Ideological Orientation Research Articles

Anti-Woke Publics

ABSTRACT To illuminate the varied and sometimes contradictory modes of public engagement practiced by right and far-right publics, this forum contribution introduces a concept of anti-woke publics. Representing themselves as fair-minded occupants of a political middle ground, anti-woke publics characterize wokeness as a divisive and destructive leftist ideology. They draw on discursive strategies of abstraction, universalism, and ahistoricism that obscure their ideological orientation and divert public attention from the unequal, unjust, and anti-democratic consequences of their advocacy. Their public engagement exhibits a fundamental tension between professed commitments to equal opportunity and their public advocacy in defense of an unequal status quo. Anti-woke publics situate the individual as the primary social actor and champion colorblindness as the ethical orientation for engaging diverse public actors. Sharing advocacy networks with avowedly supremacist publics, anti-woke publics facilitate the wider circulation of supremacist discourses among influential and mainstream publics.

Institutions or ideology? Cross-party and cross-country analysis of factors contributing to the election of women to the European Parliament

Abstract The article examines the key factors influencing women’s electoral success in European Parliament (EP) elections. We present a new conceptual approach and a novel model that simultaneously incorporates trends in party characteristics, institutional and socio-economic factors and cross-country trends in women’s representation. The model provides a comprehensive analysis of the relationships between party-level and Member State-level factors and the election of women to the EP. The study is based on an original dataset of 450 observations on national political parties from all Member States, spanning four European elections from 2004 to 2019. Our results show that party characteristics such as incumbency rates, party size and ideological orientations (i.e. the party’s position on the GAL-TAN scale or its attitude towards European integration) play a key role in shaping women’s representation. This article provides novel insights into the unique features of Central and Eastern Europe, elucidating divergent patterns of women’s electoral prospects in conservative and progressive parties in Western democracies and Central and Eastern European post-communist EU Member States.

Counter-Activism Against Ideological Opponents: Evidence Based on the Competitive Dynamics of Corporate Engagement in Advocacy Giving

A growing body of literature has sought to understand the strategic drivers of corporate activism, emphasizing the ideological composition of a firm’s workforce as its salient internal driver. Despite these advancements, however, the heterogeneity in its effect remains underexplored, leaving it unclear when employee ideology is more likely to translate into activism. We address this gap by considering competitors’ actions—another important driver uncovered in the scholarship—as a key source of heterogeneity. We examine how these actions can shape the external context in which a firm’s employees evaluate the value of its activism, thereby influencing the firm’s incentives to act on employees' preferences. Our central conjecture is that activism by so-called ideological opponents of a firm’s employee base will be a particularly strong driver of its own activism. This is because actions taken by competitors who hold stances opposite to those valued by a firm’s employees can create a temporal window during which the firm can gain enough employee appreciation for its activism—particularly counter-activism opposing the stance of the competitor. Leveraging the donation records of corporate foundations to advocacy nonprofits as a novel channel for studying corporate activism, we find support for this conjecture. Consistent with our theory, we further find that this effect is driven by firms whose employees hold homogeneous ideological preferences and arises primarily around issues with strong ideological contention.

Hierarchy as a signal of culture and belonging: Exploring why egalitarian ideology predicts aversion to hierarchical organizations

Variation in people's ideological preference for the maintenance of inequality between social groups (i.e., social dominance orientation; SDO) predicts important sociopolitical outcomes, such as endorsement of different social policies, institutions, and belief systems. We argue that SDO may also inform people's engagement with work organizations. Specifically, we propose that SDO may impact attraction to different organizational structures. Across 6 experiments (N = 3034), we find that people with relatively egalitarian values are less attracted to organizations with much (vs. little) managerial hierarchy; this gap in attraction is attenuated for relative anti-egalitarians (Studies 1a-b). These effects are not moderated by whether dominant vs. subordinate group members occupy positions of power in hierarchical arrangements (Study 2a-b) and are driven by signals concerning likelihood of organizational belonging that egalitarians (vs. anti-egalitarians) derive from managerial hierarchy (Studies 3a-b). We discuss implications for social dominance theory and research connecting ideology to organizational attraction.

