In this regard, the barely detected sound of the automata in operation may be seen as a precursor to the white noise associated with modern, corporate productivity.

  20. The Partisan Brain: An Identity-Based Model of Political Belief.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Van Bavel, Jay J; Pereira, Andrea

    2018-03-01

    Democracies assume accurate knowledge by the populace, but the human attraction to fake and untrustworthy news poses a serious problem for healthy democratic functioning. We articulate why and how identification with political parties - known as partisanship - can bias information processing in the human brain. There is extensive evidence that people engage in motivated political reasoning, but recent research suggests that partisanship can alter memory, implicit evaluation, and even perceptual judgments. We propose an identity-based model of belief for understanding the influence of partisanship on these cognitive processes. This framework helps to explain why people place party loyalty over policy, and even over truth. Finally, we discuss strategies for de-biasing information processing to help to create a shared reality across partisan divides. Copyright © 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

  1. Does attention bias modification improve attentional control? A double-blind randomized experiment with individuals with social anxiety disorder.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Heeren, Alexandre; Mogoaşe, Cristina; McNally, Richard J; Schmitz, Anne; Philippot, Pierre

    2015-01-01

    People with anxiety disorders often exhibit an attentional bias for threat. Attention bias modification (ABM) procedure may reduce this bias, thereby diminishing anxiety symptoms. In ABM, participants respond to probes that reliably follow non-threatening stimuli (e.g., neutral faces) such that their attention is directed away from concurrently presented threatening stimuli (e.g., disgust faces). Early studies showed that ABM reduced anxiety more than control procedures lacking any contingency between valenced stimuli and probes. However, recent work suggests that no-contingency training and training toward threat cues can be as effective as ABM in reducing anxiety, implying that any training may increase executive control over attention, thereby helping people inhibit their anxious thoughts. Extending this work, we randomly assigned participants with DSM-IV diagnosed social anxiety disorder to either training toward non-threat (ABM), training toward threat, or no-contingency condition, and we used the attention network task (ANT) to assess all three components of attention. After two training sessions, subjects in all three conditions exhibited indistinguishably significant declines from baseline to post-training in self-report and behavioral measures of anxiety on an impromptu speech task. Moreover, all groups exhibited similarly significant improvements on the alerting and executive (but not orienting) components of attention. Implications for ABM research are discussed. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

  2. Power and participatory politics in the digital age : probing the use of new media technologies in railroading political changes in Zimbabwe

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Mutsvairo, Bruce

    2013-01-01

    The Zimbabwean issue has often divided opinion. President Robert Mugabe's domination of the country’s political and media landscapes has attracted scrutiny and criticism from the West. The "oppressed" people of Zimbabwe are said to have not had an alternative to state-sponsored TV or daily media

  3. The Prediction of Political Competencies by Political Action and Political Media Consumption

    Science.gov (United States)

    Reichert, Frank

    2014-01-01

    Political competencies are often considered a precondition for political action; however, they are not independent of previous political participation, which may also include the frequency and the kind of political media consumption. My research aims at finding out the importance of participation in political activities in the past, as well as…

  4. Review Article: The New Political Economy of Skill Formation

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Vanhuysse, Pieter

    2008-01-01

    affordable, high-quality childcare and cognitive as well as behavioral skills in schooling, and to protect valuable asset-specific skill investments. These are important messages for policymakers, and they open up promising avenues for future research on the cognitive, behavioral, and micro-political sources......This article reviews the emerging literatures on public policies to invest in, and protect, human capital and valuable asset-specific skills. Special attention is given to two recent books on the topic: James Heckman and Alan Krueger's (2003) Inequality in America, and Torben Iversen's (2005......) Capitalism, Democracy, and Welfare. The article argues that, cumulatively, the literatures in economics, politics, sociology and political economy show that human capital policies can be institutional sources of competitive economic advantage. Efficiency can be boosted by strategies aiming both to provide...

  5. Politics in a New Key: Breaking the Cycle of U.S. Politics with a Generational/Developmental Approach

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Ken White

    2010-03-01

    Full Text Available Some common, mental models shape how people in the US perceive political changes over time. The one-dimensional pendulum swing model and the two-dimensional cyclical model are prevalent. When generational differences are mapped onto such political change cycles, they orient to cohorts or age groups. This leads to viewing generational cohorts as experiencing one- or two-dimensional cycles without deeper scrutiny. Cohort differences that surface in the Generations Salons that I and others conducted in California suggest a different, three-dimensional model may be more representative of the potential for societal change in the US. Using a musical metaphor, that model is explained in terms of different political “keys” and the value of distinguishing among them as time passes. It also underlies a speculation about a “politics in a new key,” which might prove more useful.Summary-level reporting of the action research conducted with the Generations Salons supports the three-dimensional model. We expect new politics to emerge from the Millennial cohort coming of age now, yet it will not be without the support and wisdom of the cohorts that came of age before it. This must be the case if the burden of expectations we place on the Millennials will indeed pave the way for transformative change in US society. Intergenerational support of Millennials is essential. This initial research and application suggests the potential for the generational/ developmental approach as a wellspring for transformational—and practically successful—political work. It begs the question: What will you do to help?

  6. Politics in a New Key: Breaking the Cycle of U.S. Politics with a Generational/Developmental Approach

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Ken White

    2010-03-01

    Full Text Available Some common, mental models shape how people in the US perceive political changes over time. The one-dimensional pendulum swing model and the two-dimensional cyclical model are prevalent. When generational differences are mapped onto such political change cycles, they orient to cohorts or age groups. This leads to viewing generational cohorts as experiencing one- or two-dimensional cycles without deeper scrutiny. Cohort differences that surface in the Generations Salons that I and others conducted in California suggest a different, three-dimensional model may be more representative of the potential for societal change in the US. Using a musical metaphor, that model is explained in terms of different political “keys” and the value of distinguishing among them as time passes. It also underlies a speculation about a “politics in a new key,” which might prove more useful. Summary-level reporting of the action research conducted with the Generations Salons supports the three-dimensional model. We expect new politics to emerge from the Millennial cohort coming of age now, yet it will not be without the support and wisdom of the cohorts that came of age before it. This must be the case if the burden of expectations we place on the Millennials will indeed pave the way for transformative change in US society. Intergenerational support of Millennials is essential. This initial research and application suggests the potential for the generational/ developmental approach as a wellspring for transformational—and practically successful—political work. It begs the question: What will you do to help?

  7. Political participation, digital democracy and e-citizenship for the protagonism of adolescents and young people

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Juan Bautista Martínez Rodríguez

    2011-08-01

    Full Text Available This article presents the political, legal and educational for the participation of adolescents and youth in public and political, for it deals with digital citizenship: how adolescents and youth policy reconstruct inhabiting public spaces. We present the e‐Participation and the production of social gaps, cultural and political under the idea that the public is no longer common. Are some suggestions from the theory of communication and power in order to identify those who have power and where to find them. It is suggested to know the mindset of teens and their modes of interpretation that structure and give meaning to the messages circulating on the networks to increase capacity to produce their own messages. The article proposes deliberative policy for media education and the use of social networks.

  8. THE POLITICS OF MULTICULTURALISM OF THE TOWANI TOLOTANG MINORITY IN SOUTH SULAWESI

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Zuly Qodir

    2013-06-01

    Full Text Available This article provides a description of the ethnographical and political issues of the minority group located in South Sulawesi, i.e. the believers of Towani Tolotang that still exist there even in the national political scene as they have representatives in the legislature. The community seems to be playing the politics of Towani Tolotang accommodating and making use of the will of the political regime of Muslims and Hindus, where both of them are scrambling for mutual acknowledgment and entering into the tradition of the religion: Islam or Hinduism. As a minority group, the Towani Tolotang community has a variety of strategies to survive and fight in various kinds of interest. Economic and political gain, and commodification of ethnicity and religion are rampant in the area due to decentralization. This article is based on field library and research on the minority people who have been dealing with political suppression and discriminatory treatment. Keywords: Towani, Tolotang and minority, political rights.

  9. Unconventional Participation in Time of Crisis: How Ideology Shapes Citizens’ Political Actions

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Vincenzo Memoli

    2016-04-01

    Full Text Available Since democracy requires the involvement of citizens, the topic of political participation has attracted great attention from both practitioners and scholars. During the current financial and economic crisis, there have been various protest movements in many European countries. In this paper, which employs data from the European Social Survey and analyzes some European countries using a longitudinal study (2002-2012, I measure unconventional political participation considering three types of action - signed a petition, participated in a lawful demonstration and joined a boycott. By linking citizens to government ideology and vote for party government to political action through a multilevel model, this paper argues that both ideology and citizens’ electoral choices have a bearing on unconventional political participation. In times of crisis, government choices do not feed the level of unconventional political participation. However, differences emerge in terms of political behavior when I consider citizens’ ideology, loser status and government ideology.

  10. Politics, the Media, and the Right to Know.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Berry, John; And Others

    1992-01-01

    Report on the 1992 American Library Association (ALA) conference discusses featured speakers, political actions of the ALA Council, guidelines on patron behavior, the resignation of ALA Executive Director Linda Crismond, and conference exhibits. Excerpts from an address by new ALA president Marilyn Miller on empowering people through libraries are…

  11. Generating political priority for regulatory interventions targeting obesity prevention: an Australian case study.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Baker, Phillip; Gill, Timothy; Friel, Sharon; Carey, Gemma; Kay, Adrian

    2017-03-01

    Effective obesity prevention requires a synergistic mix of population-level interventions including a strong role for government and the regulation of the marketing, labelling, content and pricing of energy-dense foods and beverages. In this paper we adopt the agenda of the Australian Federal Government (AFG) as a case study to understand the factors generating or hindering political priority for such 'regulatory interventions' between 1990 and 2011. Using a theoretically-guided process tracing method we undertook documentary analysis and conducted 27 interviews with a diversity of actors involved in obesity politics. The analysis was structured by a theoretical framework comprising four dimensions: the power of actors involved; the ideas the actors deploy to interpret and portray the issue; the institutional and political context; and issue characteristics. Despite two periods of sustained political attention, political priority for regulatory interventions did not emerge and was hindered by factors from all four dimensions. Within the public health community, limited cohesion among experts and advocacy groups hampered technical responses and collective action efforts. An initial focus on children (child obesity), framing the determinants of obesity as 'obesogenic environments', and the deployment of 'protecting kids', 'industry demonization' and 'economic costs' frames generated political attention. Institutional norms within government effectively selected out regulatory interventions from consideration. The 'productive power' and activities of the food and advertising industries presented formidable barriers, buttressed by a libertarian/neolibertarian rhetoric emphasizing individual responsibility, a negative view of freedom (as free from 'nanny-state' intervention) and the idea that regulation imposes an unacceptable cost on business. Issue complexity, the absence of a supportive evidence base and a strict 'evidence-based' policy-making approach were used as

  12. Feminism and Critical Political Economy of Communication

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Mojca Pajnik

    2015-03-01

    Full Text Available The article deals with the study of feminist analysis in the field of political economy of communication. We discuss feminisms that flirt with Marxism, socialist and radical feminism, in the light of the importance of studies in the field of communication. We highlight the relevance of the feminist critique of Marxism, drawing attention to the engendered class and addressing the inequalities of capitalist society, not only in the sphere of production but also with relation to the reproductive labor. We introduce notions of “capitalist patriarchy” and “sex class” in order to emphasize the dialectical relationship between the class stratification and hierarchical structuring of capitalist society. We problematize the decline of the materialist perspectives in feminist critique as a turn to discourse and ideology while marginalizing class as an analytical category. In this article, we introduce an intersectional understanding of gender that contributes to gender de-essencialization and de-homogenization. Attention is also paid to prospects for the feminist political economy of communication today, to how it is constituted and what types of analyses it brings and why it is important for the understanding of contemporary society and the processes of communication.

  13. Back to the USSR: How Colors Might Shape the Political Perception of East versus West.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Gebauer, Fabian; Raab, Marius H; Carbon, Claus-Christian

    2016-01-01

    People typically process information to confirm their prior held attitudes and stereotypes. As the political relations between NATO and Russia have distinctively drifted apart in recent years, we were interested in how far old-established color depictions referring to the Cold War's demarcations (USSR = red; NATO = blue) might reinforce people's political perception of an East versus West antagonism nowadays. Participants received a fabricated news article in which both world powers were either depicted on a map as Russia = red and NATO = blue or vice versa (Study 1). Testing a different sample in Study 2, we fully removed color assignments and used hachured distinctions or no distinctions at all. We revealed that perceived political distance between both sides increased particularly for participants with negative attitudes toward Russia, but only when Russia was depicted in red. Thus, colors referring to the old-established Cold War patterns can indeed shape the political perception and reinforce stereotypical East versus West thinking.

  14. Selling the Space Telescope - The interpenetration of science, technology, and politics

    Science.gov (United States)

    Smith, Robert W.

    1991-01-01

    Attention is given to the politics of initiating the Space Telescope program and to the manner in which the coalition, or working consensus, for the Telescope was assembled, in particular, the role played by astronomers. It is contended that what ensued was a case study in the influence of government patronage on a large-scale scientific and technological program. It is concluded that while a politically feasible Space Telescope did result, in the selling process the Telescope had been both oversold and underfunded.

  15. The politics of vulnerability and resilience

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Georg Frerks

    2011-12-01

    Full Text Available Much conceptual confusion exists over the concepts of vulnerability and (social resilience, reinforced by the different paradigms (the article identifies four and disciplinary traditions underlying their use. While since the 1980s the social construction of "vulnerability" as a driver for disaster received considerable attention, in recent years we have seen increased attention to people's capacities and resilience. The currently popular "complexity" approach to risk moreover appears to offer ways of breaking through entrenched vulnerabilities. Resilience however is also a political project which, we argue, also has its dark, conservative overtones and overlooks structural sources of vulnerability that continue to affect hazard-prone actors. We may therefore need to conceive resilience as the potential for social transformation after disaster.Existe muita confusão conceitual em torno dos conceitos de vulnerabilidade e resiliência (social, reforçada pela diferença de paradigmas (este artigo identifica quarto e tradições disciplinares subjacentes à sua utilização. Enquanto desde os anos 80 a construção social de "vulnerabilidade" como condutor para desastres recebeu atenção considerável, nos últimos anos temos visto maior atenção às capacidades e resiliência das pessoas. Atualmente popular, a abordagem da "complexidade" do risco, além disso, parece oferecer maneiras transformadoras através das vulnerabilidades enraizadas. No entanto, defendemos que a resiliência é um projeto político que também tem seus sombrios sobretons conservadores e omite fontes estruturais de vulnerabilidade que continuam a afetar os atores propensos ao risco. Podemos, portanto, precisar conceber a resiliência como potencial para transformação social depois de desastres.

  16. WHY THE SUDDEN CHANGE OF THE POLITICAL REGIME IS DETERMINING RISK IN ECONOMY AND SOCIETY?

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Ion Lucian MEHEDINTI

    2014-06-01

    Full Text Available In this article the authors aim to gather an in-depth understanding of the evolution of manking throughout the history and its political regimes, and in the same time are analizing and determining the components of the social function that exercised a great influence on the stability and dynamics of the production and consumption, pointing out that any social organization that wants to remain rational should have as a primary objective the happiness of the people, that so called,“general happiness”, that could only be achieved through education, culture, raising people's moral and intellectual knowledge. Since any political system does not seek the general good, but the one of some persons or a specific group of people, there is only very little communion between them and the people or is entirely missing and for these reasons their reign won’t be long, because the people are always wanting a political change. This "social problem" occurred because of some significant social movements, socialist doctrines whose effects still persist in present times. The efforts of the profound thinkers and mankind throughout the history, with all the positive developments did not materialize in achieving a society in which wealth is equitably distributed, where the contributions of the people in getting them is equally shared that could satisfy the requirements and the needs of the majority members of the society. In all the transformations and society changes or the political regime of the state, the human being represented the base, with its unlimited evolution and thinking, and all of these were achieved in time and were given by a certain social environment. The human being can not be separated from its social environment. He is born to live in the society, but the freedom can not be unlimited of course. The history has shown that all the hasty attempts suffered the same fate and the only sustainable progress made by the people were those who came out

  17. Sports, Global Politics, and Social Value Change: A Research Agenda

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Lars Rensmann

    2015-11-01

    Full Text Available Despite their important role in forging, constructing and self-ascribing social identities and shaping popular culture, sports have long been a marginalized subject of social science inquiry, cultural studies, and research on international politics. Only in recent years this has begun to change. The article seeks to advance the still nascent but emerging cross-disciplinary field of research on sports and global politics in two ways: first, by addressing largely unexplored issues of sports, politics, and social conflicts, putting the spotlight on sociopolitical arenas beyond commercialized sports mega events, which have attracted most scholarly attention in contemporary research; and second, by generating hypotheses on the indirect political effects of sports cultures, in particular on the relationship between local social identities—reinforced through sports—and cosmopolitan value change. These interlinked spatial and substantive claims ground a new critical research framework and agenda: it examines sports as profoundly embedded in socioeconomic, cultural and political forms of rule and domination but also seeks to disclose sports’ emancipatory and subversive potential in advancing globalization from below.

  18. Cabinet Governance and Political Stability in English Urban Councils

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Stephen Greasley

    2011-12-01

    Full Text Available Policy-makers have long been concerned with the quality of local political leadership and have often resorted to institutional reform to try to improve political leadership. This paper looks at a specific and neglected facet of the political management reforms that have been implemented in English local government over the last decade: the tenure and turnover of cabinet members. The tenure of top politicians may be an important influence on the performance of local government particularly when political management is designed to favour individualised leadership. On the one hand, excessively short tenures for top politicians may damage the ability of governments to develop strategic plans and ensure they are implemented while on the other hand the risk of loss of office is central to political accountability and excessively long tenures may be indicative of an insulated and unresponsive elite. While some research attention has been paid to the tenures of leaders of councils in England there is little systematic information about the tenure of cabinet members. This paper discusses the relevance of cabinet stability and provides an overview of recent experience in England.

