• Difference-in-differences analyses show that refugee arrivals may reduce political trust in host communities. • The negative effect is stronger among people with lower education. • It is important to mitigate negative consequences of arrivals in host communities to uphold political legitimacy. Previous research shows that the arrival of forcibly displaced people may have a considerable impact on the economy and on livelihoods within host communities. This is particularly the case in many African countries, which host many of the world’s refugees, but may have limited capacity to handle sudden influxes of people. Yet the bulk of research on refugee arrivals and public opinion is conducted in wealthy, Western contexts. In this article, we start addressing this gap by assessing the effect of forced displacement on trust in national and local authorities. Theoretically, we draw on the literatures on the consequences of forced migration and political trust. Empirically, we rely on seven rounds of georeferenced Afrobarometer data (N = 228,242) combined with data on migrant settlements from the UNHCR People of Concern database to estimate a set of difference-in-differences regression models. We also test whether individual educational attainment moderates the effect of displacement. We find that camp establishment reduces both forms of political trust, and the effect is more pronounced among host community members with less education. This underscores the importance of human development in bolstering the host community’s coping capacity when new camps are established.

Conduction velocity of intracortical axons in monkey primary visual cortex grows with distance: Implications for computation.

The advancement of information and communication technology during the Industry 4.0 and Society 5.0 eras has brought significant changes to community media practices, especially in rural areas. This study examines the roles and social responsibilities of community radios CDR FM in Bantul, Yogyakarta, and RASI FM in Garut, West Java, amid the dynamics of digital media convergence. Employing a qualitative approach with a constructivist paradigm, data were collected through interviews, observations, focus group discussions, and documentation. The findings reveal that both community radios maintain their existence through active community participation, adaptation to digital technology, and management grounded in local values. Digital media convergence enables the expansion of broadcast reach from local to global levels, enhancing interaction and social mobilization. The social responsibility of community media is reflected in delivering factual information, shaping public opinion, preserving culture, and ensuring accountability to the audience. Key challenges include the regeneration of media activists and funding, which can be addressed by strengthening partnership networks and human resource capacity. This study confirms that community media play a strategic role as agents of social development in rural areas by leveraging evolving communication technologies.

Whole-body MRI: social media perspectives and opportunities for radiologist engagement.

Social media platforms, such as Facebook and Instagram, play a pivotal role in shaping public opinion on health interventions, including community water fluoridation (CWF). Despite its recognition as a safe and effective public health measure, CWF remains a polarizing topic, with misinformation on these platforms contributing to public mistrust. This study collected 109,117 Facebook and Instagram posts from 2014 to 2023 to examine public sentiment surrounding CWF. The analysis revealed a mix of opinions, with 42.1% positive, 39.1% negative, and 18.8% neutral sentiments. Trends highlighted a surge in negative sentiment during 2017-2019, likely influenced by misinformation and significant public events, while positive sentiment has gradually regained ground in recent years. Key themes included health benefits, safety concerns, and government trust, with positive discussions emphasizing CWF's role in public health and negative discussions focusing on risks and chemical exposure. The study employed advanced sentiment analysis models to highlight the importance of monitoring public discourse and addressing misinformation, thereby promoting trust and support for evidence-based health policies, such as CWF. These findings offer digital data-driven insights for public health communication strategies, enhancing community understanding and acceptance of vital health interventions.Knowledge Transfer Statement:The findings of this study can inform public health agencies and policymakers about public concerns and support for water fluoridation. By identifying sentiment trends and misinformation on social media, communication strategies can be tailored to improve public understanding and acceptance of fluoridation as a preventive health measure.

Characterising public opinion for food-based fiscal policies in the UK.

Anti-Latine bias and drug-induced homicide law support: Evidence from a nationally diverse, randomized survey experiment in the United States.

ABSTRACT As artificial intelligence (AI) is increasingly understood as a political infrastructure and a decision-making technology with the potential to reshape institutions and reconfigure power relations, media coverage plays a key role in shaping public understanding of its risks and opportunities. This study examines how mainstream media outlets in the Global North and Global South politically frame AI, emphasising the implications for digital governance and public opinion. Building on prior work that analyse AI coverage but leaves its political and emotional dimensions underexplored, the research presents a comparative analysis of 6,829 news articles (2010–2024) across twelve newspapers from Europe, North America, Africa, and Asia and Oceania, combining topic modelling and sentiment analysis. The results reveal three temporal phases: an incipient phase (2010–2016), politicisation through crises (2017–2021), and exponential acceleration (2022–2024), with salient inflection points following the Cambridge Analytica scandal (2018) and the launch of ChatGPT (2022). Fifteen thematic frames emerged, dominated by Social Media and Tech Impact (16.03 per cent), Technology and the Digital Economy (12.54 per cent), and China–US Relations and Trade (11.41 per cent). Media outlets in the North display higher levels of pessimistic coverage , with 41.7 per cent of headlines classified as negative. In contrast, media in the South express a more optimistic tone, with 51.5 per cent of headlines being positive. The study demonstrates that media narratives about AI are shaped by geopolitical disputes, differing risk perceptions, and asymmetries in technological power, stressing the need for fair, transparent and ethical AI regulation.

