Hasil untuk "Political science (General)"

G. Gauchat

Caitlin Drummond, Baruch Fischhoff

Eric Msughter Aondover, Ifedolapo Ademosu, Ramson Oloche Acheme

The 2023 general elections in Nigeria were characterised by a surge in hate speech, particularly across digital platforms, significantly shaping the political landscape and influencing voter behaviour. The study highlights how ethno-religious and politically motivated hate speech deepened societal divisions, fostered misinformation, and contributed to voter apathy and fear-driven electoral choices. On social media platforms, individuals and organisations believe that freedom of speech entitles them to speak their minds without any restrictions whatsoever. During elections, this freedom of expression plays out without any hindrance, pervading social media platforms with hate speech rhetoric, misinformation, and disinformation. This study examines how voters’ exposure to political hate speech during the 2023 presidential election campaigns, as disseminated through traditional media, social platforms, and campaign rhetoric, shaped the attitude of voters, their trust in the ability of the candidates to deliver, and their level of electoral participation. Using the Functional Theory of Campaign Discourse, the study analyses the system through which inflammatory language divides public opinion, reinforces divisions in political party groups (among supporters), and destroys the confidence voters have in the Nigerian electoral processes. Based on the pragmatic approach of research design, survey method, and content analysis of hate speech in the 2023 presidential election campaigns will be adopted, and results show pervasive use of hate speech by the political class and how this results in low voter turnout.

B. Rutjens, Robbie M. Sutton, Romy van der Lee

Many topics that scientists investigate speak to people’s ideological worldviews. We report three studies—including an analysis of large-scale survey data—in which we systematically investigate the ideological antecedents of general faith in science and willingness to support science, as well as of science skepticism of climate change, vaccination, and genetic modification (GM). The main predictors are religiosity and political orientation, morality, and science understanding. Overall, science understanding is associated with vaccine and GM food acceptance, but not climate change acceptance. Importantly, different ideological predictors are related to the acceptance of different scientific findings. Political conservatism best predicts climate change skepticism. Religiosity, alongside moral purity concerns, best predicts vaccination skepticism. GM food skepticism is not fueled by religious or political ideology. Finally, religious conservatives consistently display a low faith in science and an unwillingness to support science. Thus, science acceptance and rejection have different ideological roots, depending on the topic of investigation.

Mile Obrenović

Ako pođemo od postulata da vojna strategija podrazumeva vođenje rata s namerom postizanja određenog cilja, osnovni preduslov za bavljenje vojnom strategijom je razumevanje rata. S obzirom na to da rat predstavlja jednu od najsloženijih društvenih pojava, koja tokom vremena permanentno menja svoja osnovna obeležja, teško je „ukrotiti” osnovne karakteristike rata. Imajući u vidu tu složenu prirodu rata, utvrđivanje njene dinamične prirode je praktičnije usmeravanjem na jednu od karakteristika, a to je u ovom slučaju prostorna dimenzija rata. Razumevanje prostorne dimenzije rata je jedan od preduslova za razumevanje samog rata i kako se on u tom pogledu menjao tokom vremena. Nekadašnjiratovi su se vodili oružanom borbom „prsa u prsa”, što je omogućavalo da bojište bude jasno određen geografski prostor i socijalni konstrukt kojem se pripusuju isključivo ratne namene. Postavlja se pitanje da li je pojam bojišta danas moguće odrediti u prostornom i u socijalno-konstruktivističkom smislu? Osnovna pretpostavka na kojoj počiva rad jeste da je bojište doživelo potpuno transformaciju, koja je sa razvojem hibridnog rata doživela vrhunac, čime je od prostora na kojem je geografija imala primat nad ratom bojište postalo prostor u kojem rat ima primat nad geografijom. Analizom vojnog strateškog promišljanja od Sun Cua do savremenih vojnih stratega, moguće je uočiti kako se danas u vođenju rata za postizanje političkih ciljeva ne daje primat taktici koja će se najbolje prilagoditi geografskim okolnostima, nego taktici koja će najbolje prevladati geografske okolnosti. Tako je prostorna dimenzija rata i u strateškom promišljanju i u taktičkom delovanju proširena do tih granica da bojište nije moguće ni geografski ograničiti ni shvatiti kao socijalni konstrukt koji razdvaja vojno od civilnog.