‘Change? Decay? Promise?: fifty years of local government cultural services in the UK

ABSTRACT This paper offers an assessment of how local government cultural services in the UK have transformed in the last fifty years. We frame our discussion around three questions: How should cultural services be funded? How should cultural services be delivered? And what are cultural services for? Drawing on published research and ongoing empirical work by the authors, we discuss how the ideological preferences of different political administrations have offered alternative responses to these three questions, creating a highly uncertain and challenging operating environment for these services. We close by reflecting on the future of cultural provision and by identifying questions for further research in this area.

Beyond acceptable criticism

Abstract This paper utilizes the concept of debasement to examine politicians’ rhetoric in Japan. It focuses on 3,233 questions posed by opposition party members to Cabinet ministers during the 2023 meetings of the Budget Committee in both houses of the National Diet. The analysis identifies debasement comments, examining the linkage between the use of such language and a list of socio-political variables, including ideological orientation, differences in electoral systems, and previous career occupation. From a cross-cultural perspective, abusive rhetoric in Japan might not seem to be an extreme phenomenon, but because of cultural factors even the use of “mild” invective language indicates a clear intention of politicians to debase the reputation of their counterparts in the parliament.

As you wish? Public preferences for models of representation and MPs’ role orientations

AbstractHow much autonomy elected representatives should have in looking after the interests of their constituents is a central question of democratic theory. While much research has been conducted on the representational roles adopted by elected representatives, we currently lack an understanding of citizens’ preferences for contrasting models of representation, more specifically whether they believe representatives should primarily act as instructed delegates, closely following public opinion or rather as trustees, relying on their own convictions and judgement. As a result, we know relatively little about how congruent citizens’ and politicians’ representational preferences are, whether some subgroups of citizens and politicians are more congruent with each other than others and whether citizens’ and politicians’ representational preferences are driven by the same determinants. Using data from 13 countries, we assess the level of congruence between voters’ and MPs’ preferences in representational style. In all countries, citizens favouring delegate‐style MPs are poorly represented as the vast majority of representatives display a moderate to strong preference for trusteeship. Analysing subgroups of politicians and citizens according to party family, ideology, inclusion in government, populism and social class reveals that MPs from left‐wing or right‐wing radical and populist parties, representatives sitting on the opposition benches and those belonging to lower classes tend to hold representational preferences that are more in line with the preferences of their own supporters or individuals belonging to the same group as themselves, but also with those of the entire electorate. However, even among these politicians there are few delegates. Examining whether citizens’ and politicians’ representational preferences are driven by similar determinants, we assessed the influence of their ideological orientations, socioeconomic status and support for (or affiliation with) a party in government on their representational preferences. For citizens, our results indicate that locating oneself on the right of the ideological spectrum is related to higher scores on the delegate–trustee scale, while supporting a populist party seems to decrease voters’ favourability toward trusteeship. Politicians’ preferences could not be explained by similar factors as none of the tested factors were significant. In line with our congruence analysis, there seems to be little variation in MPs’ representational preferences. Even groups of MPs that can be thought of as most likely to be delegates turn out to be staunch trustees, potentially causing frustration among citizens preferring delegate‐style representation.

Introduction: Mobilizing during COVID-19: social movements in times of crisis

ABSTRACT Early 2020 saw the beginning of a pandemic that triggered an unprecedented global health crisis and economic turmoil. The COVID-19 pandemic also crucially affected the dynamics of political mobilization in social movements. This introduction seeks to reflect on such effects. In particular, we ask: How did the pandemic change or hinder existing struggles? To what extent did new activist networks, issues, and forms of action emerge? Drawing on the special issue’s contributions, we highlight how the pandemic gave way to new incentives and forms of mobilization, in particular the anti-lockdown protests with covid-specific claims, and actor constellations that often brought together people with diverse ideological orientations. These mobilizations were crucially facilitated by social media, bringing together previously disconnected people and harnessing heightened emotions of fear, anger, distrust, uncertainty, and anxiety. At the same time, existing movements continued their work on longer standing issues and often effectively adapted their organizational infrastructures, repertoires of action, or goals to a new set of priorities and circumstances. As in other crises, the pandemic spurred mutual aid and solidarity activism for those most affected by the pandemic.