ABSTRACT Central Asia has historically been a contentious region for water, stoking tension and cooperation. This paper explores how the water experiences of Tajikistan and Uzbekistan impact public opinion on environmental views, using the World Values Survey. This paper finds, using ordered logistic regression, that in upstream Tajikistan, nationalism is associated with environmentalism, yet no conclusive findings can be found in Uzbekistan. While these outcomes are limited to the relationship between Uzbekistan and Tajikistan in a specific time period, such findings offer a potential model for understanding how riparian geographic positioning can influence environmental views through nationalism.

This study aims to determine the influence of netizen comments on readers' perceptions on the Tribun Bengkulu Instagram account. The development of social media has introduced a new communication pattern that allows audiences not only to receive information but also to respond through the comment section. Those comments can affect how readers understand, evaluate, and form opinions about news. This research uses a quantitative approach with an explanatory research design. Data were collected by distributing questionnaires to 45 respondents who are active Instagram users and have viewed news content on the Tribun Bengkulu Instagram account. Data analysis was performed using simple linear regression, the coefficient of determination, and a t-test. The results show a regression coefficient of 0.728, indicating a strong positive relationship between netizen comments and readers' perceptions. The regression test produced a significance value of 0.000 < 0.05, so H1 is accepted and H0 is rejected. The magnitude of the influence of netizen comments on readers' perceptions, based on the R-squared value, is 72.8%, while 27.2% is influenced by other factors outside the study. These findings indicate that netizen comments play a role in shaping readers' perceptions of news on Tribun Bengkulu's Instagram. Positive comments can increase readers' trust, while negative comments can raise doubt and affect evaluations of the information. User interaction on social media is an important factor in the formation of public opinion in the digital era.

Stuttering affects approximately 1% of adults globally and carries a significant psychosocial burden shaped by public attitudes. Despite growing cross-national evidence using the Public Opinion Survey of Human Attributes–Stuttering (POSHA-S), age-related differences in public attitudes toward stuttering remain relatively underexplored in the Indian context. To address this gap, in the current study, ninety adults from a rural population of Delhi were divided equally into three age groups: young adults (18–35 years), middle-aged adults (36–55 years), and older adults (55+ years). Age group significantly predicted the Overall Stuttering Score and the Beliefs Score. Across both measures, young adults held comparatively least positive attitudes toward people who stutter, middle-aged adults showed demonstrated moderately positive attitudes, and older adults consistently showed the most positive attitudes overall. Bonferroni post-hoc comparisons confirmed that young adults scored significantly lower than older adults on both the Overall Stuttering Score and the Beliefs Score. Significant group differences were also observed for the Traits/Personality, Help From, and Potential components. Bonferroni-adjusted post-hoc comparisons indicated that older adults rated people who stutter more positively on Help From and Potential compared with younger adults, while middle-aged adults rated people who stutter more positively on Traits/Personality compared with younger adults, whereas no significant age-group differences were found for Self-Reactions. These component-level patterns suggest that beliefs about the character, potential, and available support for people who stutter accumulate more positively with age, while immediate behavioral reactions to stuttering remain uniformly negative across all age groups. These findings suggest that public attitudes toward stuttering in Delhi become more positive with increasing age, primarily through differences in the Beliefs domain. Speech-language pathologists (SLPs) have a central role to play in translating these findings into action. As both clinicians and community educators, SLPs are positioned to design and deliver targeted stuttering awareness and destigmatization programs, particularly for young adults who demonstrated the least positive attitudes in the present study. SLPs can advocate for the inclusion of stuttering education in school curriculum, workplace orientation programs, and public health campaigns, and can use instruments such as the POSHA-S to evaluate the effectiveness of such initiatives over time. The results indicate that young adults should be considered a priority target for future stuttering awareness, education, and destigmatization initiatives.