Lucia Michalkova, Olga Ponisciakova

Businesses are influenced by the cyclical nature of economic development and distinct stages in the corporate life cycle. Accurate early-warning mechanisms are crucial to mitigating bankruptcy risk, enabling timely rescue measures. This article analyses the reliability of various bankruptcy prediction models, including those by Kliestik et al., Poznanski, the modified Zmijewski, Jakubik–Teply, and Virag–Hajdu, across corporate life cycle stages. Reliability was assessed using five metrics: accuracy, balanced accuracy, <i>F1</i> and <i>F2</i> scores, and the Matthews correlation coefficient (<i>MCC</i>). The sample included over 5000 SMEs from Central Europe, with financial data from 2022. The findings reveal a U-shaped trend in financial distress risk, with start-ups and declining enterprises facing the highest risks. The results indicate that the Kliestik et al. model shows consistent reliability across all life cycle stages, while the Poznanski model shows more variability. Conversely, the Virag–Hajdu model exhibits significant variability in reliability, with its best performance observed during the Decline stage. The modified Zmijewski and Jakubik–Teply models show lower <i>MCC</i> values overall, with the modified Zmijewski model performing better at predicting the financial distress of mature shake-out firms compared to other stages.

Muhammad Hassan Bin Afzal, Paula Daniela Ganga, Oindrila Roy et al.

We investigate the determinants of voting behavior by focusing on the direct effect of educational attainment, sociodemographic characteristics, partisan identity, and political ideology on the intention to vote, registration, and turnout. We use the cumulative CCES dataset to explore voting behavior for the 2014 and 2018 midterm elections and the 2016 and 2020 general elections. We propose a new Voting Engagement Index (VEI) to assess these factors' cumulative impact on electoral participation. Our analysis shows that education consistently motivates voting behavior, while gender, race, and ethnicity significantly shape engagement levels. Mainly, Black and Middle Eastern Americans exhibit higher voting engagement, whereas Native Americans and females display lower odds of voting engagement. Although Native Americans and women express a clear intention to vote in upcoming elections with increased attainment, the intention is not fully realized in voter registration and voting during midterms and general elections. Income and home ownership also become apparent as strong predictors of voter engagement. This research contributes to understanding the changing aspects of voter motivation and participation, with implications for grassroots-level mobilization, including unheard voting voices in U.S. elections, more inclusive and just voting policies and future electoral studies.

Bang Quan Zheng

Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) or Covariance Structure Analysis (CSA) is a versatile and powerful method in the social and behavioral sciences, providing a framework for modeling complex relationships, testing mediation, accounting for measurement error, and analyzing latent constructs. However, SEM remains underutilized in in political science; its application is often marred by misunderstandings, misinterpretations, and methodological pitfalls that can compromise the validity and interpretability of findings. This article examines key challenges in SEM applications within political science, including test statistics and fit indices, model specification, estimator selection, and causal inference. It offers practical recommendations for enhancing methodological rigor and introduces recent advancements in causal inference.

Kay T. Xia, Thayer L. Anderson, Phelan Yu

The American scientific community is reeling from funding cuts and policy directives that will debilitate scientific research and education. The underlying hostilities fueling these attacks have intensified in recent years as the COVID-19 pandemic increased suspicion of scientific experts and the institutional embrace of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) policies in 2020 prompted a backlash along longstanding political fault lines. Under the banner of anti-elitism, opponents of science and DEI have formed a coalition that sees attacks on higher education as a strategic means to achieve their political ends. While some of their arguments contain legitimate criticisms, academics must resist these attacks that seek to dismantle higher education altogether. Instead, we should engage the public in our research process, build a scientific practice representative of and accountable to the communities we serve, and interrogate the aims of our work by critically studying the history of science.