  19. Political Concepts for the Ethical Debate on Dilemmas on Assisted Suicide and Euthanasia

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Roberto Israel Rodríguez Soriano

    2015-09-01

    Full Text Available This essay is a reflection on some of the political elements embedded in the ethical problems of medically assisted suicide and euthanasia. The thesis work is that political theoretical founda­tions of modern nations are aimed to protect the lives of people, a fact that responds to a series of historical processes of the very development of modern political theory. These fundamentals directly affect the cultural and political positions for the refusal to accept the legalization or regulation of the two practices in question, thus denying the right of self-determination in human decision making on the own life and death.

  20. The politics of municipal fragmentation in Ghana

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Abdulai Kuyini Mohammed

    2015-06-01

    Full Text Available The scholarly debate over the rival merits of local government consolidation and fragmentation is an old but enduring one. However, in this debate very little attention has been focused on the political dimension of council amalgamation and fragmentation – yet political considerations play a central role in both the formulation and outcomes of de-concentration policy. The purpose of this article is to fill a gap in the literature by examining local government fragmentation in Ghana from 1988 to 2014. The article does this by identifying the key players and analysing their interests and gains, as well as the tensions arising from the fragmentation exercise. The implications from the Ghanaian case for more general theories of fragmentation are drawn out.

  1. The Politics of Trade and Industrial Policy in Africa: Forced ...

    International Development Research Centre (IDRC) Digital Library (Canada)

    1 janv. 2004 ... Previously, Dr Ogbu spent 10 years working for the International ... Political Economy in memory of the Swedish Nobel Laureate, Gunnar Myrdal. ... virus ébolique dévastateur en 2014, une attention accrue a été accordée aux ...

  2. Understanding How Young People Do Activism: Youth Strategies on Sexual Health in Ecuador and Peru

    Science.gov (United States)

    Coe, Anna-Britt; Goicolea, Isabel; Hurtig, Anna-Karin; San Sebastian, Miguel

    2015-01-01

    While social movement research employs "tactical repertoire" to emphasize protest tactics directed at the state, literature on youth activism globally indicates that young people do politics outside the realm of formal political spheres. Youth activism on body politics in Latin America offers evidence that enhances conceptual tools…

  3. Attentional bias modification for addictive behaviors: clinical implications.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Cox, W Miles; Fadardi, Javad S; Intriligator, James M; Klinger, Eric

    2014-06-01

    When a person has a goal of drinking alcohol or using another addictive substance, the person appears to be automatically distracted by stimuli related to the goal. Because the attentional bias might propel the person to use the substance, an intervention might help modify it. In this article, we discuss techniques that have been developed to help people overcome their attentional bias for alcohol, smoking-related stimuli, drugs, or unhealthy food. We also discuss how these techniques are being adapted for use on mobile devices. The latter would allow people with an addictive behavior to use the attentional training in privacy and as frequently as needed. The attentional training techniques discussed here appear to have several advantages. They are inexpensive, can be fun to use, and have flexibility in when, where, and how often they are used. The evidence so far also suggests that they are effective.

  4. CHANGING UNIVERSITY STUDENT POLITICS IN SRI LANKA: FROM NORM ORIENTED TO VALUE ORIENTED STUDENT MOVEMENTS

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Gamini Samaranayake

    2015-10-01

    Full Text Available This paper analyzes the causes of student political activism in Sri Lankan universities by paying attention to the history of student politics starting from the 1960s when the first traces of such activism can be traced. Towards this end, it makes use of the analytical framework proposed by David Finlay that explains certain conditions under which students may be galvanized to engage in active politics. Analyzing different socio-political contexts that gave rise to these movements, and the responses of incumbent governments to such situations, it concludes that in order to mitigate the risk of youth getting involved in violent politics, it is necessary to address larger structural issues of inequality.

  5. The use of stereotypes and individuating information in political person perception.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Crawford, Jarret T; Jussim, Lee; Madon, Stephanie; Cain, Thomas R; Stevens, Sean T

    2011-04-01

    This article introduces the political person perception model, which identifies conditions under which perceivers rely on stereotypes (party membership), individuating information (issue position), or both in political person perception. Three studies supported the model's predictions. Study 1 showed that perceivers gave primacy to target information that was narrowly relevant to a judgment, whether that information was stereotypic or individuating. Study 2 found that perceivers relied exclusively on individuating information when it was narrowly relevant to the judgment and relied on both stereotype and individuating information when individuating information was not narrowly relevant to the judgment but did imply a political ideology. Study 3 replicated these findings in a more ecologically valid context and showed that people relied on party information in the absence of narrowly relevant policy positions and when individuating information did not imply a political ideology. Implications for political person perception and theories of stereotyping are discussed.

  6. Network advocacy and the emergence of global attention to newborn survival.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Shiffman, Jeremy

    2016-04-01

    Globally 2.9 million babies die each year before reaching 28 days of life. Over the past quarter century, neonatal mortality has declined at a slower pace than post-neonatal under-five mortality: in consequence newborns now comprise 44% of all deaths to children under five years. Despite high numbers of newborn deaths, global organizations and national governments paid little attention to the issue until 2000, and resources, while growing since then, remain inadequate. This study examines the factors behind these patterns of policy attention: the delayed emergence of attention, its sudden appearance in 2000, its growth thereafter, but the dearth of resources to date. Drawing on a framework on global health networks grounded in collective action theory, the study finds that a newborn survival network helped to shift perceptions about the problem's severity and tractability, contributing to the rise of global attention. Its efforts were facilitated by pressure on governments to achieve the child survival Millennium Development Goal and by growing awareness that the neonatal period constituted a growing percentage of under-five mortality, a fact the network publicized. The network's relatively recent emergence, its predominantly technical rather than political composition and strategies, and its inability to date to find a framing of the issue that has convinced national political leaders of the issue's urgency, in part explain the insufficiency of resources. However, since 2010 a number of non-health oriented inter-governmental organizations have begun to pay attention to the issue, and several countries with high neonatal mortality have created national plans, developments which augur well for the future. The study points to two broader implications concerning how neglected global health issues come to attract attention: priority emerges from a confluence of factors, rather than any single cause; and growth in priority may depend on the creation of a broader

  7. Personal Autonomy, Psychological Sense of Community, and Political Ideology.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Fox, Dennis R.

    Political debates often mask underlying differences in people's assumptions about natural behaviors and appropriate values. Ten individuals who had written letters to newspapers from nonmainstream perspectives (from right-wing libertarian to left-wing revolutionary communist) participated in three or four intensive, open-ended, semistructured…

  8. POLITICAL COERCION IN THE REFORMATION ERA IN BULELENG REGENCY IN THE PERSPECTIVE OF CULTURAL STUDIES

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Pande Made Suputra

    2012-11-01

    Full Text Available During the reformation era much political coercion took place in Buleleng Regency, Bali.Such political coercion occured repeatedly in the general election referred to as Pemiluconducted in 1999 and 2004, and in the election conducted to directly vote for district headsreferred to as Pilkada in 2007. It is interesting to investigate this phenomenon. The problems inthis study are formulated as follows: (1 what factors causing political coercion to take place inthe general election and in the election conducted to directly vote for district heads; (2 how ittook place; and 3 what ideology leading to it and what implications it had on the socio-cultureof the people living in Buleleng Regency?The practical theory, the theory of coercion and the theory of ideology were eclecticallyadopted to establish and analyze concepts. Qualitative method is employed and the data neededwere collected by observation, in-depth interview, and documentation study.The results of the study show: first, the factors causing political coercion to take placevaried; second, six cases of political coercion in Buleleng Regency did not take place suddenly,but through processes and were related to the cultural coercion inherent within local individualsand groups; third, they took place through semiologic deconstruction related to themeaningfulness provided by the common people and political elites to the ‘pemilu and pilkada’.Thus, the ideologies responsible for political coercion were paternalism, binary opposition ,pragmatism and ‘premanisme’ (the broker of coercion ; fourth, the implications the cases ofpolitical coercion had on the people in Buleleng Regency were: the pattern of kinship becamebroken, the culture of physical coercion shifted to the culture of symbolic and economiccoercion; a new consensus was established.The conclusions withdrawn in this study show that the characteristics of the politicalcoercion taking place in Buleleng Regency during the reformation

  9. Space, politics, and the political

    OpenAIRE

    dikec , mustafa

    1987-01-01

    International audience; Introduction Geography and politics'', Gottmann wrote in 1980, ``have long been in search of each other'' (page 11). Debates in the literature suggest not only that they have found each other, but also that the encounter has instigated, notably in the last decade or so, a body of literature seeking to think space politically, and to think politics spatially. This is not to suggest that previous work on space was apolitical, nor to suggest that previous work on politics...

  10. How Neighborhoods Influence Health: Lessons to be learned from the application of political ecology

    Science.gov (United States)

    Chitewere, Tendai; Shim, Janet K.; Barker, Judith C.; Yen, Irene H.

    2017-01-01

    AIM This paper articulates how political ecology can be a useful tool for asking fundamental questions and applying relevant methods to investigate structures that impact relationship between neighborhood and health. Through a narrative analysis, we identify how political ecology can develop our future agendas for neighborhood-health research as it relates to social, political, environmental, and economic structures. Political ecology makes clear the connection between political economy and neighborhood by highlighting the historical and structural processes that produce and maintain social inequality, which affect health and well-being. These concepts encourage researchers to examine how people construct neighborhood and health in different ways that, in turn, can influence different health outcomes and, thus, efforts to address solutions. PMID:28342425

  11. Adaptation as a political process: adjusting to drought and conflict in Kenya's drylands.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Eriksen, Siri; Lind, Jeremy

    2009-05-01

    In this article, we argue that people's adjustments to multiple shocks and changes, such as conflict and drought, are intrinsically political processes that have uneven outcomes. Strengthening local adaptive capacity is a critical component of adapting to climate change. Based on fieldwork in two areas in Kenya, we investigate how people seek to access livelihood adjustment options and promote particular adaptation interests through forming social relations and political alliances to influence collective decision-making. First, we find that, in the face of drought and conflict, relations are formed among individuals, politicians, customary institutions, and government administration aimed at retaining or strengthening power bases in addition to securing material means of survival. Second, national economic and political structures and processes affect local adaptive capacity in fundamental ways, such as through the unequal allocation of resources across regions, development policy biased against pastoralism, and competition for elected political positions. Third, conflict is part and parcel of the adaptation process, not just an external factor inhibiting local adaptation strategies. Fourth, there are relative winners and losers of adaptation, but whether or not local adjustments to drought and conflict compound existing inequalities depends on power relations at multiple geographic scales that shape how conflicting interests are negotiated locally. Climate change adaptation policies are unlikely to be successful or minimize inequity unless the political dimensions of local adaptation are considered; however, existing power structures and conflicts of interests represent political obstacles to developing such policies.

  12. Associative issue ownership as a determinant of voters’ campaign attention

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Lefevere, J.; Tresch, A.; Walgrave, S.

    2015-01-01

    Campaigns raise public interest in politics and allow parties to convey their messages to voters. However, voters’ exposure and attention during campaigns are biased towards parties and candidates they like. This hinders parties’ ability to reach new voters. This paper theorises and empirically

  13. Infant joint attention, neural networks and social cognition.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Mundy, Peter; Jarrold, William

    2010-01-01

    Neural network models of attention can provide a unifying approach to the study of human cognitive and emotional development (Posner & Rothbart, 2007). In this paper we argue that a neural network approach to the infant development of joint attention can inform our understanding of the nature of human social learning, symbolic thought process and social cognition. At its most basic, joint attention involves the capacity to coordinate one's own visual attention with that of another person. We propose that joint attention development involves increments in the capacity to engage in simultaneous or parallel processing of information about one's own attention and the attention of other people. Infant practice with joint attention is both a consequence and an organizer of the development of a distributed and integrated brain network involving frontal and parietal cortical systems. This executive distributed network first serves to regulate the capacity of infants to respond to and direct the overt behavior of other people in order to share experience with others through the social coordination of visual attention. In this paper we describe this parallel and distributed neural network model of joint attention development and discuss two hypotheses that stem from this model. One is that activation of this distributed network during coordinated attention enhances the depth of information processing and encoding beginning in the first year of life. We also propose that with development, joint attention becomes internalized as the capacity to socially coordinate mental attention to internal representations. As this occurs the executive joint attention network makes vital contributions to the development of human symbolic thinking and social cognition. Copyright © 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

  14. Distribution of attention modulates salience signals in early visual cortex

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Mulckhuyse, M.; Belopolsky, A.V.; Heslenfeld, D.J.; Talsma, D.; Theeuwes, J.

    2011-01-01

    Previous research has shown that the extent to which people spread attention across the visual field plays a crucial role in visual selection and the occurrence of bottom-up driven attentional capture. Consistent with previous findings, we show that when attention was diffusely distributed across

  15. Finding a Place in the Discourse: Film, Literature and the Process of Becoming Politically Subject

    Science.gov (United States)

    McDonnell, Jane

    2014-01-01

    This paper reports on the role of the narrative arts in young people's political subjectivity and democratic learning. Drawing on theoretical insights into the process of subjectification and the relationship between politics and aesthetics, the paper discusses a number of findings from an empirical research project carried out with young people…

  16. Making people be healthy.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Wilkinson, Timothy Martin

    2009-09-01

    How are we supposed to decide the rights and wrongs of banning smoking in bars, restricting adverts for junk food, nagging people into being screened for cancers, or banning the sale of party pills? The aim of this paper is to think through the political ethics of trying to make people healthier through influencing or restricting their choices. This paper covers: (1) Paternalism. What it is, what it assumes. (2) The place of health in well-being, and how this makes paternalism problematic. (3) The mistakes people make in acting in their own interests, and the implications for pro-health paternalism. (4) Autonomy objections to paternalism. The paper (5) finishes on a note of hope, by commending the currently fashionable libertarian paternalism: trying to have one's carrot cake and eat it too. A persistent theme is that thinking sensibly about making people healthier needs subtlety, not broad, ringing declarations.

  17. The deeper sources of political conflict: evidence from the psychological, cognitive, and neuro-sciences.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Hibbing, John R; Smith, Kevin B; Peterson, Johnathan C; Feher, Balazs

    2014-03-01

    Political disputes ruin family reunions, scuttle policy initiatives, and spur violence and even terrorism. We summarize recent research indicating that the source of political differences can be found in biologically instantiated and often subthreshold predispositions as reflected in physiological, cognitive, and neural patterns that incline some people toward innovation and others toward conservatism. These findings suggest the need to revise traditional views that maintain that political opinions are the product of rational, conscious, socialized thought. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

  18. The Political Economy of Corruption and the Role of Financial Institutions

    OpenAIRE

    Kira Boerner; Christa Hainz

    2004-01-01

    In many developing countries, we observe rather high levels of corruption. This is surprising from a political economy perspective, as the majority of people generally suffers from high corruption levels. We explain why citizens do not exert enough political pressure to reduce corruption if financial institutions are missing. Our model is based on the fact that corrupt officials have to pay entry fees to get lucrative positions. The mode of financing this entry fee determines the distribution...

  19. Selective attention, diffused attention, and the development of categorization.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Deng, Wei Sophia; Sloutsky, Vladimir M

    2016-12-01

    How do people learn categories and what changes with development? The current study attempts to address these questions by focusing on the role of attention in the development of categorization. In Experiment 1, participants (adults, 7-year-olds, and 4-year-olds) were trained with novel categories consisting of deterministic and probabilistic features, and their categorization and memory for features were tested. In Experiment 2, participants' attention was directed to the deterministic feature, and in Experiment 3 it was directed to the probabilistic features. Attentional cueing affected categorization and memory in adults and 7-year-olds: these participants relied on the cued features in their categorization and exhibited better memory of cued than of non-cued features. In contrast, in 4-year-olds attentional cueing affected only categorization, but not memory: these participants exhibited equally good memory for both cued and non-cued features. Furthermore, across the experiments, 4-year-olds remembered non-cued features better than adults. These results coupled with computational simulations provide novel evidence (1) pointing to differences in category representation and mechanisms of categorization across development, (2) elucidating the role of attention in the development of categorization, and (3) suggesting an important distinction between representation and decision factors in categorization early in development. These issues are discussed with respect to theories of categorization and its development. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

  20. Selective Attention, Diffused Attention, and the Development of Categorization

    Science.gov (United States)

    Deng, Wei (Sophia); Sloutsky, Vladimir M.

    2016-01-01

    How do people learn categories and what changes with development? The current study attempts to address these questions by focusing on the role of attention in the development of categorization. In Experiment 1, participants (adults, 7-year-olds, and 4-year-olds) were trained with novel categories consisting of deterministic and probabilistic features, and their categorization and memory for features were tested. In Experiment 2, participants’ attention was directed to the deterministic feature, and in Experiment 3 it was directed to the probabilistic features. Attentional cuing affected categorization and memory in adults and 7-year-olds: these participants relied on the cued features in their categorization and exhibited better memory of cued than of non-cued features. In contrast, in 4-year-olds attentional cueing affected only categorization, but not memory: these participants exhibited equally good memory for both cued and non-cued features. Furthermore, across the experiments, 4-year-olds remembered non-cued features better than adults. These results coupled with computational simulations provide novel evidence (1) pointing to differences in category representation and mechanisms of categorization across development, (2) elucidating the role of attention in the development of categorization, and (3) suggesting an important distinction between representation and decision factors in categorization early in development. These issues are discussed with respect to theories of categorization and its development. PMID:27721103

  1. Politics of sustainability in the Arctic - a research agenda

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Gad, Ulrik Pram; Jakobsen, Uffe; Strandsbjerg, Jeppe

    2017-01-01

    and application from the global ecosphere to a regional environment, and, second, how sustainability is again conceptually transformed when meeting Greenlandic ambitions for postcoloniality. This discussion leads us to outline an agenda for how to study the way in which sustainability works as a political concept.......The concept of sustainability has taken centre stage in Arctic politics. However, there is little agreement on what ‘sustainable’ means. For different actors (governments, indigenous people, NGOs, etc.) the concept implies different sets of opportunities and precautions. Sustainability, therefore......, is much more a fundamental idea to be further elaborated depending on contexts than a definable term with a specific meaning. The paper argues a research agenda that aims to map and analyse the role of sustainability in political and economic strategies in the Arctic. Sustainability has become...

