Political Orientation Research Articles

The Diffusion of Digital Corporate Hegemony: Addiction, Capital and Discourse Power

People are caught in social media, which digests their desires, and addiction has become a prominent phenomenon among users, but the platforms care nothing about the protection of users’ information and privacy, and their rights to express and choose. The collection and processing of user data by digital enterprises has undoubtedly become a new type of capital, which alienates individuals, affects the operation of social capital and political orientation, and how individuals defend their own boundaries has become an important issue.

Determinants of inheritance and gifts taxation in the European Union

Abstract Inheritance and gift taxation vary widely among countries in both the design and tax burden. We analyze the impact of a series of factors, such as the country’s affluence, political preferences, preferences for equity, aging ratio, fiscal standing of the state, and the country’s size, on inheritance tax systems. The applied methods involve the random effects ordered logistic regression for tax design and tobit correlated-random effect models for tax revenues. We find that inheritance tax design is mainly determined by demographic factors while tax revenues depend on a broader group of factors including political orientation of a state, condition of an economy, and the size of a country. Higher preferences for equal distribution and commitment to democratic norms are associated with higher tax revenues. Good economic condition of the state boosts revenues, as does country’s higher population. The results shed some light on future evolution of inheritance taxation.

Oromo Tarih Yazımının Bazı Yönleri ve Etiyopya Siyasi Yönelimleri (16-21. Yüzyıllar)

This article investigates the Oromo historiography vis-a-vis the Ethiopian political orientations, 16th-21st centuries. Oral and written sources and the researchers’ empirical knowledge have been analyzed qualitatively to produce this work. Ethiopian history has centered on the north, Semitic and elitist revolving around politics. For so long, Oromo historiography has been a neglected object though the Oromo are the largest ethnic group in the Horn of Africa. This study is thus undertaken to portray how far and in what way the Oromo have been studied historically. The study shows that social, economic, and cultural studies of the Ethiopian people have been neglected even after professional history was launched in Ethiopia in 1963. The Oromo historiography has not only been neglected but also distorted, prejudiced, and exposed to controversy. Recent studies however have been trying to redress these imbalances. This is however far from enough and popular history should be given more attention.

The Impact of Korean CEOs’ Political Orientation on Organizational Capacit : The Role of Entrepreneurial Orientation

The Impact of Korean CEOs’ Political Orientation on Organizational Capacit : The Role of Entrepreneurial Orientation

Kurdish Cause (1975-1980) and its Impact on Iraq-Syria Relations

Throughout the stages of contemporary Kurdish history, the Kurdish issue has had an impact on regional relations in general and the relationship between Iraq and Syria in particular. This impact became more evident during the Algiers Agreement, which marked the end of one of the most prominent Kurdish revolutions—the Aylool revolution. Simultaneously, it worsened Iraq-Syria relations. Researching the Kurdish question and its effect on the Iraq-Syria relationship during the Algiers Agreement reveals its distinctive characteristics. During this period, the strained relations between the two states were reflected in the Kurdish issue. Through the method of analysis and ascertaining of political events and incidents, we can highlight the significance of this matter. While the post-1975 era marked the emergence of new political parties in the Kurdish political and military landscape, the proliferation of these parties did not substantially influence the Kurdish issue. Additionally, the Kurdish political orientation in the region shifted, particularly in relation to Iraq and Syria. The Kurdish issue experienced a difficult phase, characterized by internal divisions and disarray within the Kurdish community. Meanwhile, the Kurds were unable to capitalize on the strained Iraq-Syria relationship. Despite a complete ban on political activities, Syria extended comprehensive support and cooperation to all South Kurdistan forces and political parties due to its deep-rooted disputes with Iraq. This financial and military assistance played a significant role in revitalizing the new revolution. Syria’s contrasting policy towards the Kurdish cause is evident. It is clear that regional countries utilized the Kurds as a means of pressure against each other, particularly for maintaining a balance in the region. This dynamic persisted until the 1980s, but with the changes that both Iraq and Iran underwent, including the collapse of the Algiers Agreement and shifts in regional relationships, Iraq’s disputes with Syria and Iran intensified. As a result, the Kurdish issue entered a new phase.

