Study Of Public Opinion Research Articles

Sentiment analysis and topic modeling of BPJS Kesehatan based on twitter crawling data using Indonesian Sentiment Lexicon and Latent Dirichlet Allocation algorithm

In today’s era, company performance is influenced by quick and easy responses to interacting with users. Twitter is one of the social media which is believed that public opinion on Twitter can influence the government or companies to make policies. Public criticism on Twitter is more quickly responded than people who contacting customer service directly, this is because the companies or government do not want their image to be bad due to delays in responding to public complaints on Twitter. Studies related to opinion writing on social media can use the method of topic modeling and sentiment analysis in order to get what topics are currently being discussed and also the value of their sentiments. Modeling of the topic was carried out using Latent Dirichlet Allocation and sentiment analysis using the Indonesian Sentiment Lexicon. A case study of public opinion on BPJS Kesehatan using Twitter data for 3 months from February to April 2020, obtained 5 main topics with the BPJS Kesehatan’s New Contribution Rate as a trending topic with a sentiment value of 61.7% positive and 38.3% negative.

State compensation as rape justice: are public attitudes a legitimate foundation for reform of the UK’s Criminal Injuries Compensation Scheme?

The British state’s mechanism for compensating victim-survivors of sexual offences has been critiqued as retraumatising. However, a recent review preliminarily rejected calls to loosen the eligibility rules, stating that the current criteria reflect public attitudes. This article outlines the first empirical study of public opinion on the UK Criminal Injuries Compensation Scheme (CICS), drawing on data from over 2,000 survey participants. The findings show ambivalence among members of the public, but also reveal the current rules are not strongly supported and are in some cases highly unpopular. The article then examines some difficulties with relying on public opinion for criminal justice reform, and ultimately argues that there are stronger justifications for reforming the CICS than popularity with the public. Specifically, loosening the eligibility criteria would create more legitimate policy through the protection of core societal values such as fairness and dignity.

Public Opinion on Artificial Intelligence Development

In connection with the active role of Russia and other countries in the design and implementation of devices with artificial intelligence (AI), there is a need to study the opinion of different social groups on this technology and the problems that arise when using it. The purpose of this work is to analyze public opinion on AI, in Russia and various foreign countries, and the possible consequences of its implementation in different areas of human activity. The research has revealed students’ opinions about AI devices and the problems related to their development in Russia. The research methods adopted are a content analysis of foreign publications devoted to the study of public opinion on AI and a questionnaire survey. Overall, 190 students of the Ural Federal University enrolled in Bachelor’s and Master’s programs were interviewed. The analysis of publications devoted to the study of public opinion in the United States, Japan, and Western Europe, as well as the results of our survey, has led to the conclusion that the majority of people have only a vague idea of what AI devices are. Our study has revealed that 23.6% of the respondents know nothing about AI. 36% of the respondents believe that in the near future the most demanded specialists in the labor market will be those who create robots and control their work. The survey has also shown the important role of mass media and general and special education institutions in informing the population about the opportunities and problems that arise when devices that exceed human mental capabilities are created and enter the social fabric.
 Keywords: public opinion, artificial intelligence, subjects of public opinion, representations of social groups about artificial intelligence

КОРРУПЦИя В СИСТЕМЕ ГОСУДАРСТВЕННОЙ ГРАЖДАНСКОЙ СЛУЖБЫ В ОБЩЕСТВЕННЫХ ОЦЕНКАХ (НА МАТЕРИАЛАХ РЕГИОНАЛЬНОГО ИССЛЕДОВАНИЯ)

The subject matter of the article is the study of public attitudes in Kemerovo Region-Kuzbass in relation to the problem of corruption which manifests itself in various areas of social relations, in particular, in the system of the state civil service. The aim of the study is to consider the current views on the problem of corruption and countering it in public assessments of the population of Kemerovo Region-Kuzbass. To solve this task statistical and monitoring data from federal research centres have been used, as well as the results of a regional sociological survey conducted by the authors in the municipal divisions of Kemerovo Region-Kuzbass. The methodological basis of the research has been formed by the systemic and neoinstitutional approaches along with the sociological survey. The article presents statistical data of federal sociological institutions (All-Russian Centre for the Study of Public Opinion, Public Opinion Foundation) for the past few years in assessing the problem of corruption by the population. In addition, Transparency International’s 2020 data on the level of perceptions of corruption in the Russian Federation are presented, which make it possible to draw attention to the problems in combating corruption and propose recommendations for improving the state anti-corruption policy. In designing the research questionnaire for their sociological survey, the authors adhere to the principle of problem-based assessment of the current situation regarding the issue of corruption, which has made it possible to evaluate the subject of the research from different angles and to focus on the most challenging issues. It is noted that the understanding of the term “corruption” in the civil service system is associated with the concept of “bribery”, the appropriation of resources and taking advantage of official position. Among the recommendations proposed, the authors would highlight the necessity to continue activities to strengthen measures of countering corruption, to make the work of officials more transparent, to enhance the information campaign among the population to provide information on the responsibility for illegal actions

