Silent Majority Research Articles

The Silent Majority: Triad Risk Classification, Birth Control Use, And Anxiety

The Silent Majority: Triad Risk Classification, Birth Control Use, And Anxiety

Why Twitter Sometimes Rewards What Most People Disapprove of: The Case of Cross-Party Political Relations

Recent evidence has shown that social-media platforms like Twitter (now X) reward politically divisive content, even though most people disapprove of interparty conflict and negativity. We document this discrepancy and provide the first evidence explaining it, using tweets by U.S. Senators and American adults’ responses to them. Studies 1a and 1b examined 6,135 such tweets, finding that dismissing tweets received more Likes and Retweets than tweets that engaged constructively with opponents. In contrast, Studies 2a and 2b (N = 856; 1,968 observations) revealed that the broader public, if anything, prefers politicians’ engaging tweets. Studies 3 (N = 323; 4,571 observations) and 4 (N = 261; 2,610 observations) supported two distinct explanations for this disconnect. First, users who frequently react to politicians’ tweets are an influential yet unrepresentative minority, rewarding dismissing posts because, unlike most people, they prefer them. Second, the silent majority admit that they too would reward dismissing posts more, despite disapproving of them. These findings help explain why popular online content sometimes distorts true public opinion.

Social Media Personalities in Asia: Demographics, Platform Preferences, and Behavior Based Analysis

This study investigates social media personalities in Asia, shedding light on their demographics, platform preferences, and user behaviors across 16 countries. The findings reveal a significant predominance of younger users, highlighting the importance of targeting this demographic in marketing strategies. The study also underscores the pervasive influence of social media in daily life, with platforms like Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn, X (Twitter), WhatsApp, Telegram, and Snapchat widely adopted for various purposes in Asia. The study shows that different personality types (Approval Seeker, Changeling, Denier, Lurker, Peacock, Quizzer, Ranter, Ultra, Virgin, Social Butterfly, and Informer) exhibit distinct preferences for social media platforms, indicating the need for tailored marketing strategies. Furthermore, the correlation between countries of origin and social media personalities underscores cultural nuances and regional trends in usage. Understanding these dynamics is crucial for effectively engaging diverse audiences across the region. The study suggests practical implications for marketers to customize their strategies based on dominant personality types and platform preferences in each market, empowering them to make informed decisions. Overall, this study provides valuable insights into social media behavior in Asia, equipping marketers, policymakers, and researchers with the understanding and tools to navigate the evolving landscape of social media engagement. The dominance of the Lurker personality type in Asia emphasizes that ‘silent majorities’ also exist in the digital sphere as they exist in the real world. Future research could explore the motivations driving social media usage and personality traits among Asian users considering cultural influences. Despite valuable insights gained, limitations such as response bias should be considered.

Perspektiven auf widerständisches Argumentieren im ‚Dritten Reich‘

Abstract Resistance in the ‚Third Reich‘ was a mostly solitary and thus lonely struggle not only against the National Socialist regime, but also for being heard by the silent majority society. In addition to the various communicative practices of warning, admonishing, or calls to action, argumentation also played an important role. The task was not only to convince members of the majority society of the righteousness of their resistance goals and perspectives, but also to agree on goals and perspectives within the various resistance groups and in the exchange between these groups. This dual role of argumentation as a practice that is constitutive of both the group as well as the group’s identity makes this communicative practice an important phenomenon in capturing communicative conditions, circumstances, and paradigms of resistance to National Socialism. In this paper, these functional contexts are examined and the way in which arguments were used both to persuade members of the integrated society and to negotiate consensual principles and goals within resistance groups are discussed.

Silent Rebellion: Dialectics of Individual and Collective

This review delves into the core social phenomenon reflected in "The Silent Majority"-the conflict between the individual and the collective. By analyzing relevant discussions and examples in Wang Xiaobo's works, it reveals the multiple facets of this conflict, including its manifestation in the specific socio-cultural context of China and its profound impact on individual identity, freedom, and social structure. The paper explores the roots of the individual-collective conflict from cultural, historical, and social structural perspectives and analyzes the manifestations and development trends of this conflict in the ever-changing modern society. It also discusses how to balance individual freedom and collective interests in the face of this conflict and the importance of this balance in promoting social harmony and individual development. Through a detailed analysis of "The Silent Majority" and its corresponding phenomena, this review aims to provide insights for understanding and addressing the complex relationship between individuals and the collective and to propose constructive thoughts and suggestions for contemporary society.

