Political Cynicism Research Articles

Theoretical Model of Behavioral Consequences of Faith in Conspiracy Theory

The article analyzes researches of recent years on the current issues of studying psychological features of faith in conspiracy theory. It is noted that the relevance of this issue is determined by the lack of thorough theoretical and empirical research on the above issue. The authors for the first time reviewed and generalized analysis of socio-psychological predictors of belief in conspiracy theory and its behavioral consequences. It is determined that belief in conspiracy theory is associated with socio-political conditions (stressful situation of uncertainty in society, distrust of power, low social status, political cynicism, low level of education, etc.), individual psychological (schizotypal traits, neuroticism, mistrust, anxiety, insecurity, narcissism) and cognitive factors (conspiratorial type of thinking, etc ..) Analysis of literature revealed a number of positive and negative consequences of faith in the theory of conspiracies, which are sometimes contradictory. The result of this analysis is the proposed theoretical model of behavioral consequences of faith in conspiracy theory. In addition, the authors emphasize the generalization of the study results of conspiracy theories impact related to the spread of the COVID-19 virus on the implementation of preventive measures by the population. It is noted that people with a high conspiracy mentality are more likely to engage in abusive prevention behaviors, but are less likely to adhere to government-initiated preventive behaviors, although the perceived risk of death and motivation to defend themselves can minimize this trend.

Between New Sensibility and Transgression: Slovenian Alternative Artistic Practices – OHO and NSK

The article conducts a comparative discussion on the strategic poetic and political similarities/differences between the respective contexts of neo-avant-garde and retro-avant-garde practices in relation to aesthetic, artistic, and cultural revolutions. I juxtapose two revolutionary potentials and effects of their actualisation: the utopias and projections of the international revolution relating to the “new sensibility” and the unity of “art and life” of 1968, and several projects and practices that undermine totalitarian systems, from punk cynicism to the national revolutions of 1989 that overthrew real socialism in the Eastern and Central Europe. In my comparative discussion I focus on two specific cases in Slovenian art and alternative cultures, highlighting the position of “experimental poetry,” “new sensibility,” and “conceptual art” of the OHO group, active between 1966 and 1971, and the position of “political cynicism” and “retro-avant-garde art” in the Neue Slowenische Kunst movement founded in 1984.

WITHDRAWN: Determinants of support and participation in a major sport event referendum

ABSTRACT In recent years, referenda have been used to inform decisions to bid on major sport events. Recognising referenda as a means to engage a community in a major sport event, the purpose of this study was to investigate the determinants of referenda support and participation intention. A sample of 603 New Zealanders completed a questionnaire a) the intention to participate in such a referendum. Based on exploratory factor analysis assessing b) their support for a referendum on their city bidding to host the Commonwealth Games, and multinomial logistic regression, the key findings are that political cynicism, civic duty, event status and involvement affected voters’ referendum support, while political cynicism, civic duty, political interest, event status and involvement impacted their voting intentions. The results have implications for prospective host cities, sport managers, policymakers, and ordinary citizens.

Ethnic antagonism erodes Republicans’ commitment to democracy

Most Republicans in a January 2020 survey agreed that "the traditional American way of life is disappearing so fast that we may have to use force to save it." More than 40% agreed that "a time will come when patriotic Americans have to take the law into their own hands." (In both cases, most of the rest said they were unsure; only one in four or five disagreed.) I use 127 survey items to measure six potential bases of these and other antidemocratic sentiments: partisan affect, enthusiasm for President Trump, political cynicism, economic conservatism, cultural conservatism, and ethnic antagonism. The strongest predictor by far, for the Republican rank-and-file as a whole and for a variety of subgroups defined by education, locale, sex, and political attitudes, is ethnic antagonism-especially concerns about the political power and claims on government resources of immigrants, African-Americans, and Latinos. The corrosive impact of ethnic antagonism on Republicans' commitment to democracy underlines the significance of ethnic conflict in contemporary US politics.

Perceptions of mis- or disinformation exposure predict political cynicism: Evidence from a two-wave survey during the 2018 US midterm elections

Despite a fast-growing body of literature on fake news and mis-/disinformation, there remains surprisingly little empirical work on the social/political consequences of exposure to false information. Addressing this issue, this study provides initial evidence that perceptions of false information exposure catalyze political cynicism. The findings from a two-wave panel survey during the 2018 US midterm elections reveal that perceptions of false information exposure 2 weeks before the election significantly predict the changes in political cynicism immediately after the election day. We also find that social media news use in Wave 1 significantly relates to political cynicism in Wave 2 indirectly through perceptions of mis-/disinformation exposure. The autoregressive regression model indicates that our findings are robust after controlling for prior levels of cynicism.

