Social Distrust Research Articles

Science, misinformation and digital technology during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Three interdependent factors are behind the current Covid-19 pandemic distorted narrative: (1) science´s culture of “publish or perish”, (2) misinformation spread by traditional media and social digital media and (3) distrust of technology for tracing contacts and its privacy-related issues. In this short paper, I wish to tackle how these three factors have added up to give rise to a negative public understanding of science in times of a health crisis, such as the current Covid-19 pandemic and finally, how to confront all these problems.

Influence of parenting efficacy, parenting stress, and acculturation stress on parent-child relations among North Korean refugee mothers.

PurposeThis study assessed the levels of parenting efficacy, parenting stress, and acculturation stress of North Korean refugee mothers and analyzed their effects on parent-child relations.MethodsA descriptive study design was used. Data were collected during 2019, and 124 North Korean refugee mothers participated.ResultsThe mean score for parenting efficacy was 53.08 out of 90, that for parent-child relations was 37.84 out of 50, and that for parenting stress was 48.57 out of 90. The parental stress score was higher than that of child-related stress. The acculturation stress level was 90.66 out of 165, with the highest stress levels found for social isolation and distrust and the lowest found for perceived discrimination. Parenting efficacy, parenting stress, acculturation stress, and parent-child relations were significantly related in North Korean refugee mothers. Hierarchical regression analysis showed that the final model had an explanatory power of 35% for parent-child relations (F=17.68, p<.001). Parenting efficacy was the variable with the largest effect on parent-child relations (β=.36, p<.001), followed by parenting stress (β=-.24, p=.010).ConclusionThe findings suggest the need to identify ways to decrease parenting stress and improve parenting efficacy. Parenting education can guide North Korean refugee mothers to strengthen their parent-child interactions.

The welfare state criticism of the losers of modernization: How social experiences of resentment shape populist welfare critique

This article aims to explain the paradoxical finding that socio-economically vulnerable groups express more economic, moral and social criticism of the welfare state. As these groups generally benefit more from the welfare state and hold more egalitarian world views, their stronger criticism cannot be explained by the traditional frameworks of self-interest and ideology. As an alternative, we highlight the importance of social experiences of resentment as a source of discontent with welfare state performance. Our contribution argues that the dissatisfaction is embedded in a broader welfare populist critique that pits the hard-working people against the deceitful elite and welfare abusers. This welfare populism emerges from experiences of resentment related to the restructuring of group positions in the process of modernization. We differentiate between three types of discontent: economic status insecurity, group relative deprivation and social distrust. By applying structural equation modelling, we test whether resentful experiences mediate the relationship between the social structural position and welfare state criticism. Results indicate that relative deprivation consistently leads to more economic, moral and social criticism. Social distrust, moreover, stimulates a higher level of moral criticism. This study illustrates that resentment is indeed an important element for understanding the paradoxical relationship between social class and welfare state criticism.

Decades of Party Distrust. Persistence through Reform in Italy

One common feature of the Italian political space over the past half century has been the presence of distrust in political parties and the presence of anti-system parties on both the left and the right. Discontent with existing elites and the political system has taken many forms, including referendums altering the electoral system. Both the character of the main parties and the rules by which they are elected have been reformed 4 times since the 1980s. However, as the elections of 2013 and 2018 and the referendum of 2016 demonstrate, Italians still have a high amount of resentment towards party elites and the operation of the system. Using data from Italian National Election Studies, this paper traces the development of this party resentment with a focus on three questions: 1) How has resentment towards party representiveness changed with the electoral and party reforms 2) Who was likely to hold this resentment 3) What was the party affiliation of those most resentful, or did they abstain? Results stress that socio-demographic differences had little effect on understanding the source of party resentment; distrust in parties correlates well with distrust in parliament and political administration. General social distrust did not translate into a distrust for parties. We conclude that discontent can be separated into a political dimension associated with current governance and one of a more systemic nature.

