In Ghana’s political landscape, actors from both ruling and opposition parties deploy a range of linguistic and rhetorical strategies in their pursuit of political power. Prominent among these is political labeling, a discursive practice used to construct favorable self-images while delegitimizing opponents through derogatory and face-threatening expressions. This study examines how political labeling functions as a strategic tool for identity construction and power negotiation in Ghana’s electoral landscape. Situated within the fields of political discourse and communication studies, the study demonstrates how labeling operates simultaneously as a rhetorical and framing device that reflects and reinforces underlying sociopolitical power dynamics. Drawing on empirical data from major Ghanaian news portals, the study adopts an integrated analytical framework combining Framing Theory and the Theory of Impoliteness. It analyzes public labeling directed at three prominent political figures across three election cycles (2016, 2020, and 2024). The findings show that politicians, activists, and their supporters strategically deploy labels to reconstruct rivals’ identities, inflict reputational damage, and provoke ridicule, thereby undermining their perceived competence and public credibility. Focusing on derogatory labels, we argue that political labeling serves primarily to generate emotional responses, shape public perception, and mobilize collective action, ultimately influencing the trajectory of national political discourse. By examining the interplay between language, identity construction, and power, this research offers a nuanced account of how political labeling shapes individual attitudes, group dynamics, and the broader political culture in Ghana.

Abstract Immigrants and the children of immigrants routinely receive information about the politics of both their country of origin and country of residence. While existing research emphasizes how diasporas absorb political ideas from the residence country and transmit them back to the origin country through social remittances, less attention has been given to how ongoing political conditions in the origin country shape these processes. This paper advances a circular perspective on social remittances, showing how information about the origin country influences political attitudes in the diaspora with implications for the content of attitudes transmitted back to the origin country. Focusing on information about criminal violence in Latin America, we examine how exposure to such information shapes support for the militarization of public security in Latin America among U.S. Latinos, including both foreign-born and U.S.-born individuals. Using a conjoint experiment with a national sample of U.S. Latinos, we randomize information about perpetrators, the scope of violence, and state capacity to assess their causal effects on public opinion. We show that higher levels of violence, greater organizational capacity of criminal actors, and ineffective policing increase support for military involvement in public security. These findings highlight the significant role of origin country conditions in shaping social remittances.

ABSTRACT When individuals are referred to as “the people” (人民, Renmin), “citizens” (公民, Gongmin), or “commoners” (老百姓, Laobaixin), do their political attitudes reflect the special implications of “the people,” “citizens,” or “commoners,” respectively? The experimental question sets embedded in the survey contribute to the theoretical investigation of the priming effect of political identity terms on individuals’ political attitudes, as well as the methodological examination of the effect of wording on measurement outcomes. The analysis of data collected from residents of China's city N reveals that the modern political identification terms “the people” and “citizens” are more likely to inspire agreement to rights awareness than the traditional term “commoners.” It suggests that modern terms for the general public can indeed inspire modern political attitudes. In terms of methodology, if the researcher focuses on interval and ordinal variables rather than nominal variables, the researcher has greater leeway in designing the questionnaire, using terms such as “people,” “citizens,” and “commoners.” The findings help us understand the application of various political identity terms in real-life official and popular contexts, while also providing a reference for survey research design in the Chinese context.

Abstract Recent literature suggests that citizens in Western democracies have become desensitized to Islamist terrorism and that Islamist attacks therefore no longer evoke the same changes in political attitudes as before. However, this hypothesis remains undertheorized and has not been systematically tested. We develop a theoretical framework that positions desensitization alongside alternative trajectories of public responsiveness and subject it to two complementary tests. In Study 1, we draw on a meta-analytic dataset of over 170 previous studies and 800 effect estimates to assess whether public reactions to Islamist terrorism have changed as a result of repeated exposure. In Study 2, we conduct a more controlled comparison of the effects of two recent Islamist terrorist attacks using a comparable research design and a new data source. Across both studies, we find little evidence that responsiveness has systemically diminished – or increased – over time, calling into question the presumed erosion of the effects of Islamist terrorism on political attitudes in Western democracies.