Developing contemporary factors of political participation

ABSTRACT Drawing from research in communication and political science, this study identifies five factors of political participation that address both traditional and more contemporary forms of political engagement. To begin, a questionnaire was developed and tested with respondents from two nationwide surveys who answered questions about their political participation (N = 476 in Sample 1, N = 490 in Sample 2). Next, exploratory factor analysis (EFA) was conducted with responses from the first sample, and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was conducted with responses from the second. Both datasets yielded five distinct factors of political participation: (1) traditional political participation, (2) interpersonal political talk, (3) voting, (4) social media engagement, and (5) online information seeking. Testing convergent and discriminant validity, each factor of political participation was positively related to political efficacy and political interest. Only traditional political participation was (negatively) related to political cynicism. These results suggest that forms of political participation have become more diversified and individualized following the development of communication technologies. Therefore, each of these five factors of political participation is recommended for use in future research.

Blaming in the name of our people: how attitudinal congruence conditions the effects of populist messages communicated by traditional media, politicians, and citizens

ABSTRACT Social Network Sites (SNSs) provide a platform for different actors to directly communicate populist ideas. Politicians and citizens can bypass elite media by directly speaking to the people via social media. Although a growing body of research has investigated the effects of populist messages, extant research has not explicitly compared how the dissemination of populism by (1) traditional media, (2) politicians, and (3) ordinary citizens can activate populist attitudes on the demand-side of the electorate. Relying on a comparative experiment in three countries (the US, UK, and the Netherlands, N = 1,096), this paper shows that the effects of populist messages on populist attitudes are contingent upon four factors: (1) the likelihood of selecting populist content in real life, (2) relative deprivation, (3) political cynicism, and (4) identification with the “ordinary people” as a source of populist ideas. There are no direct effects of populist communication by the news media, citizens, or politicians. Source cues on their own thus do not make populist communication more or less persuasive. Together, this study shows that people are most likely to be persuaded by populist messages when these messages confirm dissent, source identification, and media exposure patterns.

정치토크쇼가 대학생의 냉소주의와 정치효능감 및 정치관여도에 미치는 영향: jtbc ‘썰전’을 중심으로

본 연구는 정치토크쇼가 일정 기간 정기적으로 대학생 유권자에게 노출되었을 경우 유권자의 정치냉소주의, 정치효능감, 정치관여도, 투표의도에 어떠한 영향을 끼치는지 검증하고자 하였다. 본 연구는 패널연구와 추세연구를 혼합한 종단연구로 진행되었으며 실험은 사전 사후검사 통제집단 설계 형식을 취하였다. 실험 1과 실험 2 모두에서 유권자가 정치토크쇼를 시청했을 경우 유권자의 정치냉소주의가 감소하고 정치관여도가 증가하는 긍정적인 영향이 나타났다. 실험 1에서는 일정 기간 정치토크쇼를 시청한 유권자의 경우 정치효능감과 투표의도가 증가하는 것으로 확인되었다. 이 같은 연구 결과는 연성화된 정치콘텐츠, 즉 정치토크쇼가 이를 시청한 유권자의 정치냉소주의를 감소시키고, 정치효능감과 정치관여도, 투표의도를 증가시키는 긍정적인 효과가 있다는 것을 의미한다.

Cynicism, insults, and emotions in the 2016 U.S. presidential election: An affective intelligence framework

ABSTRACT This study examines the role of political cynicism in emotions, online campaign information seeking, and online political expression. Data from a two-wave online panel survey conducted before the 2016 U.S. presidential election reveal that cynicism is related positively to anger and anxiety and negatively to enthusiasm. Cynicism is also positively related to online campaign information seeking indirectly through anxiety. This indirect relationship is moderated by perceived exposure to insult campaigning, such that the relationship is stronger for those who thought they were often exposed to insulting campaign rhetoric. Data also show that cynicism is negatively associated with online political expression through reduced enthusiasm.

Celebrity Politics, Political Cynicism and Contestations of Credibility in Lucius Banda’s Songs

ABSTRACTLucius Banda is one of the renowned popular musicians in Malawi. His songs explore a wide range of political and social issues. In 2003 he joined the United Democratic Front (UDF) party and decided to run for parliament representing Balaka North Constituency. This paper focuses on Banda’s transition from musician to celebrity politician, and on what his music and behaviour after joining politics reveal about the man who prefers to be called soldier for the poor. I illustrate that Banda’s transition reveals that he is a shrewd musician who envisioned joining politics in the future. The transition also shows a remarkable continuity of a calculating artist who sang about the necessity of his martyrdom for his country’s social and political transformation to an elected politician who believed he could advise fellow Malawians on which political party and presidential candidate to vote for during elections. Thus, while most of his songs that criticise politicians resonate with Malawians, in others one sees evidence of a savvy musician who used his songs to promote his own interests and ambitions. The discussion draws from Karen Barber and John Street’s views on the communicative power of popular arts and from John Street’s notion of celebrity politicians.

