Influence of the academic environment on formation of political attitudes of students: the experience of sociological research

2021 ◽  
pp. 33-38
Author(s):  
V.V. Zagrebin ◽  
◽  
E.S. Kalinin

Presented is the study of the role of the academic environment in the formation of political attitudes of modern Russian students on the example of the city of Yaroslavl. The theoretical interpretation of the political attitude is presented. The definition of political attitudes, structure, typology and functions are disclosed. The material presented in the article is based on the results of the author's sociological study of the political attitudes of students, primarily through the study of the university environment as a factor in the formation of political attitudes. The political involvement of students, their protest moods, electoral behavior, political views, trust in political institutions and leaders, popular sources of political information among students, social activity and other aspects are analyzed. The results of the study showed that the influence of the academic environment on the political attitudes of students is rather moderate. It was found that academic performance, the level of student social activity, the faculty of education do not have a significant impact on the political orientations of students. Communication with other students and teachers is essential. Moreover, the influence of teachers and disciplines of a socio-political orientation rather leads to an increase in political literacy and greater involvement of students in the political sphere.

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stefan Sütterlin ◽  
Torvald F. Ask ◽  
Sophia Mägerle ◽  
Sandra Glöckler ◽  
Leandra Wolf ◽  
...  

AI-generated “deep fakes” are becoming increasingly professional and can be expected to become an essential tool for cybercriminals conducting targeted and tailored social engineering attacks, as well as for others aiming for influencing public opinion in a more general sense. While the technological arms race is resulting in increasingly efficient forensic detection tools, these are unlikely to be in place and applied by common users on an everyday basis any time soon, especially if social engineering attacks are camouflaged as unsuspicious conversations. To date, most cybercriminals do not yet have the necessary resources, competencies or the required raw material featuring the target to produce perfect impersonifications. To raise awareness and efficiently train individuals in recognizing the most widespread deep fakes, the understanding of what may cause individual differences in the ability to recognize them can be central. Previous research suggested a close relationship between political attitudes and top-down perceptual and subsequent cognitive processing styles. In this study, we aimed to investigate the impact of political attitudes and agreement with the political message content on the individual’s deep fake recognition skills.In this study, 163 adults (72 females = 44.2%) judged a series of video clips with politicians’ statements across the political spectrum regarding their authenticity and their agreement with the message that was transported. Half of the presented videos were fabricated via lip-sync technology. In addition to the particular agreement to each statement made, more global political attitudes towards social and economic topics were assessed via the Social and Economic Conservatism Scale (SECS).Data analysis revealed robust negative associations between participants’ general and in particular social conservatism and their ability to recognize fabricated videos. This effect was pronounced where there was a specific agreement with the message content. Deep fakes watched on mobile phones and tablets were considerably less likely to be recognized as such compared to when watched on stationary computers.To the best of our knowledge, this study is the first to investigate and establish the association between political attitudes and interindividual differences in deep fake recognition. The study further supports very recently published research suggesting relationships between conservatism and perceived credibility of conspiracy theories and fake news in general. Implications for further research on psychological mechanisms underlying this effect are discussed.


Author(s):  
Gunārs Ozolzīle

A democratic political system can be sustainable and stable only if it has society’s support that is based on legitimacy. So far, the attention of Latvian researchers has mostly been devoted to the so-called “ratings” of separate political institutions and politicians, but no attempt has been undertaken to investigate the political system as a whole through the prism of legitimacy. The aim of the present article is to explore whether there is a sufficient resource of legitimacy of the Latvian political system in order to provide stability and efficiency of the regime. The empirical basis of the research mostly consists of the results of the sociological research conducted in Latvia during the past six years (2011–2016). The data analysis of the present research is based on David Easton and Pippa Norris’ conceptual approach to the study of legitimacy of political systems. One of the conclusions that can be made is that the political system of Latvia is characterised by insufficient diffuse support, which then indicates that the political system experiences the problem of legitimacy. As there is a divided society in Latvia, both communities lack a shared national identity, which could connect the society. In addition, it can be stated that around half of the society is not satisfied with the functioning of the political regime. The analysis performed in the article allows concluding that the trust in political institutions is extremely low and the assessment of the political authority performance is highly negative.


