Identity Politics Research Articles

Ethnic identity construction through multimodal linguistic landscape at Ban Arunotai in Thailand

ABSTRACT Thailand is a country where ethnic diversity and multilingualism are deeply embedded in the cultural landscape, and understanding the construction of ethnic identity provides crucial insights into its social dynamics. This study investigates how ethnic identities are constructed and negotiated through multimodal resources within the linguistic landscape of Ban Arunotai, a multiethnic village in Chiang Mai. Utilizing a comprehensive multimodal framework, the research analyzes how public signage combines linguistic, visual, auditory, and spatial elements to articulate and reshape identity. The findings reveal a hierarchical structure of languages and modes, where dominant languages are visually prioritized, while minority languages serve more localized, symbolic functions. Moreover, a shift from static, monolingual systems to fluid, multilingual repertoires among speakers reflects broader sociocultural changes shaped by translanguaging practices. By framing public signs as dynamic resources in the active formation and reinforcement of ethnic identities, this study offers significant implications for understanding identity politics and social integration in multilingual settings.

Exploitation and Isolation in W.H. Auden’s The Age of Anxiety: An Existentialist Perspective

Existentialism is a philosophical belief that explores the issues of existence and questions on the identities. European ideological concern on existentialism was strongly brought into debate from 1930s to the late 90s. It discusses the views of two distinct groups of the philosophers: the theists, who believe in the existence of God first, and the atheists, who reject this view and propose the existence of humans first. The objective of this paper is to study about individual feelings, fears, and ideas related to socio-economic downfall and the structural loss of social prestige and position. It also deals with exploitation, isolation, domination, deprivation and it raises the questions on identity issues. Poverty, sexual exploitation, injustice and insecurity are the weapons of identity politics to seek the values of ‘I’ in existentialism. This study, applies Jean-Paul Sartre, Friedrich Nietzsche, Martin Heidegger, Soren Kierkegaard, Martin Buber, Gabriel Marcel and Karl Jaspers’ ideas explored in existentialist philosophy as methodological tools to analyze the experiences of Malin, Quant, Emble, and Rosetta in Auden’s ‘The Age of Anxiety.’

The Future of Multiracial Democracy: The Rise of Multicultural Nationalism

ABSTRACT: Some liberals argue that political polarization is caused by "identity politics" that has created a kind of new tribalism. This essay argues that this is a misreading. Instead, the essay addresses polarization between those who are pro-diversity (possibly also pro-immigration) and those who fear that their national identities are being demoted at the expense of other identities. The clash is not between universalism and identitarianism but over the value or recognition to be accorded to different group identities. While multiculturalism has been concerned with the normative status of minority identities, it has been counterposed, sometimes aggressively, by those who bemoan the neglect of majorities and their identity-based anxieties. This essay focuses on how we can tackle and lessen the polarization that is fostering mutual distrust and threatening the national, democratic citizenships upon which any multiculturalist, egalitarian, and unifying project must be built, and which multiculturalists, together with others, must defend. This involves developing a multicultural national identity to which all citizens can have a sense of belonging without giving up other identities that are important to them. Such national and group identities should not be conceived as monistic or static but rather as interactive and dialogical. Such a sense of the national allows one to be sensitive to minority-identity vulnerabilities and majority-identity anxieties within an integrated theoretical and political framework.

Macedonia and Identity Politics after the Prespa Agreement ed. by Vasiliki P. Neofotistos (review)

Macedonia and Identity Politics after the Prespa Agreement ed. by Vasiliki P. Neofotistos (review)

Do ethnic politics matter? Reassessing the role of ethnicity in local elections in Indonesia

ABSTRACT While recent scholarship has investigated the role of money politics in Indonesia, much less has been said about the part played by sentiments of identity. We argue here that ethnicity and religion remain crucial to an understanding of the processes of local politics and electioneering. We have coined the term ethnicity and religion based organization (ERBO) and used it as a basis for an examination of ethnicity and religion based identity politics in Lampung, the southernmost province of Sumatra. Ethnic identity dovetails largely with religious identity and is a dominant force in the local politics of Lampung, a province that, while multi-ethnic, has a population consisting overwhelmingly of migrants who relocated from the island of Java primarily as a result of the transmigration programme. ERBOs are the vehicle used by local leaders to channel ethnic sentiment and translate it into votes; they are often instrumental in selecting and campaigning for candidates, ensuring voter turnout and arranging rewards. Reflecting ethnic sensitivities, however, some ERBOs refrain from entering the political domain and direct their energies to social and cultural spheres. In presenting this evidence, we seek to qualify recent claims that ethnicity no longer plays an important part in Indonesian politics.