  2. Competing sovereignties, contested processes : The politics of food sovereignty construction

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    C. McGee Schiavoni (Christina)

    2014-01-01

    textabstractThis study provides a preliminary theoretical and empirical exploration into how ‘competing sovereignties’ are shaping the political construction of food sovereignty—broadly defined as ‘the right of peoples to healthy and culturally appropriate food produced through ecologically sound

  3. Cognitive rehabilitation for attention deficits following stroke.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Loetscher, Tobias; Lincoln, Nadina B

    2013-05-31

    Many survivors of stroke complain about attentional impairments, such as diminished concentration and mental slowness. However, the effectiveness of cognitive rehabilitation for improving these impairments is uncertain. To determine whether (1) people receiving attentional treatment show better outcomes in their attentional functions than those given no treatment or treatment as usual, and (2) people receiving attentional treatment techniques have a better functional recovery, in terms of independence in activities of daily living, mood and quality of life, than those given no treatment or treatment as usual. We searched the Cochrane Stroke Group Trials Register (October 2012), Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials (CENTRAL) (The Cochrane Library October 2012), MEDLINE (1948 to October 2012), EMBASE (1947 to October 2012), CINAHL (1981 to October 2012), PsycINFO (1806 to October 2012), PsycBITE and REHABDATA (searched October 2012) and ongoing trials registers. We screened reference lists and tracked citations using Scopus. We included randomised controlled trials (RCTs) of cognitive rehabilitation for impairments of attention for people with stroke. The primary outcome was measures of global attentional functions, and secondary outcomes were measures of attention domains, functional abilities, mood and quality of life. Two review authors independently selected trials, extracted data and assessed trial quality. We included six RCTs with 223 participants. All six RCTs compared cognitive rehabilitation with a usual care control. Meta-analyses demonstrated no statistically significant effect of cognitive rehabilitation for persisting effects on global measures of attention (two studies, 99 participants; standardised mean difference (SMD) 0.16, 95% confidence interval (CI) -0.23 to 0.56; P value = 0.41), standardised attention assessments (two studies, 99 participants; P value ≥ 0.08) or functional outcomes (two studies, 99 participants; P value ≥ 0

  4. Me, us, or them: who is more conformist? Perception of conformity and political orientation.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Cavazza, Nicoletta; Mucchi-Faina, Angelica

    2008-06-01

    Research has shown that people perceive others as more vulnerable than themselves to media communication, and their political out-group as more vulnerable than their political in-group. In the present study, the authors predicted that the same two biases would appear with respect to another kind of influence--conformity--but that participants' judgments would display a different pattern according to their political orientations. Right-wing and left-wing university students were asked to evaluate conformity and to estimate how conformist they, their political in-group, their political out-group, and other groups are. As hypothesized, right-wingers expressed more ambivalence toward conformity and viewed it less negatively than did left-wingers. Political orientation had no impact on the discrepancy between self and others, but it did moderate the in-group-out-group discrepancy.

  5. Multicultural Politics In Governor Candidates Of Dki Jakarta 2017 In Tempo.Co

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Diya Sri Widiyanti

    2017-06-01

    Full Text Available The purpose of this research is how to comprehend the politics of Indonesian people for accepting ethnic, racial, religious and tribal diversity in occupying government seat (governor’s election of Jakarta in the context of multicultural country. This research uses Michel Foucaul’s theory, especially in implementing the discourse of  " indigenous Indonesian leader " in people’s mind.  Foucaul’s critical discourse analyses alone does not fully answer the issues of politics in Indonesia, therefore this research also uses Jacques Ranciere's theory in its democratic spirit and the multicultural view of Bhikhu Parekh. The result of the research are society’s heterophobia of multicultural politics, the emerging burden of multicultural politics in Indonesia, antagonism,  failures in politics, and epilogue, becoming a difference border. The conclusion is, issue of SARA (ethnicity, religion, race, intergroups still exists, especially in a country with multicultural status. Politics and multicultural discourses which do not find the logic of the equation is not the dissensus, but consensus.

  6. Public political thought: bridging the sociological-philosophical divide in the study of legitimacy.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Abulof, Uriel

    2016-06-01

    The study of political legitimacy is divided between prescriptive and descriptive approaches. Political philosophy regards legitimacy as principled justification, sociology regards legitimacy as public support. However, all people can, and occasionally do engage in morally reasoning their political life. This paper thus submits that in studying socio-political legitimation - the legitimacy-making process - the philosophical ought and the sociological is can be bridged. I call this construct 'public political thought' (PPT), signifying the public's principled moral reasoning of politics, which need not be democratic or liberal. The paper lays PPT's foundations and identifies its 'builders' and 'building blocks'. I propose that the edifice of PPT is built by moral agents constructing and construing socio-moral order (nomization). PPT's building blocks are justificatory common beliefs (doxa) and the deliberative language of legitimation. I illustrate the merits of this groundwork through two empirical puzzles: the end of apartheid and the emergence of Québécois identity. © London School of Economics and Political Science 2016.

  7. Political Transmigrants: Rethinking Hmong Political Activism in America

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Nengher N. Vang, Ph.D

    2011-12-01

    Full Text Available Since the initial resettlement of the Hmong in the United States in the mid-1970s, they have maintained strong political and military relationships with the Lao People‘s Democratic Republic (LPDR. Yet, there is little research on that relationship and the involvement of the Hmong in the United States in political developments in Laos. Most works on Hmong political activism have focused on the electoral participation and representation of Hmong Americans in relation to American domestic politics. In this article, using archival, ethnographic, and interview data that I have collected between 2006 and 2009 in Laos, Thailand, and the United States, I describe and analyze the non-domestic or transnational form of Hmong American political expression and participation. I argue that Hmong political activism in America not only was transnational from the outset, but that their transnational involvement in political developments in Laos and their relations with the Lao PDR government also had a significant impact on their ethnic politics. Many Hmong political activists made their entry into ethnic politics through the door of transnational politics, and many were motivated by transnational political issues to participate in domestic American politics. By exploring their transnational involvement in political developments in Laos and their relations with the Lao PDR government, we get a more complete and dynamic understanding of Hmong political activism in the United States than is possible by focusing exclusively on domestic and electoral participation. Examining their transnational politics also allows us to see the transnationality of not only their culture, identity, and community but also that of their political activities and aspirations.

  8. Citizenship, National Identity and Political Education: Some Disputable Questions

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Vladimir Gutorov

    2015-07-01

    Full Text Available The article seeks to elucidate some controversial problems of the formation of both civic and national selfconsciousness through analysing the politics of identity and citizenship, which has assumed increasing importance in Western and Eastern European countries. Citizenship is considered as a dynamic construct that should be viewed as a ‘process’ through which specific rights and obligations are exercised. The central task, therefore, is to analyse the evolution of various conceptions of citizenship in the light of historical experience, continuity and change, as well as the process of transformation of the model of political education that has emerged within the framework of the liberal political culture of the 19th century and has continued to exert a great impact on the development of political discourse in the modern world. Special attention is given to the comparative analysis of the models of civic and national identity in the USA, Western and Eastern Europe, including post-communist Russia. The author argues that the conception of identity as well, as the criteria for its defi nition, have become crucial in the discussion of problems of citizenship and political education. The issue remains whether an effective model of political education alone, i.e. without active citizens’ involvement and support, can have the potential not only to transform a political culture, but also influence the whole system of both secondary and university education. The final aim of the article is to prove the idea that a new conception of citizenship and political education could, in conditions of a deepening crisis, become the most important link binding civil society and the new content of the political making its way through corporative interests.

  9. Lev Vygotsky between two revolutions: on the political self-determination of the scientist

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Vladimir S. Sobkin

    2016-09-01

    Full Text Available The paper presented texts of the three previously unknown Lvygotsky’s journal notes and comments on them. These texts were published in mid-July and early September 1917 in the Jewish weekly «New Path» under the pseudonym «L.S.» and «W». In these texts, Lev Vygotsky describes the features of the political behaviour of the Jewish population in connection with the revolutionary events in Russia. On the one hand, a clear discrepancy between the activation of party work and political rhetoric is mentioned, and on the other hand, reduction of the significance of Jewish communal life is highlighted. As a key characteristic of social and psychological wellbeing of the Jewish population Vygotsky singles out absenteeism, i.e. the lack of interest in politics. Eventually the scientist captures the increase in uncertainty in the Jewish environment and fear of the future political, social and economic reforms in Russia. In the comments on Vygotsky notes, there are definitions relating to the various features of the activities of the Jewish political parties and public organizations, information about various policy documents and staff characterized by social and political situation before the elections in the Consituent Assembly (Uchreditel’noe Sobranie. Particular attention is paid to the analysis of stylistic and structural features of the commented text construction. By implicit quoting the relationship between Vygotsky’s texts and the works of other authors is identified. Particular attention is paid to the author’s attitude to religious texts, which allows to select a characteristic feature of the «double vision» of real events of the revolution against the background of the Jewish history. The comments help to single out features of the political identity of the young Lev Vygotsky in the period between the two revolutions, which is important to study his biography and understanding of his world view.

  10. Social capital, political trust and self-reported psychological health: a population-based study.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Lindstrom, Martin; Mohseni, Mohabbat

    2009-02-01

    This study investigates the association between political trust (an aspect of institutional trust) in the Riksdag (the national parliament in Sweden) and self-reported psychological health, taking generalized (horizontal) trust in other people into account. The 2004 public health survey in Skåne in Southern Sweden is a cross-sectional postal questionnaire study that was answered by 27,757 respondents aged 18-80 yielding a 59% response rate. A logistic regression model was used to investigate the associations between political trust and self-reported psychological health adjusting for possible confounders (age, country of origin, education, economic stress and generalized trust in other people i.e. horizontal trust). We found that 13.0% of the men and 18.9% of the women reported poor psychological health. A total of 17.3% and 11.6% of the male and female respondents, respectively, reported that they had no trust at all in the national parliament, and another 38.2% and 36.2%, respectively, reported that their political trust was not particularly high. Respondents in younger age groups, born abroad, with high education, high levels of economic stress, low horizontal trust and low political trust had significantly higher levels of self-reported poor psychological health. There was a significant association between low political trust and low horizontal trust. After adjustments for age, country of origin, education and economic stress, the inclusion of horizontal trust reduced the odds ratios of self-reported poor psychological health in the "no political trust at all" category compared to the "very high political trust" category from 1.6 to 1.4 among men and from 1.7 to 1.4 among women. It is concluded that low political trust in the Riksdag seems to be significantly and positively associated with poor mental health.

  11. Political Parties and Interest Groups Members' Patterns of Social Network Site Usage in Kyrgyzstan

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Elira Turdubaeva

    2014-11-01

    Full Text Available Kyrgyzstan, with a high level of political participation and an avant-garde position regarding internet access in Central Asia, broadband and social media penetration in the population, is a critical case for studying social network sites (SNSs in relation to political participation. This study analyzes the practices and attitudes of SNS users in Kyrgyzstan. Two types of users – members of political parties and members of interest organizations – are interviewed in focus groups about their practices and attitudes towards political content in the social network site Facebook. The findings indicate that, to some extent, the political engagement is indeed occurring within the Facebook environment, suggesting that the popular social networking sites (SNSs are an avenue for young people to express and share their political views. Facebook allowed users to share their political beliefs, support specific candidates, and interact with others on political issues. Participants’ perceptions regarding the appropriateness of political activity on Facebook, as well as the specific types of political activities they engaged in and witnessed within the site, were also explored.

  12. Political Bildung in the Context of Discipline, Instruction, and Moral Guidance

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Thomas Rucker

    2014-02-01

    Full Text Available Johann Friedrich Herbart (1776-1841 is considered the founding father of the science of education. In this article, I will try to show that Herbart sees the promotion of political Bildung as the task of discipline, instruction, and moral guidance, and that his work presents important components of a theory of political Bildung within an educational setting. According to Herbart, the political relationship to self and the world relates to issues that not only affect the lives of some but of a majority of people. But it is not people’s collective life as such that is the point of orientation for the political relationship to self and the world, but only the collective life where problems have arisen. According to Herbart, politics results from a conflict about the question as to how to regulate people’s collective life. While discipline, by providing the basic preconditions for instruction and moral guidance, makes merely an indirect contribution to political Bildung, the two latter forms of education – instruction and moral guidance – serve as the actual means by which political Bildung is achieved.

  13. Sources of political violence, political and psychological analysis

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    O. B. Balatska

    2015-05-01

    We also consider the following approaches to determining the nature and sources of aggression and violence such as instinktyvizm (K. Lorenz and behaviorism (J. B. Watson and B. F. Skinner et al.. Special attention is paid to theories of frustration aggression (J. Dollard, N. E. Miller, L. Berkowitz et al., according to which the causes of aggression and violence are hidden in a particular mental state – frustration. The particular importance of the theory of T. R. Gurr, in which the source of aggression and political violence are defined through the concept of relative deprivation, is underlined. Another approach is described in the article ­ the concept of aggression as a learned reaction (A. Bandura, G. Levin, B. Fleischmann et al.. Supporters of this approach believe that aggressive behavior is formed in the process of social training.

  14. Surfing citizens and floating voters : Results of an online survey of visitors to political web sites during the Dutch 2002 General Elections

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Boogers, Marcel; Voerman, Gerrit

    This article assesses the role of political web sites in the campaign for the Dutch parliamentary elections of 2002. It presents the results of an online survey of 18,000 visitors to political Web sites to examine how far, 1) political Web sites can engage people in politics and, 2) party Web sites

  15. POLITENESS ON WHATSAPP: THE RESPONSES TO GREETINGS AND CONGRATULATIONS BY ENGLISH SPEAKING GROUPS IN INDONESIA

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Budi Purnomo

    2017-12-01

    Full Text Available In the last three years, WhatsApp (WA has become one of the most popular means of instant communication between individuals and the most preferred medium for contact among people who belong to a specific group. This tool provides the opportunity to send and receive text, audio and visual messages. Guidelines for writing WA messages are not available, and people may often be unsure which politeness and languages are appropriate. This research is intended to investigate the politeness markers used by English speaking groups in Indonesia to respond greetings and congratulations. This study is of a qualitative and descriptive nature. The data were the responses on behalf of 50 group members of English Student Club, 200 ones of English Teachers and 50 ones of English Lecturers, as evidenced in the politeness markers they respond to greetings and congratulations posted on the WA. Furthermore, the data were analyzed by using the parameter of politeness markers (Spencer-Oatey, 2008. The research findings show that the group members used various politeness markers on one occasion, but violate them on another occasion. The politeness markers they used from the most to the least frequency are politeness markers to greet, to agree, to give compliments, to express gratitude, to give notice, to apologize, to request, to give alternative suggestions, to command and to refuse. The value of this study contributes towards understanding politeness in online environments, such as WA, which is used for smooth communication through the establishment and maintenance of interpersonal relationships.

  16. A state of limbo: the politics of waiting in neo-liberal Latvia.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Ozoliņa-Fitzgerald, Liene

    2016-09-01

    This article presents an ethnographic study of politics of waiting in a post-Soviet context. While activation has been explored in sociological and anthropological literature as a neo-liberal governmental technology and its application in post-socialist context has also been compellingly documented, waiting as a political artefact has only recently been receiving increased scholarly attention. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork at a state-run unemployment office in Riga, this article shows how, alongside activation, state welfare policies also produce passivity and waiting. Engaging with the small but developing field of sociological literature on the politics of waiting, I argue that, rather than interpreting it as a clash between 'neo-liberal' and 'Soviet' regimes, we should understand the double-move of activation and imposition of waiting as a key mechanism of neo-liberal biopolitics. This article thus extends the existing theorizations of the temporal politics of neo-liberalism. © London School of Economics and Political Science 2016.

  17. A moral house divided: How idealized family models impact political cognition.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Feinberg, Matthew; Wehling, Elisabeth

    2018-01-01

    People's political attitudes tend to fall into two groups: progressive and conservative. Moral Politics Theory asserts that this ideological divide is the product of two contrasting moral worldviews, which are conceptually anchored in individuals' cognitive models about ideal parenting and family life. These models, here labeled the strict and nurturant models, serve as conceptual templates for how society should function, and dictate whether one will endorse more conservative or progressive positions. According to Moral Politics Theory, individuals map their parenting ideals onto the societal domain by engaging the nation-as-family metaphor, which facilitates reasoning about the abstract social world (the nation) in terms of more concrete world experience (family life). In the present research, we conduct an empirical examination of these core assertions of Moral Politics Theory. In Studies 1-3, we experimentally test whether family ideals directly map onto political attitudes while ruling out alternative explanations. In Studies 4-5, we use both correlational and experimental methods to examine the nation-as-family metaphor's role in facilitating the translation of family beliefs into societal beliefs and, ultimately, political attitudes. Overall, we found consistent support for Moral Politics Theory's assertions that family ideals directly impact political judgment, and that the nation-as-family metaphor serves a mediating role in this phenomenon.