Abstract Dictionary-based text analysis, where researchers select keywords to measure constructs such as public sentiment, anxiety, or political attitudes in large text corpora, is widely used in computational social science. However, keyword selection is rarely subjected to the same psychometric scrutiny applied to survey instruments: studies seldom report reliability, evaluate internal structure, or test whether the measurement holds across subpopulations or time points. Moreover, few existing methods enable the construction of measures that reflect theoretical or expected relationships among keywords. This paper proposes a method that brings these capabilities to text analysis by applying Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) to word embeddings. Keywords are treated as observed indicators of a latent construct, and their semantic relationships, operationalized as centered cosine similarities between embedding vectors, serve as the input correlation matrix for CFA estimation. The framework enables researchers to estimate factor loadings and model fit indices (CFI, TLI, RMSEA, SRMR), compute reliability coefficients (Cronbach’s alpha, Omega), and test measurement invariance across groups or time periods using multigroup models with structured means. Moreover, the method allows researchers to compare latent construct intensity across groups or time periods, transforming keyword-based text measures from descriptive indicators into formally comparable latent variables. The method is demonstrated through an empirical application of the discourse of war anxiety during Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine. A Monte Carlo simulation further examines the behavior of fit indices under random keyword selection. The approach complements existing text analysis methods and can be implemented using standard software, such as the lavaan R package.

Abstract Do men respond to a masculinity threat by adopting more conservative political attitudes? A highly cited 2013 study by Willer et al. – drawing on substantial work in social psychology – argues in the affirmative, reasoning that endorsing conservative views allows men to reaffirm their gender identity. In two experiments with student convenience samples ( N total 100–110, N men 40–51), the authors find consistent evidence: inducing masculinity threat increases support for war, homophobic attitudes, and endorsement of dominance hierarchies. We conduct a preregistered replication of this foundational study using a nationally representative probability sample ( N total 2774, N men 2073). Contrary to original findings, we observe no consistent evidence that masculinity threat alters political attitudes. We further do not find support for design differences between the replication and original study driving contrasting findings. Our results call into question the robustness of evidence linking masculinity threat to political attitudes and underscore the importance of re-evaluating widely accepted findings with representative, large samples.

The article compares the academic advancement of the married couple of historians, Wanda and Bogumił Zwolski, who during the period of the People’s Polish Republic (PRL) were affiliated with the Institute of History at the University of Łódź. Both arrived in Łódź from Vilnius in 1945. Bogumił already held a doctoral degree and had prior university teaching experience (before the war he had served as an assistant at Stefan Batory University in Vilnius). Wanda, who in the interwar period had worked as a secondary school history teacher, took up positions as a lecturer in the methodology of teaching history at Łódź institutions of higher education, including the State Higher School of Education (Państwowa Wyższa Szkoła Pedagogiczna, PWSP) and the University of Łódź. The author focuses on the time required for the two scholars to reach comparable stages of their academic careers and on how their scholarly output was assessed, including the criteria used in these evaluations. The study examines whether career advancement was shaped by subdiscipline, research interests, or political attitudes, as well as by support (or the lack thereof) from colleagues and university authorities. It also addresses the question of whether gender influenced the functions and positions entrusted to the protagonists. This case study of the Zwolskis goes beyond a narrowly defined biographical framework, allowing broader patterns of academic advancement in the PRL to be identified. It also contributes to the discussion of whether gender determines career progression and whether academic couples working within the same discipline find it easier to advance professionally.

This study investigates the conditions under which Polish cities adopt proactive reception and early integration responses for Ukrainian forced migrants following the 2022 Russian invasion. Despite Poland's centralized governance and limited municipal authority over migration, certain cities adopted a proactive approach, coordinating reception and initiating early-integration measures beyond minimal compliance. Employing Qualitative Comparative Analysis, we examined 12 urban cases to identify configurations of conditions—political leadership, institutional capacity, socio-economic opportunities, and community attitudes—that facilitate proactive approaches to reception and early integration. Our findings reveal that strong political leadership is a necessary condition across all proactive cases. Additionally, combinations involving high institutional capacity, favorable socio-economic conditions, and supportive community attitudes contribute to municipal action exceeding baseline requirements. These findings help to understand the urban context in shaping reception and early integration, demonstrating that local configurations of resources, governance, and community dynamics can drive municipal responses to forced migration crises, particularly within centralized systems.

ABSTRACTThis paper examines affective climate polarization (ACP) and affective political polarization (APP) – emotional distance between supporters and opponents of decarbonization and political partisans, respectively. Analyzing original, representative Canadian survey data (n = 2503), we examine why people have differing levels of ACP and APP and the extent to which ACP and APP predict support for a carbon tax and beliefs about how decarbonization will affect jobs. The intensity of individuals’ support or opposition to decarbonization is the most important factor in predicting ACP. The strength of ideological alignment predicts APP among both liberals and conservatives, and, on the political right only, attitudes to decarbonization also explain variation in APP. Support for an industrial carbon tax and belief that decarbonization will increase jobs are related to political ideology and attitudes toward decarbonization more strongly than to either measure of affective polarization. These findings show that climate politics intensify partisan animosity, albeit in different ways on the political left and right.