Trust in government during the pandemic: gender aspect

The article examines the differences in the choice of behavioral patterns based on social trust and distrust of men and women. The essence of the problem under consideration is that so far few researchers have studied mistrust as a phenomenon characteristic of Russians, and practically no one has considered the difference in the character of trust / distrust for men and women and the influence of these indicators on the level of socio-psychological well-being of the population and, as a consequence, on social tension in society, if we consider this problem in terms of trust and distrust to the authorities. Here are the studies that were conducted in December 2020 in the city of St. Petersburg, regarding these issues. A study of changes in trust showed that in the northern capital от Russia, the level of mistrust for the federal government among women increased much more than among men, and a small excursion into history and analogies with revolutionary situations of the past make one think about the stability of the current system and the need for the authorities to make serious efforts to resolve an explosive situation. This situation is especially evident in St. Petersburg, because the unpopular actions of local authorities during the pandemic created the prerequisites for the fact that it was on the shoulders of women that the main burden fell, when it was necessary to actually independently educate children, continue to work in new conditions and practically fully support the life of the whole family in harsh conditions of isolation and psychological and informational pressure. Analyzing the research data and the situation in general, this article concludes that in the current difficult conditions the authorities should pay more attention to the position of women and increase targeted support measures to improve the socio-psychological well-being of the population.

Right to Privacy and State Policy on Cyber Security. Necessity or Threat from the State

In the era of extremely rapid technological development, the state is directing particular interest towards security in cyberspace and cyber security is becoming a dominant value in its policy. Such a policy may cause a number of negative consequences, such as the willingness to introduce legal regulations that may limit civil rights and freedoms, and in the next stage may lead to violence. As a result, their implementation causes excessive, and often unauthorized, interference of public authorities in the sphere of citizens’ privacy. It should also be stressed that the global nature of the Internet means that mechanisms based on territoriality in a rather limited way ensure effective protection of individual rights against violations by public authorities in cyberspace. In addition to significant physical damage and direct financial losses, the mere likelihood of future cyber threats may cause social distrust and unwillingness to work with new technologies.

Individual disaster communication in the Latinx community after Hurricane Harvey: The role of disaster exposure, perceived discrimination stress, and social trust

ABSTRACT This study examined how socio-cultural factors explain the relationship between hurricane exposure and frequency of individual disaster communication among Latinx individuals in Texas communities impacted by Hurricane Harvey. Participants included 397 Latinx residents in nine Texas counties that were most impacted by Hurricane Harvey. Through structural equation modeling, results indicated that perceived discrimination stress mediates the relationship between Hurricane Harvey exposure and individual disaster communication, whereas social distrust plays a disruptive role. Overall, the results (a) identify the individual and inter-related influence of stress and trust factors on the seeking and sharing of information within Latinx disaster communication ecologies, and (b) emphasize the importance of trust-building and storytelling strategies to engage the Latinx community following disasters.

Соціалізація, соціальні інновації та соціальна взаємодія бізнесу й держави

Paper demonstrates how socialization and social innovations spread the social interaction of business and the state, based on the statement that socialization is functionally seen as a way to achieve a balance between competition, which forms actions to obtain higher business results, and mutual assistance to achieve social unity in the state through socialization. At the heart of competition and mutual assistance is socialization, which strengthens people’s desire to have a better life, which is especially vital for a less orderly society in which the functioning of the state occurs under the phenomenon of social distrust. To achieve the goals of stability in society and to support economic growth, the winners are the triumphers of the national solidarity spirit, achieved through social innovation, which through developing social interaction, creates conditions for sustainable development. Under the current conditions in Ukraine, it should be a matter of finding a balance between interests of the society, the state and the individual, which can be achieved through the social function of the state. This function should not restrict access to public goods, but rather ensure inclusive activities among economic institutions, which will suspend the destruction of social space, reduce inequality and intensify people’s behaviour, socializing their life activities in the social space of the country.

Information Openness of the State and Municipal Service: Panopticon Model

The paper is devoted to the study of prospects and regulatory limitations of the development of the concept ‘information openness of the state and municipal services’. The authors focus on how the public function affects the activities of state and municipal employees not only in but also out the service. The principle of openness of the state and municipal service in modern society obliges to take a responsible approach to any information posted publicly on the Internet, even if it is not related to the service. Big data technologies and the analytical capabilities of neural networks allow us to collect information from various sources and deanonymize them by comparing them. As a result, any state and municipal employee who is present in the public space can be subjected to public control procedures at any time. The panopticon model is used as an explanatory model. It is transformed in the conditions of digitalization of modern society. Alongside the synopticum, the panopticon expands the supervisory capabilities of the government, but at the same time makes its representatives visible to the mass "observer". The model of a new panopticon determines the risks of the emergence and reproduction of social tension and distrust between the authorities and the population. This is also as any member of the public can act as an expert without having expert knowledge and skills. In order to avoid the termination of the information openness development of the power in the new panopticon, it seems promising to educate the citizens in the area of regulatory (legal and moral) grounds for the state and municipal employees’ activities. It is important to include rules governing the presence of the authorities in social media and determine the degree of responsibility of those violating the rules of behavior in public space into the administrative ethics codes.