Anti-Kurdish Racism in Germany: Decolonial Perspectives on the German Education System

Educational institutions are places of identity formation and reformation, contributing differently to existing identity politics. In the author's biographical narrative interviews with people who position themselves as Kurds, conducted as part of her PhD project, “Experiences of Racism among Kurds in Germany—Functions and Effects of (Not) Speaking About Anti-Kurdish Racism,” the author frequently encounters instances of devaluation of Kurdish identities due to racialization and everyday invisibilization. The professional demands on educational institutions, on the other hand, require them to give resonance and validity to the multitude of identities and diversity of experiences in society and to make these visible. A critical pedagogy of decolonization involves overcoming colonized perspectives and acquiring alternative forms of knowledge. The author adopts a decolonial perspective to acknowledge and problematize the mechanisms of invisibilization and identity erasure, and thus not only shifts the content of hegemonic orders of knowledge but also enables the recognition of different modes of articulation. This article asks, what characterizes anti-Kurdish racism, and how does it impact Kurdish individuals within the German educational system? Through interview excerpts, the author addresses how these questions can be structurally addressed through biographical clues in Germany.

College Women’s Establishing of Peer Social-relationships and Communicating about Pandemic-related Political Identities and Topics

This mixed-methods study examines two research areas concerning whether U.S. women college students, compared with men, enrolled in online classes during the pandemic suffered from stress regarding their ability to socialize and negotiate a community/national political issue(s) affecting them negatively academically in terms of their grade point average and course outcomes, as well as whether the women would experience a sense of belonging and camaraderie with classmates by discussing topics impacting their identities and circumstances in terms of their individual and communal, social-relational, health, and financial pandemic contexts, which might also influence them negatively academically as stressors linked to their course outcomes and progress. Conducted in a rural, geographically marginalized area, the study implements survey and short-answer question instruments and utilizes an exploratory case-study design and a convergent-parallel strategy assessing 188 women and 188 men participants, including racial/ethnic minority and low socio-economic status (SES) women, with women’s median age of 23. of women and men surveyed, the former reported statistically significantly higher stress levels than men connected to the women’s need to socialize and tackle pandemic-oriented community and national political issues affecting their lives and statuses, which subsequently influenced their academic progress. Overall, the pandemic damaged women, especially racial/ethnic minorities, more than men, with women having higher stress rates revolving around their need for socializing (59% versus 33%) and addressing political issues (54% versus 32%), stressors hampering the women’s academic outcomes and status, as well as some experiencing additional stress regarding health and financial concerns. In response to these settings, 21% of women (n = 40) desired to discuss controversial topics, such as their pandemic stressors and related experiences in the classroom, including the pandemic’s political consequences for themselves, to promote self-expression, forge bonds, and seek and provide assistance in addressing all classmates’ academic, personal, and community needs.

Advisory content in politics: the form of mitigation of the negative impact of identity politics on Instagram account @lensamu and @nuonline_id

This article aims to analyze efforts to mitigate the negative impacts of identity politics by two large mass organizations in Indonesia, Muhammadiyah and Nahdhatul Ulama (NU), through their Instagram accounts. Mitigation in this context refers to steps to recognize and increase awareness of identity politics risks often occurring in campaigns, especially before the 2024 election. This research is motivated by the political situation leading up to the 2024 election and vulnerability to identity politics, which perpetrators often use as a tool. The method used in this research is quantitative content analysis with content research objects discussing political themes and the 2024 election. Data was collected through virtual observation, literature research, and online documentation via the Instagram accounts @lensamu and @nuonline_id from September 2023 to February 2024. Based on the research results, it can be concluded that the percentage of forms of mitigating the negative impact of identity politics carried out by the @lensamu account is 0.91 or 91% and by @nu_online it is 0.86 or 86%. With these test results, it can be said that the form of mitigation of the negative impact of identity politics carried out by these two accounts is high in facing the 2024 election.

