Controversial Social Issues Research Articles

Changing attitudes toward homosexuality in South Korea, 1996–2018

Women are often considered more liberal than men on controversial social issues, but gender gaps in sociopolitical attitudes across different age groups have not been fully explored. This study challenges the taken-for-granted gender differences in public attitudes toward homosexuality by examining both between-gender gaps and within-gender changes across the life course. Using data from five waves of the World Values Survey in South Korea, we explore gender and age differences in Korean adults' attitudes toward homosexuality from 1996 to 2018. Consistent with previous research, people become more conservative as they get older, and in general, women are more accepting of homosexuality than men, accounting for sociodemographic covariates. However, this gender difference is conditioned by people's life stages. Only among young adults (aged 18–29) were female respondents more accepting of homosexuality than their male counterparts. For people aged 30 and older, there are no significant gender differences in attitudes, and for both women and men, homosexuality is mostly unacceptable during their mid (aged 50–59) and late adulthood (aged 60+). Further mediation investigation has shown gendered mechanisms behind age differences in homosexuality acceptability. For both women and men, traditional family/gender attitudes provide significant explanations about age differences in homosexuality, while for women, not for men, family status, especially the number of children, makes older women more conservative in homosexuality issues. We suggest that heteropatriarchal social structures may lead to a resistance to attitudinal changes in non-traditional family forms, such as homosexuality.

“To Build a More Just Society”: Women’s National Basketball Association Teams’ Uses of Social Media for Advocacy

Sports brands and properties are using social media platforms to take a stand on controversial social issues. This paper draws on the concept of corporate social advocacy to examine how Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA) teams used their social media platforms to communicate about social issues during the 2021 season. We conducted a thematic and semantic analysis of advocacy-related tweets to examine the communicative actions and salient issues across the teams’ accounts. WNBA teams posted about racial justice, women’s empowerment, and LGBTQ+ rights, which represent a shift in the WNBA’s discursive promotional strategies. The findings of the study indicate that WNBA teams’ use of social media to take a stand on social issues aligns with, and extends, conceptualizations of corporate social advocacy. Further, social media advocacy provides insight into the sociocultural significance and the economic viability of women’s sport.

Self-Polarization: Lionizing Those Who Agree and Demonizing Those Who Disagree

Numerous recent texts have explained societal polarization, emphasizing biased input through increased accessibility of extreme partisan information. We examined instead the possible role of biased output through biased attribution of personality traits to issue partisans. Two experiments tested the hypothesis that attributing personality traits to those who agree versus disagree with an attributor on controversial social issues might lead attributors to adopt more polarized impressions and behavioral intentions toward issue partisans, as well as to adopt more polarized attitudes toward the issue itself. These hypotheses were supported with two different social issues—abortion and kneeling during the national anthem. The results were interpreted as consistent with previous theory and research on both attributional bias and self-generated attitude polarization.

Conceptualizing the relationship between corporate social advocacy and political polarization

Purpose Corporations are now taking stands on contemporary and controversial social issues that share no obvious connection to the corporations’ business practices. At the same time, political polarization continues to intensify, which begs the question: Are these corporate stands – referred to as corporate social advocacy (CSA) – and political polarization related to each other, and if so, how? The purpose of this study is to provide a conceptualization of the connections between CSA and political polarization through a series of propositions that can be tested in subsequent research studies. Corporations have influence in society, and the ways in which they communicate on controversial social issues could further intensify or help assuage political polarization. Conversely, political polarization may be causing CSA in the first place, which would put into question the legitimacy and desirability of CSA because of the environment from which CSA is cultivated.Design/methodology/approach This study is designed to be conceptual, and the approach is based on theory building.Findings The study conceptualizes the relationship between CSA and political polarization to be symbiotic because both are bidirectional causes of each other. Engagement in CSA is also argued to be positively associated with perceptions that corporations contain particular political ideologies, i.e. more “liberal-leaning” or “conservative-leaning.” This study also predicts that – dependent on particular conditions – CSA will also lead to an increase in both boycotts and skepticism.Practical implications This study will contribute to scholars’, practitioners’ and consumers’ understanding of the causes and effects of CSA. The way in which political polarization is potentially causing CSA puts into question the legitimacy of corporations engaging in CSA in the first place. If CSA is cultivated in the soil of political polarization, is CSA desirable for corporations? Conversely, the way in which CSA is potentially causing political polarization also puts the legitimacy of CSA into question. If CSA is causing political polarization, is CSA desirable for society?Social implications Corporations are an influential part of society, and thus will influence how society views controversial social issues. If the predictions in this study hold, corporations will play an important role in either intensifying or reducing political polarization, and political polarization will also play an important role in how corporations communicate about CSA issues.Originality/value Research focused on CSA is burgeoning, yet limited studies have examined how CSA and political polarization interact. Although there could be positive aspects of corporate involvement in CSA, this study examines some of the potential negative aspects of corporate involvement in CSA. Future research will also be able to test the propositions proposed in this study.

