Beliefs Of Citizens Research Articles

Psychology of Personal Political Engagement in Russia: Unpacking Perceived Community Culture, Pluralistic Ignorance, and System Justification

This study explores the relationship between Russian citizens’ self-reported political engagement and their system justification beliefs, perceptions of the system justification beliefs of other citizens, and perceptions of their community culture. We assessed personal political engagement through self-reported past behavior of 1,143 participants. The results revealed a negative relationship between individual personal system justification scores and political engagement. However, the analyses suggested that this relationship emerged because of pluralistic ignorance among the citizenry—their tendency to assume that others hold stronger system justification beliefs than they do. This possibility seemed especially likely among those who perceived themselves to inhabit vertical collectivist communities. These results suggest that beliefs about the system justification beliefs of others ( second-order beliefs) may shape personal system justification beliefs ( first-order beliefs). More generally, the findings emphasize the substantial role of cultural factors in political engagement in Russia.

Cooperation and Collective Action as Strategies for The Development of Haitian Agriculture

Objective: The objective of this study was to understand the beliefs of Haitian citizens about collective action and cooperativism to assist in the economic development of Haiti through family farming, using Mancur Olson's Collective Action Theory as an analytical theoretical framework. Theoretical framework: The study is based on the "Collective Action Theory", as developed by economist Mancur Olson in his work "The Logic of Collective Action". The theory proposes a model for the construction of collective actions based on the understanding of group needs and the ability to achieve challenging goals. Method: The study is characterized by a qualitative case study, conducted in the interior of "Cayes Jacmel," Haiti, using intentional sampling for interviews with forty Haitian farmers. Results and conclusion: The study observed that family farming depends on the implementation of new technologies and a credit system to boost agricultural practices. The study concluded that cooperativism and collective action in the Haitian context have the potential to boost the development of family farming and promote economic, political, and social progress. Research implications: The study provides critical insights into Haitians' perceptions of collective action and its role in economic development. It underscores the importance of cooperation, challenges political structures, and highlights the need for international aid aligned with sustainable agriculture. Originality/value: The study's originality lies in its focus on collective action as a driver of economic progress, aligning with the scope of the RGSA. The study's value extends to its potential to shape socio-environmental practices within Haitian society.

The Habermasian Translation Proviso of Religious Content

Habermas’s translation proviso aims to legitimize religious argumentation in the informal part of the public sphere while requiring religious citizens to express their arguments in the formal part of the public sphere using a universal (secular) language. By considering secular scholars Gonzalo Scivoletto’s and Javier Aguirre’s critiques of the meaning of “translation,” this article highlights the inconsistency of the proviso as manifested in its application to the religious concept of tzimtzum (“divine contraction”), from which Habermas attempts to extract a secular worldview and moral intuitions that contradict the beliefs of religious citizens, thus undermining the reassessment of religion in the public sphere.

The Legal Education Culture of Young People: A Projection of the Future

The article presents the basic patterns of development of future generations' education, which now belong to the age category of children and young people. The goals of the future educational paradigm, which is to overcome the deformations of the youth's legal consciousness, to raise its spiritual development, to acquire legal knowledge, to develop its legal consciousness and legal culture, are determined. It substantiates the main direction and at the same time the global goal of education of the future, to which there is a culture of peace, which is possible only in the legal continuum of international interaction of states and people that now belong to the age category of children and youth. Factors of influence on the education of legal culture of youth, among which the level of development of the economy, quality of life of the population, and its relation to social transformations are generalized. This article highlights the role of the activity of all authorities, mass media, and their influence on the consciousness, will, behavior, and beliefs of citizens. The authors of the article also take into account such factors as the experience of the population, its attitude to culture, traditions, habits, way of life, social relations.