Application of Topic Modelling Technology to the Analysis of Social Media Comments in the Context of State Identity Politics Research

In the situation of a shrinking field of public politics and a crisis of political trust, citizens may seek an alternative arena for presenting their own point of view. The social Internet space serves as a virtual projection of public contradictions and acts as an arena for the presentation and confrontation of political interests. At the same time, the increasing state presence in virtual space and the growing trust to online sources of information make social media an important channel for promoting certain patterns of political interpretations. The aim of this paper is to analyse the reactions of social media users to discover their attitudes towards the main narratives of contemporary identity politics of the Russian state. We used the Topic modelling method to study citizens’ reactions to various aspects of state identity politics. The total number of comments in the collected database is 8,023 (09/2022‑09/2023). In almost all the identified topics we can note the polarity of citizens’ opinions, examples of which are given in the article. However, there are a few topics where the users’ opinion is quite consolidated; for example, the image of the Crimean bridge on the cover of new textbooks was widely supported in comments, while the topic of traditional values, on the contrary, evokes negative feelings and shows “public tiredness”. Despite the limitations described in the conclusion of the article, the study demonstrates the high potential of applying the method of topic modelling to the analysis of the reactions of social media users.

THE NATIONAL BUILDING POLICY IN KAZAKHSTAN: CIVIC OR ETHNOSOCIAL IDENTITY?

This study demonstrates how Kazakhstan, once entangled in the complex interaction between tradition and the challenges of modernity, is now actively shaping its national identity. Against the backdrop of the issues surrounding identity politics, nationalism, and post-Soviet transitional processes, this article sheds light on Kazakhstan's decisive steps in creating and exporting a unique national narrative in the realm of state-building. This narrative goes beyond simple adaptation of external models and reflects the country's growing academic and intellectual contribution to the global discourse on national identity formation. The article examines the synthesis of governmental efforts, public knowledge, and practical ideology that underpins the formation of national policy. Special attention is given to the fact that in the post-socialist space, Kazakhstan does not merely adhere to a policy of “de-Sovietization” but also redefines its policy as an expression of sovereign identity and national leadership. The study focuses primarily on the process of «Kazakhization» - a significant paradigm in the post-Soviet context. Unlike other post-Soviet narratives, which tend to criticize or deny history or use it merely as a political tool, the Kazakh approach is aimed at strengthening the multifaceted Kazakhstani identity. In this process, Kazakhstan balances between collective civic identity (Kazakhstani) and ethnonational Kazakh identity (Kazakh), reflecting a conscious departure from the rejection or opposition to the past. Instead, the country seeks to integrate and enhance its unique national essence.

A Study on the Current Situation of Political Identity of Junior High School Students in Sandong Middle School in Sandu Shui Autonomous County, Guizhou, China

Political identity is an important cornerstone for the development of a country or a nation. Embarking on the new road of catching up, it is still necessary to gather the majestic strength of unity and struggle among all ethnic groups. Junior high school students as graduating students, this stage of the students to explore is also a test of the results of the first two years of teaching. In this paper, we go into the field to investigate the educational status of junior high school students in Sandong Middle School in Guizhou and the causes behind the status quo, and put forward corresponding paths to enhance students political identity.

Identity Movements and Identity Politics: Indian Constitutional Framework

Every society is, in some or the other way, a product of a region, ethnicity, gender, race, polity or any other social construct and therefore developing some form and shape of identity is but an essential eventuality. Here the concept of society is expanded to the totality of social phenomena and is recognized by common identity. Therefore, the severe partitions and divisions in India have led to the increase in the scenario of identity politics. Consider the concepts of Pluralism and Multiculturalism that has transformed into identity politics and defined certain groups by their race or ethnicity, where those identities became the catalyst for desiring political power. Identity formation is a process that involves the advancement of social identities based on various parameters including ethnicity and religion. There are ways in which identity creates divisions between heterogeneous groups. For instance, in present day Indian polity the factors like caste, language and even religion do not remain subtle but dominate the politics of the region. Further, this type of concentration on the issue creates a serious imbalance regarding the processes of development in Indian states dominated by the liberal politics. These minorities’ national, ethnic or religious rights are codified in the laws of various multi-national states, where the attention for the cultures of the ‘others’ is notably peripheral. Such considerations, regarding the nationalities and regarding cultural diversities, have social, political and economical consequences.

Political Communication of the Ummat Party in the 2024 Election

This research aims to analyze how identity-based political parties develop and introduce their existence in the 2024 elections in Indonesia, focusing on the case study of the Ummat Party. Through a descriptive qualitative approach, this study explores campaign strategies and patterns of political communication used by the Ummat Party to attract voter support. The research employs a qualitative approach, focusing on the general principles underlying the manifestation of meaning from social phenomena in society. Findings indicate that identity politics, particularly based on ethnicity and religion, dominate the campaign strategies of political parties, albeit controversially. While successful in garnering voter support, identity politics also generates social and political impacts that require further attention. Implications of identity politics on the political system and national unity are of primary concern, demanding in-depth analysis of the political and social dynamics in Indonesia. This study provides valuable insights into the role of identity politics in the Indonesian electoral context and lays the groundwork for further research on this topic.