The Swedish Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, 1961–1967: Political Time Orientation and Worldview

ABSTRACT The Swedish Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (SCND) fought the military’s plans to acquire Swedish nuclear weapons and protested the nuclear arms race, 1961–1967. This article presents SCND’s ideological orientation by focusing on temporalities. SCND saw the Second World War as a decisive event and tried to avert a crisis and a dystopia by manifesting remembrance of past nuclear detonations, and by representing a ‘desperate man’ who needed to act directly against nuclear weapons testing and research. As an opinion-forming force, SCND advocated international negotiations and rejected political initiatives regarding disarmament. Furthermore, SCND refused to take a position between West and East in the Cold War and SCND did not strive for a fundamental change of society, a utopia, which can be explained by SCND’s critique of ideology and from its temporal orientation rooted in the present. Nevertheless, the rise of imperialist-critical internationalism led to internal ideological conflicts, and the Swedish Campaign dissolved when only one of the goals was achieved: when Sweden abandoned the plans for nuclear weapons. Some members insisted on continuing the campaign to fight against not least imperialism, and SCND’s downfall in 1967 can be explained by its challenge to navigate an ideologically multifaceted landscape.

Priorities of Political Communication in Armenia’s Internal Politics

Currently, the effective use of political communication to confront internal threats to national security is an important issue in the Republic of Armenia (RA). Among the internal threats, the author singled out the absence of a stable civil society, the non-establishment of the multi-party system, the neglect of the feedback mechanism in the state’s political communication, etc. In particular, the following are the main reasons for the weakness of the multi-party system in RA:  weak connection with voters, being active only during election periods,  unclear ideological orientation,  personnel policy, the weak structure of internal democracy and autonomy.  not sufficient representation in all provinces  non-transparency of political and financial activities,  weak control over the activity of parties.

A COMPUTATIONAL ANALYSIS OF IDEOLOGICAL POSITIONS, EMOTIONAL STANCE, AND SUPPORT FOR PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATES IN TURKEY

Using artificial intelligence, this article explores the intricate dynamics between ideologies, emotions, and political preferences of the electorate in Turkey. Utilizing a dataset of one billion posts from X (formerly Twitter), the study maps out political opinions, focusing on support for presidential candidates, ideological stances, and collective emotions around the pivotal 2023 Turkish presidential elections. We discuss the limitations of conventional survey techniques and introduce an ERC‐funded Politus project that processes digital trace data to offer timely insights into social and political trends. The study's findings, particularly around the “prayer rug (seccade) crisis,” underscore the complexity of electoral politics and the potential of digital trace data in capturing the evolving sentiments and ideological orientations of voters. Through this computational approach, the research provides a granular depiction of Turkey's ideological map and electoral behavior, contributing significantly to the discourse on political analysis in the digital era.

КАЗАХСКАЯ ДЕТСКАЯ ЛИТЕРАТУРА И ТВОРЧЕСТВО А. СОПЫБЕКОВА

This article examines the trends in the development of Kazakh children's literature in the 1950s and 1960s, focusing on its thematic and ideological orientation. It also delves into the creative world of poet Adyrbek Sopybekov, whose significant contributions to the field are explored. The author analyzes fantastic poems and other selected works by A. Sopybekov, considered the best examples of children's poetry, and paying close attention on their thematic, ideological features, and artistic aspects. Children's poetry during the years of national independence remains a relatively understudied topic. Examining the creative laboratory of poets who have worked significantly in this direction, and thereby studying the direction and nature of modern children's poetry, drawing conclusions about thematic and ideological features, artistic aspects, is one of the urgent tasks facing the science of national literary studies. While valuable insights into Adyrbek Sopybekov's children's works have appeared in the press, a dedicated, comprehensive analysis of his creative portrait within the framework of Kazakh literary studies is still lacking. This article aims to address this gap by offering a broader differentiation of the poet's work, thereby assessing his characteristic style, his methods of conveying artistic ideas to children, and the educational value inherent in his writing. Additionally, it seeks to evaluate A. Sopybekov's contributions to Kazakh children's literature of the 1950s and 1960s and to gain a deeper understanding of his poetic skill.

Является ли сочинение Утемиша-хаджи про­шибанидским?