Factors of transformation of political rights in modern globalized society

This scientific article is devoted to the analysis of the factors of transformation of political rights in the modern globalized society.
 It is indicated that globalization causes a rethinking of traditional concepts of national sovereignty and opens up new opportunities for interaction between countries. him.
 The author proved that information technologies provide an opportunity for rapid dissemination and exchange of information, which affects the methods of public discussion and participation in political processes. The technological process is not only the introduction of new technologies, but also deep changes in production processes, communications and ways of life. Their impact on political rights is manifested through changes in communication methods, the ability of citizens to quickly receive and exchange information, as well as to influence political decision-making.
 It is emphasized that the development of society is accompanied by changes in the values and beliefs of citizens, which can lead to the appearance of new demands for political rights, for example, greater emphasis on human rights and civil liberties. Also, changes in the demographic structure of society can affect the perception and needs of citizens in political rights, in particular, taking into account the interests of the younger generation or other demographic groups. Transformations in the structure of the economy and social relations require the adaptation of political rights to ensure fair distribution of resources and protection of the interests of various social groups.
 The following factors of the transformation of political rights in the modern globalized society are summarized: globalization of international relations and anti-globalization national manifestations; technological process and informatization of social relations; changes in social values; economic and social transformations.

Modeling State Firearm Law Adoption Using Temporal Network Models.

US states are largely responsible for the regulation of firearms within their borders. Each state has developed a different legal environment with regard to firearms based on different values and beliefs of citizens, legislators, governors, and other stakeholders. Predicting the types of firearm laws that states may adopt is therefore challenging. We propose a parsimonious model for this complex process and provide credible predictions of state firearm laws by estimating the likelihood they will be passed in the future. We employ a temporal exponential-family random graph model to capture the bipartite state law-state network data over time, allowing for complex interdependencies and their temporal evolution. Using data on all state firearm laws over the period 1979-2020, we estimate these models' parameters while controlling for factors associated with firearm law adoption, including internal and external state characteristics. Predictions of future firearm law passage are then calculated based on a number of scenarios to assess the effects of a given type of firearm law being passed in the future by a given state. Results show that a set of internal state factors are important predictors of firearm law adoption, but the actions of neighboring states may be just as important. Analysis of scenarios provide insights into the mechanics of how adoption of laws by specific states (or groups of states) may perturb the rest of the network structure and alter the likelihood that new laws would become more (or less) likely to continue to diffuse to other states. The methods used here outperform standard approaches for policy diffusion studies and afford predictions that are superior to those of an ensemble of machine learning tools. The proposed framework could have applications for the study of policy diffusion in other domains.

МУЗЫКА КАК ИНСТРУМЕНТ ЭФФЕКТИВНОГО ВОЗДЕЙСТВИЯ НА СОЗНАНИЕ И ПОВЕДЕНИЕ ЧЕЛОВЕКА

This article presents an analysis of the influence of music on public opinion and behavior of people in the Russian Federation. The author examines the reasons for the possibility of successfully influencing the consciousness of citizens with the help of musical compositions. In particular, in the article, using the example of songs by the artist Shaman, the author reveals the techniques by which songs are created that influence the opinions and beliefs of citizens, and the reasons why these techniques work. In this study, the author suggests that musical works today can become an instrument capable of forming a certain public opinion on a particular issue, which can be used both in favor of the state and against it.

Ranked by Truth Metrics: A New Communication Method Approach, on Crowd-Sourced Fact-Checking Platforms for Journalistic and Social Media Content

Fake news, misinformation, and non-true stories create a definite threat to the world's public sphere. Fake news contaminates democracy by blurring the sight and the vision, or by altering the beliefs of citizens on simple everyday matters but also on significant matters such as vaccination, politics, social issues, or public health. Lots of efforts have been conducted in order to tackle the phenomenon. Fact-checking platforms consist of a major step in this issue. Certain cases of fact-checking platforms worldwide seem to work properly and fulfill their strategic goals, although functional and other issues might emerge. This study comes to take the fact-checking platform evolution one step beyond by proposing a new communication model for fake news detection and busting. The proposed model's blueprint is based on the Greek "Ellinika Hoaxes" fact-checking platform with some critical reinforcements: More extensive use of crowdsourcing strategies for detecting and busting non-true stories with the aid of AI chatbots in order not only to bust non-true stories but also to rank news outlets, writers, social media personas and journalists for their credibility. This way, serious news outlets, journalists, and media professionals can build their trust and be ranked for the credibility of their services for a more trustful and democratic public sphere.

