Basic Values, Ideological Self-Placement, and Voting : A Cross-Cultural Study

The current study examines the contribution of left-right (or liberal-conservative) ideology to voting, as well as the extent to which basic values account for ideological orientation. Analyses were conducted in 16 countries from five continents (Europe, North America, South America, Asia, and Oceania), most of which have been neglected by previous studies. Results showed that left-right (or liberal-conservative) ideology predicted voting in all countries except Ukraine. Basic values exerted a considerable effect in predicting ideology in most countries, especially in established democracies such as Australia, Finland, Italy, United Kingdom, and Germany. Pattern of relations with the whole set of 10 values revealed that the critical trade-off underlying ideology is between values concerned with tolerance and protection for the welfare of all people (universalism) versus values concerned with preserving the social order and status quo (security). A noteworthy exception was found in European postcommunist countries, where relations of values with ideology were small (Poland) or near to zero (Ukraine, Slovakia).Peer reviewe

Learning Ideological Latent space in Twitter

People are shifting from traditional news sources to online news at an incredibly fast rate. However, the technology behind online news consumption forces users to be confined to content that confirms with their own point of view. This has led to social phenomena like polarization of point-of-view and intolerance towards opposing views. In this thesis we study information filter bubbles from a mathematical standpoint. We use data mining techniques to learn a liberal-conservative ideology space in Twitter and presents a case study on how such a latent space can be used to tackle the filter bubble problem on social networks. We model the problem of learning liberal-conservative ideology as a constrained optimization problem. Using matrix factorization we uncover an ideological latent space for content consumption and social interaction habits of users in Twitter. We validate our model on real world Twitter dataset on three controversial topics - "Obamacare", "gun control" and "abortion". Using the proposed technique we are able to separate users by their ideology with 95% purity. Our analysis shows that there is a very high correlation (0.8 - 0.9) between the estimated ideology using machine learning and true ideology collected from various sources. Finally, we re-examine the learnt latent space, and present a case study showcasing how this ideological latent space can be used to develop exploratory and interactive interfaces that can help in diffusing the information filter bubble. Our matrix factorization based model for learning ideology latent space, along with the case studies provide a theoretically solid as well as a practical and interesting point-of-view to online polarization. Further, it provides a strong foundation and suggests several avenues for future work in multiple emerging interdisciplinary research areas, for instance, humanly interpretable and explanatory machine learning, transparent recommendations and a new field that we coin as Next Generation Social Networks

When Does Sexuality-Based Discrimination Motivate Political Participation?

The established consensus in political behavior research is that discrimination by political institutions motivates marginalized groups to vote and protest their conditions. However, existing studies miss a comparison between states with high and low levels of political discrimination, and they miss a comparison between states before and after the development of opportunities for groups to mobilize. In particular, a growing body of research shows that sexual-minority groups face discrimination to varying degrees across Europe. Sexual minorities in states with high levels of discrimination lack the support of other minority-group members, which encourages political participation. The analysis is based on surveys of 30 European countries, conducted before and after the 2004 European Union enlargement, which provided a stronger political-opportunity structure for sexual minorities in Eastern Europe. Eastern Europe and Western Europe provided contexts with relatively high and low levels of sexuality-based discrimination, respectively. In Western Europe, those who report sexuality-based discrimination exhibited higher levels of participation, in comparison to those who did not report discrimination. In Eastern Europe, those who report sexuality-based discrimination exhibited lower levels of participation before the 2004 enlargement, but they did not exhibit these lower levels after the 2004 enlargement

Science, scientists, and local weather: Understanding mass perceptions of global warming