B. Rutjens, Nikhil K. Sengupta, Romy van der Lee et al.

Efforts to understand and remedy the rejection of science are impeded by lack of insight into how it varies in degree and in kind around the world. The current work investigates science skepticism in 24 countries (N = 5,973). Results show that while some countries stand out as generally high or low in skepticism, predictors of science skepticism are relatively similar across countries. One notable effect was consistent across countries though stronger in Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic (WEIRD) nations: General faith in science was predicted by spirituality, suggesting that it, more than religiosity, may be the ‘enemy’ of science acceptance. Climate change skepticism was mainly associated with political conservatism especially in North America. Other findings were observed across WEIRD and non-WEIRD nations: Vaccine skepticism was associated with spirituality and scientific literacy, genetic modification skepticism with scientific literacy, and evolution skepticism with religious orthodoxy. Levels of science skepticism are heterogeneous across countries, but predictors of science skepticism are heterogeneous across domains.

Giuseppe Martinico

In this article, I shall focus on the legal consequences of one of the most obvious features of populisms: identity politics. In particular, I shall explore how populists in power use constitutional law to identify and fight the alleged enemy, thus confirming their Schmittian flavour. In Schmitt, public law becomes part of a constitutional narrative that represents the people as forged by a static identity that goes back to the mythological origin of the legal system. This reconstruction is based on an organicistic reading of the concept of the people. This identitarian public law makes instrumental use of the moral argument, the historical argument and the religious argument. Populists in government tend to militarise constitutional law in many ways and in this article I will focus on two strategies: one that looks backwards, consisting of the instrumentalisation of the argument of constituent power; and one that looks forward and leverages the use of constitutional amendment.

The AXIS Time-Domain, Multi-Messenger Science Working Group, : et al.

The Advanced X-ray Imaging Satellite (AXIS) promises revolutionary science in the X-ray and multi-messenger time domain. AXIS will leverage excellent spatial resolution (<1.5 arcsec), sensitivity (80x that of Swift), and a large collecting area (5-10x that of Chandra) across a 24-arcmin diameter field of view to discover and characterize a wide range of X-ray transients from supernova-shock breakouts to tidal disruption events to highly variable supermassive black holes. The observatory's ability to localize and monitor faint X-ray sources opens up new opportunities to hunt for counterparts to distant binary neutron star mergers, fast radio bursts, and exotic phenomena like fast X-ray transients. AXIS will offer a response time of <2 hours to community alerts, enabling studies of gravitational wave sources, high-energy neutrino emitters, X-ray binaries, magnetars, and other targets of opportunity. This white paper highlights some of the discovery science that will be driven by AXIS in this burgeoning field of time domain and multi-messenger astrophysics.

Wenwen Li

GeoAI, or geospatial artificial intelligence, is an exciting new area that leverages artificial intelligence (AI), geospatial big data, and massive computing power to solve problems with high automation and intelligence. This paper reviews the progress of AI in social science research, highlighting important advancements in using GeoAI to fill critical data and knowledge gaps. It also discusses the importance of breaking down data silos, accelerating convergence among GeoAI research methods, as well as moving GeoAI beyond geospatial benefits.

Alla Keselman, Catherine Arnott Smith, A. Wilson et al.

The development of COVID-19 vaccines is a major scientific accomplishment that has armed communities worldwide with powerful epidemic control tools. Yet, COVID-19 vaccination efforts in the US have been marred by persistent vaccine hesitancy. We used survey methodology to explore the impact of different cognitive and cultural factors on the public’s general vaccination attitudes, attitudes towards COVID-19 vaccines, and COVID-19 vaccination status. The factors include information literacy, science literacy, attitudes towards science, interpersonal trust, public health trust, political ideology, and religiosity. The analysis suggests that attitudes towards vaccination are influenced by a multitude of factors that operate in a complex manner. General vaccination attitude was most affected by attitudes towards science and public health trust and to a lesser degree by information literacy, science literacy, and religiosity. Attitudes towards COVID-19 vaccines were most affected by public health trust and to a lesser extent by general trust, ideology and attitudes towards science. Vaccination status was most influenced by public health trust. Possible mediating effects of correlated variables in the model need to be further explored. The study underscores the importance of understanding the relationship between public health trust, literacies, and sociocultural factors.