Feed algorithms are widely suspected to influence political attitudes. However, previous evidence from switching off the algorithm on Meta platforms found no political effects1. Here we present results from a 2023 field experiment on Elon Musk's platform X shedding light on this puzzle. We assigned active US-based users randomly to either an algorithmic or a chronological feed for 7 weeks, measuring political attitudes and online behaviour. Switching from a chronological to an algorithmic feed increased engagement and shifted political opinion towards more conservative positions, particularly regarding policy priorities, perceptions of criminal investigations into Donald Trump and views on the war in Ukraine. In contrast, switching from the algorithmic to the chronological feed had no comparable effects. Neither switching the algorithm on nor switching it off significantly affected affective polarization or self-reported partisanship. To investigate the mechanism, we analysed users' feed content and behaviour. We found that the algorithm promotes conservative content and demotes posts by traditional media. Exposure to algorithmic content leads users to follow conservative political activist accounts, which they continue to follow even after switching off the algorithm, helping explain the asymmetry in effects. These results suggest that initial exposure to X's algorithm has persistent effects on users' current political attitudes and account-following behaviour, even in the absence of a detectable effect on partisanship.

Narcissistic personality disorder (NPD) has arguably been subject to concept creep, a phenomenon according to which psychopathological concepts gradually expand over time. Such semantic shifts may lead to over-inclusive lay concepts of mental disorders, which blurs the boundaries between mental health and illness. To assess the individual concept breadth of NPD and to test whether specialized knowledge in psychology reinforces or inhibits expanded concepts, a convenience sample of 414 participants primarily consisting of students from a Swiss university completed a vignette-based online-survey. The vignettes were based on DSM-5 criteria of NPD and varied alongside two dimensions that assess vertical (severity gradient, including non-pathological manifestations) and horizontal (variety of features, including normal behaviors) concept breadth. We found that about a quarter of the participants endorsed expanded concepts of NPD that incorporated non-pathological manifestations and normal features. An academic background in psychology was associated with less expanded concepts of NPD, both vertically and horizontally, whereas a conservative political attitude was associated with more expansive vertical concepts. Both vertical and horizontal concept breadth correlated with the self-reported frequency of perceiving narcissistic people in everyday life. We conclude that a substantial portion of young adults endorse expanded and over-inclusive concepts of NPD, which may affect their perception of narcissistic people in everyday life. Psychology students endorsed less expansive concepts due to a general reluctance to attribute the depicted features, even diagnostic core features, to a narcissistic personality disorder.

the Al-Aqsa Flood Operation on October the 7th represented a paradox in the Palestinian political issue and the global media engagement with it. After a long time of international neglecting, these events reinstated the Palestinian issue back into the global media spotlight. As much as this events escalating as much the global media splinted significantly between the Palestinian narrative & the foreign media supported Zionist narrative. However, this foreign misleading media coverage -characterized in selective reporting & distortion of information- played a massive role in legitimizing violence against Palestinians perpetuating cognitive and structural harm, throughout too many tools such as propaganda and hate speech, digital platforms which has manipulated public consciousness & produced one-sided view of reality. Finally, this research examines digital media warfare as a defining feature of modern conflicts and wars, by highlighting its impact on public perception, political attitudes & the opinion shaping in alignment with specific political interests.

ABSTRACT Despite increasing scholarly attention to populist orientation, little is known about its psychological effects on individuals. This cross-lagged panel study examines the temporal relationship between populist orientation and perceived control over one’s life, as well as the associations between these variables and emotional distress, using a quota sample of Italian adults across six waves from April 2020 to October 2022 (N = 2,027). Higher levels of populist orientation significantly predicted lower perceived control in subsequent waves, whereas perceived control did not predict later populist orientation. Moreover, both perceived control and populist orientation were positively associated with emotional distress. The study highlights the psychological risks associated with populist worldviews and offers insights for future research on political attitudes and well-being.

In today’s fragmented media landscape, social media influencers (SMIs) have emerged as popular political information sources among young audiences—despite often lacking political expertise. However, we have limited knowledge about factors that predict trust in SMIs’ political content during early and middle adolescence, a critical period during which political attitudes are formed. This study proposes two novel theoretical pathways to explain varying trust perceptions between and within adolescents: a source-centered pathway, focusing on observed SMI-audience interactions and motive attribution, and an audience-centered pathway, emphasizing adolescents’ digital literacy and parental mediation. A three-wave panel survey ( N W3 = 799 parent-child dyads) shows that trust in SMIs’ political information is higher among those adolescents who view SMIs as involved with their audiences and altruistically motivated, and among adolescents with high digital literacy and whose parents engage in active mediation. However, changes in these variables do not predict deviations from adolescents’ usual trust levels.