Changing public attitudes toward the employment of formerly incarcerated people: The role of “human resources social advocacy”

AbstractThis registered report aims to evaluate the extent to which the human resources function can change public attitudes toward a controversial social issue. Focusing on the employment of formerly incarcerated people, we explore the novel concept of “human resources social advocacy” (HRSA), an interventionist approach through which HR might pro‐actively change and/or shape people's minds on social issues via the communication and conveyance of ideas related to HR matters of public interest. We seek to test the effectiveness of two HRSA interventions in reducing public stigma toward the employment of formerly incarcerated people. One makes a moral case (“Changing Hearts”) and the other makes an instrument case (“Changing Minds”) for including formerly incarcerated people in the labor market. We also explore which of the two interventions is more effective at achieving normative change. This research will have important implications for the “societal effects” of human resource management.

“Football is war” – FIFA's reactions to a real war and the response of football fans

PurposeThe commentary examines the possible rational for Federation Internationale de Football Association(FIFA) sending a series of tweets on the Russian invasion of Ukraine.Design/methodology/approachThe commentary counts and analyses the number of tweets sent by FIFA media between 1 February and 1 March, 2020 and indicates that these concerning the war in Ukraine represent a radical departure from past topics. Stakeholder engagements with the tweets on the war were recorded and these far surpassed other regular topics.FindingsFIFA's stance in condemning the war and taking direct action against Russia was effective in generating far greater stakeholder engagements in Twitter than other football-related posts. While the tweets were favourably received by many fans, not all of that response was positive, and in fact, some were extremely hostile.Originality/valueAn analysis of tweets and their responses provides a relatively new and powerful mechanism for gauging stakeholder engagements. The authors also contribute to the literature on communication strategies of sporting bodies by demonstrating how the integration of social issues into social media posts is likely to exhibit a strong response, albeit not always favourable. When sporting bodies (such as FIFA) depart from their core mission, they risk alienating some stakeholders when they delve into controversial social and/or political issues.

Companies Taking a Stand: The Effect of Corporate Activism on Wall Street

Some companies have begun to take a stand on controversial social and political issues. These initiatives, which are defined as ‘corporate activism’, are part of a complex context that is characterised by distrust in public institutions and governments. This article analyses the impact of corporate activism on the financial returns of companies that have implemented it. Our contribution to the empirical research of corporate activism is to identify two variables not previously studied that have an influence on whether that impact is positive or negative. To this end, a wide sample of corporate activism cases were analysed using an event analysis approach to identify the effect of two key variables: (a) the controversial nature of the sector and (b) the type of activism. The results show that corporate activism actions have positive effects when the sector is not perceived as controversial, and negative when the type of activism is based on social rights. The findings provide managerial implications for marketing professionals and broaden the possibilities of corporate activism as long-term strategy.

