Public health has long grappled with moral and epistemic disagreement-conflicts over values and facts that shape decisions about how best to protect population health. While these forms of disagreement are not new, recent years have seen a shift toward a more entangled and intractable form, which we term "wicked" disagreement. This wicked disagreement, adapted from the concept of wicked problem, sees political identity as shaping both factual beliefs and moral commitments, rendering traditional tools of public health persuasion-such as appeals to evidence or shared values-ineffective. Wicked disagreement is not defined by what is disputed but by the polarized context in which facts, values, and identity are deeply fused. In this essay, we argue that public health must develop new strategies for navigating this terrain, including sustained engagement with a wide range of communities, transparent communication about uncertainty, and a willingness to revise guidance publicly. Navigating wicked disagreement is not about achieving consensus. It is about finding trustworthy ways to protect life and advance health in a fractured public sphere. (Am J Public Health. 2026;116(4):544-551. https://doi.org/10.2105/AJPH.2025.308350).

This article introduces the Political Identity and Relational Impact Scale (PIRI), a tool designed to help institutions understand how students navigate political identity and relationships. Developed by an interdisciplinary research team and employed at two Christian liberal arts institutions, one in the Midwest and one in California, PIRI provides empirical insights into students’ political orientations, beliefs, and experiences. Used alongside measures of ideology, partisanship, religiosity, and political opinion, the findings reveal that students’ political orientations are more nuanced than familiar narratives of rigid polarization suggest, often reflecting a blend of progressive and conservative positions. We conclude by highlighting implications for practice and research, inviting institutions to consider empirical tools to better understand and engage the complexity of ideological diversity in a polarized political climate.

Influencing factors and enhancement paths of college students' learning motivation: Evidence from Nanjing.

Adolescent disability identity is a constantly evolving and changing process, involving connection to a broader disability community and disability community pride. This paper explores disabled adolescent understandings of disability community issues through the lens of political disability identity. This study focuses on a Youth Leadership Forum (YLF) program, focused on leadership development for adolescents with disabilities, in a Midwestern state in the US. I collected two years of responses (2023–2024) to an application essay prompt (n = 32). I completed a multi-phase qualitative content analysis of the YLF essays. I find that disabled youth are deeply engaged with issues that matter to the disability community, such as building accessibility (including schools and classrooms), disability awareness in community and schools, and bullying. Connections to the development of political disability identity in youth, and implications for special education and transition planning are discussed.

ABSTRACT Kingdoms are home-grown political institutions in history. But the existence of autonomous Kingdoms in pre-colonial Esanland has been glossed over. In Edoid studies, the dominant narrative is that the founding of Esan and its Kingship system are phenomena related to Benin Kingdom. This narrative distorts the identity of Esan people and informed the reference of their pre-colonial polities as Chiefdoms. Hence, the aim of this paper is to demonstrate that Esan pre-colonial political formations were Kingdoms not Chiefdoms. Kingship politics was the pivot of statecraft in Esanland. The King called ‘Onojie’ was the highest political authority and sovereign ruler during the period. He held all land in trust for the people and ensured equity in its distribution. Using the historical research methodology, this study reconstructs Esan Kingship politics and its adaptation to Benin hegemony. Findings in the study were that Esan origin as an autochthonous African tribe and autonomous Kingdoms in Nigeria predated the 15th century. But Benin imperialism in Esanland caused its political restructuring and institutional adaptation as Chiefdoms. The study concludes that British conquest of Benin Kingdom in 1897 triggered the reversal of Esan polities to Kingdoms and the reassertion of Esan independent identity.

ABSTRACT This study examines the cultural and political significance of the Marseillaise during the Haitian Revolution (1791–1804). Beginning with the oft-told tale of Toussaint Louverture’s soldiers singing French revolutionary songs, it traces the shifting fortunes and evolving meanings of the Marseillaise through five contrafacta published in Saint-Domingue between 1792 (the anthem’s arrival) and 1804 (Haitian independence). Attending to the Marseillaise’s metaphorical language about “slavery” in a context of literal enslavement, the article explores how colonists and revolutionaries reinterpreted the imported song to confront local crises, assert new political identities, and articulate competing visions of freedom. In bringing together these Caribbean adaptations of metropolitan verse, the article raises the Marseillaise as an effective case study for understanding the incoherence of Enlightenment rhetoric within the colonial Americas.

