What if postal votes were a great way to boost political engagement?

Eric Pickles’ recent report on electoral fraud raised concerns that postal votes represent an opportunity for voter fraud. But Justin Reedy suggests that filling out a postal ballot gives people more opportunity to discuss their choice with friends, family and neighbours – and potentially make better-informed choices as a result

Deliberating While Voting: The Antecedents, Dynamics, And Consequences Of Talking While Completing Ballots In Two Vote-By-Mail States

An overlooked context for citizen deliberation occurs when voters discuss their ballots with others while completing them at home. Voting by mail (or “absentee voting”) creates an opportunity for informal deliberation in the midst of exercising a basic form of citizen power. We examined this understudied context by blending prior theory with qualitative observations of dyadic and small-group absentee voter discussions to identify common features of such talk, which range from cynical joking and speculation on election outcomes to observing norms of politeness and engaging in heated argument. The hypothesized antecedents and consequences of those behaviors were examined in a survey of 295 Washington and Oregon voters’ recollections of their ballot discussions. Results showed that pro-deliberative features of discussion were reported most often by voters with more formal education and political knowledge. Contrary to hypotheses, the strength of voters’ partisan identities bore no relation to deliberative behavior. Finally, the presence of key discussion features had many of the expected effects on voters’ confidence in ballot choices and their respect for the electoral process, particularly for those voters with less political knowledge

Psychological Phenomena in Democratic Deliberation

Psychological phenomena have long been a focus of research on democratic deliberation, particularly concerning policy knowledge and attitudes and other issues addressed in conventional scholarship on political psychology. Yet in recent years, the subject matter of psychological research on deliberation has expanded to include a wider array of issues, ranging from lay conceptualizations of deliberation, to phenomena not foregrounded in traditional political psychology scholarship, including emotions, social identity, communication goals, relational schemata, and social learning. This essay summarizes key findings from prior research on psychological dimensions of deliberation, and then delineates recent deliberative scholarship that explores a broader range of psychological phenomena. Finally, this essay introduces the six new articles that make up this special issue. These articles offer novel theoretical and empirical insights on a number of current themes concerning psychological aspects of deliberation, while expanding knowledge concerning established areas of inquiry

Perceptions of the crowded sky as assessed through response to aerial infrastructure

Ever increasing numbers of wind turbines, communication towers, power lines, and aerial vehicles are clear evidence of our growing reliance on infrastructure in the lower aerosphere. As this infrastructure expands, it is important to understand public perceptions of an increasingly crowded sky. To gauge tolerance for aerial crowding, 251 participants from across the US completed a survey where they rated tolerance for a series of aerial infrastructure images (i.e., towers, turbines, and airborne vehicles) in four landscapes with varying degrees of pre-existing ground-level infrastructure that approximated rural, suburban, and urban settings. We predicted lower tolerance for aerial infrastructure 1) in more natural scenes and 2) among rural residents. In general, participants preferred an open aesthetic with relatively little aerial infrastructure across all landscape types. No clear association was found between infrastructure tolerance and natural scenes nor rural residency, with participants slightly less tolerant of infrastructure in the suburban scene. Tolerance scores were generally similar across age, income levels, and political affiliations. Women indicated less crowding tolerance than men, with this effect driven by a disproportionate number of women with zero tolerance for aerial infrastructure. African Americans and Asians had higher tolerance scores than other racial/ethnic groups, but these trends may have been affected by low sample sizes of non-white participants. Our survey revealed fewer differences in crowding tolerance across demographic groups than might be expected given widely reported political and geographic polarization in the U.S. Attitudes toward aerial infrastructure were varied with few associations with demographic parameters suggesting that public opinion has not yet solidified with regard to this issue, making possible opportunities for consensus building with regard to responsible development of aerial infrastructure

Social media in democratic transitions and consolidations: what can we learn from the case of Tunisia?

© 2018, © 2018 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. The aim of this paper is to analyse the use of social media in the stages of uprising, democratic transition and democratic consolidation using the case study of Tunisia. While the impact of social media in uprisings has been widely documented in past research about the MENA region, Tunisia provides new evidence to the use of Internet in the processes of democratisation. Consequently, this research focuses in detail on the benefits but also the pitfalls of social media in transitions and consolidations. Data collection was based on interviews with Tunisian social media activists. The analysis is valuable to social media practitioners and researchers alike

Children’s and adolescents’ rising animal-source food intakes in 1990–2018 were impacted by age, region, parental education and urbanicity