Objective: To explore the effects of long-term climate trends and short-term weather fluctuations, evaluations of scientists and science, political predispositions, religious affiliation, the information environment, and demographic attributes on individuals’ views about whether global warming exists and, if so, whether it is a result of natural cycles or human activity. Methods: We use data from the 2009 Pew General Public Science Survey, along with data on long- and short-term patterns of temperature and precipitation in individuals’ home communities. Results: We find that long-term trends in summer temperatures influence perceptions of global warming. Individuals who reside in communities with long-term warming of summer temperatures that are coupled with long-term cooling of spring temperatures are significantly more likely to perceive that global warming exists and is due to human activity. We also find that Americans\u27 attitudes toward scientists and science, political dispositions, evangelical religious affiliation, education, and some demographic attributes all have discernible effects on their perceptions of anthropogenic (man-made) global warming. Conclusion: Individuals’ attitudes toward global warming are influenced by long-term temperature trends in their home communities, as well as a variety of attitudinal and demographic attributes

Where Is the North Pole? An Election-Year Survey on Global Change

To explore public knowledge and perceptions about climate change, University of New Hampshire researchers conducted the first Polar, Environment, and Science (POLES) survey in August 2016. A random sample of U.S. adults were asked for their views regarding science, climate change, sources of information, current problems, and possible solutions. In addition, the survey tested basic geographical knowledge related to polar regions, such as whether the United States has a significant population living in the Arctic, and what respondents know about the location of the North Pole. In this brief, author Lawrence Hamilton reports that fewer than one in five Americans knows that their country includes territory with thousands of people living in the Arctic. Fewer than half understand the locations of the North or South Poles. A majority recognizes that Arctic sea ice is declining and CO2 levels are rising, but knowledge of these scientific facts varies depending on political preference. More than 60 percent agree that human activities are changing Earth’s climate. Public acceptance of the scientific consensus on climate change has been gradually rising in recent years. The gaps between Trump and Clinton supporters are wide on scientific and policy questions alike, including whether scientists can be trusted for information, and whether climate change, from any source, is causing problems now. Supporters of Donald Trump are less likely to trust scientists for information about climate change, to think that climate change is causing important problems, or to support actions to reduce its risks. But despite sharp political divisions, there is broad and rising public recognition of climate-change problems and of the need to shift our energy use in response

Positive views of immigration are linked to more favorable views about welfare among Americans.

Whether immigrants to the US are a negative or positive influence on US society has been the source of much debate in recent years. In new research, James Garand, Ping Xu, and Belinda C. Davis examine the relationship between people’s attitudes towards immigration and welfare. Using election data, they find that those who are in favor of immigration are also more likely to support welfare and greater welfare spending. They write that much of this relationship can be explained by the growing “immigrationalization” of welfare attitudes in recent decades due to demographic change and the growing number of immigrants participating in welfare programs

Many Americans’ racially and partisan motivated dislike forObama means they doubt his legitimacy as president

For much of Barack Obama’s presidential run and his subsequent two terms as president he has been dogged by accusations that he was not born in the US, and is therefore ineligible to be president. In order to explain the continuing prevalence of this view, despite the evidence to the contrary, Josh Pasek looks at whether or not such ‘birthers’ are motivated by partisanship of racial prejudice. They find that while on the surface the ‘birther’ view is motivated by party ideology and racism, such views actually lead people to dislike President Obama, and thus leaves them more open to accepting claims that he was not born in the US

Cultural Cognition and Public Policy: The Case of Outpatient Commitment Laws.

What explains controversy over outpatient commitment laws (OCLs), which authorize courts to order persons with mental illness to accept outpatient treatment? We hypothesized that attitudes toward OCLs reflect ‘‘cultural cognition’’ (DiMaggio, P. Annl Rev Sociol 23:263– 287, 1997), which motivates individuals to conform their beliefs about policy-relevant facts to their cultural values. In a study involving a diverse sample of Americans (N = 1,496), we found that individuals who are hierarchical and communitarian tend to support OCLs, while those who are egalitarian and individualistic tend to oppose them. These relationships, moreover, fit the cultural cognition hypothesis: that is, rather than directly influencing OCL support, cultural values, mediated by affect, shaped individuals’ perceptions of how effectively OCLs promote public health and safety. We discuss the implications for informed public deliberation over OCLs