  18. Rules of political communication in the pre-war Soviet countryside

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    S Merl

    2017-12-01

    Full Text Available The author aims to debunk the Soviet official myth of local administration as being weak and not functioning effectively. The Soviet regime could not function in the way it pretended to, and the official picture of the economy was far from the reality though played a central role in the political discourse for the aims of legitimacy. The command economy actually functioned as a symbiosis of commands and threats ‘from above’ and corrupt practices of the majority of people including officials. However, this symbiosis worked quite successfully in industry ensuring impressive rates of growth, but not in agriculture and rural areas. Certainly, the kolkhoz system also combined severe control and treats with tolerance to corrupt practices condemned in the official slogans so as to save people from starvation. However, in the countryside the myth that rural administration was weak and wrongdoing proved to be the strongest basis of the regime for it corresponded to the firm conviction of rural people and traditional expectations that Stalin would pursue the paternalist rule as a “good tsar” by punishing local officials (as scapegoats and by removing them from office (after blaming them for regime’s shortcomings as incompetent managers. To keep people from protests und rebellions the rural officials’ task was not only to use force and intimidation during the campaigns, but also to look away allowing the kolkhozniki from time to time to betray the state as compensation. Thus, the Soviet rural administration fulfilled its functions set by the regime, such as ensuring political communication for the aims of the faith in the legitimacy of the political rule. The author also considers a vertical channel of communication between the people and the regime - petitions to the ruler. Soviet people were encouraged to write letters including complaints to “bargain” personal dissatisfaction. Soviet peasants considered such a communication as a

  19. Questioning Appropriation: Agency and Complicity in a Transnational Feminist Location Politics

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Joe Parker

    2012-12-01

    Full Text Available In feminist circles agency is often opposed to complicity and associated with resistance to sexism and patriarchy, yet such binary oppositions make the political stakes of their presumed boundaries difficult to interrogate. By bringing location politics into dialogue with agency theory, boundaries of same/Other and location categories may move from a naturalized ground for political work to the contested center of a politics of resistance. I follow a Foucauldian interpretation of agency to reconsider the ethico-politics of established divisions of self and Other both individually and in terms of social movements. By following Gayatri Spivak, Meyda Yeğenoğlu, and Chandra Mohanty's transnational feminist politics, I argue for the refusal of totalizing binaries and for careful attention to unavoidable complicities. This makes possible practices of agency that can critique the political and ethical limits and effects of its epistemology and take as its central project the intervention into appropriations of the Others into modern notions of the "real." The resulting reconstitution of self-Other relations in their work opens up important new avenues for building social movements that acknowledge difference within the subject or the movement rather than deny and expel their Others.

  20. How Neighborhoods Influence Health: Lessons to be learned from the application of political ecology.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Chitewere, Tendai; Shim, Janet K; Barker, Judith C; Yen, Irene H

    2017-05-01

    This paper articulates how political ecology can be a useful tool for asking fundamental questions and applying relevant methods to investigate structures that impact relationship between neighborhood and health. Through a narrative analysis, we identify how political ecology can develop our future agendas for neighborhood-health research as it relates to social, political, environmental, and economic structures. Political ecology makes clear the connection between political economy and neighborhood by highlighting the historical and structural processes that produce and maintain social inequality, which affect health and well-being. These concepts encourage researchers to examine how people construct neighborhood and health in different ways that, in turn, can influence different health outcomes and, thus, efforts to address solutions. Published by Elsevier Ltd.

  1. Politics and public health ethics in practice: right and left meet right and wrong.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Gollust, Sarah E; Baum, Nancy M; Jacobson, Peter D

    2008-01-01

    As public health practitioners are no doubt aware, public health practice and politics are closely linked. Although theoretical discussion of the emerging field of public health ethics has been rich, scholars have paid little attention to the relationship between ethical issues and politics in public health practice. We conducted semistructured interviews with 45 public health practitioners across a range of occupations (eg, health officers, medical directors, sanitarians, nurses, educators, and commissioners) working at 12 local health departments across Michigan and the state health department. Practitioners were asked to describe the ethical issues they faced in their daily practice. Ethical issues that resulted from the political environment emerged as one major category of ethical issues our interviewees described. This article illustrates how political issues engender ethical challenges in 4 main areas: public health agenda-setting, political pressures, political conflicts with best practices, and the scope of public health practice. The findings suggest that politics and public health ethics intrinsically intersect, because political pressures and priorities often impose ethical challenges that practitioners negotiate in their daily work.

  2. USSR Report, Political and Sociological Affairs.

    Science.gov (United States)

    1984-03-15

    an indivi- dual: culture, language, paternal or maternal descent, membership in a clan or the immediate feeling of belonging to his people. In... authoritarian - bureaucratic to revolutionary-demo- cratic. It is indicative that such approach is rejected by western liberal-bourgeois political theorists...at the kolkhoz and Nina Leonidovna at the present time is on a one and a half year’s maternity leave taking care of the baby. The young family has

  3. Positive Politeness & Social Harmony in Literary Discourse

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Nawal F. Abbas

    2013-05-01

    Full Text Available The strategies of politeness are not arbitrarily chosen by speakers in interaction. Instead, the choice of a strategy is constrained by a number of contextual features (socio-cultural variables, such as the relative power of the speakers, the social distance of the speakers and what the speakers happen to be negotiating at the time of speaking. This study focuses on the linguistic strategies of politeness, and more specifically on the positive politeness, as represented in fiction. The novel chosen is that of Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables- a novel in which the main character Anne Shirley tries her best to establish common grounds with others until she achieves friendly and social harmonious relationships with nearly everybody. To show the above point, Brown and Levinson’s (1987 theory of politeness is adopted to account for the linguistic strategies, in addition to some subsequent contribution provided by Spencer-Oatey (2002 to account for sociality rights and obligations. This model is chosen to explore the relation between language use and the social relationship of the speakers. A point of departure, and according to O’Driscoll (1996, Brown and Levinson’s hierarchy of politeness strategies allows attention to positive to cover more ground than that subsumed under positive politeness (super-strategy 2. That is why baldly on-record (super-strategy 1 is used to pay positive face. The analysis shows that most of Anne’s directives in this speech event, which are linguistic realizations of both super-strategy 1 and 2, are meant to establish common grounds to achieve friendly and harmonious relationships with others.

  4. NATIONAL-RELIGIOUS EXTREMISM AND POLITICAL TERROR OF NATIONALISTS AS THE DRIVING FORCE BEHIND THE ETHNOGENESIS OF ARMENIAN ETHNICITY (ESSAY ON SOCIAL-POLITICAL HISTORY)

    OpenAIRE

    Kuznetsov, Oleg

    2014-01-01

    The author traces the ethnogenesis of the Armenian people and analyzes its content to demonstrate how organized national and religious extremism, political terror, and terrorism affected the vector and intensity of social modernization of Armenian ethnicity between the last quarter of the nineteenth and the late twentieth century.

  5. Cinema as a tool of political communicationin the Post-Soviet Space

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    O. E. Grishin

    2016-01-01

    Full Text Available The article investigates the use of cinema as an instrument of political communication on the post-So- viet space. The authors analyze its qual- itative state, given the prospects and trends of modern cinema, as an aggre- gate for the manipulation of conscious- ness technologies. The article presents a comparative analysis of partial Holly- wood and Russian films in terms of its impact on the political consciousness of citizens. Particularly acute, this prob- lem concerns young people who acquire “political maturity”, becoming voters. It was concluded that not all the tradition- al means of political communication lose their strength and ability to use. At this stage of development of the state there is a need to find new ways of commu- nication between the state and society. One of them is still cinema.

  6. On the Scope of Justice: In Defence of the Political Conception

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Midtgaard, Søren Flinch

    2012-01-01

    , that in central instances of international coercion such as immigration control people are not asked to accept the ongoing coercion. Consequently, the problem of justice does not, on Thomas Nagel’s view, arise internationally. Furthermore, to the extent that political authority is exercised internationally......The paper defends the so-called political conception of the scope of justice proposed by Thomas Nagel. The argument has three stages: (a) I argue that A. J. Julius’ infl uential criticism of the political conception can be answered. Pace Julius, actual and (relevant) hypothetical cases of state......, it does not give rise to justifi catory burdens involving principles of distributive justice. (c) I relate the notion of authority to other aspects of the political conception, including responsibility, and argue that together they constitute an attractive alternative to an infl uential allocative...

  7. The virtues of localism and arctic wilderness politics

    Science.gov (United States)

    James N. Gladden

    2007-01-01

    An analysis of co-managing structures and land use issues in three case studies of arctic wilderness politics shows that more formal and informal power sharing by government officials with local people results in less conflict. Greater input and control by nearby communities may also help to protect wilderness ecosystems and traditional values of northern cultures....

  8. Political instability and economic growth: an empirical evidence from the Baltic states

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Ladislava Grochová

    2011-01-01

    Full Text Available For more than last 20 decades, new political economics has been dealing with theories of economic growth (for example influential contributions by Mancur Olson, Dani Rodrik. However, less attention has been paid to their empirical verification. The new political economics growth theory defines some factors that are necessary for economic growth among which political stability. Our aim is to test the theory focused on political stability empirically in order to enrich the studies with recent European results. The paper uses a single-equation model to reject a hypothesis that political stability is a necessary condition for economic growth finding a relationship between economic growth and political instability. A demonstration that political stability is not a crucial factor for economic development in general then represents the main goal of the contribution. There are distinguished two types of political instability – elite and non-elite – in topical literature. While non-elite political instability concerns about violent coups, riots or civil wars, elite political instability is represented with “soft changes” such as government breakdowns, fragile majority or minority governments. A number of government changes is used as a proxy of elite political instability. The disproof of the hypothesis is demonstrated on data from the Baltic states where number of government changes takes place and still fast economic growth could be seen within last two decades. Since it is shown that political instability has almost no impact on economic growth, we consider the hypothesis regarding a necessity of political stability for economic development to be only a specific non-generalizable case.

  9. Effects of perceived workplace politics in hospitals on nurses' behavioural intentions in Ghana.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Atinga, Roger A; Domfeh, Kwame A; Kayi, Esinam; Abuosi, Aaron; Dzansi, Gladys

    2014-03-01

    To examine the effects of perceived workplace politics in hospitals on nurses' job satisfaction, commitment, exit intention, job neglect, absenteeism and performance. One of the factors contributing to nurses' poor advancement in clinical practice is the existence of petty politics, which has given rise to competing self-interest. However, little evidence exists to inform policy direction on the implication of politics on nurses' behaviour. A total of 610 nurses comprising associate and nursing professionals completed a structured questionnaire modelled on workplace politics and its outcome variables. Descriptive statistics and mean comparisons were used to analyse data. A multivariate regression model was computed to examine association between perceived politics and nurses' behavioural intentions. Perceived politics potentially leads to decline in job satisfaction, commitment and work performance. However, perceived workplace politics is associated with high intention to leave, negligent behaviour and absenteeism. Measures aimed at improving nursing management and health-care delivery should be directed at minimising the use of politics to promote self-interest. Evidence-based best practices in nursing management centred on the creation of an enabling environment for nurses to participate in decision-making should be given critical attention. © 2013 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

  10. Review Paper: Rehabilitation of Blind People and People With Low Vision in Iran

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Marzieh Pashmdarfard

    2016-06-01

    Discussion: Proper assessment of the visually disabled is required to implement the appropriate intervention technique. Occupational therapists need to pay special attention to the visually disabled people

  11. Aristotle on Animals in the Politics

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Bloch, David Kristian

    2006-01-01

    This article examines the apparently very harsh views on animals that are found in two passages of the Politics. These passages have not received much scholarly attention, but they have regularly been invoked by defenders of animal rights. In this article it is argued that an interpretation...... of these passages demands close scrutiny of the context, and furthermore that they must be taken into consideration along with the psychological and the biological writings if Aristotle's views on animals are to be convincingly established....

  12. From Dissensus to Conviviality: The New Cultural Politics of Difference in Turkey

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Oliver Kontny

    2017-01-01

    Full Text Available Political developments in Turkey have sparked unprecedented international media attention after the failed coup d'état in July 2016. Coverage tends to focus on the draconic crackdown and restrictions that include academic work and cultural production. This article highlights articulations of dissensus from among the vivid community of cultural producers and takes a look at the uneasy relation between cultural politics, cultural policies and Kulturkampf. Drawing on work by Paul Gilroy, Homi Bhabha, Jacques Rancière and Cornel West, I attempt to discuss the theoretical dimensions of a new cultural politics of difference in Turkey that seeks to negotiate alterity and work towards a culture of conviviality in the face of ever-increasing adversities.

  13. Organizational Life and Political Incorporation of Two Asian Immigrant Groups: A Case Study.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Aptekar, Sofya

    2009-10-14

    Civil society is the foundation of a healthy democracy but its immigrant element has received little attention. This paper is a case study of immigrant organizations of highly-skilled Asian Indians and Chinese immigrants in a suburban town of Edison, New Jersey. I find that civic participation of Asian Indian immigrants spills over into political incorporation while Chinese immigrant organizations remain marginalized. I argue the local processes of racialization are central in explaining differences in political incorporation of immigrants. In the local context, the Chinese are seen as successful but conformist model minorities and Asian Indians as invaders and troublemakers. The racialization of Asian Indians has resulted in more political activity and higher levels of political visibility of their organizations. The results highlight shortcomings of current assimilation theories, which give little space to civic and political incorporation and view human capital in an unqualifiedly positive light.

  14. Selective Attention and Fear of Cancer Recurrence in Breast Cancer Survivors

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Custers, J. A. E.; Becker, E. S.; Gielissen, M. F. M.; van Laarhoven, H. W. M.; Rinck, M.; Prins, J. B.

    2015-01-01

    Anxious people show an attentional bias towards threatening information. It was investigated whether an attentional bias exists for cancer-related stimuli in breast cancer survivors and if different levels of fear of cancer recurrence would lead to different patterns of selective attention. Breast

  15. Urbanization and its Political Challenges in Developing Countries

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Kemal ÖZDEN

    2012-11-01

    Full Text Available Developing countries in the twenty-first century is experiencing rapid urbanization with a high concentration of people in the urban areas while the population of people in the rural areas is decreasing due to the rise in rural-urban push which has adverse consequences on the economic and political development of developing countries, in particular African cities. Therefore, this study seeks to analyze the trends and nature of urbanization in Africa from the pre-colonial era to the contemporary period of globalization in order to ascertain the implications of rapid urbanization on the processes of democratic transitions, on the vagaries of food sufficiency and crisis as well as its multiplier effects on the escalating rate of poverty and insurgency in the cities. These problems stem from the lack of good governance, high rate of corruption and the misappropriation of state resources through diverse economic liberalizing reforms and development strategies. Thus, this study affirms that urbanization is a process that requires objective management and institutional role differentiations and performance to create the organizational synergy, moderation and frugality necessary for the equitable distribution of the common wealth for the greatest good of all peoples not only in the urban areas but also in the rural areas which invariably will bring about political and economic development in African cities, and reduce the high incidences of poverty, insurgency and food crisis.

  16. Ethics in Sport: Socio - Political Point of View

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Robert C. S CHNEIDER

    2015-09-01

    Full Text Available Sport is a natural medium for bringing together people of different backgrounds throughout the world. If grounded in ethics and if participants follow the rules and cooperate, sport can be a conduit for world harmony (Sport great for human bonding, 2010.A s international relationships are developed through sport, those relationships can help support larger global endeavors in pursuit of a better world. If international sport based relationships are grounded in Mill’s utilitarianism that calls for actions re sulting in the most long - term happiness for the most amount of people (Mill, 1863/1969 those relationships are well positioned to transition to the domain of governmental politics, where meaningful attempts to resolve large world issues can be addressed, under the same utilitarian premise. In pursuit of a better world, identifying common groundamong the many differences held by people throughout the world is a magnanimous challenge. Beauchamp’s (1982 practical suggestion that common sense, habits, and pas t experience are most helpful when attempting to select actions that will determine long - term happiness. Moving beyond sport and transferring the application of Beauchamp’s practical utilitarian approach to larger global conflicts, can help guide governmen ts as they engage in the necessary politics, to move toward improving global problems in the interest of world harmony.

  17. John Stuart Mill in nineteenth-century Serbia: Influence on political thought and gender issues

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Pantelić Ivana

    2009-01-01

    Full Text Available The paper deals with the reception of J. S. Mill’s writings by contemporary Serbian intellectuals. As shown in the paper, the impact that Millean ideas made on many important Serbian politicians and philosophers from all parts of the political spectrum was broad and profound. Special attention is paid to the work of liberal and socialist thinkers, notably Vladimir Jovanović and Svetozar Marković. The influence of Mill’s ideas on Serbia’s political development is also examined, as well as how Mill’s attitude towards the question of women’s rights impacted contemporary Serbian political thought.

  18. Architecture for the Elderly and Frail People, Well-Being Elements Realizations and Outcomes

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Knudstrup, Mary-Ann

    2011-01-01

    -being elements in the nursing home environments that contribute to enhancing the well-being of the elderly and how these elements is ensured attention during a decision making process related to the design and the establishing of nursing homes. With basis in four Danish representative case studies, various case...... data from the decision making process are collected, covering the planning, the design and the realization of four newly built nursing homes in Denmark. The case studies clearly shows that the architectural well-being elements appear weak in the decision making process, when they are conflicting......The relationship between architecture, housing and well-being of elderly and frail people is a topic of growing interest to consultants and political decision makers working on welfare solutions for elderly citizens. The objective of the research presented here is to highlight which well...