Wildlife Knowledge and Attitudes toward Hunting: A Comparative Hunter–Non-Hunter Analysis

Assessing the public’s attitudes toward hunting and knowledge about wildlife is critical for successfully managing and conserving resources. This need is further emphasized by the increase in urbanization, resulting in decreasing participation in outdoor activities, such as hunting. This study aimed at investigating the attitudes toward hunting and the wildlife knowledge of Greek residents and at understanding the variation among hunters and non-hunters. Respondents to on-site, face-to-face surveys (n = 461; hunters, 146; non-hunters, 315) were asked to rate their acceptance of the motives for hunting and of hunting as a management tool and their knowledge about the ecology, biology, and behavior of wildlife. The hunters were highly motivated for hunting and supported it as a management tool. The non-hunters’ attitudes were, however, neutral to negative. The hunters had greater knowledge about wildlife species, both game and non-game, than the non-hunters. The more experienced hunters with greater knowledge about wildlife were generally more positive toward hunting. Older, male, non-hunters who have a greater knowledge about wildlife and who consume game meat and have hunters in the family or among their friends were generally more positive toward hunting. The findings suggested that hunting is a controversial social issue. Policies aimed at informing public groups about good hunting practices and at increasing the public’s engagement in outdoor activities would reduce such controversies, improve human health and well-being, and reinforce nature and wildlife stewardship and support for biodiversity conservation.

Corporate social counterpositioning: How attributes of social issues influence competitive response

AbstractResearch SummaryWhilst existing research generally assumes corporate social responsibility (CSR) is seen as universally positive, firms increasingly adopt practices, and take stands, on highly polarizing social issues (e.g., gun‐control, LGBTQ rights, abortion). To better understand this phenomenon, we develop a theory about when firms will emulate, ignore, or oppose each other's CSR efforts, based on attributes of the underlying social issue (its salience and polarization), the level of market competition, and the substantiveness of CSR. Our theory predicts several distinct equilibrium outcomes, including the potential for social counter‐positioning, whereby rival firms take advantage of socio‐political polarization to horizontally differentiate by taking opposing stances on a polarizing issue. Counterpositioning is more likely when salience is high, but agreement is low, when markets are competitive, and when CSR is largely symbolic.Managerial SummaryFirms increasingly find themselves drawn, willingly or not, to taking stances on a controversial social issue (e.g., gun rights, abortion), though doing so risks alienating (some) stakeholders. In this paper, we develop a theory of why, when, and how firms should take a stance on a polarizing issue. We argue that firms profit from doing so when (1) the issue is salient, (2) markets are competitive, and (3) the actions are mostly symbolic. We also show that taking a stance on polarizing issues creates opportunities for the firms' competitors to counter their ideological positioning, strengthening weaker rivals in the process. Thus, in competitive markets, taking clear stances on polarizing, salient issues can segment the market, increasing the profits of all firms, and, potentially, intensifying polarization.

Fabricating response: Preservice elementary teachers remediating response to The Circuit through 3D printing and design

Building on sociocultural theories of literacy learning, in this article, we think at the intersection of reader response theory and multimodal literacies to examine how 13 preservice teachers in the course Teaching Social Sciences Through the Arts remediated responses to Francisco Jiménez’s The Circuit: Stories From the Life of a Migrant Child through additive manufacturing (i.e. 3D printing) and arts-integrated making. Through qualitative analyses of participants’ in situ processes and product(s), we identified a range of ideological and material supports and constraints during the digital fabrication process. Reading and responding to text—as mediated actions and events—became iterative spaces wherein individual understandings of text transformed into encounters of difference. Suggesting that participants’ artifactual responses at times operated as critical literacy texts, our analyses of 3D fabrication and remediated responses led us to consider how modalities of composition yielded unique affordances and constraints to the ways readers encountered texts and expressed and responded to controversial social issues.

Legal Scholars Engaging with Social Anthropology: Hardships and Gains

AbstractThis special issue of the German Law Journal showcases through concrete examples the conceptual and methodological toolbox that social anthropology has to offer and the added value of applying an anthropologically informed approach to legal thinking, argumentation, and practice. The contributions address a wide variety of highly topical, controversial social issues that are at the heart of the human condition, including gender recognition for non-binary people, family disputes brought before international courts, non-majoritarian language use in administrative settings, forced migration, and the impact of climate change and infrastructural development on local communities worldwide. This introduction outlines the research program into which the contributions gathered here fit; the choice of topics; and finally, the challenges the authors face in the process of integrating their intellectual encounter with anthropology into their reflections on law. The article concludes that taking recourse to anthropology can help jurists trained in state law to develop a more refined understanding of today’s societal complexity and challenges and, ultimately, to reach more nuanced, sensitive, and just decisions.