Purpose of the study: To consider specific examples to substantiate the pro-Shibanid orientation of the work of Utemish-hajji, formed in the research literature. To analyze these examples in a comparative historical vein using a wide range of written sources, and on this basis note some stylistic features of the written heritage of the Khiva historian. The final part provides a brief analysis of the works of those medieval authors whose main focus is indeed on the Shibanid dynasty. Research materials: The main sources for this article were two manuscripts of the works of Utemish-hajji published in Russian – “Chingiz-name” and “Kara tawarikh”. Also used are synchronous Arab and Persian historians of the 15th–17th centuries, and materials from Russian chronicles. Research results. It has been determined that the arguments for the author’s pro-Shibanid position presented in historiography are not entirely correct, as demonstrated by relevant passages from the work of Utemish-hajji. In both manuscripts of the work, the Shibanid dynasty indeed occupies an important role, but politically it does not stand out from the rest of the descendants of Jochi. The only exception is the founder of the Shiban dynasty whose military exploits are highlighted by the author. In addition, Utemish-hajji’s poor knowledge of the genealogy of the ruling dynasty is noted, which indirectly indicates that the goals and objectives of the work he performed were aimed at building one’s own version of the history of the Golden Horde. This approach was partly due to the sources of the information received. The plot of the work contrasts strongly with works that can be classified as Shibanid historiography. A typical example here is the work of Masud Kukhistani, who built his work around the personality of Abu l-Khair. Separately, it is worth noting a number of episodes discussed in the article (the reign and death of Khizr, the end of the Batuid dynasty), information about which could be gleaned from written sources. All of the above raises pressing questions of research into the goals and objectives set for the chronicler, as well as clarification of the specific ideological orientation of the work.

An Analysis of the Religious Solidarity Discourses Regarding the Syrian Refugees in Türkiye

Following the outbreak of the civil war in Syria, a massive migration of Syrian nationals to Türkiye has been a significant phenomenon. This situation has become a problematic issue, as the massive presence of Syrian refugees in Türkiye has become an important part of the domestic political agenda. The politicization of the refugee issue has long since presented a duality of conflicting opinions among the Turkish society, whereas it has led to political debates between pro-government and opposition groups. In light of these developments, Turkish government elites have produced discourses of religious solidarity with the aim of providing tolerance and social acceptance for Syrian refugees and thus legitimizing the open door policy of the government toward these refugees. The aim of this study is to analyze and categorize the themes that constitute the basis of the discourses of religious solidarity regarding Syrian refugees in Türkiye. In this context, a second aim is to demonstrate how these themes have been welcomed in a positive manner by their adoption and recognition by Turkish society. To these aims, governmental discourses of religious solidarity and a sample consisting of 980 posts on the digital platform X have been analyzed by using the critical discourse analysis technique and have been categorized under two discursive themes, namely the ensar–muhacir analogy and the emphases on the Ottoman legacy. The conformity between these discourses and the government’s ideological orientation and the degree to which these discourses have been welcomed and adopted by the Turkish society have been discussed in detail.

Untangling ideologies in lifelong learning discourse

ABSTRACT This paper contributes to research on lifelong learning (LL) by examining discourses of multilateral organisations through the lens of ‘progressive neoliberalism’, in which contradictory ideologies of social justice movements and capitalism are hybridised (Fraser 2017). LL has been interpreted as a means of upskilling to remain competitive in the global economy or as a device for promoting social cohesion, equality and personal fulfilment. This study locates LL within the context of educating global citizens of all ages to address world crises and aims to understand underlying ideological assumptions in OECD, UNESCO, WB, EU and IB policy texts. A critical discourse analysis reveals the entanglement of largely symbolic progressive language within the confines of neoliberal capitalism. This ambiguous conceptualisation offers an incoherent framework for LL and perpetuates what Gramsci (1971) describes as a hegemonic bloc. Findings suggest that LL discourses mediate contradictions between two diverging ideological orientations, legitimise social hierarchies and power relations, and provide a superficial approach to global injustices and environmental emergencies.

