Prominence over proximity? Terror attacks’ impact on party preferences

How does a terrorist attack affect party preferences? Based on existing theories, we would either expect incumbent parties to benefit because of a rally-effect, or populist radical right parties (PRRPs) to gain due to a radicalization of voters’ preferences. These competing theories are tested with a unique dataset of a large sample of voters’ responses on a Voting Advice Application. We do so using a novel way to leverage exogenous events using big public opinion data. We show that a terrorist attack has a positive effect for the main incumbent party, even when voters’ positions on the issues owned by the PRRPs become more radicalized. This means that during crises, voters rally around the flag and prefer prominence over policy proximity

Content Moderation As a Political Issue: The Twitter Discourse Around Trump's Ban

Content moderation — the regulation of the material that users create and disseminate online — is an important activity for all social media platforms. While routine, this practice raises significant questions linked to democratic accountability and civil liberties. Following the decision of many platforms to ban Donald J. Trump in the aftermath of the attack on the U.S. Capitol in January 2021, content moderation has increasingly become a politically contested issue. This paper studies that process with a focus on the public discourse on Twitter. The analysis includes over 9 million tweets and retweets posted by over 3 million unique users between January 2020 and April 2021. First, the salience of content moderation was driven by left-leaning users, and "Section 230" was the most important topic across the ideological spectrum. Second, stance towards Section 230 was relatively volatile and increasingly polarized. These findings highlight relevant elements of the ongoing process of political contestation surrounding this issue, and provide a descriptive foundation to understand the politics of content moderation

Определение интервалов квазистационарности экономических систем

В работе рассмотрен вопрос определения оптимального интервала адаптации алгоритма динамического управления капиталом для нестационарного случая методами расчета показателя Херста и построения автокорреляционной функции для анализа временных рядов. Проведен анализ влияния выбора интервала адаптации на эффективность алгоритма. Из анализа полученных результатов следует, что метод расчета показателя Херста позволяет более эффективно, чем метод построения автокорреляционной функции, определить интервал стационарности модели функционирования экономической системы.Робота присвячена питанню визначення оптимального інтервалу адаптації алгоритму динамічного керування капіталом для нестаціонарного випадку за допомогою методів розрахунку показника Херста і побудови автокореляційної функції задля аналізу часових рядів. Проведено аналіз впливу вибору інтервалу адаптації на ефективність алгоритму. Порівняння результатів проведеного аналізу дозволяє стверджувати, що метод розрахунку показника Херста дозволяє більш ефективно, ніж метод побудови автокореляційної функції, визначити інтервал стаціонарності моделі функціонування економічної системи

The times they are a‐changin': An experimental assessment of the causes and consequences of sudden policy U‐turns

Past research has long documented that voters dislike parties and leaders who reverse their policy positions. But would they tolerate (principled) policy U‐turns if they are motivated by external events, such as a large‐scale crisis or scientific evidence? In this study, we explore whether the motivation behind positional shifts affects voter evaluations of political parties. To do so, we seek to connect the causes and consequences of policy shifts, a synergy still unexplored in the literature. We suggest that, while U‐turns, in general, can be damaging to a party's reputation, principled changes brought about by new scientific evidence or major crises should not necessarily have negative implications, because these changes can be necessary for the public good. We conducted a nationally representative survey experiment in Germany (n = 3127) featuring two classes of policy reversals: strategic and principled. Surprisingly, however, we find that voters by and large hold negative views of different types of policy U‐turns, thus including when external circumstances suggest change may be necessary. Interestingly, our empirical analysis reveals intriguing patterns. First, voters are willing to tolerate all sorts of policy reversals if the party ends up adopting their positions, suggesting that proximity matters even in the event of exogenous events. Second, voters with high levels of political trust tolerate different types of policy reversals, even when the party changes for mere strategic office‐seeking motivations. Coming from the premise that political and societal change is imperative, these findings have direct implications for democracies

The Effect of a Real-World, Long-Term Media Literacy Intervention: A Difference-in-Differences Approach