The effects of CEO activism: Partisan consumer behavior and its duration

AbstractResearch SummaryCEOs increasingly engage in activism on controversial social and political issues that do not directly affect their core business. Simultaneously, the general public is increasingly politically polarized. We examine how CEOs' support for gun control after two mass shootings differentially affected the behavior of liberal and conservative consumers and the persistence of these effects. Using mobile phone location data to measure store‐level visits, we find (a) consumer visits to stores decreased by 3%; (b) this decrease was asymmetric: visits in the most conservative counties decreased by about 5% but did not change in the most liberal counties; and (c) these effects dissipated within 10 weeks after activism. Our results highlight the strategic implications for executives pressured to take stances on controversial issues.Managerial SummaryWe study how consumers respond to CEO support for gun control, and how consumers' partisan views influence their behavior. Visits to the stores of several major retailers declined about 3% in the 4 weeks after their CEOs supported expanding background checks for gun purchases. In the most liberal counties, visits did not change following CEO support for gun control, while in the most conservative counties visits declined about 5%. Hence, the reaction of liberal consumers did not counteract the reaction of conservative consumers. We find, however, that these effects dissipated within 10 weeks; as a result, retailers whose CEOs supported gun control did not experience any long‐term, net decrease in sales despite the short‐term sales decrease in conservative counties.

Corporate Sociopolitical Activism and Stakeholder Influences: A Conceptual Framework

Corporate Sociopolitical Activism (CSA) is the public involvement, predominantly via speech, of companies in controversial social and political issues. The predominant models of CSA draw heavily from upper echelons, agency, and other CEO-centric theories of organizational behavior, as well as managerial perceptions of issue alignment with employees and customers. While instructive, these models fail to explain both the increased incidence of CSA as well as its concentration primarily in the USA over other countries. We offer a stakeholder-centric model of CSA, specifically examining the influences of government, non-governmental organizations, and the media on CSA. The model establishes a set of testable propositions that we believe better explains CSA than existing frameworks.

It's About Eternal Life After All: Revisiting Catholic Beliefs by Edward Jeremy Miller

Reviewed by: It's About Eternal Life After All: Revisiting Catholic Beliefs by Edward Jeremy Miller Christopher Cimorelli It's About Eternal Life After All: Revisiting Catholic Beliefs BY EDWARD JEREMY MILLER Hobe Sound, FL: Divina Press, an Imprint of Lectio Publishing, LLC, 2021. xxxi + 263 pages. Paperback: $22. ISBN: 9781943901982. Many NSJ readers will be familiar with the life and work of Edward Jeremy Miller, long a contributor to the field of Newman studies.1 His works John Henry Newman on the Idea of the Church (1987)2 and the edited volume, Conscience and the Path to Holiness: Walking with Newman (2014),3 stand out in this regard and across a career spanning more than forty years. It's About Eternal Life After All: Revisiting Catholic Beliefs departs from these earlier academic works given that it contains Miller's memoirs and reflections on Catholic beliefs, as indicated by the subtitle.4 It would not be accurate to describe Eternal Life as a book about John Henry Newman, but Newman is nevertheless present throughout—explicitly mentioned or otherwise—given his influence on the author. Miller establishes two major facets of this influence at the outset, which include the following Newmanian distinctions: that is, the distinction between the visible and invisible world, on the one hand, and the distinction between notional and real assent, on the other.5 He ultimately aims to bolster the possibility of real assent in the Catholic faithful, so that many believers can come to the same realization made possible through Miller's own labor and contemplation, namely: that the invisible world is not some remote location, but rather is manifest here and now; the God who is love truly indwells the believer, drawing one further into the divine life that will be fully realized upon death. The concrete approach to support this aim includes prefatory material that contains an overview of Miller's life story, eight chapters, and six short appendices. The first chapter treats the way that the Bible works from a Catholic perspective, which sets the stage for a reconsideration of creation and the fall of humanity (ch. 2). Here, Miller reflects on, among other things, limitations stemming from the Council of Trent's literal understanding of Adam and Eve's fall from paradise. Chapters three and four treat the understanding of God and the rich subject of [End Page 94] prayer; the aforementioned idea of God's indwelling receives its form in these pages and is carried forward throughout the rest of the book. Chapters five and six explore the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus the Christ, as well as other features of resurrection belief—including thought-provoking considerations of traditional Catholic teachings like purgatory, hell, and the "timing" of the resurrection. Miller here makes the case that full resurrection life is enjoyed immediately upon death and is not something reserved for the end of time, which would lead to a view of disembodied—and thus not-quite-human—souls lurking about. These two chapters are rather substantial, which is apropos given their main topics and centrality to the Christian faith in general. Chapter seven considers the view of eternal life previously established, but in the concrete and imperfect setting of the church, which is further explored via its sacraments and controversial social issues. Chapter eight considers the relationship between faith and science, two areas that Miller's own educational background has connected in the pursuit of truth, as well as few final, but ancillary topics. In authoring these memoirs, Miller intended to not only give expression to his developing view of Catholic life and beliefs, but to do so in a simplified manner that could benefit Catholic laity—the primary audience of the text—who are invested in their faith and the quest to understand it more deeply, but who may not have had any formal theological education. Miller is largely successful in "translating" esoteric and dense theological topics into more relatable language and helpful analogies. Nevertheless, there are passages where even an invested layperson will need to sit with subsections treating complex theological content. An example includes the valuable treatment of the doctrine of Original Sin when reading the book...