The Sorry State of Research on Public Opinion About Air Pollution: A Systematic Review

Air pollution poses a serious problem to the public health, but governments have few incentives to implement costly pollution mitigation policy without the public support. We examine the current state of research on public opinion about air pollution by reviewing the three largest journal article databases for the entire period until 2018. We only identify 33 relevant articles. They are geographically biased toward a few developed countries, with limited attention paid to developing countries that face a greater level of challenges from air pollution. By conducting a meta-analysis with these articles, we report a few consistent predictors employed in these studies and summarize the findings. We find that education and income consistently appear to increase the public awareness of air pollution and support for air pollution mitigation policies, yet the evidence is less conclusive for less frequently examined variables. Our results call for a new wave of public opinion studies on air pollution that covers a broader geographical area and includes developing countries.

“The culture of fear” of inhabitants of EU countries in their reaction to the COVID-19 pandemic – A study based on the reports of the Eurobarometer

The aim of the paper was a study of public opinion of the inhabitants of the European Union as regards the reaction and perception of the COVID-19 pandemic on the basis of weekly reports of the Eurobarometer: Public opinion monitoring in the time of COVID-19, containing data from member EU countries (March-July 2020: first wave of pandemic). It was assumed that during the first wave of the Covid-19 pandemic, the lack of a sense of security (health, economic and social) was the result not by personal experience (a real threat), but was cultivated and communicated by the media, creating a culture of fear. The opinions were analyzed in three problem domains: health, economy and society, taking into account fears and their functions, experiences and declarations for solving the problems generated by the pandemic. A quantitative analysis of the content of the reports was applied as well as a qualitative analysis of the content and an analytical-descriptive one. Seven research hypotheses were accepted, of which 3 were affirmed: fear of the COVID-19 pandemic and its effects is presently a more widespread problem than the pandemic itself. The level of fear as regards the effects of the pandemic exceeds the level of negative experiences. In the domain of the health effects, the greatest fear is engendered by contact with COVID-19 which may cause infection: 14 fears. The remaining hypotheses were refuted: the level of fear of inhabitants of EU countries regarding health consequences/dangers (46) does not exceed the level of fear regarding economical (75) and social (19) consequences/dangers. In the domain of economical consequences/dangers, the most fears: 37, are caused by fear of an economical crisis and not one of unemployment (17) - as was assumed. Social isolation is more often experienced (13) and present in declarations (16) of inhabitants of the EU than in their fears (4). Fears of the consequences/dangers of COVID-19 plays, most of all, a negative function (137/74) and not a positive one - as assumed.

Religiosity of the urban community in Kazakhstan

Religious values as the most important component of the worldview can significantly affect various aspects of human life - from everyday practices to political preferences. The analysis of changes in religiosity shows that in the post-Soviet space, there is a clear tendency of the transition from atheistic attitudes to the religious revival. In the contemporary Kazakhstan society, a complex model of religious identity develops - it combines ideals and norms of religious consciousness with ideas of spirituality and national revival, but the confession values can often only be of an external, declarative nature. According to different studies, in Kazakhstan, the share of believers following religious practices increases. The question is whether people really observe religious rites and traditions and follow religious regulations. The article summarizes the results of the study conducted by the Center for the Study of Public Opinion to assess the religiosity of the Almaty urban community. The survey showed that the share of people who identify themselves as a part of some confession is significant; however, this is not a direct indicator of the increase in the number of true believers seeking to actively follow all religious rules and practices. The article presents the data on the activity of respondents in religious practices, their knowledge and understanding of some religious postulates. The study showed that the religious renaissance among the youth can be accompanied by undeveloped religious consciousness and insufficient religious knowledge, which provides grounds for the dissemination of pseudo-religious ideas including the extremist ones.

A Mistrustful Society?

The level of trust in politicians also in government institutions is taken as an indicator of the state of society in general. Various studies have shown that the population of the Central Eastern European countries, and especially the citizens of the Czech Republic, lack trust in state institutions and democratic structures. The trust of the Czech population in government institutions is, compared to other (Western) European countries, at a relatively low level. This article aims to discuss different factors that are currently influencing this lack of trust: the historical, cultural, and institutional. The empirical data for this article is based on the European Values Study and Czech surveys of public opinion concerning trust in government institutions.