Acquiescence Bias Inflates Estimates of Conspiratorial Beliefs and Political Misperceptions

AbstractScholars, pundits, and politicians use opinion surveys to study citizen beliefs about political facts, such as the current unemployment rate, and more conspiratorial beliefs, such as whether Barack Obama was born abroad. Many studies, however, ignore acquiescence-response bias, the tendency for survey respondents to endorse any assertion made in a survey question regardless of content. With new surveys fielding questions asked in recent scholarship, we show that acquiescence bias inflates estimated incidence of conspiratorial beliefs and political misperceptions in the United States and China by up to 50%. Acquiescence bias is disproportionately prevalent among more ideological respondents, inflating correlations between political ideology such as conservatism and endorsement of conspiracies or misperception of facts. We propose and demonstrate two methods to correct for acquiescence bias.

Citizen beliefs concerning wood as a construction material under extreme weather events

Climate change places great pressure on the construction sector to decrease its greenhouse gas emissions and to create solutions that perform well in changing weather conditions. Our study explores citizen perceptions on wood usage as a building material under expected mitigation and adaptation measures aimed at a changing climate and extreme weather events. The data are founded on an internet-based survey material collected from a consumer panel from Finland and Sweden during May–June 2021, with a total of 2015 responses. By employing exploratory factor analysis, we identified similar belief structures for the two countries, consisting of both positive and negative views on wood construction. In linear regression models for predicting these beliefs, the perceived seriousness of climate change was found to increase positive views on wood construction but was insignificant for negative views. Both in Finland and Sweden, higher familiarity with wooden multistory construction was found to connect with more positive views on the potential of wood in building, e.g., due to carbon storage and material properties. Our findings underline the potential of wood material use as one avenue of climate change adaptation in the built environment. Future research should study how citizens’ concerns for extreme weather events affect their future material preferences in their everyday living environments, also beyond the Nordic region.

Searching for the New Behavioral Model in Energy Transition Age: Analyzing the Forward and Reverse Causal Relationships between Belief, Attitude, and Behavior in Nuclear Policy across Countries.

This study aims to analyze the forward/reverse causal relationships between belief (risk perception), attitude (judgment), and behavior (acceptance). A traditional view stresses forward causal relationships between the three variables. However, recently, several studies have reported the possibility of reverse causal relationships between them. Based on survey data collected from 1027 Korean/Japanese participants, here we test not only the forward or reverse relationships between these three variables, but also how such causal relationships depend on the trust and country contexts (Korea and Japan in this study). The results showed that, first, not only a general forward causal relationship but also reverse causal relationship exists between belief, attitude, and behavior. Second, there exist the moderated mediation and mediated moderation effect of trust in government and media across two countries. Third, the effects of trust in government and media work significantly overall. However, the patterns of interaction effects differ between two countries. The level of trust in the government influenced the belief and attitude of citizens in Japan more than in Korea. However, the level of trust in the media showed opposite results.

Climate science or politics? Disentangling the roles of citizen beliefs and support for energy in the United States

To potentially mitigate further climate change, the US needs to move away from fossil fuels and towards carbon-free sources of energy. The issue of climate change is highly polarized, which has led to beliefs about climate change becoming entangled with political beliefs. Yet, public support for decreasing the use of fossil fuels and increasing renewable sources is high. In this paper, we use an original survey of about 1300 respondents to examine the potential for the entanglement of political beliefs, climate change beliefs, and energy preferences. We find that the majority of respondents support a decreased use of fossil fuels, a slight increase of nuclear energy, and a large increase of renewable sources; however, conservative Republicans prefer smaller decreases of fossil fuels and smaller increases in renewables. Additionally, we find that as respondents increasingly accept the scientific consensus on climate change, they support larger decreases in fossil fuels and larger increases in renewable energy. Finally, using mediation analysis we find that climate beliefs mediate the relationship between political beliefs and energy preferences for conservative Republicans and liberal Democrats, but not those with more moderate political beliefs. These findings point to the potential for energy preferences to become entangled in climate change as a result of elite discourse.