Identities are fundamental to our understanding of social and political behavior, but are challenging to measure and are rarely observed in real-world settings. We introduce a method for measuring the identity-relevant aspects of brief self-descriptions regularly used online (e.g., on social media). Our approach combines the benefits of word embeddings for finding related identity terms with the ability of clustering algorithms to aggregate terms into discrete categories. To illustrate our approach, we apply it to daily observations of bios from millions of US Twitter/X users. We present three applications of our approach with substantive findings. First, we track users’ social and political identities over time and find, among other things, that direct expressions of political affiliations are rare. Second, we map the identities that are most characteristic of each US state. Third, we show that users’ political identities are highly predictable based on non-political identity markers. With the growing availability of user self-descriptions on social media platforms and elsewhere, our approach enables researchers to map and analyze expressions of identity at scale.

This study examines how mass media function as an ideological apparatus in representing Muslims and producing citizenship identity in Indonesia. Employing a qualitative approach within a critical paradigm and Fairclough’s Critical Discourse Analysis model, the research analyzes selected national online media coverage addressing Islamic-related socio-political issues. The findings reveal four dominant representational patterns: securitization, normative moderation, politicization of identity, and commodification of religiosity. These patterns not only shape public images of Muslims but also interpellate them into selective and conditional forms of citizenship. The media construct a symbolic standard of the “ideal” Muslim citizen moderate, stable, and compatible with market logic while positioning alternative expressions of religious identity in ambivalent or problematic terms. The study demonstrates that citizenship is not merely a legal-formal status but is discursively produced through media representation. This research contributes to media and citizenship studies by highlighting representation as a mechanism of subject formation within contemporary democracy.

Abstract Multiplexity is a promising concept in International Relations (IR) to describe the emerging world order. For Amitav Acharya, a multiplex world is a world of complex interconnectedness and interdependence, with cross-cutting international orders and globalisms led by non-western actors. In a multiplex world, the West will have ‘to negotiate accommodation’ with these global South voices and influence ‘to salvage aspects of the liberal order’. This article interrogates the theoretical foundations of multiplexity by arguing that its claims of foregrounding the significance of the global South—which is, in turn, democratizing power relations—are problematic. Multiplexity as a concept ends up broadening the basis of oligarchy rather than democratizing power relations and empowering ordinary people. We show how this co-optation dynamic is implicit in the concept of multiplexity, where the deep-rooted commitment to the western neo-liberal ideology remains central. In the post-Second World War context, we use specific empirical examples such as the New International Economic Order, the BRICS and the G20, where the much-trumpeted arrival of a new multiplex world was co-opted by great powers. Ultimately, we call for critical multiplexity. The article synthesizes the insights of Gramscian hegemonic projects and Kautskyian ultra-imperialism, and focuses on the struggles of the people rather than on elite prerogatives. Critical multiplexity is a world that is attentive to the challenges against entrenched political and economic power relations and identity politics, without which multiplexity remains in closer communion with a superficially ‘diverse’ but still elitist and class-based international order.

The 2024 Batubara Regency Regent Election highlighted the use of religious and cultural identity-based political communication in digital spaces, particularly social media. This article aims to analyze the forms, strategies, and impacts of identity political communication constructed by political actors in the contest. Using a critical phenomenological approach and digital content analysis, this study explores how symbols, narratives, and representations of religious and cultural identity are produced, disseminated, and received by the multi-ethnic, predominantly Muslim community of Batubara. The results reveal three main patterns: (1) the use of religious symbols for the moral legitimacy of candidates; (2) the affirmation of local cultural identity as an emotional connection with voters; and (3) the representation of ethnic identity that is sometimes exploited in negative campaigns. Social media, such as Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok, have become primary platforms for the dissemination of identity narratives through hashtags, visual content, and short videos. This study also found a dual impact of identity politics, strengthening the consolidation of support but also causing emotional polarization and social fragmentation. These findings emphasize the importance of identity politics in the Batubara contest, as well as the need to improve political and digital literacy to minimize its negative impacts.