Designing effective corporate social advocacy campaigns using valence, arousal, and issue salience

Corporate social advocacy (CSA) is a growing communications practice that involves corporations taking a public stance on a controversial social issue. Some CSA campaigns have failed in the past (e.g., Pepsi’s 2017 Live for Now Moments Anthem video) by generating public backlash and damaging corporate reputation. To test how to design CSA campaigns that are beneficial for both the corporation and the advocacy issue, the current between-subjects experiment (N = 508) employed a 2 (issue salience: moderate vs. high) X 2 (valence: negative vs. positive) X 2 (arousal: moderate vs. high) factorial design to test the effects of salience, valence, and arousal on memory and four persuasion outcomes: company attitudes, purchase intentions, political participation intentions, and social media intentions, while also analyzing the mediation of information processing. Findings support prior research suggesting that negative valence increases persuasion in CSA contexts. A high-salience issue and high-arousal language increased political participation and social media intentions but had no effect on company attitudes or purchase intentions. Practical implications for CSA campaign designers highlight the persuasive potential of negative valence in CSA messages, and the utility of high-salience and high-arousal for political action and social media engagement.

Exploring the Psychological Characteristics and Risk-related Cognitions of Individuals Who Own Sex Dolls

ABSTRACT The ownership of sex dolls has become an increasingly controversial social issue over the last five to ten years, with many in society (and academia) calling for the criminalization of such dolls. At the root of these calls is the implicit (and often explicit) assumption that sex doll ownership contributes to increases in negative social attitudes toward women, and sexual offense risk among doll owners. However, there are yet to be any empirical examinations of these claims. In this work we compared the psychological characteristics and comparative sexual aggression proclivities of sex doll owners (n = 158) and a non-owner comparison group (n = 135). We found no substantive differences in most psychological traits. Doll owners scored lower than comparators in relation to sexual aggression proclivity. They were, however, more likely to see women as unknowable, the world as dangerous, and have lower sexual self-esteem. They also had more obsessive and emotionally stable personality styles. We conclude that there is no evidence that sex doll owners pose a greater sexual risk than a non-owning comparison group, before highlighting the need for more evidence-informed social debates about the use of sex dolls in modern society.