Pseudoscientific beliefs and psychopathological risks increase after COVID-19 social quarantine

BackgroundThe health crisis caused by COVID-19 has led many countries to opt for social quarantine of the population. During this quarantine, communication systems have been characterized by disintermediation, the acceleration of digitization and an infodemic (excess and saturation of information). The following debate arises: Do the levels related to the psychotic phenotype and pseudoscientific beliefs related to the interpretation of information vary before and after social quarantine?ObjectivesThis research aims to examine the psychological effects of social quarantine on the psychotic phenotype and pseudoscientific beliefs-experiences of the general nonclinical population. The following hypothesis was posed: social quarantine alters the levels of magical thinking, pseudoscientific beliefs and anomalous perceptions due to quarantine.MethodsA pre- and posttest analysis design was applied based on the difference in means, and complementary Bayesian estimation was performed. A total of 174 Spanish subjects responded to different questionnaires that evaluated psychopathological risks based on psychotic phenotypes, pseudoscientific beliefs and experiences before and after quarantine.ResultsSignificant differences were obtained for the variables positive psychotic symptoms, depressive symptoms, and certain perceptual alterations (e.g., cenesthetic perceptions), and a significant increase in pseudoscientific beliefs was also observed. The perceptual disturbances that increased the most after quarantine were those related to derealization and depersonalization. However, paranoid perceptions showed the highest increase, doubling the initial standard deviation. These high increases could be related to the delimitation of physical space during social quarantine and distrust towards information communicated by the government to the population. Is it possible that social alarmism generated by the excess of information and pseudoscientific information has increased paranoid perceptual alterations?ConclusionsMeasures taken after quarantine indicate that perceptual disturbances, subclinical psychotic symptoms and beliefs in the pseudoscience have increased. We discuss which elements of quarantine coincide with the social marginality theory and its clinical repercussions.

Exploring the Linkage between Income Inequality, GDP and Human Well-Being

The scorning of gross domestic product (GDP) is as old as its birth. Income inequality and ensuring human well-being are few out of many causes of its fulmination. Existing literature on the concern issues reveals that, where there are great disparities in wealth, there are heightened level of social distrust. Poor countries having reasonable distribution of wealth are much better in terms of health and happiness of people than in rich countries having unfair distribution of wealth. It has also been found that, people’ health are better in the more equally income distributed societies than the societies having highly skewed distribution of income. It has repercussion effect in the form of reduction of workforces’ productivity, upsurge in national expenditures on health, and diversion of resources from prolific endeavours to somewhere else. These are results of growth driven policies which ensure improvements in GDP indicator without assuring improvements in the human well-being. The status of income inequality raises questions on the sustainability of GDP driven development. Hence there is a need for an alternative. This paper is an attempt to discuss the issues concerning rise in income inequality and to shift our focus towards Human Well-Being approach as an alternative to GDP approach.

Social media in times of crisis: Learning from Hurricane Harvey for the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic response

In recent times societal crises such as the coronavirus disease 2019 outbreak have given rise to a tension between formal ‘command and control’ and informal social media activated self-organising information and communication systems that are utilised for crisis management decision-making. Social media distrust affects the dissemination of disaster information as it entails shifts in media perception and participation but also changes in the way individuals and organisations make sense of information in critical situations. So far, a little considered notion in this domain is the concept of sense-giving. Originating from organisational theory, it is used to explain the mechanisms behind intentional information provision that fosters collective meaning creation. In our study, we seek to understand the potential impact of sense-giving from Twitter crisis communication generated during the Hurricane Harvey disaster event. Social network and content analyses performed with a dataset of 9,414,463 tweets yielded insights into how sense-giving occurs during a large-scale disaster event. Theoretically, we specified (1) perpetual sense-giving, which relies primarily on topical authority and frequency; as well as (2) intermittent sense-giving, which occurs from high value of message content and leverage of popularity, that is, retweets. Our findings emphasise the importance of information-rich actors in communication networks and the leverage of their influence in crises such as coronavirus disease 2019 to reduce social media distrust and facilitate sense-making.