  19. A judicial review of political questions under Islamic law

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Abdulfatai O. Sambo

    2014-06-01

    Full Text Available The contemporary Arab world has witnessed uprisings and turmoil as a result of alleged power-overreaching by political elites. Consequently, people call for democracy with emphasis on constitutionalism, accountability and protection of human rights. Yet, the voice of the judiciary seems not to be heard in championing these values in many Muslim nations despite the clear roles Islam places on the judiciary regarding political matters. This paper therefore analyses the power of judicial review on political questions from the perspective of Islamic jurisprudence. It finds that the power of judicial review and its main institution existed in early Islamic periods after the demise of the Prophet (SAW. The paper concludes that failure to observe judicial review in many contemporary Muslim countries results in the absence of effective checks on the powers of the rulers by the judiciary.

  20. Conception on corruption: 2001-2006: Effect of politization

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Vasović Mirjana

    2007-01-01

    Full Text Available In this article conception of corruption in the case of Serbia is analyzed on the ground of findings of two larger surveys done within the five years span, after the Fifth October (in 2001 and 2006. Analysis of data reveals that conception is formed under the great influence of politization and given divisions in society; thus it depends on the ways how people perceive and estimate actual economic and political processes and their actors. Under these conditions subjectivity of conception is at stake. Depending from what social structure they originate, estimations and attitudes on corruption are reflecting a disappointment in new power as well as opposition pressure on rulling regime, or resistance to changes of economic and political system. Most important differences between conceptions of corruptions could be find among partisans whether of old or new regime, i.e. "losers" and "winners" of transition. These social categories are in high correlation with actual socioeconomic standing and life age. Although toleration toward corruption is descendant, it could be noticed that actual and potential transitional winners (more educated, more wealthy, younger people and supporters of the new regime estimate state of corruption more positively, thus showing the signs of accustoming on it and even including signs of moral cynism. As for the losers, they are showing more sensitivity, what could be seen as an effect of their unfavorable economic position and corresponding resistance to the changes along with sharper critical attitude toward the actual power.

  1. The Egyptian Arab Spring and Political Islam

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Ayman Gad El ashkar

    2016-07-01

    Full Text Available This study elaborates and analyzes the phenomenon and concept of political Islam, the reasons of the increased role of the Islamists and their political and reformist tendencies in the light of the Egyptian revolution of Arab Spring, reasons and the main factors that have contributed on their advent into power and their influence in that time, the issue of the application of Islamic Sharia and complex realities about this dilemma. The revolutions of Arab Spring, including the Egyptian revolution, are considered one of the most important and most dangerous events in the XXI century after the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001, not only in the Middle East but throughout the world because of their impact on peace and global security. The growth of the phenomenon of political Islam and the advent of Islamists into power in Egypt has represented one of the most remarkable features of this sudden revolution. No doubt that the issue of the relationship between Islam and the state's political system raises many confusing questions for many people. In this sense the importance of this study will directly identify the fact that the leadership of Islamists in Egypt is not the implementation of Islamic Sharia but their movements and ideology.

  2. Processing political misinformation: comprehending the Trump phenomenon

    Science.gov (United States)

    Berinsky, Adam J.; Ecker, Ullrich K. H.

    2017-01-01

    This study investigated the cognitive processing of true and false political information. Specifically, it examined the impact of source credibility on the assessment of veracity when information comes from a polarizing source (Experiment 1), and effectiveness of explanations when they come from one's own political party or an opposition party (Experiment 2). These experiments were conducted prior to the 2016 Presidential election. Participants rated their belief in factual and incorrect statements that President Trump made on the campaign trail; facts were subsequently affirmed and misinformation retracted. Participants then re-rated their belief immediately or after a delay. Experiment 1 found that (i) if information was attributed to Trump, Republican supporters of Trump believed it more than if it was presented without attribution, whereas the opposite was true for Democrats and (ii) although Trump supporters reduced their belief in misinformation items following a correction, they did not change their voting preferences. Experiment 2 revealed that the explanation's source had relatively little impact, and belief updating was more influenced by perceived credibility of the individual initially purporting the information. These findings suggest that people use political figures as a heuristic to guide evaluation of what is true or false, yet do not necessarily insist on veracity as a prerequisite for supporting political candidates. PMID:28405366

  3. Processing political misinformation: comprehending the Trump phenomenon.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Swire, Briony; Berinsky, Adam J; Lewandowsky, Stephan; Ecker, Ullrich K H

    2017-03-01

    This study investigated the cognitive processing of true and false political information. Specifically, it examined the impact of source credibility on the assessment of veracity when information comes from a polarizing source (Experiment 1), and effectiveness of explanations when they come from one's own political party or an opposition party (Experiment 2). These experiments were conducted prior to the 2016 Presidential election. Participants rated their belief in factual and incorrect statements that President Trump made on the campaign trail; facts were subsequently affirmed and misinformation retracted. Participants then re-rated their belief immediately or after a delay. Experiment 1 found that (i) if information was attributed to Trump, Republican supporters of Trump believed it more than if it was presented without attribution, whereas the opposite was true for Democrats and (ii) although Trump supporters reduced their belief in misinformation items following a correction, they did not change their voting preferences. Experiment 2 revealed that the explanation's source had relatively little impact, and belief updating was more influenced by perceived credibility of the individual initially purporting the information. These findings suggest that people use political figures as a heuristic to guide evaluation of what is true or false, yet do not necessarily insist on veracity as a prerequisite for supporting political candidates.

  4. The political science of radioactive waste disposal

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Jacobi, L.R. Jr.

    1996-01-01

    This paper was first presented at the annual meeting of the HPS in New Orleans in 1984. Twelve years later, the basic lessons learned are still found to be valid. In 1984, the following things were found to be true: A government agency is preferred by the public over a private company to manage radioactive waste. Semantics are important--How you say it is important, but how it is heard is more important. Public information and public relations are very important, but they are the last thing of concern to a scientist. Political constituency is important. Don't overlook the need for someone to be on your side. Don't forget that the media is part of the political process-they can make you or break you. Peer technical review is important, but so is citizen review. Sociology is an important issue that scientists and technical people often overlook. In summary, despite the political nature of radioactive waste disposal, it is as true today as it was in 1984 that technical facts must be used to reach sound technical conclusions. Only then, separately and openly, should political factors be considered. So, what can be said today that wasn't said in 1984? Nothing. open-quotes It's deja vu all over again.close quotes

  5. The Political Gender Gap: Gender Bias in Facial Inferences that Predict Voting Behavior

    Science.gov (United States)

    Chiao, Joan Y.; Bowman, Nicholas E.; Gill, Harleen

    2008-01-01

    Background Throughout human history, a disproportionate degree of political power around the world has been held by men. Even in democracies where the opportunity to serve in top political positions is available to any individual elected by the majority of their constituents, most of the highest political offices are occupied by male leaders. What psychological factors underlie this political gender gap? Contrary to the notion that people use deliberate, rational strategies when deciding whom to vote for in major political elections, research indicates that people use shallow decision heuristics, such as impressions of competence solely from a candidate's facial appearance, when deciding whom to vote for. Because gender has previously been shown to affect a number of inferences made from the face, here we investigated the hypothesis that gender of both voter and candidate affects the kinds of facial impressions that predict voting behavior. Methodology/Principal Finding Male and female voters judged a series of male and female political candidates on how competent, dominant, attractive and approachable they seemed based on their facial appearance. Then they saw a series of pairs of political candidates and decided which politician they would vote for in a hypothetical election for President of the United States. Results indicate that both gender of voter and candidate affect the kinds of facial impressions that predict voting behavior. All voters are likely to vote for candidates who appear more competent. However, male candidates that appear more approachable and female candidates who appear more attractive are more likely to win votes. In particular, men are more likely to vote for attractive female candidates whereas women are more likely to vote for approachable male candidates. Conclusions/Significance Here we reveal gender biases in the intuitive heuristics that voters use when deciding whom to vote for in major political elections. Our findings underscore

  6. The political gender gap: gender bias in facial inferences that predict voting behavior.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Joan Y Chiao

    Full Text Available BACKGROUND: Throughout human history, a disproportionate degree of political power around the world has been held by men. Even in democracies where the opportunity to serve in top political positions is available to any individual elected by the majority of their constituents, most of the highest political offices are occupied by male leaders. What psychological factors underlie this political gender gap? Contrary to the notion that people use deliberate, rational strategies when deciding whom to vote for in major political elections, research indicates that people use shallow decision heuristics, such as impressions of competence solely from a candidate's facial appearance, when deciding whom to vote for. Because gender has previously been shown to affect a number of inferences made from the face, here we investigated the hypothesis that gender of both voter and candidate affects the kinds of facial impressions that predict voting behavior. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDING: Male and female voters judged a series of male and female political candidates on how competent, dominant, attractive and approachable they seemed based on their facial appearance. Then they saw a series of pairs of political candidates and decided which politician they would vote for in a hypothetical election for President of the United States. Results indicate that both gender of voter and candidate affect the kinds of facial impressions that predict voting behavior. All voters are likely to vote for candidates who appear more competent. However, male candidates that appear more approachable and female candidates who appear more attractive are more likely to win votes. In particular, men are more likely to vote for attractive female candidates whereas women are more likely to vote for approachable male candidates. CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE: Here we reveal gender biases in the intuitive heuristics that voters use when deciding whom to vote for in major political elections. Our

  7. Rethinking Prefigurative Politics: Introduction to the Special Thematic Section

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Flora Cornish

    2016-05-01

    Full Text Available This special thematic section responds to the 21st century proliferation of social movements characterised by the slogans ‘another world is possible’ and ‘be the change you want to see’. It explores prefigurative politics as a means of instantiating radical social change in a context of widening global inequalities, climate change, and the crises and recoveries of neoliberal global capitalism. ‘Prefigurative politics’ refers to a range of social experiments that both critique the status quo and offer alternatives by implementing radically democratic practices in pursuit of social justice. This collection of articles makes the case for psychologists to engage with prefigurative politics as sites of psychological and social change, in the dual interests of understanding the world and changing it. The articles bridge psychology and politics in three different ways. One group of articles brings a psychological lens to political phenomena, arguing that attention to the emotional, relational and intergroup dynamics of prefigurative politics is required to understand their trajectories, challenges, and impacts. A second group focuses a political lens on social settings traditionally framed as psychological sites of well-being, enabling an understanding of their political nature. The third group addresses the ‘border tensions’ of the psychological and the political, contextualising and historicising the instantiation of prefigurative ideals and addressing tensions that arise between utopian ideals and various internal and external constraints. This introduction to the special section explores the concept and contemporary debates concerning prefigurative politics, outlines the rationale for a psychological engagement with this phenomenon, and presents the articles in the special thematic section. The general, prefigurative, aim is to advance psychology’s contribution to rethinking and remaking the world as it could be, not only

  8. Political representation and civil organisations: new forms of mediation and the challenges for legitimacy

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Adrián Gurza Lavalle

    2007-01-01

    Full Text Available This article examines the new forms of political representation civil organisations are constructing in their relation with the State, and some of the possible consequences for the quality of democracy. There are no historical or theoretical established models of representation which enable one to explore how civil organisations, in the absence of the elections or formal membership, can construct their political representativeness. For this reason, political representation by civil organisations has received little attention despite its growing importance. Extensive fieldwork in São Paulo, Brazil, reveals that political representation by civil organisations is closely connected to the dynamics of institutions of representative democracy. Furthermore, it reveals that alongside notions of representation that are clearly irreconcilable with democratic standards, a new notion of representation is emerging among civil organisations which is specifically political and compatible with democracy.

  9. Political attention to environmental issues: Analyzing policy punctuations in the Netherlands

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Breeman, G.E.; Timmermans, A.

    2009-01-01

    One of the most dramatized features in Al Gore's movie The Inconvenient Truth is the effects of a rising sea-level in the Netherlands. The film is an example of how the mobilization of bias in the Netherlands resulted in sudden high levels of attention for climate change problems. We analyze agenda

  10. China's People-to-people Diplomacy and Its Importance to China-EU Relations: A Historical Institutionalism Perspective

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Shichen Wang

    2015-12-01

    Full Text Available People-to-people exchange has become a heated topic of the Chinese foreign policy. Since the beginning of the twenty-first century, China has established people-to-people dialogues with the United States, the European Union, the United Kingdom, France and Russia. In 2012, China and the EU established a high-level dialogue for people-to-people exchange, making people-to-people exchange the third pillar of China-EU relations. However, China is not a newcomer to people-to-people exchanges with Europe. Why does China launch the people-to-people diplomacy? Is it a plus or a must for China as well as for China-EU relations? The author reviews the history and current situation of China's people-to-people exchange and investigates China’s motivations behind the policy. Using the historical institutionalism as an approach, this paper argues that people-to-people diplomacy is a key component of the contemporary Chinese foreign policy towards Europe. China has long been an unequal counterpart to Europe since the 1840s. After the development of bilateral political and economic cooperation in the past four decades, people-to-people diplomacy is the last part that China needs to finish in order to regain equal status with Europe. In addition, it is also a step towards realising the "great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation".

  11. Political Meritocracy as Eastern Alternative to the Western Public Administration Traditions in the 21st Century

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Vladislav S. Gerasimov

    2015-01-01

    Full Text Available The article discusses political meritocracy phenomenon. The author examines political and economic backgrounds of the meritocracy concept occurrence within the political science discourse as well as distinctive features of that process. Special emphasis is put on economic situation of the early 1980s when the governments of various states were challenged with the necessity of overcoming the consequences of the global economic crisis of the preceding decade. The author focuses on similarities and distinctions within the policies which have been implemented by the various states at that period paying special attention to the form of the political regime in those countries. Also the author draws attention to the discussion on "Asian values" which played significant role in the political meritocracy coming-to-be process within Asian region. The article analyses origin and dissemination of the meritocratic approaches among public administration practices of some countries within Asian region (eg. China and Singapore. The author reveals main theoretical grounds of the political meritocracy and researches culturological backgrounds of those theoretical grounds. Specifically, he studies the significance of the Confucianism moral-ethic doctrine regarding theory and practice of meritocracy. Additionally the author traces the displays of the meritocratic principles within the views of the various representatives of the western political theory among which both classic (Plato, J.St. Mill and contemporary (Brennan J., Caplan B. thinkers are represented. In conclusion the author analyses the opportunities of the meritocratic theory and practice implementation in Russian reality. He compares Russia, China and Singapore via the list of criteria of political and economic importance, reveals similarities and distinctions in the political past and present of those states, estimates the significance of some culturological factors regarding the evolution of those

  12. Social Politics: Social Media as a public sphere for Jamaican University Students

    OpenAIRE

    Clarke, Kevin

    2016-01-01

    The growth of social media use in Jamaica has changed how people communicate with each other and how they participate in the democratic process. To date, minimal research has been done to ascertain the relationship between social media use and the political process, specifically with younger members of the population. Through a survey and focus group interviews, this dissertation seeks to identify whether Jamaican university students are using social media to participate in the political proc...

  13. The political parties and significant personalities of the Bessarabian Zemstvo (1869-1917

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Valentin Tomuleţ

    2017-12-01

    Full Text Available This article focuses on some parties and significant personalities who worked in the Bessarabian institution of local self-government – Zemstvo (created in 1869 and contributed to the development of the province. The authors found that some nobles united and formed political parties. Parties of the Zemstvo were groups of persons related to the most influential families from Bessarabia. For some of them the Zemstvo served as a platform on which the nobles could solve their problems. It can be said that the Zemstvo was the “alter ego” of the Bessarabian nobility. As a result, in the political life of Bessarabia two main parties were formed – “Young Bessarabia” (“Molodaya Bessarabiya” and “Old Greek Party” (Starogrecheskaya”, which succeeded each other at the helm of power. In the early 1880s, the “Old Greek party” finally defeated its rival and gained full power in the Bessarabian Zemstvo administration. Counselors saw in the Bessarabian Zemstvo an important and reliable instrument for committing abuses. For example, the Head of the Orhei Zemstvo Council Cozac embezzled money from the Zemstvo budget. When the fact of the theft was uncovered, and this was written about in the press, Cozac shot himself. Each group of the nobles included not only people related to certain interest in economic and political life of Bessarabia, but also people related by kinship, acting in the family interests. In 1881-1884, 18 of the 52 provincial councelors were relatives: brothers Semigradov (4 people, brothers Krupensky, brothers Sinadino, brothers Dunca, brothers Cotruta (2 people. The Krupensky family was the most influential family in the Bessarabian Zemstvo. The publicist P. Krushevan wrote in this regard that the Krupensky clan usurped all the power in Bessarabia, and the Governor S. Urusov noted their importance in economic and political life of the province. Many members of the Zemstvo left their mark in the economic, political, and

  14. The Coming Age of People Work

    Science.gov (United States)

    Berger, Brigitte

    1976-01-01

    Notes a chasm between cultural and occupational aspirations (for self-realization) and the existing job market. Suggests the opening of a new sector of people work, e.g. services for the very young and very old, urban and community task forces, political participation groups, agencies for intergroup conflict resolution, etc. (JT)

  15. Politically Active Home Economists: Their Socialization to Politics.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Ley, Connie J.

    1980-01-01

    A nationwide study identified a pattern of political socialization for home economists who were politically active. The most outstanding feature of the politically active subjects was their perception that political activity is a professional role. (SK)

  16. Political and Policy Arguments for Integrated Data

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Adalsteinn D Brown

    2017-04-01

    Our analysis suggests several key issues around successful integrated data policy and politics that support the importance of strong leadership, an incremental approach to institution building that focuses on public benefits, strongly alignment to missions that are congruent with societal values, and stronger attention to effective and rapid implementation of policy. In addition to the cases studied here, the success of smaller sub-national (e.g. state or provincial efforts suggests that smaller efforts tend to work better although their success may not receive the attention that could support larger efforts to integrate data on the national level. Further work should focus chiefly on the extension of these arguments to non-health sectors to realize the full value of integrated data.