The unbearable hurtfulness of sarcasm

In the last decade, the need to detect automatically irony to correctly recognize the sentiment and hate speech involved in online texts increased the investigation on humorous figures of speech in NLP. The slight boundaries among various types of irony lead to think of irony as a linguistic phenomenon that covers sarcasm, satire, humor and parody joined by their trend to create a secondary or opposite meaning to the literal one expressed in the message. Although this commonality, in literature sarcasm is defined as a type of irony more aggressive with the intent to mock or scorn a victim without excluding the possibility to amuse. The aggressive tone and the intent of contempt suggest that sarcasm involves some peculiarities that make it a suitable type of irony to disguise negative messages. To investigate these peculiarities of sarcasm, we examined the dataset of the IronITA shared task. It consists of Italian tweets about controversial social issues, such as immigration, politics and other more general topics. Each tweet is annotated as ironic and non-ironic, and, at a deeper level, as sarcastic and non-sarcastic. Qualitative and quantitative analyses of the dataset showed how sarcasm tends to be expressed with hurtful language revealing the aggressive intention with which the author targets the victim. While irony is characterized by being offensive in hateful context and, in general, moved by negative emotions. For a better understanding of the impact of hurtful and affective language on the detection of irony and sarcasm, we proposed a transformer-based system, called AlBERToIS, combining pre-trained AlBERTo model with linguistic features. This approach obtained the best performances on irony and sarcasm detection on the IronITA dataset.

The mediating role of skepticism: how corporate social advocacy builds quality relationships with publics

ABSTRACT This study investigates the effects of corporate social advocacy (CSA) in mitigating public skepticism of corporate social engagement and reveals how CSA helps build relationships with publics. Ambiguity embedded in general corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities can cause public skepticism, but this study argues that corporations can signal their sincerity by engaging in CSA practices by taking a definitive stance on controversial socio-political issues. The results of an online survey (N = 960) showed that a corporation’s clear identification with a controversial social issue is positively associated with brand trust and loyalty mediated by reduced skepticism of corporate non-market activities. The findings of this study have practical implications for corporations as they attempt to optimize the effects of public communication through social engagement.

The Associations among Moral Foundations, Political Ideology, and Social Issues: A Study of These Associations in an Asian Sample

Abstract This study examined the relationships among moral foundations, political ideology, and controversial social issues in an Asian culture. The study sample included 835 participants who completed a moral foundations questionnaire and three questions regarding attitudes toward social issues (i.e. nuclear power usage, the death penalty, and euthanasia), and a political ideology questionnaire. Results indicated that binding foundations (i.e. Ingroup, Authority, and Purity) were associated conservative tendencies, and individualizing foundations (i.e. Harm and Fairness) were associated liberal tendencies. Also, participants who scored higher on Authority showed higher approval of the death penalty, and those scored higher on Purity showed lower approval of the euthanasia. These results may provide a better understanding of the underlying differences for variations in opinions on social issues. Results also have implications for cultural differences in the associations among political ideology, social issues, and moral foundations.

The aesthetic experience of critical art: The effects of the context of an art gallery and the way of providing curatorial information.

The aim of our research was to investigate the influence of the situational context of presenting contemporary critical artworks (in an art gallery vs in a laboratory setting) and the way in which one is acquainted with contextual information, i.e. a curatorial description (reading it on one’s own vs listening to it vs a lack of curatorial information), on the reception of critical art. All experimental stimuli were exemplars of contemporary art which raise current controversial social and political issues. Non-experts in the field of art were asked to rate their emotional reactions on non-verbal scales and estimate their liking and understanding of the artworks. As predicted, the art gallery context increased both the experience of aesthetic emotions–in terms of valence, arousal, subjective significance, and dominance and aesthetic judgements–in terms of liking. Thus, for critical art (i.e. current artworks which critically address serious, up-to-date issues) the situational context of the gallery increased the aesthetic experience–which is in line with previous studies on the gallery (or museum) effect. Curatorial information increased understanding, so non-experts seem to need interpretative guidance in the reception of critical art. Subjective significance was higher in the reading of curatorial information condition than the listening to curatorial information condition or the control condition (a lack of curatorial information). It seems, therefore, that art non-experts have a better understanding of critical art after being exposed to the curatorial description, but this does not result in an increase in liking and aesthetic emotions. Probably this is because the curatorial description allows one to grasp the difficult, often unpleasant issue addressed by critical art.