This study conducts a comparative analysis of transnational fandoms of South Korean politicians (K-pol) and Korean-pop (K-pop) in China, focusing on the interaction between patriotism and fan culture. Drawing on over three years of participant observation in these online communities, the research employs a comparative case study of the two fan communities to examine how fans navigate nationalist discourses and mobilize patriotic sentiment. Findings indicate that while K-pol and K-pop fandoms display distinct patterns of engagement and defensive behaviors, nationalism is frequently transformed and instrumentalized. Fans strategically deploy patriotic sentiment to assert moral or discursive authority, challenge opposing fandoms, and reinforce community identity, rather than expressing consistent ideological commitment. The study further reveals that K-pol fandom tends to base nationalist sentiment on historical knowledge and political positions, fostering more rationalized engagement, whereas K-pop fandom relies more on emotional and symbolic cues. Overall, the research demonstrates that digital media and fan culture enable fans to actively negotiate, reinterpret, and leverage nationalism within transnational contexts. By juxtaposing political and pop-cultural fandoms, this study contributes to a nuanced understanding of how patriotic engagement is mediated by fan practices, highlighting broader implications for transnational cultural flows and political identity formation.

Transposing Political and Regional Identities After Moving to Megalopolises: An Interaction Model (Evidence from Russia)

ABSTRACT The notorious ‘Tuvel Affair’, named after the author who likened ‘transracialism’ to gender transition, has raised several issues about what constitutes sound debate when branches of philosophical thinking, and supposed common sense about biology, collide with scholarship and activism of younger interdisciplinary fields like transgender studies and critical race studies. This paper works through the affair to draw out what got lost in the scramble to navigate the collision between philosophical abstraction, biological typing and (political) identity formation. The debate is made more complicated through its movement between public discourse, social media and academic deliberation. This paper shows that the supposed retort that gender is fluid while race is not, does not hold the efficacy that many presume. Drawing primarily on Foucauldian approaches to subjectivity, Kim TallBear’s critique of ancestryDNA, and critique from area studies that deal with trans/gender, sexuality, race and Indigenous issues, the case is made for a more robust conception of social construction, which presses analogical and syllogistic logic to become more engaged with the empirical muck of historical identity formation. This is more instructive for challenging the obsession with authenticity in sites and situations in which differences between identity affirmation and identity fraud become significant.

The aim of the article is to present the results of research on the different ways in which contemporary communist parties operating in various parts of Europe treat the historical, ideological, and political legacy of communism based on examples of how this legacy is utilized in the political practice of selected communist parties. Through a qualitative analysis of the existing materials (political programs, ideological and political documents, etc.), we attempted to construct the image underpinning the current ideological and political identity of 11 communist parties operating in 11 European Union member states, and to present the use of the communist legacy by both mainstream and marginal communist parties.

This research is driven by the increasing strength of religion-based identity politics in Indonesia’s post-reform electoral democracy, which creates a dilemma between legitimate political competition and threats to interfaith harmony. The problem formulation of this study concerns how identity politics challenges religious harmony and to what extent harmony can serve as an instrument to reduce polarization and reinforce democratic consolidation. The research questions focus on two main aspects: (1) how the dynamics of harmony are tested by the exploitation of religious issues within electoral contests, and (2) how harmonization strategies can function as social capital in maintaining democratic stability. Using a qualitative approach with a juridical-normative and socio-political framework, this study relies on a literature review involving laws and regulations, court decisions, official state documents, and national and international academic works, combined with content analysis of religiously nuanced political narratives in media and public discourse. The findings indicate that harmony is not a natural social condition but a socio-political construction that is vulnerable to instrumentalization by electoral interests. FKUB and harmony-related regulations tend to remain normative and less effective in the absence of substantive justice. Nonetheless, harmony still holds potential as strategic capital for democracy if it is developed through a framework of justice, religious political literacy, and inclusive democratic governance.