As the fight against misinformation continues, governments across the world have started to invest in media literacy interventions. It is hoped that such interventions help citizens become better at discerning between untrustworthy and mainstream news headlines, but studies relying on online- and field-experiments provide inconclusive or even worrying results: media literacy interventions targeting misinformation either have no effect, help citizens recognize fake news, but also reduce trust in mainstream news. Leveraging a natural setting in a high school in the Netherlands and using a Difference-in-Differences (DiD) approach, I show that a long-term literacy course increased students' ability to accurately assess the reliability of mainstream, but not untrustworthy news. Since the prevalence of the latter is much lower than that of the former, I argue this to be a welcome finding. Additionally, I show how real-world, intensive courses allow for unique opportunities to test the effectiveness of existing media literacy programs

Additive manufacturing of locally self-supporting compliant mechanisms: Experimental characterization and topology optimization for successful metal 3D printing

The manufacturing freedom of additive manufacturing, and design freedom of topology optimization have proven to be a fruitful combination in creating and manufacturing designs. While research into applications of metal additive manufacturing has advanced from rapid prototyping to end-use components, metal additive manufacturing of compliant mechanisms has only been researched to a limited amount. This is despite the fact that additive manufacturing provides opportunities to manufacture highly advanced, monolithic compliant mechanism considered impossible before. Important considerations regarding geometry during additive manufacturing of compliant mechanisms are what minimum length scale and angle between overhanging features and build plate (the overhang angle) need to be imposed on the design. These considerations determine whether a compliant mechanism is successfully built by additive manufacturing and can ensure that designs are self-supporting. Since these constraints are most relevant in fragile hinge regions of compliant mechanisms where support material removal is unwanted, self-supporting, cross-axis flexural pivots are manufactured using selective laser melting. It is found manufacturability in additive manufacturing does not necessarily guarantee a predictable stiffness and yield strength of these flexural pivots. That is why it is recommended to print self-supporting regions of compliant mechanisms with a minimum length scale 25% greater than prescribed by the manufacturing process used and an overhang angle of at least 5 degrees greater than the prescribed minimum overhang angle. Next, these recommendations are implemented in compliant mechanism design using topology optimization, at locations where these recommendations are most relevant. This is done by redesigning hinge regions of compliant mechanisms, using static condensation to reduce the order of the problem. While adding only 5% extra computation time, small regions of a design can be redesigned successfully. To use the potential of this method fully, an extension to this method is introduced, which allows to redesign domains in more detail. Multi-point constraints are used to couple the original and finer redesign mesh. For a finer mesh, more computation time is needed, but as the design space is enlarged, other, more optimal solutions are found. Next, constraints on overhang angle, minimum length scale and stress are implemented, since these constraints are proven to be meaningful in hinge regions by the experiments with the cross-axis flexural pivots. Implementation is done successfully, and it is seen compliant mechanisms can be designed at relatively low additional computational cost and with minimal loss of mechanism performance. Thus, using this approach, redesigned compliant mechanisms can be manufactured with locally self-supporting hinges and predictable kinematics and stress concentrations can be ensured.Mechanical Engineering | Precision and Microsystems Engineerin

The Times They Are A-Changin': An Experimental Assessment of the Causes and Consequences of Sudden Policy U-Turns

What consequences should political parties expect when they invoke sudden policy U-turns? We establish a synergy between the causes of policy changes and their consequences and argue that voter evaluations of policy shifts will be influenced by their perceptions of why these shifts occurred in the first place. Building on mental models, a notion we borrow from cognitive psychology, we expect that voters will start from their perceptions of whether party change happened on principled grounds or for electoral gains (the premises) and make probabilistic predictions about its level of commitment in the future (the inference). We suggest that, while U-turns, in general, can be damaging to a party's reputation, principled changes brought about by new scientific evidence or major crises should not necessarily have negative implications, because these changes can give the party new grounds of credibility. We test our expectations via a pre-registered randomized survey experiment in Germany (n = 3127) featuring two classes of party change: strategic or principled shifts. We find that voters generally punish political parties when they reverse course regardless of the reason, thus including when external circumstances suggest change may be necessary. Coming from the premise that political and societal change is imperative, these findings have direct implications for democracies