Unearthing citizens' acceptance factors for e‐participation initiatives through Facebook

AbstractThis study aims to investigate the determinant factors for citizens' acceptance of e‐participation initiatives that are sponsored by local governments through Facebook. The study proposes a model integrating the task‐technology fit theory and technology acceptance model with two additional factors: perceived outcome and government truthfulness. A self‐developed questionnaire was designed, and the conceptual model proposed was tested by applying the structural equation modeling method to a sample of 414 citizens from Jordan using a random sampling technique. The results indicated that citizens' attitude was the strongest predictor of citizens' acceptance, followed by the perceived outcome. The results also revealed the importance of task‐technology fit and perceived usefulness in shaping and explaining citizens' attitudes, which further lead to citizens' acceptance. Government truthfulness had no direct effect on citizens' acceptance. However, it positively affected the perceived outcome. The study makes a valuable contribution to the existing body of e‐participation research as it contributes to recent efforts toward understanding the citizen perspective of e‐participation initiatives. This study heeds the call to enrich e‐participation via theoretical underpinnings, particularly via the behavioral science approach of information systems. The study followed this approach by understanding the impact of citizen's beliefs, technological capabilities and the expected outcome to predict citizens' acceptance behavior toward e‐participation. Finally, the study provides several recommendations to help local governments in their pursuit to increase citizen participation.

PyeongChang, Pyongyang, or Pyeonghwa (peace in Korean) olympic games? An exploration of partisan media and framing effects

ABSTRACT The PyeongChang 2018 Winter Olympic Games held in South Korea drew much political attention due to its potential to resolve the ongoing political and military tensions on the divided Korean Peninsula. Given the divisive South Korean public discourse on warming ties with the North, this study uses framing theory to compare the frames employed by two partisan South Korean newspapers to cover the mega sporting event. Our analyses reveal significant framing differences between conservative and liberal sources, suggesting their potential effect on citizen attitudes and beliefs about the role of the Olympics. Theoretical and methodological implications are discussed.

Poor people’s beliefs and the dynamics of clientelism

Why do some poor people engage in clientelism whereas others do not? Why does clientelism sometimes take traditional forms and sometimes more instrumental forms? We propose a formal model of clientelism that addresses these questions focusing primarily on the citizen’s perspective. Citizens choose between supporting broad-based redistribution or engaging in clientelism. Introducing insights from social psychology, we study the interactions between citizen beliefs and values, and their political choices. Clientelism, political inefficacy, and inequality legitimation beliefs reinforce each other leading to multiple equilibria. One of these resembles traditional clientelism, with disempowered clients that legitimize social inequalities. Community connectivity breaks this reinforcement mechanism and leads to another equilibrium where clientelism takes a modern, instrumental, form. The model delivers insights on the role of citizen beliefs for their bargaining power as well as for the persistence and transformation of clientelism. We illustrate the key mechanisms with ethnographic literature on the topic.

The substance of procedures

In Democracy without Shortcuts, Cristina Lafont identifies proceduralist or ‘deep pluralist’ conceptions of democracy alongside epistemic and lottocratic approaches as shortcuts that avoid the more challenging but, in her view, preferable path of engaging with and attempting to sway competing views, values and beliefs of fellow citizens. I argue that with the wholesale dismissal of proceduralist accounts of democracy Lafont herself takes two shortcuts: The first concerns the characterization of deep pluralism as unable to explain substantive disagreement after a decision is settled, and the second undervalues proceduralism’s ability to evaluate and criticize the substance of the political decision-making process. While her critique is fitting for minimalist conceptions of proceduralism, a theory of normative proceduralism shares many objectives with Lafont’s vision of a participatory deliberative democracy. Integrating those approaches instead of dismissing proceduralism outright would render her project appealing to theorists who would not otherwise consider themselves deliberative democrats.