Sociološki osvrt na odrednice studentskoga internetskog kupovanja u Hrvatskoj

Valorizirajući internetsko kupovanje kao aktualan fenomen koji je zadnjih godina u globalnom porastu, ovim radom se ukazuje na deficit društvenih, napose socioloških, analiza na temu u kontekstu hrvatskog društva. Pregledom literature o profilima internetskih kupaca postavljen je okvir za ispitivanje studentske populacije koja je prepoznata kao predvodnik suvremenih potrošačkih i tehnoloških trendova. Operacionalizacijom viševrsnih forma kapitala uz varijable demografije, tehnoloških resursa i praksi, ispitane su odrednice studentskoga internetskog kupovanja u Hrvatskoj (N= 1094). Izvorni empirijski nalazi prikupljeni metodom ankete pokazuju da studentsko internetsko kupovanje najpouzdanije predviđaju posjedovani tehnološki resursi, tehnološke vještine i interesi na način da su ispitanici opremljeniji novim tehnologijama s izraženijim tehnološkim vještinama i interesom za praćenjem tehnoloških trendova vjerojatniji internetski kupci. Aspekti tehnoloških resursa i praksi udruženi s ekonomskim kapitalom utvrđeni su značajnima i kod razlikovanja studenata koji (ne)kupuju putem interneta, što je podcrtalo višerazinske nejednakosti u perspektivi studentskog internetskog kupovanja. Izražena zabrinutost oko online rizika te tradicionalna (ne)vezanost za fizičku kupovinu ispostavili su se glavnim razlozima neprakticiranja internetskog kupovanja iz perspektive ispitanika, što je razvojnu dinamiku same prakse zaokružilo temama društvene nejednakosti i nepovjerenja.

Relationships of Horizontalism and Hierarchy: Exploring Divergent Forms of Sociopolitical Trust

ObjectivePropose a conceptualization of trust that acknowledges varying levels of power between trusting partners. The weak, positive statistical correlation between social and political trust conceals very different experiences of trust. While many people possess either high or low levels of both forms of trust, others have divergent levels of the two forms of trust. Present a simple typology of sociopolitical trust that categorizes individuals as trusters, distrusters, hierarchicalists, and horizontalists.MethodsExploratory analysis of United States using the World Values Survey. Multivariate analysis of sociopolitical trust's effect upon protest and voting.ResultsAmericans have low levels of political trust and higher levels of social trust. Protesters possess social trust and political distrust, and voters are both social and political trusters.ConclusionThe combination of social trust and political trust impacts public participation preferences. Protesters embody a libertarian‐socialist orientation toward sociopolitical trust, while voters possess a social‐democrat orientation.

New Solutions to the Problem of Stagnating Socio-Economic Development in Russia

The presented study summarizes the results of the implementation of liberal market reforms in Russia and reviews tools of the market economy that could solve the problem of distrust within Russian society.Aim. The study aims to define the underlying problems that stem from the peculiarities of the historical development of the Russian Federation and now hinder the advancement of our country to a new level of development, and to propose directions for solving these problems.Tasks. The authors summarize the socio-economic consequences of the implementation of liberal market reforms; define the problems of the implementation of a rent-based economy in modern Russia; prove that Russia cannot advance to a new level of development without solving the problem of social distrust; review the tools that could change the current situation of global social distrust (publicprivate partnership, proactive budgeting, clusters, territorial marketing, Far Eastern Hectare program, smart cities, incident management).Methods. This study uses general scientific methods of cognition to examine the results of the implementation of liberal market reforms, identify the problems of modern Russia, and determine the possible directions and tools of development.Results. Russia’s development is historically based on finding and living off the natural rent. This perspective significantly narrows the range of ideas about the potential development directions for the Russian Federation. The rent-based development options proposed today expose another common Russian trait — uncertainty, lack of risk appetite, pessimism, and fear of “things getting worse”. Implementation of democratic reforms in the context of rent-based economic institutions, lack of mutual trust within society, poor performance of courts — all this aggravates the current situation.Conclusions. Nowadays, Russia needs an economy that would create a demand for human capital and inclusive political institutions that would make people engaged in the life of the nation, allowing them to capitalize on their creativity without leaving their homeland.