Against the backdrop of the in-depth advancement of Digital China and the rural revitalization strategy, short video platform algorithms, as a novel cultural intermediary force, are intricately linked to the reconstruction of the political ecology of urban-rural cultural identity. Existing research on digital technology and rural development predominantly focuses on macro policy and micro individual behavior levels, lacking systematic empirical investigation into how platform algorithms, as a structural force, shape urban-rural cultural identity. This study employed a nationwide stratified sampling survey, with urban and rural residents as the research subjects, and utilized regression analysis and structural equation modeling to systematically examine the differential association mechanisms of algorithm recommendation systems on the cultural identity of urban and rural residents, as well as the moderating roles of social structural factors such as household registration and education level. The results revealed that algorithm exposure is significantly and positively correlated with users’ acceptance of rural modernity narratives, which is specifically reflected in the significant enhancement of fusion innovation identification. Urban-rural household registration, as a key social location variable, moderates the association path between algorithm exposure and reality identification: urban user groups exhibit a positive correlation between the two, whereas rural user groups show no such association. Active search behavior weakens the association with algorithm domestication, as users resist the infiltration of a single narrative through autonomous information acquisition. Notably, different short video platforms exhibit significant differences in their associations with cultural identity, and both the urbanization level of permanent residence and education level exert significant moderating effects on cultural identity and algorithm perception. Based on these findings, this study proposes the “Algorithm Domestication Gap” defining the digital cultural divide as a multi-dimensional cognitive gap within the framework of the third-generation digital divide. This concept extends the knowledge gap theory, providing a theoretical lens for understanding technology-mediated urban-rural cultural politics, and offers practical implications for digital rural construction and platform governance.

ABSTRACT This study examines the semantic content of identity among members of grassroots organisations to investigate how activists' self‐concepts reflect politicised collective identity. Using an identity content approach, 128 Italian activists were asked to complete an associative recall task in which they described themselves and their group. Thematic analysis identified distinct identity components that were interpreted as ‘possible selves’, including an agent/competent self, a communal/warm self, a romanticised self, a radical self and an ought self. The results showed that a strong politicised collective identity was associated with agency/competence‐related descriptors and a nuanced self‐image, whereas lower identification was linked to communal/warm descriptors and idealisation. These findings suggest that identity strength is tied not only to group affiliation, but also to specific identity content—particularly efficacy‐related traits. The results also highlight the need for further exploration of identity motives and the dynamic interplay between individual and collective identity in activist contexts.

The Ponte Vecchio: Architecture, Politics, and Civic Identity in Late Medieval Florence

Once a vibrant trading hub in Southeast Asia, the Malaysian port city of Malacca is now part ghost town, part real estate development. Built on the prospect of transforming Malacca into a tourist magnet and a node in China’s Belt and Road Initiative, hasty reclamation and exaggerated sales promises have turned the coastline into a mud field and the construction sites into ruins. Driven by national and transnational interests, sand is made operational as a medium of economic transformation and political consolidation. Taking the silted Straits of Malacca as a point of departure, this article proposes a reading of land reclamation aimed at transforming sand into fixed forms against the unpredictable vibrancy of the matter. As fieldwork reveals, mudskippers thrive, and locals claim unexpected agency in the mire of Malacca’s near abandonment and the decaying remnants of past and future urban designs. Attention to the structural potential of sand’s granular physics unsettles practices of environmental control and financial speculation, highlighting the ambiguity of contemporary processes of urban transformation. Substrate and effect of the ongoing limbo that conflates urban and economic development strategies and postcolonial identity politics, Malacca’s coastline comes to express capital flows as partial and unstable sedimentation.

Colonialism not only affected the economy and political structures of the colonised regions, but it also had long-term impacts in shaping and re-shaping the identities of those regions and the people. The colonial rulers saw everything indigenous through the Western lens and tried to simplify it to control and govern. For similar purposes, the colonial rulers tried to erase the multiplicity of identities in the region deliberately and labelled it as ‘South Asia’ and used it as a tool to simplify governance over the region’s vast and diverse populations. In this way, colonials not only strengthen their control over the region but also try to change the cultural map of the region. This paper will explore how the term ‘South Asia’ originated and became so popular. This paper also explores how the colonial rulers tried to shape the region’s identity through the Western perceptions of the region, presenting it as a monolithic, exotic, and often inferior in culture through the tools such as modern education, census politics, bureaucratic correctness and oriental historiography.