Presidential campaign of Volodimir Zelensky: Usage of Donald Trump’s experience

Introduction: the article contains the analysis of the unique features of Volodimir Zelensky’s presidential election campaign, the success of which is based on the image of a political leader deliberately built as totally different from the one traditional for the Ukraine’s political elite. Objectives: studying the main political trends in presidential campaigns of Volodimir Zelensky and Donald Trump, to identify common elements of their image-building strategies. Methods: comparative analysis. Results: the study verifies the effectiveness of building the counter-culture image of a political leader in the conditions of high levels of political cynicism and citizens’ distrust to their government. Conclusions: the tactics used by Donald Trump and Volodimir Zelensky during the 2016 US elections and 2019 Ukrainian elections respectively are similar at their core. The difference manifests itself in the types of political images used, as formed with respect to the candidates’ previous careers.

Do Youth Trust in Political News on Social Media? Impacts of Trust or Distrust on the Egyptian Young Citizens Political Engagement

This study examines to what degree youth trust political news on social media as it is an important political communication platform. The study used standard attitudinal online survey questions to assess interest in politics, sources of getting political news, trusting attitudes, and online political engagement activities. The online survey was conducted on a sample of young citizens (n= 225, age 18 to 35 years). Findings reveal the importance of social media as a political information source for young people, however, trustworthy of political information has been discovered to be low. Youth has less trust in political information sources on social media, other citizens, and political institutions. Though, young citizens have also less trust in political news in the traditional media, surprisingly it is higher than trustworthy of social media. Mistrust attitudes predict distrusting behaviors, such as disengagement of societal or political activities as a reflection of political cynicism. Results confirm also, distrust leads to less interest to interact with other net users and a decline of social and political engagement. Trust in political news on social media alters when the public are of different age education, gender, and economic status. In addition, Regression analysis shows that trust in political information on social media is correlated to six predictor variables in the model: trust in traditional media, trust in government, trust in others, political engagement, gender, and the family economic status. These results shed a light on the need of improving the quality of online political news on social media as it seems to be a vital component of the virtual public sphere. It is plausible to assume that declining political news credibility and increasing mistrust of political news online sources confirmed by this study might negatively impact the public discourse, social capital and, potentially harm democratic transition.

The effect of consumption of corruption-related news on political cynicism

Disenchantment with politicians and politics –also called political cynicism– is understood as a phenomenon that deteriorates the functioning of democracy. One of the factors that can impact this disenchantment is the appearance of corruption within the political sphere. Prior research has studied the relationship between corruption and trust in politics; this study aims to investigate the link between corruption-related news and political cynicism in Spain. The study uses an experimental approach to investigate the impact of news reporting corruption on the political cynicism of Spanish citizens and to argue that the consumption of corruption-related news increases cynical attitudes and political cynicism. The present study also investigates whether the involvement of renowned politicians, along with the perceived level of corruption that is reported, has an impact on political cynicism. The results show that political cynicism does not depend solely on consumption of corruptionrelated news; the involvement of renowned politicians in corruption cases and differences in education levels also play a key role in increasing cynicism. Based on the results of the participants assigned to the control group, the study also reveals that Spanish citizens express a baseline level of cynicism that is already very high.

Is Context the Key? The (Non-)Differential Effects of Mediated Incivility in Three European Countries

There is a worry that serious forms of political conflict, in particular, uncivil behavior of politicians, increases political cynicism and demobilizes the public. Despite the close relation of incivility with social and cultural norms of what is an acceptable form of discussion, studies are mostly restricted to one country. To overcome this blind spot, we conduct a cross-national experiment in three countries (the Netherlands, UK and Spain) testing whether civil and uncivil forms of mediated political conflict affect cynicism toward the EU, political participation intentions, and the support for the policies discussed. Results indicate that despite different levels of conflict in the news, and different levels of cynicism and participation in these countries, the effects of incivility are homogenous. Uncivil political conflict has negative effects on political participation intention and policy support but does not significantly affect cynicism – in each of the three countries. We also test the role of an individual-level factor, namely Tolerance for Disagreement (TfD). Citizens with low levels of TfD are more affected by uncivil conflict, while subjects with high TfD seem to be immune against violations of social norms. We discuss these finding against the backdrop of individual and cultural influences on political communication effects and cross-cultural experimental research in more general terms.

