Zero-sum bias in politicized problem solving.

Digital media have reshaped electoral communication, yet official campaign websites, owned and strategically controlled media spaces, remain underexamined within hybrid media systems. This study investigates how these websites function in Portugal’s 2026 presidential election, focusing on the tension between participatory affordances and strategic control. A qualitative-dominant comparative content analysis of all eleven candidate websites is conducted using an integrated multi-model framework combining interactivity, web campaigning, functional analysis, digital sophistication, and political framing. The findings reveal a stratified digital landscape in which most websites operate as unidirectional communication hubs prioritizing narrative coherence and mobilization over deliberative interaction. Rather than functioning as democratic equalizers, campaign websites reproduce and amplify pre-existing strategic and organizational asymmetries. A key contribution of the study is the identification of a systematic association between the strength of campaign framing and the level of digital infrastructural investment. The study contributes by conceptualizing campaign websites as central media infrastructures and by reframing digital campaigning as a strategy-driven, rather than technology-driven, process.

This study examines how political disaster narratives are constructed and contested in YouTube content criticizing elite responses during the Sumatra flood crisis at the end of 2025. Employing a qualitative approach, the research integrates Critical Discourse Analysis with Entman’s framing model to analyze verbal, visual, and intertextual elements in selected YouTube videos that explicitly address government preparedness, elite political imagery, defensive responses, and structural–technical explanations of disaster causality. The analysis is based on a purposively selected dataset of high-engagement YouTube videos published in the immediate aftermath of the disaster, drawn from news programs and political commentary channels that consistently engage with elite criticism. The analytical scope focuses on narrative structure, visual juxtaposition, rhetorical strategies, and moral evaluations embedded in disaster-related political communication. The findings reveal four dominant framing patterns: government unpreparedness, the symbolic imagery of political elites, responsive versus unresponsive elite positioning, and technical–structural framing of disaster causes. Beyond identifying these patterns, the study demonstrates how YouTube reallocates framing authority from state-centered actors and mainstream journalism to non-state digital actors, enabling disaster narratives to function as mechanisms of political delegitimization in digital public spaces. Theoretically, this study contributes to disaster framing and political communication literature by positioning YouTube as an autonomous political actor that reshapes crisis communication dynamics, blurs the boundary between journalism and activism, and redistributes symbolic power during humanitarian emergencies. The findings underscore that contemporary disasters are not only humanitarian crises but also digitally mediated political battlegrounds that actively shape public trust, elite legitimacy, and democratic accountability.

ABSTRACT This study examines how political parties frame climate change and climate policy in their communication. Parties influence public opinion through communication strategies, emphasizing certain aspects of climate change while omitting others. Drawing on party manifestos for the 2024 European Parliament elections across nine EU member states, a mixed deductive–inductive content analysis identifies 14 distinct climate frames: seven that encourage climate action and seven that discourage it. While confirming several encouraging frames established in previous research, the study uncovers a set of underexplored discouraging frames that feature prominently across multiple manifestos: the “Injustice and Sacrifice”, “Complacent Optimism”, “National Sovereignty”, “Appeal to Nature Protection”, and “Change is Impossible” frames. An emerging encouraging frame, “Change is Possible”, is also identified. The findings reveal a clear ideological pattern: Green and Social Democratic parties predominantly use encouraging frames, far–right parties almost exclusively use discouraging ones, and Christian Democratic parties draw on both. By identifying prominent discouraging frames that question or resist climate policy, the study offers critical insight into the evolving political dynamics of climate discourse in Europe and highlights rhetorical strategies that may shape, stall, or undermine future climate policy efforts.

This study investigates how the title of Ghassan Kenefânî’s Umm Saʿd functions as a conduit for the novel’s religious symbolism. It addresses the question of whether a literary title can symbolically mirror the sacred imagery embedded within a narrative. In Umm Saʿd, the main and subordinate titles form a meaningful intersection where the sacred, the resilience of struggle, and the preservation of identity converge. Through a semiotic approach, the study argues that the title surpasses its nominal role and operates as a multilayered sign that conveys the narrative’s ideological and thematic depth. Employing Saussure’s dyadic and Peirce’s triadic sign models, the analysis demonstrates how the title reveals the spiritual codes and sacred motifs woven into the text. The findings indicate that the title not only encapsulates the thematic core of the novel but also guides readers toward its social, cultural and religious dimensions. By remaining detached from political framings, the study underscores how the title brings together the worldly and the sacred within a unified interpretive space. Ultimately, this research uncovers the hidden religious layers of Umm Saʿd, offering an original perspective on the role of titles in mediating and transmitting religious themes in twentieth- and twenty-first-century fictional narratives.