Illicit drugs have had a profound societal impact in the last 25 years, including 1.2 million Americans dying from overdose. This study seeks to understand whether Americans perceive policy progress against illicit drugs and how they perceive the drug problem nationally and locally. I analyzed data collected on 13 occasions between 2000 and 2025 as part of the Gallup Poll Social Survey (GPSS), an ongoing, nationally representative, cross-sectional telephone survey of American adults (N = 13,311). GPSS asks respondents to rate their perceptions of progress against illicit drugs and how severe they perceive the drug problem nationally and in their own communities. Less than half of all Americans in most years perceived that progress has been made against illicit drugs. Perceived progress was at its lowest point in 2023 (23.4% of all respondents), but sharply increased in 2025 (44.2%). Americans have been more likely to perceive progress when the president is from their party, and partisan effects have grown since the mid-2010s. For example, Republican perceptions of progress swung upward by 54.0 points between 2023 and 2025. Most Americans have perceived that drugs are a serious problem nationally, but only a minority said that they are a serious problem in their own community. Perception of a serious problem have held steady among Republicans, but Democrats' sense of concern about the national problem has decreased. Partisanship has become a major factor in how Americans perceive progress in drug policy. With widening political polarization, it may prove difficult to achieve a broad consensus in society, which itself could limit public support for a cohesive national drug control strategy.

ABSTRACT To gain deeper insight into the factors behind support for homeschooling in Czechia, we used representative survey data collected in February 2024. Analysis of the public opinion data suggests that homeschooling in Czechia is not tied to religious conservatism or populist distrust of elites, nor is it related to mistrust of the state or its political representatives. Instead, homeschooling appears to function primarily as pragmatic ‘escape route’ for children whose needs are not met in mainstream schools, for example due to poor educational quality, psychological distress, or academic failure, and it reflects a context-specific negotiation between parental autonomy, institutional regulation, and broader socio-cultural transformations in a post-communist society.

ABSTRACT In democracies, public support for climate policies can influence governments’ willingness to decarbonise economic production. The relevance of public opinion for climate policies has sparked rich research on this subject. On the one side, research in political science shows that labour market risk associated with climate policies can dampen workers’ support for climate policies. On the other side, research in environmental psychology finds that personal norms motivate pro-environmental action. Surprisingly, these findings from these two parallel literatures remain largely unintegrated. This study seeks to fill this gap by offering a perspective that connects labour market risk, personal norms and public support for climate policies. Using micro-level data from the European Social Survey (Round 8) and sectoral emissions data from Eurostat, I find that workers in sectors with higher CO2 emissions, which proxy for labour market risk from climate policies, have lower personal responsibility to tackle climate change. I also find that higher sectoral CO2 emissions dampen the positive association between personal responsibility and support for taxes on fossil fuels, but not for subsidies on renewable energy. These findings suggest that integrating currently standalone findings from these two parallel literatures can enrich our understanding of public opinion on climate policies.

ABSTRACT This study investigates how residents of İznik and Trabzon engage with and perceive Byzantine heritage within the context of shifting national and ideological narratives in Türkiye. While official state discourse has increasingly adopted neo-Ottomanist ‘re-conquest’ frameworks that portray Byzantine sites as ideological symbols or cultural ‘others’, little is known about how this heritage is understood at the local level. Using a mixed-methods approach that combines public opinion surveys and field observations, the research explores how local communities interact with Byzantine monuments that occupy different positions within the urban landscape, from prominent and actively used sites to marginal or inaccessible remains. The findings reveal a notable ‘dissonance’: while residents acknowledge the historical and economic importance of these sites, personal connections remain weak, marked by limited knowledge and emotional detachment. This disconnection is reinforced by a knowledge ecosystem that includes national education and popular media, which perpetuate conflict-centred narratives. By situating these perceptions within the broader context of heritage policies, the paper argues that adopting more inclusive and participatory approaches – recognising the multiple meanings attributed to Byzantine sites – is essential for fostering local ownership and ensuring their sustainable conservation in Türkiye.

ABSTRACT This article examines reciprocal journalism practices in Ethiopian newspaper op-ed sections during the 2018 reform period. Using public sphere theory as a lens, the article explores the interactional dimension through two key aspects: inter-op-ed reciprocity (dialogue across op-eds) and op-ed-editorial interplay (alignment between them), drawing on all op-eds and editorials related to the reform agenda across five leading publications. The analysis reveals a notable absence of reciprocal journalism within the op-ed sections of these Ethiopian newspapers during that period. Specifically, interaction between op-eds mainly occurs outside the outlets via references to unspecified media, speeches, interviews or events, rather than through intra-outlet debates. This lack of reciprocity weakens the practice of reciprocal journalism and diverges from the intended role of newspaper op-ed sections as dynamic public forums. Moreover, the polarized pro- and anti-reform debates further reflect fragmentation rather than inclusivity, undermining Habermas’s fundamental principle of a public sphere in which rational-critical discourse among diverse viewpoints is essential for fostering inclusive public opinion rather than polarized echo chambers. This deficiency in reciprocal engagement also compromises the role of newspaper op-ed sections as vibrant public forums and conflicts with the ideals of effective reciprocal journalism.