The galaxy of the ‘silent majority’: committees, public figures and ideas of order in Italy from 1968 into the 1970s

ABSTRACT The aim of this article is to set in international context the deployment of the idea of ‘silent majority’ as a rhetorical weapon and form of political mobilization in Italy. Starting from the first and best-known case in Milan in 1971, the article maps a network of grass-roots committees and public figures who used this label to delegitimize and oppose left-wing protest movements. This article draws on sources from the archives of the Ministry of the Interior, the press, and memoirs to analyse a political phenomenon of public opinion that was nationwide in scope and would extend from 1968 into the 1970s, and which cannot be reduced simply to neo-fascism and subversive motives even though it has been commonly associated with these terms in Italy. Fear of Communism and intolerance for street demonstrations by students and workers overlapped with the defence of morality and urban decorum, while demands for security in response to what were claimed to be rampant crime were interwoven with the calls for moderate reforms in the university system. By investigating these multiple demands for the restoration of the established order, this article opens the way for transnational comparisons with other Western countries in ways that may help overcoming the difficulties of defining a conservative and right-wing sphere of influence in Republican Italy.

Unveiling the silent majority: stance detection and characterization of passive users on social media using collaborative filtering and graph convolutional networks

Social Media (SM) has become a popular medium for individuals to share their opinions on various topics, including politics, social issues, and daily affairs. During controversial events such as political elections, active users often proclaim their stance and try to persuade others to support them. However, disparities in participation levels can lead to misperceptions and cause analysts to misjudge the support for each side. For example, current models usually rely on content production and overlook a vast majority of civically engaged users who passively consume information. These “silent users” can significantly impact the democratic process despite being less vocal. Accounting for the stances of this silent majority is critical to improving our reliance on SM to understand and measure social phenomena. Thus, this study proposes and evaluates a new approach for silent users’ stance prediction based on collaborative filtering and Graph Convolutional Networks, which exploits multiple relationships between users and topics. Furthermore, our method allows us to describe users with different stances and online behaviors. We demonstrate its validity using real-world datasets from two related political events. Specifically, we examine user attitudes leading to the Chilean constitutional referendums in 2020 and 2022 through extensive Twitter datasets. In both datasets, our model outperforms the baselines by over 9% at the edge- and the user level. Thus, our method offers an improvement in effectively quantifying the support and creating a multidimensional understanding of social discussions on SM platforms, especially during polarizing events.

Junkies, Queers, and Babies: Persistence and Updating of the Category AIDS Through Silencing and Puncturing of the Moral Boundary

Category emergence has been a central question in organization theory. Yet, we still do not understand what drives category persistence and updating during emergence as new information arises. We investigate this question through a rich set of oral histories and archival materials on the emergence of the category AIDS from 1978 to 1985. We show that the initial proto-category’s features and causal theories cohered with its stigmatized moral meanings. Over time, anomalies challenging these features and theories spurred a minority of medical professionals to update the category’s causal theory. However, a silent majority resisted updating the category because the new causal theory conflicted with the proto-category’s moral meanings, challenging the clear moral boundary dividing what was perceived as worthy from what was perceived as unworthy. As a result, the majority silenced the vocal minority’s updated understandings and withheld resources from the category. This article contributes to the literature on categorization by showing that conflicts between category dimensions can stifle updating, amplify imprinting, and prolong category persistence. Particularly, the dichotomous nature of the moral dimension might hinder the updating of other dimensions, such as the causal one, despite accumulated evidence suggesting the need for updates. We show that calls for category updating backed solely by rational arguments may fail to persuade the silent majority and may falter until the moral boundary is punctured and the category is morally reappraised.

Silent Majority: How Employees’ Perceptions of Corporate Hypocrisy are Related to their Silence

Silent Majority: How Employees’ Perceptions of Corporate Hypocrisy are Related to their Silence

The Silent Majority in the Cyberbullying Landscape: Bystander Apathy as a Byproduct of Aggressive Motivation

The Silent Majority in the Cyberbullying Landscape: Bystander Apathy as a Byproduct of Aggressive Motivation

The Silent Majority: Understanding and Supporting Access and Inclusion for People with Disabilities Living in Predominantly Low-Resource Communities

People with disabilities are often isolated from their community due to issues with accessibility and inclusion, which are worse in low-resource communities. Creating meaningful change will require an understanding of strategies that work at a community-wide level to foster community engagement among people with disabilities. This study utilized a qualitative grounded theory approach to identify barriers and facilitators of community access and inclusion of people with disabilities from the perspectives of 12 neighborhood presidents of low-resource areas within the state of Alabama in the United States. Four themes were identified: (1) community engagement is a process from accessibility to inclusion; (2) knowledge supports people’s needs and empowers systemic changes to policies and laws; (3) neighborhood resources beget further resources; and (4) change necessitates benevolent leadership. Based on these themes, we generated a substantive theory called the Neighborhood Engagement Theory, which health professionals can utilize to support neighborhood presidents in creating systemic change for people with disabilities.