Physical strength as a heuristic cue of political conservatism

Physically formidable men are motivated to pursue strategies to acquire resources and status through direct competition and the promotion of hierarchical social organization. In service of these priorities, these men support social policies favoring the use of aggressive bargaining and hierarchy-maintenance strategies. Given these associations, we hypothesized physical strength may function as a heuristic cue of political conservatism. Participants in four unique U.S. samples assessed the political orientation of men who varied in physical strength and musculature, considering various facets of what constitutes conservatism. Physically strong men appeared more conservative to perceivers (Study 1; N = 203). Neither type of conservatism (social versus fiscal) nor presence of wealth cues moderated effects (Study 2; N = 302). Perceivers further regarded liberty as most central to strong men's morality (Study 3; N = 179). Similar perceptions emerged for muscularity as cue to upper body strength (Study 4; N = 210). We frame results from an affordance management framework, wherein perceivers identify the potential social opportunities and costs of social targets based on physical features that inform trait inferences.

A study towards contextual understanding of toxicity in online conversations

Abstract Identifying and annotating toxic online content on social media platforms is an extremely challenging problem. Work that studies toxicity in online content has predominantly focused on comments as independent entities. However, comments on social media are inherently conversational, and therefore, understanding and judging the comments fundamentally requires access to the context in which they are made. We introduce a study and resulting annotated dataset where we devise a number of controlled experiments on the importance of context and other observable confounders – namely gender, age and political orientation – towards the perception of toxicity in online content. Our analysis clearly shows the significance of context and the effect of observable confounders on annotations. Namely, we observe that the ratio of toxic to non-toxic judgements can be very different for each control group, and a higher proportion of samples are judged toxic in the presence of contextual information.

Economists’ Political Donations and GDP Forecast Accuracy

We examine the association between economists’ political donations and the accuracy of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) forecasts. Prior research suggests that individual political donations reflect personal political orientations, leading to a partisan bias. Therefore, economists might not objectively interpret information, with a subsequent reduction in GDP forecast accuracy. Using a sample of one-quarter-ahead US GDP growth forecasts for 2003–2020, we find that economists making political donations are more accurate than their peers. This result suggests that despite the potential partisan bias, individual political donations give economists an information advantage in predicting GDP growth. We also document that the informational benefits associated with donations are stronger when the political party financed by economists controls both the Senate and House of Representatives. However, these benefits are reduced in periods of uncertainty and when the economists’ forecasting houses are more politically active.

Identifying opposition against increased carbon tax and reduced red meat consumption

Identifying the individual characteristics that predict climate policy support can inform strategies to increase support for climate policies. This study examines how individual characteristics predict support for two policies that are central to the Norwegian Climate Plan, namely increasing the carbon tax and reducing red meat consumption. The study relies on survey data collected from a representative sample of Norwegian citizens (N=2001). The findings show that several individual characteristics negatively predict both carbon tax support and willingness to eat less red meat: 1) being less concerned about climate change, 2) having right-wing political orientation, 3) having lower trust in politicians, 4) living in rural areas, 5) having lower education, and 6) being male. Strategies to increase support for carbon tax and meat reduction should pay particular attention to these groups. Future research should address how to make climate policies more attractive among these segments of the population.

Does Tone of Comments Matter?: Exploring the Role of Uncivil Comments and Political Orientation on Weakening Belief in Fake News and Eliciting Anger

ABSTRACT Although fake news has become a serious social issue and the detrimental effects of fake news have become more salient in online environments, scholars have not extensively studied the role of uncivil comments posted about fake news. As fake news itself is typically partisan and tends to deceive publics for specific purposes (e.g. gaining support for specific agendas), it usually induces heated discussion and uncivil commenting, especially among politically partisan individuals. Thus, in this study, we explored the effects of uncivil comments following fake news and political orientation on belief in fake news and anger. We used two issues to explore these mechanisms: climate change and immigration. Our results show that uncivil comments following fake news weakened participants’ belief in fake news about climate change. Moreover, uncivil comments made people angrier after viewing fake news about each issue. A significant moderating effect of political orientation on this relationship also emerged. Conservatives, who generally had a lower level of anger toward fake news than liberals, were more likely to feel anger when they viewed uncivil comments rather than civil comments. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