The political identity of China's emerging youth

AbstractObjectiveWe examine the political identity and its determinants of China's young generation who are increasingly emerging from new industries and platforms.MethodsUsing survey data collected in China in 2020 from a representative sample, we employ Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) and quantile regression models to analyze the effects of multiple factors on the political identity of emerging youth. Additionally, we employ the Shapley value decomposition method to compare the explanatory contributions of different factors. The instrumental variable method (2SLS) is also used to address the possible endogeneity between public participation and political identity.ResultsWe find that the overall political identity of emerging youth scores high, and “authority resilience” rather than “identity decline” is a more suitable term to describe the political identity of this group. Educational enlightenment does not dissolve political identity; the higher the economic benefits and the stronger the sense of external political efficacy, the greater the political identity of China's emerging youth. Young people who are willing to participate in public affairs but lack access to the channels to do so have a lower degree of political identity.ConclusionGovernance performance theory and institutional environment theory have more explanatory power than culturalism for understanding the political identity of emerging youth. Although postmaterialistic values prevail among the young generations, they are unlikely to challenge the legitimacy of the Chinese regime in the short term.

Evaluating the Influence of Role-Playing Prompts on ChatGPT's Misinformation Detection Accuracy: Quantitative Study.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, the rapid spread of misinformation on social media created significant public health challenges. Large language models (LLMs), pretrained on extensive textual data, have shown potential in detecting misinformation, but their performance can be influenced by factors such as prompt engineering (ie, modifying LLM requests to assess changes in output). One form of prompt engineering is role-playing, where, upon request, OpenAI's ChatGPT imitates specific social roles or identities. This research examines how ChatGPT's accuracy in detecting COVID-19-related misinformation is affected when it is assigned social identities in the request prompt. Understanding how LLMs respond to different identity cues can inform messaging campaigns, ensuring effective use in public health communications. This study investigates the impact of role-playing prompts on ChatGPT's accuracy in detecting misinformation. This study also assesses differences in performance when misinformation is explicitly stated versus implied, based on contextual knowledge, and examines the reasoning given by ChatGPT for classification decisions. Overall, 36 real-world tweets about COVID-19 collected in September 2021 were categorized into misinformation, sentiment (opinions aligned vs unaligned with public health guidelines), corrections, and neutral reporting. ChatGPT was tested with prompts incorporating different combinations of multiple social identities (ie, political beliefs, education levels, locality, religiosity, and personality traits), resulting in 51,840 runs. Two control conditions were used to compare results: prompts with no identities and those including only political identity. The findings reveal that including social identities in prompts reduces average detection accuracy, with a notable drop from 68.1% (SD 41.2%; no identities) to 29.3% (SD 31.6%; all identities included). Prompts with only political identity resulted in the lowest accuracy (19.2%, SD 29.2%). ChatGPT was also able to distinguish between sentiments expressing opinions not aligned with public health guidelines from misinformation making declarative statements. There were no consistent differences in performance between explicit and implicit misinformation requiring contextual knowledge. While the findings show that the inclusion of identities decreased detection accuracy, it remains uncertain whether ChatGPT adopts views aligned with social identities: when assigned a conservative identity, ChatGPT identified misinformation with nearly the same accuracy as it did when assigned a liberal identity. While political identity was mentioned most frequently in ChatGPT's explanations for its classification decisions, the rationales for classifications were inconsistent across study conditions, and contradictory explanations were provided in some instances. These results indicate that ChatGPT's ability to classify misinformation is negatively impacted when role-playing social identities, highlighting the complexity of integrating human biases and perspectives in LLMs. This points to the need for human oversight in the use of LLMs for misinformation detection. Further research is needed to understand how LLMs weigh social identities in prompt-based tasks and explore their application in different cultural contexts.