This article examines how repetition operates as a policy tool in Joe Biden’s 2023 State of the Union address (7 February 2023). Using qualitative rhetorical–discourse analysis of the prepared transcript, it traces three repetitive forms—anaphora, tricolon, and slogan‑motifs—and explains how they cooperate to make policy agenda publicly legible. Anaphora (“we/when/let’s…”) structures problem–solution sequences and assigns agency to government and citizens; tricolons compress complex claims into rhythmic, memorable triads; and recurring slogans (notably “finish the job”) function as ideographic labels that bind diverse initiatives into one narrative of continuity and completion. Drawing on work on political discourse, framing, and processing fluency, the study argues that repetition simultaneously reinforces salience (what audiences should notice), coherence (how policy items fit together), and credibility (why the agenda sounds familiar and ‘true’). The findings show that, in this speech, repetition is not ornamental but instrumental—an interface between institutional policy language and mass audience cognition—in a high‑stakes national address to Congress.

This study examines why Team USA athletes who had been publicly engaged in activism at the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games largely refrained from protest at Paris 2024. Drawing on Sidney Tarrow's framework of contentious politics, it analyses political opportunities, networks, framing, and institutional environments to explain shifting patterns of athlete expression. Using a comparative qualitative design, the study synthesizes media statements, institutional documents, and policy communications from 2020–2024 to trace changes in the political and organizational context. Findings show that the decline of activism was not driven by new repression or formal rule changes but by the erosion of public legitimacy, institutional support, and collective framing infrastructures that once legitimized protest. The analysis extends Tarrow's framework by showing how athlete activism unfolds as institutionally embedded contention , shaped less by formal access to power than by the symbolic permission and elite endorsement that determine when expression is tolerated. The study concludes that athlete activism rises and falls with the institutional and cultural environments that make dissent possible.

ABSTRACT This article uses the notion of crisis complex to analyse the relationship between labour migration and crisis from an institution‐ and process‐oriented perspective. Such an interrogation is timely, given the increasingly crisis‐prone dynamics shaping global labour systems and migration governance, including recruitment, skills recognition and the political privileging of temporary labour — all reinforcing a structural reliance on migrant workforces in capitalist development. Temporary labour migration from the Global South is increasingly framed as a development ‘solution’ to both unemployment in origin countries and labour and skills shortages in the Global North, precisely because its temporary and conditional nature is seen as politically palatable within contexts of anti‐migrant rhetoric and economic nationalism. These migration schemes reflect the unequal exchange between Southern and Northern regions, contributing to the exploitation and protracted precarity of migrant workers. Drawing on empirical evidence from a 2024 pilot project, this article examines how temporary labour migration is shaped by a broader crisis complex, understood as a policy solution that has emerged through a multilayered process driven by political framings, institutional logics and actor involvement across three dimensions: skills and development, governance institutions and business models.

ABSTRACT This article explores how faith-based organisations have become key actors in delivering social services in rural Hungary. Drawing on qualitative research with social workers, community organisers and local development programme staff, it examines how care is used to govern marginalised communities through selective and spatially uneven interventions. The analysis focuses on three dimensions: the spatial logic of service provision, the political framing of Roma poverty, and the dilemmas faced by social work professionals navigating between institutional expectations, professional ethics and community needs. The study contributes to debates on social policy, care and professional agency in the context of welfare transformations.

Higher education institutions (HEIs) increasingly face pressure to develop graduates’ meta-skills, yet meta-skills are typically treated as learner-level outcomes rather than an institutional management orientation that can reshape academic management systems. This study proposes and tests a meta-skills-oriented academic management framework that links meta-skills orientation (metacognitive capacity, emotional intelligence, and motivational competence) to academic management frames (structural, human resource, political, and symbolic) and institutional performance. Using a cross-sectional survey of 2,406 academic administrators and faculty from 60 Chinese HEIs (national key, provincial, and regular colleges) selected through stratified sampling, the study employed validated questionnaire measures and analyzed data via structural equation modeling (SEM) (AMOS 26.0). The model demonstrated acceptable fit (CFI=0.968; RMSEA=0.042). Meta-skills orientation positively predicted structural (β=0.685), human resource (β=0.573), political (β=0.412), and symbolic (β=0.524) frames (all p<0.001), while structural (β=0.486) and human resource (β=0.445) frames significantly predicted institutional performance (all p<0.001). Multi-group analysis indicated stronger meta-skills-to-structural pathways in national key universities than other HEI types. The findings position meta-skills orientation as an actionable institutional logic and provide frame-specific levers for evidence-based academic management reform.