Deepfakes and scientific knowledge dissemination

Science misinformation on topics ranging from climate change to vaccines have significant public policy repercussions. Artificial intelligence-based methods of altering videos and photos (deepfakes) lower the barriers to the mass creation and dissemination of realistic, manipulated digital content. The risk of exposure to deepfakes among education stakeholders has increased as learners and educators rely on videos to obtain and share information. We field the first study to understand the vulnerabilities of education stakeholders to science deepfakes and the characteristics that moderate vulnerability. We ground our study in climate change and survey individuals from five populations spanning students, educators, and the adult public. Our sample is nationally representative of three populations. We found that 27–50% of individuals cannot distinguish authentic videos from deepfakes. All populations exhibit vulnerability to deepfakes which increases with age and trust in information sources but has a mixed relationship with political orientation. Adults and educators exhibit greater vulnerability compared to students, indicating that those providing education are especially susceptible. Vulnerability increases with exposure to potential deepfakes, suggesting that deepfakes become more pernicious without interventions. Our results suggest that focusing on the social context in which deepfakes reside is one promising strategy for combatting deepfakes.

More human than human: measuring ChatGPT political bias

We investigate the political bias of a large language model (LLM), ChatGPT, which has become popular for retrieving factual information and generating content. Although ChatGPT assures that it is impartial, the literature suggests that LLMs exhibit bias involving race, gender, religion, and political orientation. Political bias in LLMs can have adverse political and electoral consequences similar to bias from traditional and social media. Moreover, political bias can be harder to detect and eradicate than gender or racial bias. We propose a novel empirical design to infer whether ChatGPT has political biases by requesting it to impersonate someone from a given side of the political spectrum and comparing these answers with its default. We also propose dose-response, placebo, and profession-politics alignment robustness tests. To reduce concerns about the randomness of the generated text, we collect answers to the same questions 100 times, with question order randomized on each round. We find robust evidence that ChatGPT presents a significant and systematic political bias toward the Democrats in the US, Lula in Brazil, and the Labour Party in the UK. These results translate into real concerns that ChatGPT, and LLMs in general, can extend or even amplify the existing challenges involving political processes posed by the Internet and social media. Our findings have important implications for policymakers, media, politics, and academia stakeholders.

Assessing the Prevalence and Predictors of Incivility in Online News Comments Across Six Countries

ABSTRACT Drawing on discussions about the manifestation of incivility in online news comments sections, our research operationalizes the concept of incivility and suggests a methodological approach that relies on manual and automated text analysis and regression analysis to assess its prevalence and identify its predictors. Relying on a data analysis of over two million comments on immigration and unemployment retrieved from twelve newspapers websites from six countries (Brazil, Chile, Portugal, Spain, United Kingdom, and United States), our study confirms the prevalence of incivility in online news comments sections and shows that comments on the topic of immigration, with clear political orientation, particularly right-wing, and displaying populism and false information perception are more prone to include discursive features of incivility.

Media presentation of hospital discharge to care homes during the COVID-19 pandemic

PurposeAt the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic the United Kingdom Government implemented a policy to rapid discharge hospital patients into care homes. This study aimed to examine how the media in the United Kingdom portrayed hospital discharge to care homes during the COVID-19 pandemic.Design/methodology/approachThis study was a qualitative document analysis. Four sources (Daily Mail, The Independent, The Guardian and BBC News) were selected to represent political orientations encompassing right-wing, centrist and left-wing perspectives, and were searched for mention of hospital discharge, care homes and Covid-19 pandemic between 1st January 2020 and 24th February 2022. Article text was copied verbatim into Microsoft Word documents prior to analysis. Data were thematically analysed, followed by coding the sentiment in the included articles as well as coding the sentiment of themes and sub-themes.FindingsOf 722 identified articles, 133 were eligible for inclusion as the final corpus. Data represented a moralistic narrative consisting of four themes: (1) Government as villain, (2) care homes as antiheroes, (3) patients as ideal victims and (4) moral outcomes. Most of the corpus had a negative sentiment (78.1%). One theme, moral outcomes, had considerably more positive sentiment (32.4%) than others (range 15.1%–21.9%).Originality/valueA moralistic argument for improving cross-boundary interactions between health and social care services is provided, and the media can play a role pushing cross-boundary working higher up the policy agenda. Future work should examine how direct stakeholders, including those working in healthcare and care home settings, perceived the discharge policy.