Jon Green, James N. Druckman, M. Baum et al.

Abstract Politics and science have become increasingly intertwined. Salient scientific issues, such as climate change, evolution, and stem-cell research, become politicized, pitting partisans against one another. This creates a challenge of how to effectively communicate on such issues. Recent work emphasizes the need for tailored messages to specific groups. Here, we focus on whether generalized messages also can matter. We do so in the context of a highly polarized issue: extreme COVID-19 vaccine resistance. The results show that science-based, moral frame, and social norm messages move behavioral intentions, and do so by the same amount across the population (that is, homogeneous effects). Counter to common portrayals, the politicization of science does not preclude using broad messages that resonate with the entire population.

Francesco Pierri

Targeted advertising on online social platforms has become increasingly relevant in the political marketing toolkit. Monitoring political advertising is crucial to ensure accountability and transparency of democratic processes. Leveraging Meta public library of sponsored content, we study the extent to which political ads were delivered on Facebook and Instagram in the run up to 2022 Italian general election. Analyzing over 23 k unique ads paid by 2.7 k unique sponsors, with an associated amount spent of 4 M EUR and over 1 billion views generated, we investigate temporal, geographical, and demographic patterns of the political campaigning activity of main coalitions. We find results that are in accordance with their political agenda and the electoral outcome, highlighting how the most active coalitions also obtained most of the votes and showing regional differences that are coherent with the (targeted) political base of each group. Our work raises attention to the need for further studies of digital advertising and its implications for individuals' opinions and choices.

Atle Haugsgjerd, Stine Hesstvedt, Rune Karlsen

ABSTRACT We investigate the often-stated, but disputed claim in the political science and political communication literature that increasing media choice widens inequalities in political knowledge. The assumption is that in a high-choice media environment, the politically interested will consume more news while the uninterested will avoid such content, leading, in turn, to widening differences in political knowledge. Although previous studies show that high media choice increases political knowledge gaps in the United States, comparative longitudinal evidence is currently lacking. To fill this gap, we draw on data from four rounds of the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems. Overall, we do not find general support for the high-choice knowledge gap thesis. In most countries, there is no indication that inequality in political knowledge has increased over time. Building on recent insights from political communication research, we question key assumptions of the high choice knowledge gap thesis.

Thomas A. Loughran, R. Paternoster, Aaron Chalfin et al.

B. Ford, M. Feinberg, Bethany Lassetter et al.

Politics and its controversies have permeated everyday life, but the daily impact of politics on the general public is largely unknown. Here, we apply an affective science framework to understand how the public experiences daily politics in a two-part examination. We first used longitudinal, daily diary methods to track two samples of U.S. participants as they experienced daily political events across 2 weeks (Study 1: N = 198, observations = 2,167) and 3 weeks (Study 2: N = 811, observations = 12,790) to explore how these events permeated people's lives and how people coped with that influence. In both diary studies, daily political events consistently not only evoked negative emotions, which corresponded to worse psychological and physical well-being, but also greater motivation to take political action (e.g., volunteer, protest) aimed at changing the political system that evoked these emotions in the first place. Understandably, people frequently tried to regulate their politics-induced emotions, and regulating these emotions using effective cognitive strategies (reappraisal and distraction) predicted greater well-being, but also weaker motivation to take action. Although people protected themselves from the emotional impact of politics, frequently used regulation strategies came with a trade-off between well-being and action. Second, we conducted experimental studies where we manipulated exposure to day-to-day politics (Study 3, N = 922), and the use of various emotion regulation strategies in response (Study 4, N = 1,277), and found causal support for the central findings of Studies 1-2. Overall, this research highlights how politics can be a chronic stressor in people's daily lives, underscoring the far-reaching influence politicians have beyond the formal powers endowed unto them. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Richard D. Gill

I draw attention to statistical, probabilistic, computer science aspects of the highly related topics of the Bell game and of a possible future Quantum Internet.