2019 ◽  
Vol 75 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Rugare Rukuni ◽  
Erna Oliver

The first 400 years of Christianity posed an intricate scenario of social dynamics. The interplay of these social dynamics or catalysts analogous to time perceivably conceived the political-religious establishment that then forged orthodoxy. The resultant continuum that was consequent of the imperial religious-political merger upon the following eras further established a formative impact of these catalysts. As a revisionist analysis of the era leading up to the Constantinian turn, and a parallel comparison between preceding and following eras, this research proposes an alternate construction to the narrative of Early Christianity orthodoxy. The preceding position derives from the attempt at the development of a modular theory through which Christianity can be analysed. Through document analysis, a literature review was accomplished. The development of early Christianity from inception to 400 CE when deduced against enculturating influences implies a sociological study. From the three perceived phases that Christianity went through, Jewish-Christian schism, Hellenism and then imperial interventional politics, implications can be made upon latter eras and derivations can be deduced from earlier eras. Significantly, there seems to have been a resurgent theme in the person of religious-political institutions that consolidated their positions. The synergy and inevitability of the process that preceded the first ecumenical council are confirmed in both a positive and negative substantiation of the proposed model. The emergent episcopal leadership in Christianity and its consolidation averse to the political dynamics of imperial Rome implied a composite significance of all factors. Similarly, the intransigent nature of certain African Christian elements argues for the inevitability of cultural enculturation as precedent to political definition in the formation of a universal orthodoxy.


2021 ◽  
pp. 136843022098760
Author(s):  
John V. Petrocelli

Bullshit results from communicating with little to no regard for truth, evidence, or established knowledge (Frankfurt, 1986; Petrocelli, 2018a). Such disregard for truth serves as a common source of antiscientific beliefs and endorsement of alternative facts and is thereby critical to understand. To examine how social perceptions of bullshit may be conditional upon the political orientation of a source and the extremity of one’s political attitudes, two experiments manipulated the alleged political source of bullshit messages and measured the direction and strength of political orientation. In Experiment 1, participants rated the profundity of nonsense statements allegedly stated by high-profile left/liberal or right/conservative political leaders. Experiment 2 participants rated the profundity of both bullshit statements and factual quotations regarding innovation. Results of both experiments suggest that bullshit receptivity and bullshit sensitivity are dependent on the alignment of the source’s bullshit content with the direction and extremity of one’s political attitudes.


Res Publica ◽  
1975 ◽  
Vol 17 (4) ◽  
pp. 589-618
Author(s):  
Stéphanie Bernard

T he article studies the answers collected for seven questions : four of these deal with the present functioning of the socio-political system ; the three last questions concern the future of the system. One has studied respectively : the attitudes towards the basic values of the consumers' society ; the level of satisfaction or dissatisfaction with life in Belgium ; the developments in satisfaction or dissatisfaction during the last four years ; how the various main social categories judge their living conditions ; the attitudes towards an eventual redistribution of national income; the opinions about the probable development of the political system ; those opinions which reveal how one wants the political system to develop. The study of these two last items has allowed to tackle some problems of theoretical interpretation : revolutionary vs. authoritarian risk, dissatisfaction «within the regime» vs. «against the regime», ambivalence of political attitudes, social function of the political power, revolutionary attitudes and rational calculus.


2020 ◽  
Vol 3 (3) ◽  
pp. 12-20
Author(s):  
E. A. Istyagina-Yeliseeva ◽  
C. E. Barijenikova ◽  
A. V. Boldyreva

The methodological, methodological and practical aspects of determining the socio-political activity of student youth by factors of young people involvement in Internet communications, trust in Internet resources, and the use of digital services for satisfying information needs have been revealed. Based on the analysis of the results of sociological research, the role of the information and communication network “Internet” in the formation of young people’s attitudes to various forms of participation in socio-political practices has been highlighted. A number of information sources in the virtual space with political information has been analysed. The article includes information about the conditions and factors that affect the features of virtual communications of young people on political issues. Сonsiderable attention has been paid to the peculiarities of determining the attitudes of young people to participate in elections, as the most obvious form of their political activity. Using the methods of mathematical statistical analysis, the forms of Internet activity of young people have been studied and considered as factors of integration values political activities in dispositional personality structure, political orientation and willingness to co-operate with various actors power relations (political institutions, social movements, parties, groups of political activists), as well as acceptable forms of political behavior. Using the calculation of indices, determining measures of Central trend and variation, as well as other quantitative and qualitative diagnostic tools, a comparative analysis of the results of various sociological studies on the relationship between the level of youth involvement in the Internet space and the degree of political activity has been carried out. The features of student youth perception of political reality depending on the image of political practices in the virtual space have been characterized. Measures to create conditions for the formation of positive attitudes among young people to socially encouraged models of political activity (activity and behavior) have been justified.