Revisiting Rittel and Webber’s Dilemmas: Designerly Thinking Against the Background of New Societal Distrust

In this article, we posit designerly thinking as a family of design approaches that some believe are able to effectively respond to wicked problems. We will scrutinize this premise by revisiting Horst Rittel and Melvin Webber’s 1973 article in which the notion of wicked problems was originally introduced. In it, Rittel and Webber note the emergence of a general sense of distrust in professionals in the 1960s and interpret it as a loss of confidence in the then leading approach to addressing societal problems: systems-based planning. Rittel and Webber formulated three dilemmas that societal problems pose, of which the second is their wickedness, and argued that planning does not resolve these dilemmas. In the 2010s, an emerging distrust in professionals has arisen once more, raising the question of whether designerly thinking is equipped to address societal issues. Our review and discussion of Rittel and Webber’s three dilemmas reveals that designerly thinking currently does not resolve any of them, as there can always be groups that will oppose certain solutions. We argue that designerly thinking cannot overcome societal pluralism, but that designers can and should interpret social distrust as an invitation to discuss the consequences and their societal equity.

Subsistence Solidarity and the Extension of Trust: Moral Economies of Organic Farming in Northern China

The widespread phenomenon of unsafe food on the Chinese market has been argued to be both symptomatic of moral disregard for the well-being of strangers and productive of social distrust. Organic farming has grown in recent years in response to this situation, and this article discusses the ethical work of farmers based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted at one such farm in northern China. While the Community Supported Agriculture model of the farm is shown to hinge upon establishing personal trust with member households, turning strangers into associates, the entire project of organic farming is shown to be undergirded by strong expressions of solidarity with conventional farmers framed in the language of moral economy. Engaging with theories of relational morality, the article proposes instead an extended concept of moral economies that allows us to capture the coexistence of differential care alongside horizontal solidarities within the moral landscape of contemporary China.

Transitions Out of Informality Among Entrepreneurs in Sub-Saharan Africa

Prior research has linked firm registration among entrepreneurs to faster growth and larger eco- nomic benefits from entrepreneurship, such as higher employment and revenue generation. Yet, despite these benefits, many entrepreneurs remain informal (unregistered) for extended periods of time. Why do entrepreneurs remain informal and what predicts the probability and timing of their exit out of informality through registration? I examine these questions in the dynamic con- text of firms founded informally throughout the region of Sub-Saharan Africa, across countries with varying founding conditions. Contrary to existing accounts, which emphasize economic drivers into registration and cross-national differences in transactions costs and formal institu- tions, I theorize and test the role of social and organizational drivers, such as entrepreneurs’ intentions and prevailing organizing norms and social distrust in the environments where they founded their organizations. I find that individual differences explain about 80 percent of the variance in the length of informality spells, with the remaining 20 percent attributable to re- gional differences. These findings have important implication for impediments to formalization among entrepreneurs in emerging economies.

Residential mobility and social trust in urban neighborhoods in the Seoul metropolitan area, Korea

Although urban scholars have considered population change an important barrier to the generation of social trust, studies accounting for the mechanisms at work have been relatively rare. Drawing from a dataset that combines a survey of 1348 residents nested within 45 neighborhoods in and around Seoul with census data, this article identifies neighborhood processes whereby residential mobility breeds social distrust. The relationship between social trust, neighborhood cohesion, and residential mobility is analyzed using two-stage least squares regression. The evidence suggests two underlying mechanisms—unbundling neighboring ties (the process-based channel) and diluting sense of belonging (the characteristic-based channel)—that together mediate the deleterious effect of rapid population change on the development of sense of trustworthiness on a more generalized level. Residents in a neighborhood that experiences a destabilizing change in local demographics are found to have lower levels of neighborly ties and sense of belonging, which, in turn, limit their ability to trust in general others in the neighborhood.

Downbound spiral? Economic grievances, perceived social protection and political distrust

Momentous events in Western democracies have brought renewed attention to how various aspects of government-controlled policy outputs and outcomes affect citizens’ trust in politics. Unlike most previous research, this study uses individual-level panel data to test the link between government performance evaluations and political trust. Moreover, it gauges performance in more policy areas than previous research, including key aspects of government-controlled social services as well as a wide range of economic risks. The study finds that evaluations of government performance affect political trust but that the evidence is stronger for evaluations of social protection than for economic risks. Crucially, the analysis suggests that the relationship between performance evaluations and distrust is reciprocal. The relationship may be described as a ‘downbound spiral’ where dissatisfied groups develop distrust, which in turn makes for a more pessimistic interpretation of economic risks and welfare state performance.