The associations of cultural worldviews, political orientation, and trust with COVID‐19 risk beliefs in the U.S.

AbstractGiven that risk beliefs predict engagement in behaviors to prevent disease, it is important to understand the factors associated with risk beliefs. In the present paper, we conducted path analyses to investigate the associations of belief systems (political orientation and cultural worldviews of individualism and hierarchy) with COVID‐19 risk beliefs (i.e., perceived likelihood, perceived severity, and worry about disease; Studies 1 and 2), and the indirect effect through trust in information sources in these relationships (Study 1). Two online panels of U.S. adults were surveyed at three timepoints during the COVID‐19 pandemic (Study 1: baseline n = 1,667, 1‐year follow‐up n = 551; Study 2: n = 404). Results of path analyses indicated that, across studies and timepoints, when controlling for political orientation, trust, and demographic factors, greater individualism had consistent significant direct effects on lower perceived severity and worry about COVID‐19, whereas greater hierarchy had consistent significant direct effects on lower perceived severity. However, after accounting for cultural worldviews of individualism and hierarchy (and trust and demographic factors), none of the associations among political orientation and any of the three COVID‐19 risk beliefs were significant. The test of indirect effects indicated that individualism and hierarchy were indirectly associated with lower perceived severity of and worry about COVID‐19 through less trust. The findings suggest that cultural worldviews of individualism and hierarchy play a role in shaping people's risk beliefs.

The Relationship between Political Attitudes and Life Satisfaction in Europe: An Econometric Analysis

This study examines the relationship between political attitudes and individuals’ life satisfaction. While there is a massive body of literature on the political economy of subjective well-being, no study has focused directly on political engagement (interest in politics) and political orientation (ideology). To fill this gap in the current literature, the present study investigates the impact of political engagement and orientation on individual life satisfaction through regression analysis (OLS and 2SLS methods) using the European Social Survey dataset. Our initial findings (as well as the results of the Durbin-Wu-Hausman test) point out the endogeneity problem for political orientation. In order to overcome the endogeneity problem, the instrumental variable estimation and the Stock-Watson test were conducted. Our results show that political engagement and orientation have a statistically significant influence on personal life satisfaction. Accordingly, as individuals' political engagement increases, life satisfaction decreases. Second, life satisfaction increases as one moves from left to right on the political spectrum.

Nordic authoritarianism: Child‐rearing values and political behavior in a multiparty context

AbstractThis article explores how authoritarianism as a factor in child‐rearing values (CRV) is associated with political orientation, party support, and policy preferences among voters and societal elites in the Nordic context, which is characterized by social trust and solidarity, feelings of affinity, and a modest degree of ideological polarization. Based on a representative citizen survey conducted in 2018 (n = 4,076) and an elite survey conducted in 2020 (n = 948) among Finnish political, administrative, advocacy, business, and influence elites, our findings suggest that authoritarianism in Finland mostly relates to culturally conservative, and less to economically conservative, political orientations. While authoritarianism is connected to policy preferences and political orientations on both cultural and economic dimensions, it has more relevance for preferences regarding cultural issues than economic ones. Our findings support the notion that authoritarianism plays a role in political orientation mainly in the cultural realm. Overall, our study indicates that authoritarianism as captured by the CRV scale might be a politically important underpinning among both citizens and societal elites also outside the U.S.