Author(s):  
Jill S. Greenlee ◽  
Elizabeth A. Sharrow

As the rhetoric around parenthood has increased in the political world, so too has the scholarly focus on parenthood within political science and related fields. This article attempts to account for the many ways in which parenthood is political and has implications for the study of politics. In this article, we consider parenthood as a role, identity, and life event that has the potential to shape the attitudes and behaviors of individuals. We also review literature on the constitutive roles that public policies and political institutions play in structuring the meanings and practices of parenthood. In this survey, the unit and topics of analysis differ across areas of study, varying from parent, child, candidate, officeholder, historical era, or policy domain. The literature is also characterized by the use of different data sources, methodologies, and research designs, all of which vary in their ability to isolate the independent effect of parenthood on the outcome of interest and which we acknowledge is largely focused on heterosexual partnerships and two-parent households. The scholarship here is organized around four major themes: 1) Parenthood and political socialization, 2) Parenthood and political attitudes and behavior in the mass public, 3) Parenthood and political behavior among elites, and 4) Parenthood as terrain for state-building and public policies. In this structure, we first review some central works within the literature on parents as primary socializing agents of their children’s early political orientations, while also discussing the smaller literature on children as socializing agents onto parents. Second, we examine research on how parenthood shapes the political lives of adults in the mass public. We consider literature regarding how parenthood shapes the policy stances of political elites and literature examining the political attitudes and behaviors of voters and activists. We also review research on how parenthood shapes how voters evaluate political candidates. We then consider how parenthood operates as a landscape for state-building through public policy and political institutions, and how parenthood functions as a social arrangement around which public policies are built. While scholarship outside of political science examines aspects of parenthood with implications for politics, this review covers primarily research within political science. Moreover, we touch only lightly upon topics that have generated vast amounts of scholarship, such as the politics of women’s fertility and reproductive rights. Finally, we are mindful that approaches to the study of parenthood that examine how gender, gender identity, race, sexuality, disability, and class converge to shape distinct parenting experiences, identities, vulnerabilities, and policy needs are unfortunately uncommon within political science—we hope this bibliography might underscore the need for such research in the near future. While we primarily focus on work from the American corpus, we include cross-national studies and perspectives which highlight that national context (i.e., role of the welfare state) shapes the ways in which parenthood matters for politics and policy. The authors thank Hayden Latimer-Ireland, Linda Wang, and Anja Parish for their help with the production of this manuscript.


Itinerario ◽  
1986 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 99-106
Author(s):  
Terrel D. Hale

Senegal's relationship with France from the very beginning was marked by dependency. Economic, political and cultural life in Senegal revolved around the metropole — the highly centralized administrative and political institutions of France located in Paris dominated the Senegalese periphery. But Senegal's dependency was not merely economic or political. French policies towards Senegal primarily aimed at intellectual and cultural goals and were in some cases economic and political liabilities to the metropole. In this respect, the Senegalese case did not correspond to traditional theories of dependency which stress the overall importance of economic interests. Furthermore, the nature of this dependency does not appear to have significantly altered, although the political orientation of the French government has changed greatly since the colonization of Senegal. The character and development of this phenomenon, along with its implications for current French policy, will be considered here in light of the French world view, with particular reference to the Cartesian ideal.


1968 ◽  
Vol 62 (3) ◽  
pp. 852-867 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kenneth P. Langton ◽  
M. Kent Jennings

Attempts to map the political development of individuals inevitably become involved with the relative contribution of different socialization agencies throughout the life cycle. Research has focused to a large extent on the family and to a much lesser degree on other agents such as the educational system. At the secondary school level very little has been done to examine systematically the selected aspects of the total school environment. To gain some insight into the role of the formal school environment, this paper will explore the relationship between the civics curriculum and political attitudes and behavior in American high schools.A number of studies, recently fortified by data from Gabriel Almond and Sidney's Verba's five-nation study, stress the crucial role played by formal education in the political socialization process.[None of the other variables] compares with the educational variable in the extent to which it seems to determine political attitudes. The uneducated man or the man with limited education is a different political actor from the man who has achieved a high level of education.1Such conclusions would not have greatly surprised the founders of the American republic, for they stressed the importance of education to the success of democratic and republican government. Starting from its early days the educational system incorporated civic training. Textbooks exposing threats to the new republic were being used in American schools by the 1790's. By 1915, the term “civics” became associated with high school courses which emphasized the study of political institutions and citizenship training.2


2019 ◽  
Vol 118 (11) ◽  
pp. 365-371
Author(s):  
J Dorasamy ◽  
Mr Jirushlan Dorasamy

Studies, especially in the North America, have shown a relationship between political orientation and moralfoundation. This study investigated whether moral judgements differ from the political orientation of participantsin South Africa moral judgment and the extent to which moral foundations are influenced by politicalorientation.Further, the study investigated the possibility of similar patterns with the North AmericanConservative-Liberal spectrum and the moral foundation. There were 300participants, 78 males and 222 females,who completed an online questionnaire relating to moral foundation and political orientation. The results partiallysupported the hypothesis relating to Liberal and Conservative orientation in South Africa. Further, this studypartially predicted the Liberal-Conservative orientation with patterns in the moral foundation, whilst showingsimilar findings to the North American studies. A growing rate of a neutral/moderate society is evidenced in SouthAfrica and abroad, thereby showing the emergence of a more open approach to both a political and generalstance.”””


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