Tracing the Conflict Between Türkiye and Syria Through the Turkish Mainstream Media's Coverage of the Syrian President Bashar al‐Assad

The Syrian civil war began in March 2011 and spread throughout the country in April 2011. Therefore, in this study news articles and columns published in 2011 were selected and analyzed through purposive sampling. This study uses content analysis to examine the coverage of Syrian President Bashar al‐Assad in mainstream print newspapers with different ideological orientations in Türkiye. The theoretical framework of this study is based on the concept of localization of foreign news. The research has the potential to reveal both the transformation of the tone of media texts over time and the similarities and differences in the coverage of an international conflict by newspapers with different ideological orientations. Despite ideological differences, the study reveals similarities in the orientation of the newspapers studied toward local interests. The dominance of Turkish officials as news actors, the limited portrayal of Syrian security forces, and the selection of photographs reinforce the parallel stance with Turkish foreign policy. The media's tone toward Assad and Syrian politics became more negative and critical as the conflict escalated.

We need to talk about AL: has academic literacies designed the pedagogy out of Learning Development?

Academic literacies (AL) research has made significant contributions to understandings of student writing and literacy across higher education and particularly learning development. However, researchers and practitioners both within and external to the AL movement have struggled to clarify the relationship between AL and pedagogy. English for Academic Purposes researchers have highlighted the lack of a workable AL pedagogy, whilst AL researchers maintain that the model represents a design space or heuristic for thinking about practice in context, rather than a source of pedagogic prescriptions. This theoretical discussion elaborates concerns with the structural coherence of the AL model, its broadly social constructivist underpinnings and evidence base, and the impact of its ideological orientation on the pedagogy we derive from it. Underpinning these critiques is a suspicion that the interpretation of social constructivist epistemology on which AL relies to pinpoint weaknesses in the models of literacy/writing which it subsumes cannot generate a practical pedagogy. We argue that these structural and ideological tensions in the AL model help to explain confusion over its interpretation and implementation. We speculate that this singular focus on social constructivist-derived theory, though well-intentioned, does more to reinforce a particular ideological commitment than to enhance student learning.

Network Issue Agenda Setting on Facebook: Exploring the Interplay Between Polarized Campaigns and Party Supporters

This study undertook an analysis of network agenda setting during the 2020 U.S. Presidential campaign, focusing on the interactions between the campaigns and their respective supporters within the context of a polarized social media environment. By employing social network analysis techniques to examine issue agendas, the study revealed a relatively weak correlation between the agendas of the campaigns and their affiliated supporters on Facebook. Conversely, it found a notable association between entities sharing the same ideological orientation—party supporters displayed a higher degree of engagement with their own party’s campaign, and vice versa. The implications of these findings, from a theoretical, methodological, and practical standpoint, have been thoroughly discussed.

Immigrants Through the Eyes of Citizens of Kazakhstan: The Attitude of the Host Society to the Immigrants’ Health

This article examines the attitudes of Kazakhstani citizens towards health problems among immigrants. Respondents (N=401) from different regions of Kazakhstan took part in the study in 2023. According to the results of the study, it was found that (1) male respondents demonstrated significantly higher engagement with news about migrants compared to females. (2) Age and level of education were not associated with news engagement. (3) The probability of emigration correlated negatively with age but positively with education level, and positively with frequency of following migration news. (4) Individuals with conservative ideological orientations and liberal economic perspectives were more likely to follow migration news. (5) Attitudes towards immigrant health varied, with the majority supporting continuous health monitoring but divided opinions on whether immigrants pose a danger to public health. (6) Socio-demographic factors such as language, gender, experience living abroad, and ideological orientation influenced attitudes toward immigrant health. Therefore, understanding the complex attitudes of citizens towards immigrant health issues is essential for developing targeted interventions and policies that promote integration and address the diverse needs of both immigrants and the host population in Kazakhstan.

Ideological self-selection in online news exposure: Evidence from Europe and the US.

Today's high-choice digital media environments allow citizens to completely refrain from online news exposure and, if they do use news, to select sources that align with their ideological preferences. Yet due to measurement problems and cross-country differences, recent research has been inconclusive regarding the prevalence of ideological self-selection into like-minded online news. We introduce a multi-method design combining the web-browsing histories and survey responses of more than 7000 participants from six major democracies with supervised text classification to separate political from nonpolitical news exposure. We find that political online news exposure is both substantially less prevalent and subject to stronger ideological self-selection than nonpolitical online news exposure, especially in the United States. By highlighting the peculiar role of political news content, the results improve the understanding of online news exposure and the role of digital media in democracy.