Endorsement of Critical Social Justice and Privilege: Heterosexual and Cisgender Privilege Awareness Among Social Work Students in the US

ABSTRACT Despite its central role in social work practice and education, little is known about how social justice is operationalized within the discipline. One aspect that may shed light on how the field engages the construct of social justice is through understanding more about recognition of privilege. This study examines how demographic differences, psychosocial predictors, and social work program variables may be related to increased levels of heterosexual and cisgender privilege awareness among social work students. In the heterosexual privilege model (N = 585), increased privilege awareness was associated with identifying as a cisgender woman, a more liberal political orientation, completing a course on power, privilege, and oppression, a critical endorsement of social justice, and being a 2-year MSW or doctoral student. In the cisgender privilege model (N = 758), predictors of increased privilege awareness included identifying as a cisgender woman, identifying as gay, a more liberal political orientation, completing a course on power, privilege, and oppression, a critical endorsement of social justice, and being a 2-year MSW or doctoral student. The findings demonstrate the importance of understanding social justice from a critical perspective and for educators to effectively communicate the connections between social justice and social work practice. Effective strategies to do this are discussed.

When Potential Allies and Targets Do (and Do Not) Confront Anti-Asian Prejudice: Reactions to Blatant and Subtle Prejudice During the COVID-19 Pandemic.

Anti-Asian xenophobia has exploded during the COVID-19 pandemic, after U.S. political leaders promoted anti-Asian rhetoric from its start. Confronting prejudice interrupts future perpetration of such prejudice, but confronting prejudice can only occur to the extent actions are first attributed to prejudice. Bystanders may attribute less prejudice to speech about the "Chinese Virus" than to more blatant stereotype expression, for example, and therefore be less vehement in their confrontations. Across two studies, we examined the impact of anti-Asian prejudice type (blatant, subtle, or no prejudice) and bystander race/ethnicity (White or Asian American/Pacific Islander [AAPI]), on prejudice attribution, willingness to confront, actual confrontation, and confrontation vehemence. In the context of a hiring manager justifying rejection of a Chinese applicant, we predicted that blatant prejudice would be detected and confronted most willingly, and subtle prejudice more willingly than no prejudice, and that prejudice detection would mediate the relationship between prejudice type and willingness to confront. Further, we expected AAPI bystanders to detect anti-Asian prejudice more readily than White bystanders, but to confront at lower rates, with actual confrontations being more vehement following blatant (relative to subtle or no) prejudice. Analyses were conducted using SPSS 27 and the PROCESS v4.1 macro, controlling for potential confounds such as political orientation and individual-level prejudice (expressed or perceived). Results of both studies (n = 142 [Study 1], n = 274 [Study 2]) supported hypotheses, except in Study 1 bystanders exposed to subtle prejudice were no more willing to confront than no-prejudice controls. Results of exploratory analyses indicated that attribution to prejudice was the primary obstacle to confrontation following subtle prejudice, whereas action taking was the primary obstacle following blatant prejudice. This research underscores the need for interventions to increase detection of all forms of anti-Asian prejudice and to provide would-be confronters with effective confrontation tools.

How to Turn Politics Around: Things, the Earth, Ecology

In this article, I give a personal view of Bruno Latour’s work on the politics of ecology going back to his work during the early 2000s on the politics of things. Based on my exchanges with Latour over the years, from the time that I became his student in the late 1990s, I show how he developed his understanding of the politics of ecology through a critical engagement with early twentieth-century theories of a “politics of things,” notably the one developed by the pragmatist philosopher John Dewey. I propose that Latour, who was greatly inspired by Dewey’s book The Public and Its Problems, through his more recent work on climate change demonstrated that the ecological crisis poses a profound challenge to the pragmatist vision of material politics. This challenge led Latour to undertake a radical reconstruction of the very idea of ecological politics and envision what he calls a politics of the earth. In a second section of this essay, I articulate a related but different possibility for the reconstruction of ecological politics, one that I believe Latour saw clearly, but did not pursue. If we are to succeed in turning politics around ecology, we will need to engage much more deeply with feminist understandings of politics, which affirm materiality, embodiment, and connectedness as unavoidable political realities. This in turn enables us to appreciate the wider relevance for understanding the ecological crisis of the feminist critique of the bifurcation of politics, which Carole Pateman identifies as the underlying schema of modern democracy. I argue that it remains one of the main blocks on our ability to reenvision politics in ecological terms today. Part reflection, part criticism, and part homage, this article then argues that we should look for orientation in feminist politics of ecology, if we want to take further the work of Latour and many others for a politics of the earth.