A multi-year quantitative study of the experienced age-friendliness in The Hague: A tale of four personas

As an active member of the Global Network for Age-Friendly Cities and Communities, The Hague has been monitoring the progress over the years. In 2022, a second cross-sectional survey based on the Age Friendly Cities and Communities Questionnaire (AFCCQ) was conducted among 396 community-dwelling older citizens in the municipality. During times of the pandemic, scores for Social Participation went notably down, and scores for Respect and Social Inclusion increased. For the first time, based on survey data, four personas were found through cluster analysis. These personas ranged from the precariat and people with personal health issues with lower scores, to the silent majority without the limitations of health problems, and the upper echelon who score positively in all domains. Age-friendly policies in The Hague should focus particularly on the first two clusters through dedicated action plans, which would help steer efforts towards those most in need for support. This would help The Hague to become an age-friendly city for all, and not only for those living in good health and with sufficient financial means.

Pro-environmental behavior in a common-resource dilemma: The role of beliefs

Despite the overwhelming scientific evidence about the anthropogenic nature of climate change, a vocal minority continues to spread skepticism. This inhibits pro-environmental action and fosters a false perception of social reality, leading people to underestimate the pro-environmental intentions and actions of others required to facilitate rapid and deep decarbonization. Previous efforts to address these beliefs through environmental interventions have yielded inconsistent outcomes. In two studies, we jointly examine the role of first-order climate change beliefs and beliefs about others' behavior (Study 1) as well as second-order climate change beliefs (Study 2) in pro-environmental decision-making in controlled laboratory settings. The studies involve a common-resource dilemma – in which a negative environmental externality is triggered depending on the group's collective decision-making. Our findings show that while first-order climate change beliefs weakly predict pro-environmental behavior, second-order climate change beliefs do not correlate with participants' choices when accounting for first-order climate change beliefs. However, beliefs about others' behavior strongly predict people's choices. We discuss the results in terms of the role different types of beliefs play in environmental decision-making.

Online memes on anti-American propaganda and the overlooked “silent majority” in support of authoritarian populism in Putin’s Russia

Although memes are considered disruptive to elite control over political discourse, their viability for contestation in authoritarian settings remains uncertain. The present study addresses this question by analyzing Russian memes created to ridicule the Kremlin’s propaganda, which accuses the United States of undermining Russia domestically and internationally. These memes depict US presidents engaging in trivial acts of sabotage, from damaging worn-out roads to urinating in dilapidated buildings, thereby exposing the absurdity of Russia’s claims to superpower status. Importantly, the memes go beyond ridiculing the regime to vilify “ordinary Russians” as unsophisticated subscribers to the government’s narrative. The study shows that by focusing on the tug-of-war between the authorities and the protesting “vocal minority,” communication scholars may overlook a sizable “silent majority” that enables authoritarian consolidation. I argue that such outgroup memetic articulations, despite their limitations in mobilizing broader publics, offer valuable insights into authoritarian populism that surpass this empirically flawed binary logic.

Marry or not for democracy and love: Dialogic framing in the Taiwan marriage equality movement and countermovement

Dialogic framing means that the frames are constructed through interaction among multiple parties in a discursive system with socio-cultural specificities. The meaning of a frame is articulated through such dialogic interaction and under constant contestation. We used the marriage equality movement in Taiwan as a case study and demonstrated how dialogic framing could advance the understanding of framing in the digital mobilization of collective actions. Analyzing Facebook posts by opposing advocacy groups, we identified “collective identity” and “rights” as two dominant frames. Marriage equality activists framed legalizing same-sex marriage as a testament to the democratic progress of Taiwan and a validation of gay and lesbian people’s right of love. The countermovement challenged this framing by arguing that equalizing gay love to heterosexual marital love violated the civil rights of the silent majority. The queer critique of marriage as state-sanctioned regulation of sexual citizenship and the very state power being critiqued are also constitutive of the dialogic framing of collective actions for or against same-sex marriage on social media.

