by jesse on
Jun 06, 2008 at 10:40 am
Article: Discursive legacies: The U.S. peace movement and “support the troops.” Social Problems, May 2008
Summary: Supporting the troops has become ubiquitous. Gone are the contentious relations between Vietnam-era protesters and returning troops, as accusations of murder have given way to “support the troops, bring them home” bumper stickers. Coy, Woehrle, and Maney look at how peace movements have “developed an elaborated ‘discourse of betrayal’ by redefining what it means to support the troops.” By employing “proactive, anticipatory discourses,” the peace movement has attempted to side-step questions of patriotism by a redefinition of what it means to truly support the troops. The article demonstrates that movement discourses and rhetoric are simultaneously stable and flexible, and are highly influenced by contemporary politics and cultural constraints.
by jon on
Feb 29, 2008 at 9:49 am
Article: Cross-ideological discussions among conservative and liberal bloggers, Public Choice, January 2008.
Summary: On the one hand, the internet provides people with access to an extraordinarily diverse range of information and opinions. On the other hand, the internet can also bring like-minded people together into isolated, homogeneous communities devoid of dissent and diversity. Which side wins out?
Eszter Hargittai, Jason Gallo and Matthew Kane look at political blogs and examine how frequently conservative bloggers link to liberal bloggers and vice versa. They followed 40 of the top political blogs (20 conservative, 20 liberal) for three week-long periods over the course of ten months. They have several interesting findings:
- In terms of blogroll links, conservatives are more likely to link to liberal blogs than liberal bloggers are to link to conservative blogs.
- Within blog posts, about 12% of outgoing links from conservative blogs went to liberal blogs, and about 16% of outgoing links from liberal blogs went to conservative blogs.
- Perhaps unsurprisingly, the most common format of these cross-ideological links follow a “straw-man” format, simply dismissing the other sides’ views
- However, when blog posts actually engage the substance of the linked article, conservative bloggers were actually more likely to agree (14%) than disagree (12%), while liberal bloggers only expressed substantive agreement 5% of the time.
In short, they found some support for both faces of the internet, and also found some interesting differences between conservative and liberal bloggers.
If this is interesting to you, this article is part of a special issue on blogs and politics.
by jesse on
Jan 24, 2008 at 1:34 pm
Article: Dynamics of Political Polarization. American Sociological Review, October 2007
Summary: This article deals with two “puzzling paradoxes.” The first is the simultaneous absence and presence of attitude polarization; the notion that global attitude polarization if rare, yet pundits typically describe it as commonplace. The second is the simultaneous presence and absence of social polarization; while individuals typically have very little difference in attitude from those that make up their social/interpersonal networks, their larger networks are nonetheless characterized by considerable differences in attitude. These paradoxes are resolved through the understanding of a few key concepts. The first is what the authors term “take off” issues: those issues that for a very short period demand attention and appaear to radically polarize the populus, such as the Iraq war or stem cell research. It is also essential to understand that not only may people have conflicting views and opinions in their own thoughts, people are highly selective in the issues they discuss with others. As such, people are much less likely to discuss “takeoff” issues with those whose opinions they are unfamiliar with or knowingly opposed to. In combination, these factors explain why people see so little polarization in their day-to-day lives, et hear so much about the polarized world they live in from television commentators.
by meg on
Jan 17, 2008 at 4:09 pm
Article: Social Desirability Effects and Support for a Female American President Public Opinion Quarterly, Advance Access, published Sept. 21, 2007
Summary:
The authors of this article find that contrary to more conventional public opinion polls, “Roughly 26 percent of the public is ‘angry or upset’ about the prospect of a female president. Moreover, this level of dissatisfaction is constant across several demographic groups.”
Surveyers have worried for decades about the effect of social desirability on survey responses. Previous research has shown that those responding to surveys are likely to be influenced by the desire to conform to social norms, especially in the presence of a researcher. For example, when asked about views on racial integration, a respondent is likely to answer that they are in favor of racial integration regardless of their personal views because it is considered socially unacceptable to espouse segregationist views in modern American society.
In this study, the researchers assessed respondents anger at the thought of a female president while allowing responses to be totally anonymous using something called a “list experiment.” The list experiment divides respondents into two randomly distributed groups; the first is given a list of four items, while the second group is given a list of five items. Since the fifth item on the list is the only significant difference between the two groups, the difference in the means between the two groups is attributed to the fifth item. In this experiment, respondents were asked how many items on the list made them “angry or upset.” The fifth item was “A woman serving as president.”
The results suggest that the 2005 Gallup poll showing that 92 percent of the American public would vote for a woman of their party could be exaggerating American readiness for a First Gentleman.