Gender, War, and World Order: A Study of Public Opinion

Gender, War, and World Order: A Study of Public Opinion

The role of public opinion in the sociological support of law-making activities

The article deals with theissues related to the sociological support of law-making activities, their essence and sociological research carried out in this process, taking into account public opinion in the process of law-making and legal aspects of sociological support of law-making process. At the same time the article analyzes a detailed analysis of the sociological support of lawmaking process, the role of public opinion in the lawmaking process, taking into consideration the results of the study of public opinion in the legislative process and the influence of sociological research on this process as well.

Race politics research and the American presidency: thinking about white attitudes, identities and vote choice in the Trump era and beyond

AbstractHeeding the call of the special issue, we look at the past decade's advances in public opinion studies of our understanding of the relationship between white racial identities, attitudes, and presidential voting preferences. Following a short review of developments in the literature during the Obama years, we critically evaluated four theories explaining whites' support for Trump: racial resentment, xenophobia, sexism, and white identity. Using data from three ANES studies, we test the relative explanatory power of all four approaches in predicting a vote for Trump during the 2016 Republican primary, the 2016 election, and intent to vote for him in 2020. The results suggest that xenophobia had the most consistent effect across all models, followed by racial resentment and sexism. White identity appears to have influenced voting for Trump in the primary and it could also have an impact in the 2020 election, but its effect in the 2016 general election does not appear to have been consistent with theoretical expectations. Finally, we use these results to think critically about the state of the field and propose new questions and challenges for research.

Public opinion on immigration in Europe: Preference and salience

Studies of public opinion on immigration have focused on the responses to survey questions about whether the individual would prefer more or less immigration (preference) but not on his or her assessment of its importance as a policy issue (salience). Analysis of data from the European Social Survey and Eurobarometer indicates that preference and salience are associated with different individual-level characteristics. At the national level they move differently over time and in response to different macro-level variables. Both dimensions of opinion must be taken into account as influences on the formation of immigration policy.

The Attitude of Ukraine’s Population to Russia and Russia’s Population to Ukraine (2008–2020)

The paper accumulates the results of the joint project of Kyiv International Institute of Sociology (KIIS) and the Russian center for the study of public opinion “Yuri Levada Analytical Center” (Levada-Center). The project started in 2008. Every three months, KIIS inserts in its omnibus survey the questions about the attitude of Ukrainians towards Russia, and Levada-Center on the attitude of Russians towards Ukraine. In total, 34 surveys were conducted in each country, with samples of about 2,000 Ukrainians and about 1,600 Russians (about 68,000 of Ukrainians and 54,000 of Russians were surveyed during the entire period of the project). The data are representative of the population in each of the countries aged 18 years and above. In Ukraine, after 2014, surveys were conducted only in the territory controlled by the government of Ukraine. The attitude of Ukrainians towards Russia from 2008 to May 2014 can be called unrequited love. During this period, in different years, from 80 % to 90 % of Ukrainians treated Russia positively, and the proportion of Russians who favored Ukraine ranged from 30 % to 70 %. The collapse of the positive attitude of Ukrainians towards Russia began after the annexation of the Crimea and continued after the beginning of the war in the Donbass; by March 2015, only 30 % of Ukrainians had a positive attitude to Russia. However, after the end of the active hostilities, a positive attitude towards Russia was gradually restored, and by February 2020, more than 50 % of Ukrainians had a positive attitude towards Russia. At the same time, the attitude of Russians towards Ukraine after the annexation of the Crimea also worsened. During all the period of observation, Ukrainians treated Russia better than Russians treated Ukraine. Besides the question about the attitude towards Russia as a whole, we also asked separate questions about the attitude to the government of Russia and to the population of Russia. Manuscript received 26.04.2020

The Political Consequences of Indigenous Resentment

AbstractUnderstanding the legacy of settler colonialism requires understanding the nature and scope of anti-Indigenous attitudes. But what, exactly, are the political consequences of anti-Indigenous attitudes? Answering this question requires recognizing that attitudes toward Indigenous peoples are distinct from White racial attitudes toward other disempowered groups. In this paper, I introduce a novel measure of Indigenous resentment. I then show that Indigenous resentment is an important predictor of policy attitudes using data collected from an original survey of White settlers. I estimate the effect of both Indigenous resentment and negative affect on policy attitudes—opposition to welfare and support for pipeline developments—to make the case that Indigenous resentment is a better measure of anti-Indigenous attitudes than affective prejudice, and that Indigenous resentment is an important omitted variable in the study of public opinion in settler societies.