Obscenity

Obscenity Editorial note: From Invocación a las mayorías silenciosas (Invocation to the silent majorities) (Letraversal, 2022). Translated by Lawrence Schimel (bio) Click for larger view View full resolution I'm terrified of my migrant parents,always with their eyes set on flight. Is that how you solve everything, Papá?Are you going to once more do what he tells you, Mamá? I'm more terrified by the wound of birth,I hide it in the oriental part of the HERE.What was so bad so as to abandon the THEREwhere one finds oneself at just twenty?How did they do it to reconstruct (themselves),to recompose (themselves),to resist? How to raise an offspring who curses a place thatshe has never visited,who dreams in a language she doesn't know,who lives in another one which will always be foreign to her? What is so good to justify staying?What European dream is beingthe Chinese woman who sells beer,the Chinese man of the village,the Chinese girl of El Hormiguero,the Chinese kid of Física o Química,the China girl of China boy? That is not my dream. My dream is to be the blood that flows from the migratory wound,the Valencian queen of the gunpowder blessed by my ancestors. My dream is that they don't separate me from my fatherand from my motherinto one line for foreignersand another for Europeans,that we embarkthrough the same gate,that we fly togetherto whereverpassports arean obscenity. Translation from the Spanish [End Page 8] Paloma Chen Paloma Chen (b. 1997, Alicante) investigated the Chinese diaspora in Spain in Crecer en 'un chino' and has contributed to El Salto, El País, and La Marea. She won the 2020 Viva #LdeLírica National Poetry Prize and has recited in such festivals as Irreconciliables in Málaga and in spaces such as the Fórum Social Europeu das Migrações and the Asia Europe Peoples' Forum. Lawrence Schimel Lawrence Schimel is a bilingual author and literary translator based in Madrid, working in and between English and Spanish. His translations have won a PEN Translates Award from English PEN (three times) and the Cliff Becker Book Translation Award. Copyright © 2023 World Literature Today and the Board of Regents of the University of Oklahoma

Citizen-initiated interactions in urban water governance: How public authorities respond to micro-level opinions related to nature-based solutions

Public opinions have become increasingly salient in water environmental governance, especially in implementing nature-based solutions (NBS) projects. However, current studies stay short of focusing on user-generated data on online participation platforms and the real public opinions and concerns on NBS revealed through spontaneous and interactive participation. In response to insufficient explorations on micro-level government-citizen interactions, this study adopts text mining analysis to evaluate different NBS-related topics and investigates targeted government responses from Jan 1st, 2020 to Apr 1st, 2022 in China. The results indicate that public participation on online government-citizen interaction platforms is no longer an instrumental level of “pseudo participation”. Based on dialogic communication theory (DCT), the silent majority affected by NBS started to express diverse opinions, i.e., seeking help, complaint, and suggestion. Moreover, instead of top-down or one-way communication, authorities are beginning to shift towards an open and responsive government. Hence, most public opinions can receive online feedback from authorities with targeted strategies (i.e., explaining, coordinating, and guiding), forming a “dialogic loop”. Nevertheless, there is still a lack of timely government response in NBS communication. Findings can contribute to developing a systematic understanding of micro-level demands associated with NBS and supplement relevant policies and decision-making for urban water governance.

Anti-Black Racism and Asian American Local Educational Activism: A Critical Race Discourse Analysis

In this critical race discourse analysis of legal documents and correspondence, we discuss how a small number of highly organized and visible groups of Asian American parent activists oppose admissions policy reforms intended to diversify student enrollment to specialized high schools. We identify two narratives deployed by this vocal minority: anti-Asian discrimination and Asian American exceptionalism. These narratives prioritize the historical and interpersonal racialized experiences of Asian Americans over institutionalized racial inequality experienced by Black students, namely, residential housing and school segregation. By valorizing Asian American exceptionalism and meritocracy, these claims relegate racism as a historical problem, mirroring ideologies of white supremacy and anti-Blackness while reconstituting anti-racism.

Hippies Next to Right-Wing Extremists?

Abstract: To reduce the spread of COVID-19, adherence to protective measures was crucial around the world. While most complied with these measures, a vocal minority protested against them. Early reports emphasized the unusual heterogeneity of these protests: Hippies and esoterics marched alongside conspiracy theorists and neo-Nazis. We examined what these protestors might (and might not) have in common. A large study with antilockdown protestors in Germany ( N = 1,700) revealed four subgroups: centrists, politically undifferentiated, left-wingers, and right-wingers. Beyond that, these subgroups demonstrated striking similarities: All endorsed conspiracy beliefs, misinformation, esotericism, and vaccine hesitancy to a similar extent. These beliefs share that they are scientifically unfounded and epistemically unwarranted. They may unite individuals from diverse political backgrounds in the antilockdown protests.

Public Attitudes Towards the Zero-COVID Policy in China: The Sound of the Silent Majority

Public Attitudes Towards the Zero-COVID Policy in China: The Sound of the Silent Majority