Animal-source foods (ASF) provide nutrition for children and adolescents’ physical and cognitive development. Here, we use data from the Global Dietary Database and Bayesian hierarchical models to quantify global, regional and national ASF intakes between 1990 and 2018 by age group across 185 countries, representing 93% of the world’s child population. Mean ASF intake was 1.9 servings per day, representing 16% of children consuming at least three daily servings. Intake was similar between boys and girls, but higher among urban children with educated parents. Consumption varied by age from 0.6 at <1 year to 2.5 servings per day at 15–19 years. Between 1990 and 2018, mean ASF intake increased by 0.5 servings per week, with increases in all regions except sub-Saharan Africa. In 2018, total ASF consumption was highest in Russia, Brazil, Mexico and Turkey, and lowest in Uganda, India, Kenya and Bangladesh. These findings can inform policy to address malnutrition through targeted ASF consumption programmes.publishedVersio

Incident type 2 diabetes attributable to suboptimal diet in 184 countries

The global burden of diet-attributable type 2 diabetes (T2D) is not well established. This risk assessment model estimated T2D incidence among adults attributable to direct and body weight-mediated effects of 11 dietary factors in 184 countries in 1990 and 2018. In 2018, suboptimal intake of these dietary factors was estimated to be attributable to 14.1 million (95% uncertainty interval (UI), 13.8–14.4 million) incident T2D cases, representing 70.3% (68.8–71.8%) of new cases globally. Largest T2D burdens were attributable to insufficient whole-grain intake (26.1% (25.0–27.1%)), excess refined rice and wheat intake (24.6% (22.3–27.2%)) and excess processed meat intake (20.3% (18.3–23.5%)). Across regions, highest proportional burdens were in central and eastern Europe and central Asia (85.6% (83.4–87.7%)) and Latin America and the Caribbean (81.8% (80.1–83.4%)); and lowest proportional burdens were in South Asia (55.4% (52.1–60.7%)). Proportions of diet-attributable T2D were generally larger in men than in women and were inversely correlated with age. Diet-attributable T2D was generally larger among urban versus rural residents and higher versus lower educated individuals, except in high-income countries, central and eastern Europe and central Asia, where burdens were larger in rural residents and in lower educated individuals. Compared with 1990, global diet-attributable T2D increased by 2.6 absolute percentage points (8.6 million more cases) in 2018, with variation in these trends by world region and dietary factor. These findings inform nutritional priorities and clinical and public health planning to improve dietary quality and reduce T2D globally.publishedVersio

Political discussion and deliberative democracy in immigrant communities

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Washington, 2013In this dissertation, I set out to build our understanding of how Latino immigrants learn to participate in and talk about politics in the United States. First, I develop a framework for analyzing political discussion from the perspective of social norms, and speculate about what may be the prevailing political discussion norms in the American public sphere. Next, I unite the literatures on political socialization, Latino and immigrant politics, and political discussion, along with scholarship on social groups and networks, to create a theoretical model for how Latino immigrants become socialized into a political system. I test this model with three empirical studies. In the first, I use quantitative survey data to test whether Latino immigrants report different sources of political socialization than the general population. The second study relies on qualitative interviews and focus groups with Mexican-heritage immigrants in Arizona and Washington aimed at their early and notable political experiences. The final study reports the results of a national quantitative survey of Mexican-heritage Americans and a comparison sample of whites. My key findings are that Latinos rely less on the traditional socializing influences of parents and teachers, and rely more on spouses, children, and the media. Many Latinos focus on learning about issues rather than debating in their political discussion, though those talking with other Latinos were open to arguing. Overall, I find notable differences in both the socialization channels and discussion norms between Latinos and whites in the U.S

Deliberating While Voting: The Antecedents, Dynamics, And Consequences Of Talking While Completing Ballots In Two Vote-By-Mail States

An overlooked context for citizen deliberation occurs when voters discuss their ballots with others while completing them at home. Voting by mail (or “absentee voting”) creates an opportunity for informal deliberation in the midst of exercising a basic form of citizen power. We examined this understudied context by blending prior theory with qualitative observations of dyadic and small-group absentee voter discussions to identify common features of such talk, which range from cynical joking and speculation on election outcomes to observing norms of politeness and engaging in heated argument. The hypothesized antecedents and consequences of those behaviors were examined in a survey of 295 Washington and Oregon voters’ recollections of their ballot discussions. Results showed that pro-deliberative features of discussion were reported most often by voters with more formal education and political knowledge. Contrary to hypotheses, the strength of voters’ partisan identities bore no relation to deliberative behavior. Finally, the presence of key discussion features had many of the expected effects on voters’ confidence in ballot choices and their respect for the electoral process, particularly for those voters with less political knowledge