Press freedom in 10 African nations: Citizen attitudes and global rankings

Press freedom is said to be a necessary pillar of democracy. As many sub-Saharan African nations move towards creating or strengthening democracies, examining their levels of press freedom may be an important element. This study utilizes public opinion data from 10 nations in the sub-Saharan African region and international press freedom rankings from Reporters Without Borders to better understand both how important (or not) citizens view press freedom to be in their country and how those beliefs compare to global metrices between 2011 and 2018. Results show clear differences in citizen beliefs about press freedom across countries, but no clear relationship between citizen beliefs and global rankings. A connection between individual perceptions and global rankings may take more time to manifest, and/or a nation’s cultural values and political landscape likely have the strongest impact on citizen beliefs.

Constrained Gatekeepers of the Criminal Justice Footprint: A Systematic Social Observation Study of 9-1-1 Calltakers and Dispatchers

This study examines the gatekeeping role that public safety communication specialists (911 calltakers and dispatchers) play in the criminal justice footprint using systematic observations of one of the largest public communication centers in the U.S. Findings indicate that public safety communications professionals can play a significant role in initially shaping the criminal justice footprint, and can help to prevent that footprint from growing. However, organizational constraints, liabilities, and rules, as well as the expectations and beliefs of citizens and activities of police officers, can also inhibit this gatekeeping function. Recent assertions that citizen calls for public safety services might be easily diverted or prevented to reduce this footprint rely on significant changes to several policies, practices, and assumptions that have yet to be easily realized.

Civic values in the context of public administration

The article analyzes the issues of civic values in the context of public administration. Civic values are an important foundation that gives a positive impetus to management and is one of the elements of public administration and their role in building Ukrainian statehood. The main civic values are solidarity, dignity, tolerance, and social trust.
 The article focuses on the introduction of values as an element of public governance in democratic countries, the unification of human potential and its entry into the main orbit of political life of the state to realize the interests of social groups and stakeholders.
 Thus, the formation of civic values in the context of public administration will be the formation as a result of a constant dialogue between government and citizens, without a doubt, it is a complex process. However, its constant initiation by the two sides will stimulate the gradual formation of public opinion on the basic mechanisms, forms and methods of achieving political culture, trust, social solidarity and integration into society.
 It is concluded that civic values as an element of public administration acquire particularly stable trends that regulate public administration policy in most countries.
 The Revolution of Dignity provided a new opportunity for the development of new values in the history of civil society in Ukraine, demonstrated the influence of the public on socio-political processes, and became an impetus for the renewal and reformatting of power. Such socio-political processes require the creation of full-fledged, not declarative public institutions, able to obtain information in the initial stages of public administration decisions, to offer alternative ways to solve problems, to monitor the implementation of decisions.
 An important emphasis on the path of transformation is the readiness of citizens for self-organization, for the manifestation of civic activity at the local level. A significant challenge of post-Sovietism is paternalism – the belief of citizens in the omnipotence of the state; confidence that the state should solve all their problems. As a result, such civic passivity allows the authorities to play on the voter’s paternalistic tendencies (politicians find it easier to «bribe» citizens with their promises).
 One of the elements of public administration in the context of globalization processes in countries with democratic principles is the value, or system of values, the introduction of which accelerated the interaction between government and society and deepened the process of satisfying all stakeholders, created new challenges to social development. The introduction of values as an element of public administration in democracies has resulted in the pooling of human potential and its entry into the main orbit of the political life of the state to realize the relevant interests of stakeholders.

Parallax City: “Impossible” Meetings in Königsberg and Kaliningrad

Working with recent research on atmospheres, affects and urban spaces, the author here draws upon Freud’s essay, “The Uncanny” and the notion of parallax outlined by philosopher Slavoj Zizek to the urban center of Kaliningrad to describe a place of becoming through unique physical, psychological and political pressures. Photography is employed to appreciate a city center that may never find “synthesis” between its German, Soviet and Russian iterations but is nevertheless evolving through the practices, interventions and beliefs of citizens. This paper argues, that though “resurrecting Königsberg” is impossible the German city is an irresistible vectoring force in the ongoing creation of Kaliningrad. This article seeks to make a contribution to understanding this place in a novel way; through the affective and emotional atmospheres suggested by the landscape and material culture of Kaliningrad. This is achieved through a mixed qualitative approach of interviews with informants, photography and my own reflections. My photographs attempt to show that Kaliningrad’s center represents a melancholy landscape of “beautiful sadness.”