Gender in Contemporary Europe: Rethinking Equality and the Backlash

European Social Survey Round 11: Question Module Design Teams (QDT) - Stage 2 ApplicationDecades of policy efforts and campaigns by governments, international organizations and social movements have brought significant progress towards gender equality. Many would argue, however, that gender equality still remains largely out of reach. Furthermore, there are visible backlashes against gender equality partly driven by the rhetoric of the radical right against “gender ideology”. Additionally there is evidence there has been retrenchment on key indicators measuring the status of women in society. In response to these seemingly countervailing trends, we propose a module that will allow researchers to examine contemporary attitudes about gender and gender equality, sexism, gender-based discrimination and policy responses to gender equality. We propose measuring five dimensions: identity, sexism, experiences, salience and policy instruments. While these five dimensions draw on a wealth of existing measures about gender attitudes, the proposed module would, we argue, redress some blind spots in current cross-national survey items such as experiences of gender-based discrimination, perceptions of masculinity and femininity; and attitudes about the role of gender equality in society

Adoption and continued use of mobile contact tracing technology: multilevel explanations from a three-wave panel survey and linked data

OBJECTIVE: To identify the key individual-level (demographics, attitudes, mobility) and contextual (COVID-19 case numbers, tiers of mobility restrictions, urban districts) determinants of adopting the NHS COVID-19 contact tracing app and continued use overtime. DESIGN AND SETTING: A three-wave panel survey conducted in England in July 2020 (background survey), November 2020 (first measure of app adoption) and March 2021 (continued use of app and new adopters) linked with official data. PARTICIPANTS: N=2500 adults living in England, representative of England's population in terms of regional distribution, age and gender (2011 census). PRIMARY OUTCOME: Repeated measures of self-reported app usage. ANALYTICAL APPROACH: Multilevel logistic regression linking a range of individual level (from survey) and contextual (from linked data) determinants to app usage. RESULTS: We observe initial app uptake at 41%, 95% CI (0.39% to 0.43%), and a 12% drop-out rate by March 2021, 95% CI (0.10% to 0.14%). We also found that 7% of nonusers as of wave 2 became new adopters by wave 3, 95% CI (0.05% to 0.08%). Initial uptake (or failure to use) of the app associated with social norms, privacy concerns and misinformation about third-party data access, with those living in postal districts with restrictions on mobility less likely to use the app. Perceived lack of transparent evidence of effectiveness was associated with drop-out of use. In addition, those who trusted the government were more likely to adopt in wave 3 as new adopters. CONCLUSIONS: Successful uptake of the contact tracing app should be evaluated within the wider context of the UK Government's response to the crisis. Trust in government is key to adoption of the app in wave 3 while continued use is linked to perceptions of transparent evidence. Providing clear information to address privacy concerns could increase uptake, however, the disparities in continued use among ethnic minority participants needs further investigation

Masculinity, sexism and populist radical right support

This is the final version. Available on open access from Frontiers Media via the DOI in this recordData availability statement: The data presented in the study are publicly available. This data can be found here: GenPsyche-Study1 [DATASET]; DIGITAL.CSIC; https://doi.org/10.20350/digitalCSIC/15251Introduction: The gender gap in populist radical right voting—with women being less likely to support populist radical right parties than men—is well-established. Much less is known about the interplay between gender, masculinity and populist radical right voting. This study investigates the extent to which masculinity affects women and men's likelihood of supporting populist radical right parties. Focusing on sexism as a link between masculinity and populist radical right support, we put forward two mechanisms that operate at once: a mediating effect of sexism (sexism explains the association between masculinity and populist radical right voting) and a moderating effect of sexism (the impact of masculinity is stronger among citizens scoring high on sexism compared with citizens with low levels of sexist attitudes). Methods: We draw on an original dataset collected in Spain at the end of 2020 to investigate support for the Spanish populist radical right party VOX. Results: We find support for hypothesized mechanisms, mediation and moderation, chiefly among men. First, sexism explains about half of the link between masculinity and populist radical right support for this group, confirming the hypothesized mediation effect. Second, masculinity has a significantly stronger impact on the likelihood of supporting VOX among men scoring high on sexism, which in turn substantiates the presence of a moderation effect. Discussion: Existing research so far has examined the empirical connections between how individuals perceive their levels of masculinity, sexism, and PRR voting separately. Our study offers a first step in unpacking the relationship between masculinity and PRR support by focusing specifically on how sexism relates to both these variables.Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación, Agencia Estatal de Investigació

British Election Longitudinal News Study 2015–2019: Print news coverage with validated topics and candidate sentiment

The British Election Longitudinal News Study 2015–2019 (BELNS) covers campaign coverage relating to three general elections: 2015, 2017, 2019. The print newspaper component in this release tracks topic and general election candidate coverage across 46 national and local sources, including actor-level sentiment. For a full description, see Documentation.Corrected file version uploaded on 17-05-2021.The British Election Longitudinal News Study 2015–2019 (BELNS) covers campaign coverage relating to three general elections: 2015, 2017, 2019. The print newspaper component in this release tracks topic and general election candidate coverage across 46 national and local sources, including actor-level sentiment.Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC)Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC)Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC

Intra-Campaign Changes in Voting Preferences: The Impact of Media and Party Communication

An increasing number of citizens change and adapt their party preferences during the electoral campaign. We analyze which short-term factors explain intra-campaign changes in voting preferences, focusing on the visibility and tone of news media reporting and party canvassing. Our analyses rely on an integrative data approach, linking data from media content analysis to public opinion data. This enables us to investigate the relative impact of news media reporting as well as party communication. Inherently, we overcome previously identified methodological problems in the study of communication effects on voting behavior. Our findings reveal that campaigns matter: Especially interpersonal party canvassing increases voters’ likelihood to change their voting preferences in favor of the respective party, whereas media effects are limited to quality news outlets and depend on individual voters’ party ambivalence

Financing Direct Democracy: Revisiting the Research on Campaign Spending and Citizen Initiatives

The conventional view in the direct democracy literature is that spending against a measure is more effective than spending in favor of a measure, but the empirical results underlying this conclusion have been questioned by recent research. We argue that the conventional finding is driven by the endogenous nature of campaign spending: initiative proponents spend more when their ballot measure is likely to fail. We address this endogeneity by using an instrumental variables approach to analyze a comprehensive dataset of ballot propositions in California from 1976 to 2004. We find that both support and opposition spending on citizen initiatives have strong, statistically significant, and countervailing effects. We confirm this finding by looking at time series data from early polling on a subset of these measures. Both analyses show that spending in favor of citizen initiatives substantially increases their chances of passage, just as opposition spending decreases this likelihood