How churches make education policy: the churchification of Hungarian education and the social question under religious populism

ABSTRACT Since 2010, Hungary’s authoritarian populist government has radically redefined church-state relations, promoting the governance narrative of building an ‘old-style Christian democracy’. Public education has been reconceptualised within a religious framework and outsourced to religious actors. This article explores how key religious organisations engage with the government’s religious populism and govern their expanding school networks. Given the immanent tension between nativist Christian-conservative identity politics and Christian teachings about the church’s social mission, I focus on how Christian church elites have engaged with the education of underprivileged communities. Four characteristic types of strategic involvement are identified based on church education policies and their legitimacy discourses concerning their (lack of) engagement with the social question. Despite using different approaches to navigate political pressures, both the nativist illiberal and inclusive liberal visions of religion and their corresponding policies have reinforced the structures of segregated education and legitimised the government’s education policy.

Diversity in Civic Engagement: Political Priorities and Protest Behavior of Arizona College Students

A core function of higher education is to prepare students to be active and informed citizens who are prepared to make sustained contributions to civic life and democratic society. However, past research on college student civic engagement has disproportionately focused on students at traditional 4-year universities and on a narrow range of political activities. In this study, we analyzed online survey data ( N = 1,159) collected before the 2020 presidential election from young adults throughout Arizona who were attending 2-year and 4-year postsecondary institutions. Results show significant differences between community college, transfer and university students in terms of political identities, background characteristics, and participation in Black Lives Matter protests. Yet, across these postsecondary pathways, young adults expressed a strong commitment to active citizenship and ranked combating climate change and dismantling systemic racism as top political priorities. We call for more research on underserved students’ political identities, outlooks, and behaviors as part of a broader and more inclusive conceptualization of civic engagement.

Pork Barrel and Identity Politics: Explaining a Minority Party’s Electoral Success in Lithuania

Abstract Our article describes the lifecycle of Lithuania’s Electoral Action of Poles–Christian Families Alliance (LLRA-KŠS) party that has been a part of country’s political landscape for near 30 years. Despite its seemingly ethnic program, the party has a poor track record for delivering on its electoral promises. Yet, it has been continuously supported by the majority of Polish-speakers in Lithuania. The background of the nationalizing state, which encourages the party elites to conflate substantive representation with the signposting of ethnic identity in party politics, offers one of the reasons for the LLRA-KŠS’s electoral success. Although the party effectively consolidated its regional electorate, it came to control service delivery to their ethnic constituency by engaging in pork barrel politics. Poor performance in recent national and municipal elections put this strategy to bond with its voters into question, casting doubt on the LLRA-KŠS’s ability to survive as an ethnic party in the long term.

The politics of platform folklore: Emotion, identity, and sense-making in far-right populist Twitter communities

Platforms are increasingly part of everyday life, but they remain opaque and impenetrable spaces for most users. To manage life on platforms, users thus need to engage with sense-making practices that help them understand and navigate online spaces. This paper studies how far-right populist activists interpret and navigate their presence on Twitter, using the concept of platform folklore, that is, unofficial and collective narratives aimed at relieving feelings of uncertainty associated with the opacity of platforms. The data consists of 20 life-history interviews with Swedish and American Twitter activists from right-wing populist communities, who all participated in populist Twitter debates. The analysis shows how platform folklore is constructed not only based on observations of content moderation, as emphasized in previous research, but also in correspondence with the political ideology and identities of the activists. This led them to interpret Twitter as a leftist organization that disfavored them, which stopped them from developing strategies to reach the goals they held as central to their Twitter activism. The paper concludes by discussing the role of emotions and ideology in platform folklore within political communities and suggesting directions for future research.

Implikasi Politik Identitas dalam Pemilihan Gubernur Jawa Timur Tahun 2018 Perspektif Fiqh Siyasah

Discussing the issue of identity politics, in general, can be interpreted as an effort to use identity in political life based on group equality such as race, ethnicity, religion, culture, and the like, with the aim of influencing the standards of permanent voters. The main focus of this research discusses the implications of identity politics which refers to the influence of the NU Muslim religious organization in winning Khofifah-Emil as Governor of East Java in 2018 from a siyāsah fiqh perspective. More fully, the parameters of this test are based on the basic values ​​of siyāsah fiqh such as the principles of siyāsah syar'iyyah, democracy in Islamic politics, political tolerance in Islam, the ummah and the principles of government in the Medina Charter, with the research method used in the form of qualitative. The conclusion of this research confirms that the entire series carried out by NU Muslims in their participation in supporting candidate pair number one is not contrary to Islamic religious values. Because the activities and strategies carried out by Muslimat NU and Khofifah are actually in line with the basic values ​​of fiqh siyāsah, which espouse the values ​​of tolerance and democracy.