Prevailing models of immigrant political behavior in the United States commonly predict alignment with progressive parties based on material self-interest, minority status, and vulnerability to exclusionary immigration policy. Yet during the Trump era, a visible subset of continental African immigrants expressed support for Donald Trump despite nativist rhetoric, restrictive immigration measures, and personal moral scandal. This article argues that the apparent paradox is best explained by two mutually reinforcing mechanisms: (1) the prioritization of sexual conservatism—particularly opposition to LGBTQ rights and “gender ideology”—as a supreme cultural interest that overrides other political considerations; and (2) “citizenship insulation,” the belief among many naturalized immigrants that having already secured U.S. citizenship largely shields them from anti-immigrant policy harms, enabling them to vote primarily on cultural issues. Drawing on a qualitative, interpretive methodology informed by critical realist sensibilities and symbolic boundary theory, the study shows how pre-migration socialization in African religious and political contexts frames sexual normativity as a non-negotiable civilizational boundary. In the diaspora, this worldview is reinforced through religious institutions and transnational digital media, generating a single-issue voting framework in which a candidate’s stance on sexuality and gender becomes the dominant litmus test. A comparative analysis with African American Christian conservatives highlights the distinctiveness of the immigrant case, shaped by imported moral frameworks, different experiences of racial linked fate, and a political psychology of exceptionalism. The article concludes that diaspora political analysis must take seriously how moral boundary-making—amplified by transnational networks—can reshape partisan alignment even against seemingly obvious policy interests

ABSTRACT The paper argues the inadequacy of some received definitions of social systems, which have been inherited from social and political thought in the 19th and 20th centuries, underlying the urgency to reconsider the concepts to think of social systems in contemporary societies. The binary opposition of the market economy versus the planned economy does not provide a fruitful conceptual frame to capture the diversity of contemporary economies. A variety of mixed forms of market economies have emerged, which should be analysed for understanding the cleavages in contemporary societies in terms of social and political hierarchy. The contemporary puzzle about social systems in states around the world is the combination of the global expansion of market economies, jointly with the still-pervasive presence of authoritarian regimes. To improve the understanding of contemporary mixed forms, it is necessary to look at the forms of state power along with the forms of economic organisation. Governance and political rights frame the way social interaction works, and the capabilities and resources which are available. The welfare perspective involves looking at the access to the range of capabilities that freedom in civil and political rights offer.

We examine how a selection of working groups established by the Ministry of Education and Culture in Finland co-produced evidence for higher education student admissions reform between 2016 and 2019 to promote the government's political goals. These goals included accelerating transitions from tertiary education to working life by reforming how students applied for and were selected by universities. In Finland, government's working groups aim to promote evidence-based policy making. In these groups, stakeholders can work with public officials to develop ideas for advancing the government's political goals. We approach working groups as a site of co-production whose members collectively produce and assess evidence. We analysed documentary data and interviewed ten key informants in working groups, using qualitative content analysis to highlight relevant themes. Our results show that co-production in working groups was actualised during writing. A political and corporatist frame steers which information is used. Public officials play a key role in selecting which information is taken up, relying on stakeholders' experience and expertise. In the co-production process, public officials learn of stakeholders' interests, while stakeholders learn about the political will concerning Finnish higher education policy. Members prioritise and assess evidence based on whose interests it serves. Our study contributes to understanding the politics of evidence use, and how co-production is used to drive the government's political goals.

ABSTRACT While a burgeoning literature has investigated the effects of extreme weather events on citizens’ climate attitudes and voting behaviour, politicians’ reactions to such events mostly remain a black box. Our mixed-methods analysis of plenary debates following the 2021 floods in Germany focuses on the framing competition in the Bundestag and its relationship to legislators’ ideology and constituency linkages. While climate change as a cause of the floods is barely discussed, far-right legislators attempt to capitalise on them by blaming governmental and institutional failures in dealing with the tragedy. Climate change adaptation is present in the discourse of most mainstream parties, but advocating for climate change mitigation is a strategy only adopted by the Greens. Our analyses also indicate that legislators react differently depending on their districts’ exposure to floods.

ABSTRACT The 2024 elections in the United States and the United Kingdom were characterized as the first “podcast elections,” with political figures leveraging the medium to connect directly with the public. This study examines how political insiders in both countries used podcast-specific affordances to engage listeners and advance political agendas. Through close analytical listening and critical discourse analysis of four prominent politics podcasts—Bannon’s War Room, Pod Save America, The Rest is Politics, and Electoral Dysfunction—we analyze host engagement strategies and political framing. Our findings reveal a “strategic ritual of authenticity” whereby hosts present themselves as accessible and genuine through intimate, emotional discourse while also displaying professional, insider expertise. U.S. podcasts demonstrated overt partisanship, while U.K. podcasts adopted more establishment-supportive, cross-party approaches. The analysis reveals podcasting’s effectiveness for contrasting objectives: fostering democratic participation through intimate and inclusive dialogue, and deepening polarization through partisan mobilization, with potential to undermine democracy.