  17. Social capital, political trust and daily smoking and smoking cessation: a population-based study in southern Sweden.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Lindström, M

    2009-07-01

    To investigate the associations between vertical (institutional) political trust in the Riksdag and daily smoking and smoking cessation. Cross-sectional study. In total, 27,757 individuals aged 18-80 years answered a postal questionnaire, which represents 59% of the random sample. A logistic regression model was used to investigate the associations between political trust in the Riksdag and daily smoking and smoking cessation. A multivariate analysis was performed to investigate the importance of possible confounders on the differences in daily smoking and smoking cessation according to political trust. In total, 14.9% of the men and 18.1% of the women were daily smokers. Middle-aged respondents were significantly more likely to be daily smokers than the young. The proportion of ever smokers who had quit smoking increased with age. Respondents with low generalized trust in other people [odds ratio (OR) 1.6, 95% confidence interval (CI) 1.5-1.8 among men; OR 1.7, 95% CI 1.5-1.8 among women] and not high political trust/no political trust at all (OR 1.6, 95% CI 1.4-1.8 among men; OR 1.8, 95% CI 1.6-2.0 among women) had significantly higher ORs of daily smoking. Men and women with not particularly high political trust/no political trust at all and no opinion of the Riksdag had significantly lower ORs of smoking cessation than people with very high/high political trust. These associations remained significant after multiple adjustments. The results suggest that political trust is independently associated with both daily smoking and smoking cessation.

  18. Social class, politics, and the spirit level: why income inequality remains unexplained and unsolved.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Muntaner, Caries; Rai, Nanky; Ng, Edwin; Chung, Haejoo

    2012-01-01

    Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett's latest book, The Spirit Level: Why Equality is Best for Everyone, has caught the attention of academics and policymakers and stimulated debate across the left-right political spectrum. Interest in income inequality has remained unabated since the publication of Wilkinson's previous volume, Unhealthy Societies: The Afflictions of Inequality. While both books detail the negative health effects of income inequality, The Spirit Level expands the scope of its argument to also include social issues. The book, however, deals extensively with the explanation of how income inequality affects individual health. Little attention is given to political and economic explanations on how income inequality is generated in the first place. The volume ends with political solutions that carefully avoid state interventions such as limiting the private sector's role in the production of goods and services (e.g., non-profit sector, employee-ownership schemes). Although well-intentioned, these alternatives are insufficient to significantly reduce the health inequalities generated by contemporary capitalism in wealthy countries, let alone around the world.

  19. The Political Economy Of Pro-Poor Development: The Case Of ...

    African Journals Online (AJOL)

    The Political Economy Of Pro-Poor Development: The Case Of Ghana's Poverty Reduction Strategies. ... The eradication of poverty, and hence also sustainable growth, can only be achieved through the engagement of poor people in the development processes which affect their lives. This makes domestic policy ownership ...

  20. The Metastable City and the Politics of Crystallisation: Protesting and Policing in Kampala

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Joschka Philipps

    2016-01-01

    Full Text Available When protests break out in downtown Kampala they tend to transform a fluid urban environment into bounded political camps, and myriad ambiguous concerns into comparatively clear-cut political issues. This article traces this process and conceptualises Kampala’s urban politics as a politics of crystallisation: as attempts to structure highly fluid dynamics into something concrete. The article is based on ethnographic research amongst opposition activists and the police forces. Both seek to activate political boundaries and make people gravitate towards their respective side. But in line with the fluidity of urban everyday life, they also work and collaborate across these boundaries. The national regime and the opposition thus function not as permanent, stable structures, but as processes, as fields of gravity whose emergence is incited and inhibited, financed, and policed. Drawing on Gilbert Simondon’s theory of individuation and AbdouMaliq Simone’s work on urbanity, this analytical framework offers a dynamic reading of urban contentious politics in general, and a reinterpretation of the paradoxes of power in African politics in particular.

  1. Race Guides Attention in Visual Search.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Marte Otten

    Full Text Available It is known that faces are rapidly and even unconsciously categorized into social groups (black vs. white, male vs. female. Here, I test whether preferences for specific social groups guide attention, using a visual search paradigm. In Experiment 1 participants searched displays of neutral faces for an angry or frightened target face. Black target faces were detected more efficiently than white targets, indicating that black faces attracted more attention. Experiment 2 showed that attention differences between black and white faces were correlated with individual differences in automatic race preference. In Experiment 3, using happy target faces, the attentional preference for black over white faces was eliminated. Taken together, these results suggest that automatic preferences for social groups guide attention to individuals from negatively valenced groups, when people are searching for a negative emotion such as anger or fear.

  2. The New Institutionalism and the Representationalist Concept of Politics

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Guillermo Pereyra

    2009-01-01

    Full Text Available The main objective of this paper is to offer a critique of the representationalist assumptions of some of the neoinstitutionalist studies. Two fundamental theses are upheld: 1 the institutionalist model of democracy's critique of the notion of popular sovereignty does not take into consideration that the people is a political category which shows the constituitive failure of any representation; 2 the New Institutionalism theory, and in particular from its historical–sociological perspective, is based on the representationalist assumption that there is something previous to politics in society, and culture that must be faithfully represented by the institutions to avoid disorder.

  3. Comparative study of "politeness"in multicultural communication

    Institute of Scientific and Technical Information of China (English)

    王清莹

    2016-01-01

    In daily life, everyone has to communicate with the medium of language. How to communicate effectively is a question bothering each of us through our lifetime. This thesis analyzes the situations of communication between Chinese people and foreigners from the perceptive of Levinson's face theory and Gu Yueguo's theory about politeness in Chinese culture in order to further find out the different cultural characteristics of communication in China and the West.

  4. Public opinion on energy development: The interplay of issue framing, top-of-mind associations, and political ideology

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Clarke, Christopher E.; Hart, Philip S.; Schuldt, Jonathon P.; Evensen, Darrick T.N.; Boudet, Hilary S.; Jacquet, Jeffrey B.; Stedman, Richard C.

    2015-01-01

    In this article, we examine framing effects regarding unconventional oil and gas extraction using hydraulic fracturing (or fracking): an issue involving considerable controversy over potential impacts as well as terminology used to describe it. Specifically, we explore how two commonly used terms to describe this issue – fracking or shale oil or gas development – serve as issue frames and influence public opinion. Extending existing research, we suggest that these frames elicit different top-of-mind associations that reflect positive or negative connotations and resonate with people's political ideology. These associations, in turn, help explain direct and indirect framing effects on support/opposition as well as whether these effects differ by political ideology. Results of a split-ballot, national U.S. survey (n=1000) reveal that people are more supportive of the energy extraction process when it is referred to as shale oil or gas development versus fracking, and this relationship is mediated by greater perceptions of benefit versus risk. Political ideology did not moderate these effects. Further analysis suggests that these findings are partly explained by the tendency to associate fracking more with negative thoughts and impacts and shale oil or gas development more with positive thoughts and impacts. However, these associations also did not vary by political ideology. We discuss implications for communicating risk regarding energy development. -- Highlights: •How an issue is presented (“framed”) influences how people perceive it. •We applied this premise to oil/gas extraction via hydraulic fracturing (fracking). •We examined two commonly used frames: fracking and shale oil or gas development. •People viewed the former less favorably irrespective of political ideology. •We discuss implications for communicating about energy development impacts

  5. Grants to Political Groups in the Spanish Legislative Assemblies

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Álvaro González-Juliana Muñoz

    2014-06-01

    Full Text Available This paper analyzes, from the perspective of Administrative Law, one of the sources of public funding of political parties in Spain: the grants to Political Groups in the Legislative Assemblies. This paper focuses on the study of the legal status of those grants, which have received little attention from the legal literature, despite its importance and despite the fact that they are poorly regulated. In this regard, this paper analyzes the legal nature of those grants and it concludes that they are authentic public subsidies. On the basis of this conclusion, the fundamental aspects of those grants become the subject of the study: the requirements and obligations of Political Groups, the procedure for the award of the grants, the control activity and the refund of the grant. As a result, this analysis makes clear the limits and errors of the meager regulation contained in parliamentary Regulations. Last, but not least, several solutions are proposed, taking the General Subsidies Act as a reference.

  6. "By any memes necessary": Exploring the intersectional politics of feminist memes on Instagram

    OpenAIRE

    Breheny, Caitlin

    2017-01-01

    Internet memes are exemplary forms of user-generated content in the age of social networking and user participation. This study draws attention to the work of an intersectional feminist community on Instagram who make use of this platform to discuss their personal politics via image macro memes. The community is made up of femmes who typically blend politics, pop culture, and a personal perspective into their content. This practice is identified as a contemporary feminist use of new media and...

  7. Attention in Urban Foraging

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Malcolm McCullough

    2013-05-01

    Full Text Available This position paper argues how there has to be much more to smart city learning than just wayshowing, and something better as augmented reality than covering the world with instructions. Attention has become something for many people to know better in an age of information superabundance. Embodied cognition explains how the work-ings of attention are not solely a foreground task, as if attention is something to pay. As digital media appear in ever more formats and contexts, their hybrids with physical form increasing influence how habitual engagement with persistent situations creates learning. Ambient information can just add to the distraction by multitasking, or it can support more favorable processes of shifting among different kinds of information with a particular intent. As one word for this latter process, foraging deserves more consideration in smart city learning

  8. Selectively Distracted: Divided Attention and Memory for Important Information.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Middlebrooks, Catherine D; Kerr, Tyson; Castel, Alan D

    2017-08-01

    Distractions and multitasking are generally detrimental to learning and memory. Nevertheless, people often study while listening to music, sitting in noisy coffee shops, or intermittently checking their e-mail. The current experiments examined how distractions and divided attention influence one's ability to selectively remember valuable information. Participants studied lists of words that ranged in value from 1 to 10 points while completing a digit-detection task, while listening to music, or without distractions. Though participants recalled fewer words following digit detection than in the other conditions, there were no significant differences between conditions in terms of selectively remembering the most valuable words. Similar results were obtained across a variety of divided-attention tasks that stressed attention and working memory to different degrees, which suggests that people may compensate for divided-attention costs by selectively attending to the most valuable items and that factors that worsen memory do not necessarily impair the ability to selectively remember important information.

  9. Strategic political postures and political market orientation

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Ormrod, Robert P.; Henneberg, Stephan C.

    2010-01-01

    by developing an integrated concept of political marketing strategy using two complementary frameworks, namely Strategic Political Postures (SPP) and Political Market Orientation (PMO). We introduce the two main concepts and derive for each of the strategic posture-specific PMO profiles as well as inter......Recently, the areas of strategic political marketing and political market orientation have been the subject of several conceptual articles which have provided the theoretical foundations for further empirical work. However, despite the close conceptual relatedness of the proposed concepts......, these have yet to be integrated to provide a more nuanced framework which both researchers and political marketing practitioners can utilise in the development of strategies and offerings with which to achieve their organizational goals. The aim of this conceptual paper is to address this deficit...

  10. Engaging in extreme activism in support of others’ political struggles: The role of politically motivated fusion with out-groups

    Science.gov (United States)

    Boos, Beverly; Kimel, Sasha Y.; Obaidi, Milan; Shani, Maor; Thomsen, Lotte

    2018-01-01

    Humans are a coalitional, parochial species. Yet, extreme actions of solidarity are sometimes taken for distant or unrelated groups. What motivates people to become solidary with groups to which they do not belong originally? Here, we demonstrate that such distant solidarity can occur when the perceived treatment of an out-group clashes with one’s political beliefs (e.g., for Leftists, oppressive occupation of the out-group) and that it is driven by fusion (or a feeling of oneness) with distant others with whom one does not share any common social category such as nationality, ethnicity or religion. In Study 1, being politically Leftist predicted European-Americans’ willingness to engage in extreme protest on behalf of Palestinians, which was mediated by fusion with the out-group. Next, in Study 2, we examined whether this pattern was moderated by out-group type. Here, Norwegian Leftists fused more with Palestinians (i.e., a group that, in the Norwegian context, is perceived to be occupied in an asymmetrical conflict) rather than Kurds (i.e., a group for which this perception is less salient). In Study 3, we experimentally tested the underlying mechanism by framing the Kurdish conflict in terms of an asymmetrical occupation (vs. symmetrical war or control conditions) and found that this increased Leftist European-Americans’ fusion with Kurds. Finally, in Study 4, we used a unique sample of non-Kurdish aspiring foreign fighters who were in the process of joining the Kurdish militia YPG. Here, fusion with the out-group predicted a greater likelihood to join and support the Kurdish forces in their fight against ISIS, insofar as respondents experienced that their political orientation morally compelled them to do so (Study 4). Together, our findings suggest that politically motivated fusion with out-groups underpins the extreme solidary action people may take on behalf of distant out-groups. Implications for future theory and research are discussed. PMID:29304156

  11. Styling the revolution: masculinities, youth, and street politics in Jakarta, Indonesia.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Lee, Doreen

    2011-01-01

    This article explores the changes to urban political culture in Jakarta, Indonesia, from 1998 to the present. By tracing the contributions of youth activists, and middle-class university students in particular, to the production of the street as a political and public space, the author demonstrates to what extent the democratized post-Suharto era naturalizes the place of youth in nationalist politics. Central to this inquiry of youth identity formation is the elision of class and gender as analytical categories. Student movements in 1998 and after have relied on a specific masculine style that draws on both the authenticity of nationalist historical narratives and the street as the domain of the People, and in the process masks potentially contentious class and gender differences among progressive activists.

  12. Exploring Women's Understanding of Politics, Political Contestation ...

    International Development Research Centre (IDRC) Digital Library (Canada)

    Exploring Women's Understanding of Politics, Political Contestation and Gender ... First, researchers will explore women's political leadership and the extent to ... Sign up now for IDRC news and views sent directly to your inbox each month.

  13. Political symbols and political transitions

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Herrero de Miñón, Miguel

    2006-11-01

    Full Text Available Politics, Law and Psychology are fields that come together in the symbolic. This text takes evidence from those three areas to develop an analysis of political symbols and political transitions. The development of the analysis goes through three stages. The first succinctly describes the concept of transition and its meaning. The second closely examines the notion of the symbol, in terms of its definition, to explain aspects that allow us to understand it, characterise it and make its functions clear. Finally, from the author's experience as a witness and as an actor, I suggest three ways of understanding symbols in the processes of political transition: as symbols of change, as symbols of acknowledgment, and as symbols of support.

  14. On the role of attention and emotion in morality: attentional control modulates unrelated disgust in moral judgments.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Van Dillen, Lotte F; van der Wal, Reine C; van den Bos, Kees

    2012-09-01

    The emotion of disgust can influence people's moral judgments, even if this emotion objectively is unrelated to the moral judgment in question. The present work demonstrates that attentional control regulates this effect. In three studies, disgust was induced. In an unrelated part of the studies, participants then judged a moral transgression. Disgust resulted in more severe moral judgments when attentional control (either measured by means of individual predisposition or manipulated with experimental control) was weak as opposed to strong (Studies 1-3). Findings further showed that attentional control mediated the positive relation between the intensity of participants' disgust responses and the severity of their moral judgments (Study 2). Moreover, attentional control has its effects through the regulation of affective processing (Study 3). Taken together, the findings suggest that unrelated influences of disgust on moral judgments are contingent on the attention system.

  15. Political Education as a Means of Political Socialization.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Grabe, Weronika; Knobelsdorf, Wodzimierz

    1980-01-01

    This essay describes the dimensions of political socialization with systematic political education as a major component. Both promote individual acceptance of political norms--particularly where government and school systems are tightly linked. The authors argue that political socialization should promote effective citizenship rather than simply…

  16. Medicaid and the politics of groups: recipients, providers, and policy making.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kronebusch, K

    1997-06-01

    There is a substantial heterogeneity of interests within the Medicaid program. Its major beneficiary groups include the elderly, people with disabilities, children in low-income families, and adults receiving Aid to Families with Dependent Children. Providers who deliver medical services to these recipients represent another set of potential claimants. These groups are likely to be treated differently by the politics that affect the design and management of the Medicaid program. The Medicaid recipient groups vary in several important dimensions: First, the groups differ politically, a dimension that includes their political participation, their relationships to parties and electoral coalitions, the images they present to other political actors, and the legacy of public policies that affect them. Second, the groups have different medical and social needs. Third, the groups differ with respect to economic constraints, including the political economy of labor markets and of government spending programs, and they have differing relationships to the various types of medical providers. The medical providers are themselves political actors with a variety of characteristics that create political advantages relative to recipients, although there is also diversity among providers. The politics of the Medicaid program involves more than simply technical decisions about eligibility, coverage of medical services, reimbursement, and the implementation of managed care initiatives. Instead the differences between the program's multiple claimants are an important element of current Medicaid politics and the likely path of future reforms.

  17. Earth stewardship on rangelands: Coping with ecological, economic, and political marginality

    Science.gov (United States)

    Rangelands encompass 30-40 percent of Earth's land surface and support 1-2 billion people. Their predominant use is extensive livestock production by pastoralists and ranchers. But rangelands are characterized by ecological, economic, and political marginality, and higher-value, more intensive land ...

  18. Voting frequentia as an indicator of political activity

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    V. V. Kryvoshein

    2017-07-01

    Found that the amount of voting frequentia depends on the political regime, the form of government and the level elections. Determined that democracies characterized by an autonomous form of voting frequentia and for undemocratic – mobilizational form of voting frequentia. Followed that the highest rate of participation in voting observed in countries with a parliamentary form of government and proportional electoral system, more than 2/3 of the voting frequentia observed in countries with a parliamentary form of government and majoritarian electoral systems, lowest level of voting frequentia observed in countries with a presidential form of government. It also notes that increased voting frequentia observed in countries where compulsory voting is set. Observed trend of dependency and level elections: electoral activity of elections on the local, regional and supra-national representative authority is much lower than in the presidential and parliamentary elections. Attention is drawn to in explaining the voting frequentia considered rational and irrational factors, since voting is a two-tiered process: active, politically defined part of the voters voted party ideologically and politically unbiased – rationally.