The effects of scandalization in political news messages on political trust and message evaluation

Recent decades have seen an increase in the frequency of ‘scandalization’ in political news, a practice in which journalists try to persuade the public that there is a scandal, sometimes by exaggerating the importance of minor mistakes or improprieties. At the moment, little is known about the effects of this practice on news consumers. In this study, we investigated the effects of scandalization on news consumers’ evaluations of the politician involved in the scandal, as well as the news message itself. We expected that such responses would be contingent on the perceived severity of the alleged transgression. We conducted an experiment in which we randomized participants (128 undergraduate students at a Dutch university) into a 2(mild versus severe transgression) X 2(scandalization versus control) between participants design. The results showed that, in the mild transgression condition, a scandalizing message caused participants to perceive the alleged events as less serious than a control message, and that scandalization resulted in lower levels of perceived message appropriateness and message trust. No effects of scandalization were found in the severe transgression condition. We conclude that scandalization does not inevitably lead to lower levels of political trust and increased political cynicism. It can, however, lead to lower levels of trust in news reporting when the transgression is seen as mild.

The effect of consumption of corruption-related news on political cynicism

Disenchantment with politicians and politics –also called political cynicism– is understood as a phenomenon that deteriorates the functioning of democracy. One of the factors that can impact this disenchantment is the appearance of corruption within the political sphere. Prior research has studied the relationship between corruption and trust in politics; this study aims to investigate the link between corruption-related news and political cynicism in Spain. The study uses an experimental approach to investigate the impact of news reporting corruption on the political cynicism of Spanish citizens and to argue that the consumption of corruption-related news increases cynical attitudes and political cynicism. The present study also investigates whether the involvement of renowned politicians, along with the perceived level of corruption that is reported, has an impact on political cynicism. The results show that political cynicism does not depend solely on consumption of corruptionrelated news; the involvement of renowned politicians in corruption cases and differences in education levels also play a key role in increasing cynicism. Based on the results of the participants assigned to the control group, the study also reveals that Spanish citizens express a baseline level of cynicism that is already very high.

When Liberalism Is Not Enough: Political Theology after Reinhold Niebuhr and Emmanuel Levinas

In this paper, we are interested in extending out the dialectical models of religious ethics and political theology that Reinhold Niebuhr and Emmanuel Levinas began by enacting a conversation between these two theorists. We do this by presenting and critically comparing Niebuhr’s and Levinas’s thought as concerns three key issues in moral and political theory: (1) the nature of persons, (2) the source and content of the moral ideal of love and the political ideal of justice, and (3) the impossibility and yet continued practical relevance of ideals for social life. Ultimately, we conclude that they mutually offer reasons to find hope in the face of political cynicism.

To Laugh or Not to Laugh: How Comedy News Versus Hard News Interacts with Individuals’ Levels of Political Cynicism and Political Efficacy to Impact the Agenda-Setting Effects

This experiment investigated how the same information presented as either hard news or comedy news interacted with individuals’ levels of cynicism and levels of efficacy to impact the agendasetting effects. The results indicated individuals who received the comedy news story and had increased levels of cynicism accepted the media’s agenda more than those who received the same information presented as hard news. However, individuals who received the hard news story and had increased levels of efficacy were more likely to cite the issue they received as compared to those who received the same information presented as comedy news.

LOLitics: The Content and Impact of Dutch Populist Internet Memes

Social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter have created a space for user generated content. Users create their own humorous pictures, catchphrases, hashtags or videos, called internet memes, which are widely shared via social media. These memes, often satirical, are also used to express political criticism. As such, it represents a new form of political participation and deserves further inquiry. This study (i) analyses the content of internet memes posted on Dutch right-wing populist Facebook pages; and (ii) using an experimental design, it examines the impact of memes on political cynicism and sympathy for politicians. The results show that (i) memes are more than just entertaining images. They are carriers of anger and political discontent; (ii) yet, there is not enough evidence to assert that memes affect political cynicism or attitudes towards politicians.

Attitudes toward Surveillance: Personality, Belief and Value Correlates

Two hundred and fifty adults completed a number of questionnaires about their attitudes to surveillance. They included measures of personality, paranoia, political cynicism, attitudes to authority, belief in conspiracy theories and the Big Five personality traits. The 25-item, surveillance scale, developed for this study, factored neatly into pro- and anti-surveillance attitudes. The strongest and most consistent correlates were attitudes to authority and political cynicism. Regressions indicated that the most powerful correlates of pro-surveillance attitudes were attitudes to authority, trait openness, conformity and right-wing authoritarianism. The most powerful anti-surveillance correlates were attitudes to authority, political cynicism, belief in conspiracy theories and paranoia. Implications and limitations of this study are considered.