The rise of digital media has profoundly reshaped how Indonesian citizens engage in political discourse. This study explores how Mojok.co's Putcast functions as an affective democratic space and a medium of political education for young audiences. Employing a qualitative approach that combines content analysis, grounded theory, and in-depth interviews with the editorial team, this research analyzes two podcast episodes: "Inaya Wahid: Lengsernya Gus Dur Bikin Trauma Politik Sampai Sekarang" and "Dimas Oky Nugroho: Mereka Menghancurkan Mimpi Anak Muda Indonesia!" Findings reveal that Mojok.co strategically employs humor, satire, and reflective narratives to frame political issues surrounding Indonesia's Constitutional Court decision No. 90/PUU-XXI/2023 and the role of youth in democratic participation. The podcast's framing encourages audiences to negotiate political meanings emotionally and deliberatively. Analysis of YouTube comment sections demonstrates active audience participation in three forms: reflective (developing personal political opinions), affective-educative (expressing empathy and learning), and critical-negotiative (reinterpreting the podcast's frames). This study affirms theories of digital democracy and mediatization, suggesting that podcasts function not merely as information channels but as participatory arenas of political discourse. Mojok.co's Putcast exemplifies how local alternative media can democratize political conversations through affective engagement, egalitarian language, and technological accessibility. Hence, this study contributes to contemporary scholarship on digital political communication and proposes podcasting as a strategic medium for youth political literacy and affective democracy in Indonesia. Keywords: podcast Mojok.co, affective democracy, political framing, digital participation, political communication

This study analyzes how the “Security with the U.S., Economy with China” frame is reproduced in actual broadcast news. Using big data on China-related political and economic news aired between 2012 and 2023 by South Korea’s major broadcasters, this study conducted network analyses of news sources and keywords. The results reveal that South Korean media coverage in China exhibits a dual perceptual structure, starkly separated across the political and economic domains. Political reporting relied on limited official channels, and security conflicts dominated. Economic reporting draws on diverse sources and focuses on market- and industry-specific keywords. A distinct “Economy with China” frame emerged, recognizing China as an “irreplaceable partner” and a key structural variable for the South Korean economy. The study empirically demonstrated that South Korean broadcasters reproduce structural contradictions by defining China as a security threat and an economic partner.

This paper examines how Serbia’s anti-lithium environmental protests, centred on opposition to Rio Tinto’s Jadar lithium mine, are situated within the country’s broader history of civic mobilisation and democratic struggle for change. As part of the methodology, this study draws upon social movement theory (particularly the concepts of political opportunity structures and cultural framing) alongside cultural resistance scholarship, which explores the relationship between protest music and contemporary socio-political events. It also engages with environmental democracy frameworks, focusing on public participation rights. Together, these theoretical perspectives are useful in demonstrating how protest music operates as both a cultural and political resource in processes of social and political transformation. Furthermore, drawing on qualitative discourse analysis of news reports, non-governmental organisations’ (NGO) statements, activist interviews, and two popular protest songs, “Fire in Darkness” and “March Out of My Yard” (Vatra u mraku and Marš iz moje avlije), the study investigates the role of cultural expression, such as music, in sustaining activism. It also considers the fusing impact of the November 2024 Novi Sad railway station tragedy, which catalysed a broader pro-democracy coalition by linking environmental grievances to systemic governance failures. The paper argues that the Serbian case illustrates how environmental movements in post-socialist contexts can evolve into multi-issue campaigns for democratic accountability, with protest music and popular cultural production acting as a unifying force across social divides.

This commentary engages with Mikko Joronen's ‘Polluting Appropriations: Malevolent Weathering of Settler Colonisation in Palestine’ through two tracks. Firstly, I delve into the lineage of the term ‘settler colony’ as a designation of Israel, considering some of its political framings and impacts. Secondly, I consider wider literature on environmental transformations and impacts of settler colonialism. Both tracks yield questions on Israel's commonalities with other military-colonizing powers.

This study explores how Dutch, Turkish, and Russian media frame the Srebrenica genocide and how these narratives reflect each country’s cultural, historical, and political contexts. Drawing on framing theory and qualitative content analysis, the research investigates articles published between 2015 and 2020 in Algemeen Dagblad (Netherlands), Hürriyet (Turkey), and Izvestia (Russia). The objective is threefold: to identify framing techniques, examine the role of national identity and collective memory, and analyze the influence of political context on media narratives. Articles were selected during key moments - the 20th and 25th anniversaries of the genocide and the 2017 ICTY verdict - and coded using Semetko and Valkenburg’s framing categories. The findings reveal distinct patterns: Dutch media emphasizes national accountability, Turkish media highlights Muslim solidarity and calls for justice, while Russian media often downplays or reframes the genocide within geopolitical narratives. These differences underscore how national interests and political alliances shape journalistic framing, ultimately influencing public memory and perceptions of historical responsibility.