  19. Reconsidering 'Set the People Free': Neoliberalism and Freedom Rhetoric in Churchill's Conservative Party.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Freeman, James

    2017-09-18

    It is often assumed that 'Hayekian' or 'neoliberal' influences lay behind Conservative attacks on socialism in 1945 and subsequent calls to 'set the people free' in 1950 and 1951. This assumption has had consequences for our understanding of late-1940s Conservatism and for wider interpretations of post-war politics. Heeding recent calls to reconnect the inter-war and post-war parties and to pay closer attention to how opponents and contexts generate arguments, this article revisits senior Conservatives' rhetoric between 1945 and 1951 to break the link between neoliberal influence and freedom rhetoric. First, it argues that the rhetoric of 1945 was derived from a distinctly Conservative lineage of interwar argument and reflected strategies developed before the publication of F. A. Hayek's 'The Road to Serfdom'. Second, it demonstrates that senior Conservatives' emancipatory rhetoric in opposition after 1945 was neither a simple continuation of these themes nor primarily a response to the public's growing antipathy towards rationing and controls. Rather, such rhetoric was a complex response to Britain's immediate economic difficulties and the political challenges presented by austerity. Finally, the article sheds new light on the strategy that governed the party's campaigns in 1950 and 1951. Churchill and others' calls to 'set the people free' stemmed from a belief that the rhetorical opportunity lay in reconciling liberty with security. In that sense, the leadership had moved beyond begrudging compromises with the 'Attleean settlement' and was instead attempting to define a new identity within the parameters of the welfare state. © The Author [2017]. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oup.com.

  20. An assessment of potential hydro-political tensions in transboundary river basins using environmental, political, and economic indicators

    Science.gov (United States)

    De Stefano, Lucia; Petersen-Perlman, Jacob; Sproles, Eric; Eynard, James; Wolf, Aaron T.

    2015-04-01

    Globally 286 river basins extend across international borders, covering over 61.9 million km2 of the earth's surface and hosting a total of approximately 2.7 billion people. In these basins, transboundary water resources support an interdependent web of environmental, political, and economic systems that can enhance or destabilize a region. We present an integrated global-scale assessment of transboundary watersheds to identify regions more likely to experience hydro-political tensions over the next decade and beyond based upon environmental, political, and economic indicators. We combine NASA's Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) measurements of changes in terrestrial water storage with metrics of projected climate change impacts on water variability, the institutional capacity of countries to manage shared water resources, the development of new water infrastructure, per capita gross national income, domestic and international armed conflicts, and recent history of disputes over transboundary waters. The construction of new water-related infrastructure is on-going or planned in many basins worldwide. New water infrastructure is foreseen also in areas where instruments of international cooperation are still absent or limited in scope, e.g. in Southeast Asia, South Asia, Central America, the northern part of the South American continent, and the southern Balkans as well as in different parts of Africa. Moreover, in Central and Eastern Africa, the Middle East, and Central, South and South-East Asia there is a concomitance of several political, environmental and socioeconomic factors that could exacerbate hydropolitical tensions. Our analysis integrates political, economic and environmental metrics and is part of the United Nation's Transboundary Waters Assessment Programme to provide the first global-scale assessment of its type.

  1. People-centred science: strengthening the practice of health policy and systems research

    Science.gov (United States)

    2014-01-01

    Health policy and systems research (HPSR) is a transdisciplinary field of global importance, with its own emerging standards for creating, evaluating, and utilizing knowledge, and distinguished by a particular orientation towards influencing policy and wider action to strengthen health systems. In this commentary, we argue that the ability of the HPSR field to influence real world change hinges on its becoming more people-centred. We see people-centredness as recognizing the field of enquiry as one of social construction, requiring those conducting HPSR to locate their own position in the system, and conduct and publish research in a manner that foregrounds human agency attributes and values, and is acutely attentive to policy context. Change occurs at many layers of a health system, shaped by social, political, and economic forces, and brought about by different groups of people who make up the system, including service users and communities. The seeds of transformative practice in HPSR lie in amplifying the breadth and depth of dialogue across health system actors in the conduct of research – recognizing that these actors are all generators, sources, and users of knowledge about the system. While building such a dialogic practice, those conducting HPSR must strive to protect the autonomy and integrity of their ideas and actions, and also clearly explain their own positions and the value-basis of their work. We conclude with a set of questions that health policy and systems researchers may wish to consider in making their practice more people-centred, and hence more oriented toward real-world change. PMID:24739525

  2. Political Ecologies of Global Health: Pesticide Exposure in Southwestern Ecuador's Banana Industry.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Brisbois, Ben Wesley; Harris, Leila; Spiegel, Jerry M

    2018-01-01

    Pesticide exposure in Ecuador's banana industry reflects political economic and ecological processes that interact across scales to affect human health. We use this case study to illustrate opportunities for applying political ecology of health scholarship in the burgeoning field of global health. Drawing on an historical literature review and ethnographic data collected in Ecuador's El Oro province, we present three main areas where a political ecological approach can enrich global health scholarship: perceptive characterization of multi-scalar and ecologically entangled pathways to health outcomes; critical analysis of discursive dynamics such as competing scalar narratives; and appreciation of the environment-linked subjectivities and emotions of people experiencing globalized health impacts. Rapprochement between these fields may also provide political ecologists with access to valuable empirical data on health outcomes, venues for engaged scholarship, and opportunities to synthesize numerous insightful case studies and discern broader patterns.

  3. Manyu youths, belonging and the antinomies of patrimonial elite politics in contemporary Cameroon

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Orock, Rogers Tabe Egbe

    2013-01-01

    and better chances for upward social mobility. With a critical attention to their discourses and practices, the article examines the disjuncture between the promise of Cameroon’s patrimonial state as an inclusive structure of political action and the sense of exclusion, anxiety, and uncertainty felt by many......This article explores the social and political connections between youths and political elites from Manyu Division in South-Western Cameroon. Unlike several recent studies on youths in Africa, it focuses on educated youths from Manyu, exploring their strategies to secure greater political inclusion......, these do not always guarantee inclusion and success in social mobility for the youthful actors. For these youths, they felt their exclusion to be more a result of the obstructive character of middle-aged elites who were reticent to acknowledge the values of kinship, ethnicity, and patronage as valid basis...

  4. Political party affiliation, political ideology and mortality.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Pabayo, Roman; Kawachi, Ichiro; Muennig, Peter

    2015-05-01

    Ecological and cross-sectional studies have indicated that conservative political ideology is associated with better health. Longitudinal analyses of mortality are needed because subjective assessments of ideology may confound subjective assessments of health, particularly in cross-sectional analyses. Data were derived from the 2008 General Social Survey-National Death Index data set. Cox proportional analysis models were used to determine whether political party affiliation or political ideology was associated with time to death. Also, we attempted to identify whether self-reported happiness and self-rated health acted as mediators between political beliefs and time to death. In this analysis of 32,830 participants and a total follow-up time of 498,845 person-years, we find that political party affiliation and political ideology are associated with mortality. However, with the exception of independents (adjusted HR (AHR)=0.93, 95% CI 0.90 to 0.97), political party differences are explained by the participants' underlying sociodemographic characteristics. With respect to ideology, conservatives (AHR=1.06, 95% CI 1.01 to 1.12) and moderates (AHR=1.06, 95% CI 1.01 to 1.11) are at greater risk for mortality during follow-up than liberals. Political party affiliation and political ideology appear to be different predictors of mortality. Published by the BMJ Publishing Group Limited. For permission to use (where not already granted under a licence) please go to http://group.bmj.com/group/rights-licensing/permissions.

  5. Social Dominance Orientation: A Personality Variable Predicting Social and Political Attitudes

    OpenAIRE

    Malle, Bertram F.; Stallworth, Lisa M.; Sidanius, James; Pratto, Felicia

    1994-01-01

    Social dominance orientation (SDO), one's degree of preference for inequality among social groups, is introduced. On the basis of social dominance theory, it is shown that (a) men are more social dominance-oriented than women, (b) high-SDO people seek hierarchy-enhancing professional roles and low-SDO people seek hierarchy-attenuating roles, (c) SDO was related to beliefs in a large number of social and political ideologies that support group-based hierarchy (e.g., meritocracy and racism) and...

  6. Politics Backstage - Television Documentaries, Politics and Politicians

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Ib Bondebjerg

    2006-09-01

    Full Text Available This article deals with "the transformation of visibility" in political discourse on and representation of politics and politicians in resent Dansih television documentaries. Drawing on the theories of Habermas, Meyrowitz and John B. Thompson, it is argued that the political persona on television is moved closer to the individual citizen, creating a sort "mediated quasi-inter- action" giving mediated communication a stronger element of face-to-face interaction. Together with the more pervasive "live" coverage of politics and politicians, this expands media coverage to both the backstage of political processes and the private and personal backstage of politicians, changing the form of democracy and public debate.

  7. USSR Report, International Affairs, Peoples of Asia and Africa,No 6, November-December 1986.

    Science.gov (United States)

    1987-05-05

    people, for whom the active process of political socialization began as early as after the winning of independence. Insofar as their consciousness...uncovered allowed the author to describe the process of political socialization of these groups of African youth as "the beginning of a transition

  8. The Democratic Dilemma: Can Citizens Learn What They Need To Know? Political Economy of Institutions and Decisions Series.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Lupia, Arthur; McCubbins, Mathew D.

    Although this book concedes that people lack political information and that this ignorance can allow people "of sinister designs" to deceive and betray the uninformed, it does not concede that democracy must succumb to these threats. Rather, the book argues that limited information need not prevent people from making reasoned choices,…

  9. The politics of 'hope' and 'despair': Generational dimensions to Igbo ...

    African Journals Online (AJOL)

    This paper examines the concept of “generations” as one of the key features of contemporary Igbo nationalism, and as one that has received relatively less or no attention in the literature on post-civil war Igbo nationalism in Nigeria. Drawing on the activities of Ohanaeze Ndi Igbo- the apex socio-political group in Igboland- ...

  10. Philosophical Anthropology, Ethics and Political Philosophy in an Age of Impending Catastrophe

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Arran Gare

    2009-11-01

    Full Text Available  In this paper it is argued that philosophical anthropology is central to ethics and politics. The denial of this has facilitated the triumph of debased notions of humans developed by Hobbes which has facilitated the enslavement of people to the logic of the global market, a logic which is now destroying the ecological conditions for civilization and most life on Earth. Reviving the classical understanding of the central place of philosophical anthropology to ethics and politics, the early work of Hegel and Marx is explicated, defended and further developed by interpreting this through developments in post-mechanistic science. Overcoming the opposition between the sciences and the humanities, it is suggested that the conception of humans developed in this way can orient people in their struggle for the liberty to avert a global ecological catastrophe.

  11. Henan - the model: from hegemonism to fragmentism:portrait of the political culture of China's most populated province

    OpenAIRE

    Heberer, Thomas; Jakobi, Sabine

    2000-01-01

    "Henan is China's most populous province. It has long played a strategic role in Chinese history and in more recent decades has played a prominent part in the country's politics. In this paper we explore aspects of the history and political culture of Henan, particularly the collective memory or consciousness of its people, and trends in its recent political history. We focus in particular on specific cultural features and local patterns of socio-economic development, both to highlight import...

  12. Cognitive assessment of older people

    OpenAIRE

    Young, John; Meagher, David; MacLullich, Alasdair J

    2011-01-01

    peer-reviewed Cognitive assessment involves examination of higher cortical functions, particularly memory, attention, orientation, language, executive function (planning activities), and praxis (sequencing of activities). This article will focus on cognitive assessment of older people (those aged over about 65 years) in the context of possible dementia, delirium, and depression. These are common and serious clinical syndromes affecting older people, and accurate cognit...

  13. ThemeStreams: Visualizing The Stream Of Themes Discussed In Politics

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    de Rooij, O.; Odijk, D.; de Rijke, M.

    2013-01-01

    The political landscape is fluid. Discussions are always ongoing and new "hot topics" continue to appear in the headlines. But what made people start talking about that topic? And who started it? Because of the speed at which discussions sometimes take place this can be difficult to track down. We

  14. Sex Worker Political Development in Costa Rica: from Informal Solidarities to Formal Organizing

    OpenAIRE

    Koné, Mzilikazi

    2014-01-01

    While many accounts of sex workers presume they lack agency, this project studies how people framed as powerless assert positions of power through social interactions, friendships, and organizing. I examine sex workers' politics and power from the perspective of a subset of female Costa Rican sex workers. I engage specifically with sex workers who organize, in order to theorize everyday experiences of politics, including solidarity building and acts of accommodation or resistance vis-à-vis st...

  15. Fair Biodiversity Politics With and Beyond Rawls

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    John Bernhard Kleba

    2013-09-01

    Full Text Available The access and benefit-sharing regime (ABS of the Convention on Biological Diversity has been criticised for focusing on entitlements and asset exchanges. In this regard, the Nagoya Protocol provides little advance. This work introduces new paths of research and reasoning debating the tensions between the Rawlsian concept of justice and the realm of ABS. A new original position to debate fair biodiversity politics would include the concepts of justice of non-Western cultures. Taking the case of indigenous and traditional peoples, the issue of cultural minority rights is raised, challenging the institutionalisation of legal pluralism and political recognition. Against Bell, and with and beyond Rawls, arguments are provided favouring an environmental constitutionalism. The least advantaged concept shifts from an economical focus towards realising citizenship and applied to the ABS regime. Concerning the destination of benefits in ABS agreements, I advocate a complement between entitlements and the systemic aims of the Convention, prioritising the latter. Finally, controversies about the equity of benefit sharing are examined. Whereas the difference principle is helpful in tackling the economical and political asymmetries in ABS negotiations, it leaves core questions open. The Nagoya Protocol has advanced in providing legal tools to realise citizenship. However, political justice demands more. Concerns to benefit the least advantaged should be included in policy, bioprospecting project design and ABS contracts.

  16. 'Western Balkans': Political context and the media usage

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Svilar Predrag

    2010-01-01

    Full Text Available By accessing the content analysis of media archives, available both on the Internet presentations of the most significant and most influential media, press agencies, web search engines, and official public institutions, international government and non-government organizations, we will make an attempt to point to political conditioning, appearances and uses, as well as political etymology of the term Western Balkans. The attention will also be called to the fact that the term has its origin in Anglo-Saxon political and historiographical tradition, through the examples of its use, as well as to the similarities of political relations which bring to its applicability. By analyzing the content of media inscriptions, reports, documents, official announcements, authorial reviews and analyses, it came to a conclusion that Western Balkans occurs as a regional reference in particular historical and political circumstances and that geographical frames it is being used within, could be located outside the time frames and there are specified the particularities of its use. We will demonstrate that through the analysis of the political context and media usage, Western Balkans could be interpreted on more than one level. Western Balkans can at the same time represent both a terminological construction and a regional reference which expresses the indecisiveness of the West on social and cultural properties of the Balkans and the founding of Balkan cultures as immanently European, but at the same time the means of measurement, which is not only the determination of regionalism, but the determination of historical and political moment likewise. Besides, Western Balkans could also be interpreted as a mean of practical methodology and classification of naming the societies on the Balkans, which are the only outside the European Union frames, but also stand for the synchronization of the Balkanistic discourse with current political and historical circumstances and

  17. Sustained attention to objects' motion sharpens position representations: Attention to changing position and attention to motion are distinct.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Howard, Christina J; Rollings, Victoria; Hardie, Amy

    2017-06-01

    In tasks where people monitor moving objects, such the multiple object tracking task (MOT), observers attempt to keep track of targets as they move amongst distracters. The literature is mixed as to whether observers make use of motion information to facilitate performance. We sought to address this by two means: first by superimposing arrows on objects which varied in their informativeness about motion direction and second by asking observers to attend to motion direction. Using a position monitoring task, we calculated mean error magnitudes as a measure of the precision with which target positions are represented. We also calculated perceptual lags versus extrapolated reports, which are the times at which positions of targets best match position reports. We find that the presence of motion information in the form of superimposed arrows made no difference to position report precision nor perceptual lag. However, when we explicitly instructed observers to attend to motion, we saw facilitatory effects on position reports and in some cases reports that best matched extrapolated rather than lagging positions for small set sizes. The results indicate that attention to changing positions does not automatically recruit attention to motion, showing a dissociation between sustained attention to changing positions and attention to motion. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

  18. Strength and Fragility of Disidentified Subjects. Reflections on Political Subjectivation

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Valentine Le Borgne de Boisriou

    2015-01-01

    Full Text Available This publication presents the results of a research project on forms of political subjectivity in social movements. Conducting this research required a double disciplinary field, calling on the one hand on contemporary political philosophy, particularly the thought of Jacques Rancière, and on the other authors of the corpus of political sociology, drawing specifically on an axis of research formed in Argentina on popular and territorial mobilizations. Between 2009 and 2012, I conducted a field research on the territorial organization of Gran Buenos Aires. The objective was to elucidate the modes of mobilization of people in precarious situations, starting from their entry into the organization to the particularities of their mobilization. Taking as a starting point the power relations produced by these movements, there arose, in the course of the investigation, a reflection on the conditions of production of a certain type of subject in the struggle. In this article I propose to analyze this reflection in terms of political subjectivation. In this sense, I will present one of the most significant life stories obtained during the field study. This story will be used to explain the dimension of uprooting that accompanies the irruption of politics in one’s existence. Taking thus the experience of disidentification as a fundamental element of political subjectivation, I hope to deepen the understanding of its existential effects as well as the effects in political philosophy as to the analytical complexity that a work on concrete experiences implies.