Public attitudes about emergent issues in LGBTQ rights: Conversion therapy and religious refusals

Following legal recognition of marriages for same-sex couples, new topics have emerged in debates over LGBT rights. While numerous studies of public opinion about gay and transgender rights have been examined, some emergent issues remain underexamined. Two prominent issues are conversion therapy and denials of service based on religious beliefs in a variety of settings. These areas of LGBT rights are dynamic, with some states recently banning conversion therapy on minors, the Trump Administration’s guidance on denials of service by health professionals, and some states funding adoption and foster agencies that refuse to provide services to same-sex couples and LGBT adults. In this study, we assess factors associated with public attitudes on these issues. While we find patterns that are consistent with previous studies, we also find inconsistencies when examining the effects of age, race, partisanship, educational attainment, and interpersonal contact. We further find that being a parent moderates the effects of interpersonal contact. Sometimes the moderated contact effects are large and positive but other times contact effects are negative. The contact effect depends on the particular type of contact such as with LGB people, transgender people, or knowing parents who have a transgender child.

Discovering underlying sensations of human emotions based on social media

AbstractAnalyzing social media has become a common way for capturing and understanding people's opinions, sentiments, interests, and reactions to ongoing events. Social media has thus become a rich and real‐time source for various kinds of public opinion and sentiment studies. According to psychology and neuroscience, human emotions are known to be strongly dependent on sensory perceptions. Although sensation is the most fundamental antecedent of human emotions, prior works have not looked into their relation to emotions based on social media texts. In this paper, we report the results of our study on sensation effects that underlie human emotions as revealed in social media. We focus on the key five types of sensations: sight, hearing, touch, smell, and taste. We first establish a correlation between emotion and sensation in terms of linguistic expressions. Then, in the second part of the paper, we define novel features useful for extracting sensation information from social media. Finally, we design a method to classify texts into ones associated with different types of sensations. The sensation dataset resulting from this research is opened to the public to foster further studies.

Competencies Expected from an Information Manager Working in BIM Based Projects

ABSTRACT An Information Manager (IM) has an exclusive and unique role to play in a project. Yet, the competencies expected of an IM have not been adequately defined. The other professionals in the construction industry define this role in their own way ignoring the industry needs. Thus, this study aimed to define the competencies expected of an IM. To achieve this, the tasks expected of an IM were first determined through a desk study using BIM guidelines. Secondly, an informal public opinion study was carried out using online data sources. The collected data were then analyzed using NVIVO software to outline the competencies required of an IM for each task. Finally, an expert interview survey was carried out to validate the outcomes of the study. The findings revealed that an IM must be a construction professional well-versed in construction technology and contract administration and that the IM must be competent in using Building Information Modeling (BIM) workflows/software. The study contributes to knowledge by identifying the gap that currently exists between industry needs and the performance of professionals working as IMs, which would be invaluable when designing a curriculum for a course on information management within a BIM environment.

Public Responses to Policy Reversals: The Case of Mask Usage in Canada during COVID-19

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has resulted in rapid, substantial, and at times contradictory policy changes as public health agencies and government officials react to new information. We examine the implications of such changes for public compliance by drawing on the case of revised guidance on mask usage by asymptomatic individuals. As official recommendations on the use of masks in Canada shift from discouraged to mandatory, we draw on findings from an ongoing public opinion study to explore contemporaneous changes in rates of mask adoption and levels of public trust in government institutions. We find that Canadians exhibit high levels of compliance with changing policies on mask usage and that trust in public health officials remains consistent despite policy change.

СОЦИАЛЬНАЯ СТРАТИФИКАЦИЯ В САМООЦЕНКЕ УЗБЕКИСТАНЦЕВ ПО РЕЗУЛЬТАТАМ СОЦИОЛОГИЧЕСКОГО ОПРОСА

The article analyzes the results of a survey of the Uzbek public opinion conducted by the ‘Izhtimoiy Fikr’ Republican Public Opinion Study Center. It is concluded that, along with the objectively existing models of stratification of society, subjective stratification is of great importance, reflecting the ideas of individual citizens about what place in society, in relation to its other members, they occupy. Accordingly, while objective indicators of the hierarchy of inequalities primarily reflect particular features of the socio-economic development of the republic, the account of subjective stratification, which reflects the personal perception of people of their social position and the degree of their satisfaction, is important to ensure socio-political stability and assess the legitimacy of the ruling power in the eyes of the population, as well as to predict the behaviour of people in a given situation.

Learning democracy digitally? The internet and knowledge of democracy in nondemocracies

ABSTRACT The study of public opinion in nondemocratic states has found that people often say they support democracy, yet they show little demand for democratization or regime change. Given this paradox, recent scholarship has shown that these attitudes exist because people who live under the rule of non-democratic regimes often misunderstand what democracy is. Individuals in these societies often think that authoritarian ways of governance are fundamental aspects of democracy. In another strain of literature, research has shown that the internet can alter demands for democracy and increase protest activity in non-democracies. Given these findings, this study investigates what impact the internet has on understanding democracy in non-democracies. Using World Values Survey data and employing two different styles of empirical modelling, the study finds that consuming information from the internet leads to a better understanding of essential elements of democracy. The findings also show that the effects are more pronounced in autocracies than they are in illiberal regimes.