We present a project investigating the impact of social media on ideological structuring of political attitudes in a generational perspective, with Italy (around the 2024 European Parliament elections) as a case study. We introduce an innovative mixed-methods, sequential, quantitative-driven, multi-stage design combining surveys, qualitative interviews, and social media data, which effectively integrates qualitative and quantitative components to analyze the effect of social media influencers on political attitudes across generations. We present project design along with interaction and integration among components (methodological innovations include a “Swipe” module for respondents–influencers linkage and use of AI for classifying social media posts). We describe individual components (including first empirical results), an intermediate convergent assessment stage, and directions for data analysis.

Abstract This study evaluates whether exposure of local areas to medieval Mediterranean trade with Africa and the Middle East still shapes Italian political attitudes. Such exchanges may have fostered cultural traits that eased interaction with people of different cultures, ethnicities, and religions. We show that individuals living near a medieval port are less likely to view migrants as a security threat or to report right-wing voting preferences; these areas also had fewer xenophobic attacks during the 2015 Syrian refugee surge. We also find that right-wing parties received fewer votes near medieval ports only when immigration was highly salient. Finally, we document a lower probability of Jewish deportations near medieval ports during the Nazi occupation, the only period when a minority group was explicitly targeted. This suggests that deep-rooted cultural traits can re-emerge when historical and political conditions make them relevant.

In diverse societies, minority groups may face challenges when events signal exclusion from a superordinate identity (SOI) shared with the relevant majority groups. We examine how such SOI threats relate to hardline political attitudes, focusing on betrayal as a potential mechanism. A cross-sectional study of Ethiopian Jews in Israel (N = 276) showed that priming an SOI threat was associated with support for violent resistance via betrayal. A two-wave study of Arab-Muslims in Israel (N = 165) showed that a real-time SOI-threatening event predicted betrayal and, in turn, increased support for violence, particularly among those with stronger baseline SOI. An additional two-wave study of Israeli Jewish women (N = 584) during the recent Gaza war extended this framework to a broader SOI shared with women worldwide: stronger baseline SOI predicted higher expectations of solidarity, which, when undermined by SOI threat, was associated with greater betrayal and hawkish wartime policy support.

Abstract Previous research conducted in closed autocracies indicates that government propaganda can deter opposition, shift political attitudes, and influence emotions. Yet the specific mechanisms and contextual factors influencing how and when propaganda works remain unclear. We theorize how power-projecting government propaganda works differently for government supporters and opponents in polarized electoral authoritarian regimes, focusing on emotional reactions, sense of societal belonging, and downstream effects on contentious political behavior. Through two preregistered surveys in Turkey ( N = 6,286), we find that supporters exposed to propaganda videos feel a greater sense of belonging and are more susceptible to engage in pro-government activities. Opponents report heightened anger and anxiety and seem deterred from protesting. However, the latter effect weakened during the highly contested 2023 electoral campaign. These results indicate that propaganda can help electoral authoritarian regimes deter anti-government action and encourage pro-government action, but that its deterrent effects may weaken during periods of high mobilization and contention.

State surveillance has been extensively investigated in various contexts in relation to the use of technology, external threats and people’s attitudes and characteristics. However, the relationship between political attitudes and the public’s acceptance of state surveillance has been underexplored. Our article addresses this gap in the literature and aims to identify the effects of citizens’ political preferences regarding the acceptance of state surveillance in Hungary. We use individual-level data from a survey conducted in October 2022 on a national-level representative sample. We find that populist attitudes have no effect on the acceptance of surveillance, but also that support for a right-wing government, age and gender have strong explanatory power.

This paper analyses the impact of income inequality on European citizens' attitudes towards the green transition, using data from Round 11 (2023) of the European Social Survey (ESS). Although there is extensive literature on the relationship between inequality and populist political attitudes, the same cannot be said when looking at the “green” orientation of the population. In particular, similar to the Kuznets curve, the relationship studied may take a non-linear form: in a non-polarised context, greater inequality should lead to a strengthening of environmentalist attitudes, while in a polarised context the sign of the relationship should be reversed. From a methodological point of view, the Gini index is calculated to measure inequality, while a binary logistic regression model is estimated to understand the probability of voting for green parties, considering not only polarisation but also individual socio-economic control variables. In addition, a Multilevel Linear Probability Model was used, which also allows for the impact of aggregate factors such as gross domestic product, population density and perceptions of environmental quality to be taken into account. The results show that higher levels of inequality are associated with a lower propensity to vote green. The study contributes to the literature by highlighting how socio-economic polarisation can influence environmental attitudes and support for ecological transition in Europe.