  19. Hmong Political Involvement in St. Paul, Minnesota and Fresno, California

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Yang Lor

    2010-01-01

    Full Text Available Over the past several years, Hmong in the United States have gained prominence for their increasing involvement in politics. Most of the attention has understandably focused on Fresno, California and St. Paul, Minnesota, home to the two largest Hmong populations in this country. While the Hmong communities in both cities are similar in size and have made significant political progress as evidenced by the election of Hmong candidates, the Hmong community in St. Paul has made greater inroads in the political realm. In addition to the elections of two Hmong candidates to the Minnesota State Legislature and two to the St. Paul School Board, the Hmong community in St. Paul has been able to engage local and state governments in Minnesotato address issues that affect the Hmong community. Through interviews, census data, and newspaper coverage of political campaigns, I show that Hmong in St. Paul have achieved greaterrepresentation in local and state governments and received greater support from government officials than Hmong in Fresno because Minnesota offers a social, economic, and politicalcontext that is favorable to fostering Hmong political involvement. Compared to Hmong in Fresno, Hmong in St. Paul have higher levels of socioeconomic resources and are more visible given their large size relative to other minority groups. They live in a region with consistently high levels of political participation and have political candidates who devote resources to mobilizing the Hmong community. Moreover, the Hmong vote has been critical to the success of Hmong candidates in St. Paul, an indication of the increasing political clout of the Hmong community there and a major reason why politicians in Minnesota are more willing to respond toissues that affect the Hmong community. Overall, this study highlights the importance of local and regional context in understanding the political incorporation of immigrants.

  20. Political Science and Political Geography: Neglected Areas, Areas for Development.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Laponce, J. A.

    1983-01-01

    Since at least the 1950s, political scientists have tended to ignore the possible contributions of political geography to political science because of a move away from considering spatial factors on political structure. Political scientists need to use more information from geography to enhance their understanding of political power and conflict.…

  1. Antinomies of Ideologies and Situationality of Education Language Politics in Multilingual Contexts

    Science.gov (United States)

    Odugu, Desmond Ikenna

    2015-01-01

    Widespread scholarly and political attention to language-related inequities in the 20th century precipitated a spate of orientations to language planning in multilingual societies. While various orientations indicate a shift from earlier deficit to affirmative views of multilingualism, vigorous debates persist about the logical and pragmatic…

  2. Big Data: A New Empiricism and its Epistemic and Socio-Political Consequences

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Rieder, Gernot; Simon, Judith

    2017-01-01

    The paper investigates the rise of Big Data in contemporary society. It examines the most prominent epistemological claims made by Big Data proponents, calls attention to the potential socio-political consequences of blind data trust, and proposes a possible way forward. The paper’s main focus is...

  3. Russian Climate Politics. Light at the end of the tunnel? Briefing Paper

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Korppoo, A.; Moe, A.

    2007-04-01

    Russian climate politics were certainly a talking point a few years ago due to the country's decisive role in the entry into force of the Kyoto Protocol. The views of various potentially influential officials were reported by the world media almost on a daily basis. Since the ratification of the Kyoto Protocol by Russia in 2004, and its entry into force, Russian climate politics have received less attention. In this paper we update our previous analyses of Russian climate politics and policies, and report the latest developments, including material from the discussions in the 'JI in Russia' workshop 26 March 2007 organised by Oxford Climate Policy in co-operation with Climate Strategies. The main tasks of this paper are to review: the readiness of Russia to implement the Kyoto mechanisms; the fulfilment of the compliance requirements of the Kyoto Protocol; the current political debate about climate policy by various key players; the emerging discussion on the post-2012 positions of Russia

  4. Between vanguard and exclusion- young people of the twenty-first century

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Agnieszka Gil

    2011-12-01

    Full Text Available This study has been narrowed down to reveal a paradox. Here the vanguard of culture and civilization - which is regarded as young people of the twenty-first century – is embroiled in a discourse of exclusion: economic, political and cultural life. In secondary school programs and high schools we do not find specific references and studies, primarily based on the needs of students, about the theory of popular culture and cultural education in the area of pop culture. The paradox of exclusion of mainstream culture from educational discourse is schizophrenic. The political exclusion of young people of the XXI century I consider all the disparaging scientific discourse, which skips the actual media and communication competence of young people. Prosumers, cognitarchy, digital natives, C-generation – they are for the modern economy “Silicon Valley” - their market power to exclude is already unstoppable. In other areas it remains to be considered whether excluding young people from the cultural discourse will not deprive our future teachers and translators of the next civilization revolution of social reality...

  5. Effects of Political Knowledge on Political Tolerance

    Science.gov (United States)

    Hall, John Powell

    2018-01-01

    Sexual orientation continues to be an explosive issue in American classrooms. Increasing the political knowledge of students can reduce the volatility of this explosive issue by increasing tolerance toward the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender community. This relationship between political knowledge and political tolerance has been…

  6. TCBH Duncan Tanner Essay Prize Winner 2017 The 'Progress of a Slogan': Youth, Culture, and the Shaping of Everyday Political Languages in Late 1940s Britain.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Cowan, David

    2018-04-17

    In 1948, worried that young people would take full employment and the welfare state for granted, the Labour Party trialled a new slogan: 'Ask your Dad'. This slogan encouraged the young to learn about the hardships which their parents had experienced in the inter-war years, largely under Conservative governments. Using archived interviews and letters sent to the press, this article provides the first study of the popular reception of this slogan. Most people had not heard of this slogan, and most of those who had heard of the phrase showed no knowledge that it was associated with politics, turning instead to popular culture. Those who understood the slogan were not the passive conduits of their party's message; often, they reworked political ideas to fit their own memories. Because repeating slogans was associated with a lack of political independence, not listening to party politics could conceal an intense interest in creating political change-an attitude which was, apparently, pronounced amongst the young. This article uses these responses to suggest how political language was as much produced by ordinary people's memories and daily discussion, as it was something drawn from professional campaigners.

  7. New Ways of Interaction in Social Media: Political Participation of Young People in Mexico and Ecuador

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Daniel Barredo-Ibáñez

    2017-09-01

    Full Text Available The media crisis is linked to the crisis of public institutions. This shows the emergence of social practices focused on user activation and consequently, we can observe a decline of vertical mediation. However, these phenomena do not extend horizontally at a global level. With this study, we compare the results of a survey of more than two thousand university students from Mexico and Ecuador, in which we question the perceptions of these strategic groups about phenomena such as political participation on and offline, and political information consumption.

  8. Transforming epistemologies in the postcolonial African university? The challenge of the politics of knowledge

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Amasa Philip Ndofirepi

    2014-11-01

    Full Text Available The process of knowledge production, dissemination and consumption has captured much scholarly attention from a political viewpoint in recent times. Discourses on development, empowerment, transformation and democracy have revolved around knowledge and power and more precisely on the politics of knowledge. Institutions of higher learning, especially universities, globally, as nerve centres of knowledge production and distribution, have not been spared from the challenges of the politics of knowledge. In this conceptual paper, we theorise the dynamics of the challenges and opportunities of the politics of knowledge in the context of the postcolonial African university’s endeavour to transform epistemologies in higher education in the 21st century Africa. Our case is premised on three claims, namely that 1 the production and mediation of knowledge is a genuinely political process(Weiler, 2011b 2 universities can be considered among the most political institutions in society (Ordorika, 1999 and 3 recontextualisation and transformation of university epistemologies (Weiler, 2011a is a prerequisite for an authentic postcolonial African university.

  9. Ideology: Its Resurgence in Social, Personality, and Political Psychology.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Jost, John T; Nosek, Brian A; Gosling, Samuel D

    2008-03-01

    We trace the rise, fall, and resurgence of political ideology as a topic of research in social, personality, and political psychology. For over 200 years, political belief systems have been classified usefully according to a single left-right (or liberal-conservative) dimension that, we believe, possesses two core aspects: (a) advocating versus resisting social change and (b) rejecting versus accepting inequality. There have been many skeptics of the notion that most people are ideologically inclined, but recent psychological evidence suggests that left-right differences are pronounced in many life domains. Implicit as well as explicit preferences for tradition, conformity, order, stability, traditional values, and hierarchy-versus those for progress, rebelliousness, chaos, flexibility, feminism, and equality-are associated with conservatism and liberalism, respectively. Conservatives score consistently higher than liberals on measures of system justification. Furthermore, there are personality and lifestyle differences between liberals and conservatives as well as situational variables that induce either liberal or conservative shifts in political opinions. Our thesis is that ideological belief systems may be structured according to a left-right dimension for largely psychological reasons linked to variability in the needs to reduce uncertainty and threat. © 2008 Association for Psychological Science.

  10. Competing for the same value segments? Insight into the volatile Dutch political landscape.

    Science.gov (United States)

    van Herk, Hester; Schoonees, Pieter C; Groenen, Patrick J F; van Rosmalen, Joost

    2018-01-01

    Values are central to public debates today. Human values convey broad goals that serve as guiding principles in a person's life and value priorities differ across people in society. Groups in society holding opposing values (e.g., universalism versus security) will make different choices when voting in an election. Whereas over time, values are relatively stable, the number and type of political parties as well as the political values they communicate and disseminate have been changing. Groups of people holding the same human values may therefore vote for another (new) party in a later election. We focus on analyzing the relationship between human values and voting in elections, introducing a new methodology to analyze how value profiles relate to political support over time. We investigate the Dutch multi-party political system over five waves of the European Social Survey, spanning 2002 until 2010. Whilst previous research has focused on individual values separately and focused on voters only, we (1) distinguish groups holding a similar set of opposing and compatible values (value profile) instead of focusing on single values in the the entire population; (2) incorporate a correction for differences in scale use in our model; (3) compare voting over time; (4) include non-voters, a growing group in Dutch society. We find evidence that specific value profiles are related to voting for a specific set of political parties. We also find that specific value profiles distinguish non-voters from voters and that voters for populist parties resemble non-voters.

  11. Competing for the same value segments? Insight into the volatile Dutch political landscape

    Science.gov (United States)

    Groenen, Patrick J. F.; van Rosmalen, Joost

    2018-01-01

    Values are central to public debates today. Human values convey broad goals that serve as guiding principles in a person’s life and value priorities differ across people in society. Groups in society holding opposing values (e.g., universalism versus security) will make different choices when voting in an election. Whereas over time, values are relatively stable, the number and type of political parties as well as the political values they communicate and disseminate have been changing. Groups of people holding the same human values may therefore vote for another (new) party in a later election. We focus on analyzing the relationship between human values and voting in elections, introducing a new methodology to analyze how value profiles relate to political support over time. We investigate the Dutch multi-party political system over five waves of the European Social Survey, spanning 2002 until 2010. Whilst previous research has focused on individual values separately and focused on voters only, we (1) distinguish groups holding a similar set of opposing and compatible values (value profile) instead of focusing on single values in the the entire population; (2) incorporate a correction for differences in scale use in our model; (3) compare voting over time; (4) include non-voters, a growing group in Dutch society. We find evidence that specific value profiles are related to voting for a specific set of political parties. We also find that specific value profiles distinguish non-voters from voters and that voters for populist parties resemble non-voters. PMID:29324764

  12. Breaking up old Marriages: The Political Process of Change and Continuity of Work

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Kamp, Annette

    2000-01-01

    , and new management concepts. Attention is given to the introduction of technical-bureaucratic management concepts for Occupational Health and Safety and the environment through presenting a case study, where both managers' and shop-floor personnel's political behaviour can be examined the findings...

  13. Why metaphor and other tropes? Linguistic approaches to analysing policies and the political

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Yanow, D.; Cienki, A.

    2013-01-01

    The articles in this special issue on linguistic approaches to analysing policies and the political share the goal of taking language seriously, achieved through detailed attention to linguistic usage in its respective contexts. They reflect a stance common to both cognitive linguistic and

  14. Political apathy amongst students: A case study of Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Ntsikelelo B. Breakfast

    2017-09-01

    Full Text Available The primary motivation for this research, in which a qualitative method was employed, was to examine political apathy amongst students at Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University. The secondary motivation was to question whether youth political apathy threatens the consolidation of democracy. The researchers arranged four focus groups at Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University. A purposive sampling technique was utilised. All 50 participants in the study were Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University undergraduate and postgraduate black students, with ages ranging from 21 to 35 years. The researchers encouraged participants to have maximum participation in the focus group deliberations. The researchers also made use of elite interviews in the study. The findings of this study suggest that political apathy does exist amongst students at Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University. Most of the participants in the focus groups indicated that young people in post-apartheid South Africa have no interest in politics.

  15. System for assessing classroom attention.

    OpenAIRE

    Raca Mirko; Dillenbourg Pierre

    2013-01-01

    In this paper we give a preview of our system for automatically evaluating attention in the classroom. We demonstrate our current behaviour metrics and preliminary observations on how they reflect the reactions of people to the given lecture. We also introduce foundations of our hypothesis on peripheral awareness of students during lectures.

  16. Identity construction and British Muslims' political activity: beyond rational actor theory.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Hopkins, Nick; Kahani-Hopkins, Vered

    2004-09-01

    Political activity is often addressed in terms of rational actor theory (RAT). We review RAT's psychological assumptions and highlight the neglect of collective identity. In turn, we view the perception of 'interest' as contingent upon constructions of identity and explore how different characterizations of collective identity are organized strategically so as to shape people's understandings of their interests and how they should act to realize them. Using examples taken from a study of British Muslims' political activity we emphasize the contested and strategic dimension to identity construction and analyse how activists addressing the same constituency construe Muslim identity in different ways so as to promote different conceptions of collective interest. Specifically, we explore the contested invocations of Prophetic example in the definition of Muslim identity. The broader thrust behind this work is a critique of the sharp dichotomization of Muslim and non-Muslim political activity. We maintain that essentially similar processes of identity construction underlie all attempts to organize collective sentiment and political action (including that comprising so-called 'conventional' electoralist politics in the West), and that conceiving of identity as a site of political struggle underscores the inadequacy of Orientalist characterizations of Muslim identity in terms of a singular, transhistorical essence.

  17. Debate on global warming as a socio-scientific issue: science teaching towards political literacy

    Science.gov (United States)

    dos Santos, Wildson Luiz Pereira

    2014-09-01

    The focus of this response to the original article by Tom G. H. Bryce and Stephen P. Day (Cult Stud Sci Educ. doi: 10.1007/s11422-012-9407-1, 2013) is the use of empirical data to illustrate and expand the understanding of key points of their argument. Initially, I seek to discuss possible answers to the three questions posed by the authors related to: (1) the concerns to be addressed and the scientific knowledge to be taken into account in the climate change debate, (2) the attention to be paid to perspectives taken by "alarmists" and "deniers," and (3) the approaches to be used to conduct controversial global warming debate. In this discussion, I seek to contribute to the debate proposed by the original paper, illustrating various points commented on by the authors and expanding to other possibilities, which highlight the importance of political issues in the debate. Therefore, I argue that socio-political issues must be taken into account when I aim for a scientific literacy that can enhance students' political education. Likewise, I extend the debate presented in the original article, emphasizing the attention that should be paid to these aspects and approaching science education from a critical perspective. Highlighting only the confirmation bias without considering political implications of the debate can induce a reductionist and empiricist view of science, detached from the political power that acts on scientific activity. In conclusion, I support the idea that for a critical science education, the discussion of political issues should be involved in any controversial debate, a view, which goes beyond the confirmation bias proposed by Bryce and Day for the global warming debate. These issues are indeed vital and science teachers should take them into account when preparing their lessons for the debate on climate change.

  18. Global Stories of People Working for Change.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Dragman, June; Szasz, Michael

    Developed by a Canadian volunteer organization, this textbook for high school and adult English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) and literacy students explores current international events and social issues using both personal and global perspectives. It includes personal stories of people's lives, discussions of social and political issues in a wider…

  19. Contemporary Political Paranoia, a Case of Political Gnosticism

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Antonio Rivera García

    2017-10-01

    Full Text Available This article puts forward the concept of political paranoia as a useful category to understand some contemporary manifestations of the pathologies of power. For this aim an interdisciplinary approach has been used, namely, the knowledge provided by psychoanalysis, political philosophy, theology and literary or aesthetic studies. Freud’s and Lacan’s psychoanalysis allows us to understand why the paranoid subject is a megalomaniac and hyperrational subject who wants to be in control of everything. It is a sovereign subject, who has adapted not only to the Society of Control initially defined by Deleuze, but also to a conception of philosophy that aims for totality. After dealing with the close relationship between paranoia and conspiratorial political theory, the article explains the reason why contemporary political paranoia represents a case of the most radical political theology: political Gnosticism. This term stands for a conception of politics that reduces the Other to the condition of an absolute enemy that needs to be eliminated. Lastly, the article establishes a close link between the cure for political paranoia and the assumption of an ontology of incompleteness

  20. Emotion recognition in Chinese people with schizophrenia.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Chan, Chetwyn C H; Wong, Raymond; Wang, Kai; Lee, Tatia M C

    2008-01-15

    This study examined whether people with paranoid or nonparanoid schizophrenia would show emotion-recognition deficits, both facial and prosodic. Furthermore, this study examined the neuropsychological predictors of emotion-recognition ability in people with schizophrenia. Participants comprised 86 people, of whom: 43 were people diagnosed with schizophrenia and 43 were controls. The 43 clinical participants were placed in either the paranoid group (n=19) or the nonparanoid group (n=24). Each participant was administered the Facial Emotion Recognition task and the Prosodic Recognition task, together with other neuropsychological measures of attention and visual perception. People suffering from nonparanoid schizophrenia were found to have deficits in both facial and prosodic emotion recognition, after correction for the differences in the intelligence and depression scores between the two groups. Furthermore, spatial perception was observed to be the best predictor of facial emotion identification in individuals with nonparanoid schizophrenia, whereas attentional processing control predicted both prosodic emotion identification and discrimination in nonparanoid schizophrenia patients. Our findings suggest that patients with schizophrenia in remission may still suffer from impairment of certain aspects of emotion recognition.