ABSTRACT Despite record levels of inflation, millions of immigrants and widespread economic difficulties, Erdoğan’s AKP won the 2023 Presidential Elections in Turkey. The limited resources that deprived the opposition of benefitting fully from the best professional political services delivered by public opinion researchers, political consultants, communication and social media experts and analysts were one of the main factors that facilitated the AKP’s victory. Yet, especially in local elections, the cost-efficient use of political professionals can help opposition parties effectively challenge incumbents in competitive authoritarian regimes, as revealed by the CHP’s local election victory in 2024. From a broader theoretical perspective, this paper argues that, to retain the legitimacy benefits of a genuinely competitive polity based on a compelling degree of electoral ‘uncertainty’, incumbents in competitive authoritarian regimes usually need to reveal a full proficiency in the legitimate as well as Machiavellian use of modern professional techniques in electoral politics. The paper supports its arguments through the examination of existing studies on professional campaigns in 2023 and 2024 elections in Turkey as well as with primary evidence deriving from relevant publicly accessible sources and eight interviews with some key political professionals delivering services to the AKP and CHP.

This study analyzes how emotions are communicated on social media during crisis events and ex-plores how governments, media, and other communication actors influence public perception through emotional messages. The study helps explain how emotions work in crisis communication and offers ideas for improving online crisis management and public communication. The study addresses the fol-lowing research question: how do governments and media actors use emotional language to shape public opinion and collective response during a crisis? It is based on the assumption that emotional communication strongly affects public trust, group identity, and public attitudes. Methodologically, the research combines crisis lifecycle theory and situational crisis communica-tion theory with qualitative text analysis and simple data visualization. Two crisis cases are compared: the January Events in Kazakhstan (2022) and the Zhengzhou flood in China (2021). Social media data were collected from Instagram and Telegram for the Kazakhstan case and from Weibo and Douyin for the China case using crisis-related keywords. The dataset includes post content, post type, and basic engagement data such as views, likes, and comments from different stages of the crises. The study uses three steps. First, the dataset is built from social media posts. Second, emotions are coded according to Ekman’s six basic categories. Third, emotional patterns and platform dynamics are compared between the two cases. The analysis shows that emotional framing shapes news narratives and audience responses during crises. Emotional communication affects public trust, collective identity, and the emotional tone of online discussions. This cross-disciplinary and comparative approach contributes to a better understanding of emotional communication in crisis contexts by providing empirical evidence from Kazakhstan and China. It also offers practical guidance for government media organizations and public institutions on how to manage emotions more thoughtfully and promote a more rational public communication environment during crisis situations.

ABSTRACT Objects in museum collections have always evoked differing ideas of how museums should label, conserve, display and return objects, especially when human remains are at play. Discussions around these types of material culture are now heightened and often contentious as public opinion and museum staff are becoming increasingly aware of the afterlives of colonial practices in today’s world. This paper focuses on a set of ten wooden figures from the Raja Ampat Islands (Southwest Papua, Indonesia), collected in the 1920s, of which one sculpture’s head is a human skull. Named ‘the Raja Ampat Altar’ since their collecting, the figures have been on display in West Papua, the Netherlands, the UK and France and have seen the involvement of the Raja Ampat village communities, but also that of Dutch colonial administrators, missionaries, museum staff, museum visitors, Raja Ampat and Papuan communities in the diaspora, Polynesian museum advisors and artists. By tracing a century of narratives – from the 1920s to the 2020s – around the display and the naming of ancestral remains in so-called ‘World Museums’ that, from the nineteenth century onwards attempted to present culture in an organized way, the paper discusses the different historicities at play for the people implicated in viewing, naming, displaying or removing these Raja Ampat objects from display. This leads to the question: what is at stake in terms of people’s constructions of time and identity in relation to the ‘altar’?

ABSTRACT Canadian offshore high schools have operated in China for 30 years, yet public knowledge and opinions remain limited. Given the media's role in shaping public opinion, it is important to examine how these schools are represented in both Canadian and Chinese media. Using critical discourse analysis, we examined news coverage published about Canadian offshore schools from 2008 to 2026 in both countries, and in both Chinese and English languages. Drawing on framing theory and cultural hegemony, the media representations had stark differences when comparing the two contexts. Chinese media portrayed Canadian offshore schools positively, while Canadian media was more critical, questioning both their operations and existence. We also found differences between positive, negative, and critical representations in the news articles and categorized the findings according to these framings. Finally, our research indicates that global hegemonic ideologies, particularly neoliberalism and Western hegemony, are reproduced and reinforced across borders through media representations.