What Does Rigged Mean? Partisan and Widely Shared Perceptions of Threats to Elections

2020 ◽  
pp. 000276422097977
Author(s):  
Dakota Park-Ozee ◽  
Sharon E. Jarvis

This article is a piece of a larger line of research supported by the Democracy Fund studying how to communicate about threats to elections in ways that do not dampen people’s desire to vote or make them question the integrity of electoral outcomes. It reports findings from a computerized text analysis of 2,970 open-ended survey responses in the field during the fall of 2018 to the prompt “when people say that elections are rigged, what do you think they mean?” Four key themes emerged in the data: (1) Democrats and Republicans were equally likely to regard electoral outcomes as predetermined, (2) Republicans were twice as likely to be concerned about illegal voting than Democrats, (3) Democrats were slightly more likely to be upset about money in politics than Republicans, and (4) Democrats were twice as likely to be preoccupied with Russian meddling than Republicans. A qualitative analysis of the first theme revealed both similarities across partisans as well as how Democrats focus on how threats to elections benefit people already in power, whereas Republicans worry that elections are threatened by ordinary people cheating. These findings, and the nuances contributing to them, raise new paths for research on communicating about elections without decreasing people’s faith in them.

Author(s):  
Natalie Shapira ◽  
Gal Lazarus ◽  
Yoav Goldberg ◽  
Eva Gilboa-Schechtman ◽  
Rivka Tuval-Mashiach ◽  
...  

Author(s):  
Kate G. Niederhoffer ◽  
James W. Pennebaker

Over two decades of research devoted to the writing paradigm has resulted in substantial findings that translating emotional events into words leads to profound social, psychological, and neural changes. How and why would constructing stories about important personal events be so beneficial? The chapter describes the writing paradigm used in this research, offering an overview of the research findings and examination of its historical antecedents. While the precise mechanisms through which a narrative heals are still unrealized, we review three underlying processes that might explain its power: emotional inhibition, cognitive processes, and linguistic processes that echo changes in social orientation. Most recently, advances in computerized text analysis, in addition to the rapid development of the Internet, have afforded a new lens on the psychological transformations achieved through the writing paradigm. Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC) is one such computerized text analysis program that captures style and content words. Originally created to better understand the language of emotional upheaval and recovery, with a focus on content and emotional valence, more recent research has focused on subtle stylistic differences in function words such as pronouns, articles, and prepositions. These “junk words” have proven to be reliable markers of demographics, biological activity, depression, life stressors, deception, and status. The chapter briefly reviews recent LIWC-based research regarding the often-overlooked stylistic components of sharing one's story.


2019 ◽  
Vol 17 ◽  
pp. 211
Author(s):  
Alireza Jalilifar ◽  
Yasamin Moradi

Today, studying tourism discourse has become widespread among scholars in the field of text analysis. However, few, if any, studies which have addressed the language of tourism have examined the verbal content of travel brochures from the point of view of the appraisal model. The major questions addressed in this study pertain to Graduation strategies as part of appraisal strategies in the discourse of tourism as well as the lexico-grammatical resources for the coding of these strategies in texts. The dataset comprised 50 e-brochures released by tour operators across the United States within the period 2012 to 2013. First, the data were examined quantitatively to identify the statistical variations in utilizing Graduation strategies in tourist brochures. The preferences for lexico-grammatical resources for the construal of these strategies were also illustrated in light of a qualitative analysis. The results of the study revealed that the discourse of travel brochures is loaded with Graduation strategies. The subsystems within the system of Graduation were shown to serve as strong tools in promoting various aspects of tourist destinations such as the number and distribution of tourist sites over an area.


CJEM ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 19 (S1) ◽  
pp. S102-S103
Author(s):  
L. Krebs ◽  
L. Gaudet ◽  
L.B. Chartier ◽  
B.R. Holroyd ◽  
S. Dowling ◽  
...  

Introduction: Recently, campaigns placing considerable emphasis on improving emergency department (ED) care by reducing unnecessary tests, treatments, and/or procedures have been initiated. This study explored how Canadian emergency physicians (EPs) conceptualize unnecessary care in the ED. Methods: An online 60-question survey was distributed to EP-members of the Canadian Association of Emergency Physicians (CAEP) with valid emails. The survey explored respondents awareness/support for initiatives to improve ED care (i.e., reduce unnecessary tests, treatments and/or procedures) and asked respondents to define “unnecessary care” in the ED. Thematic qualitative analysis was performed on these responses to identify key themes and sub-themes and explore variation among EPs definitions of unnecessary care. Results: A total of 324 surveys were completed (response rate: 18%); 300 provided free-text definitions of unnecessary care. Most commonly, unnecessary ED care was defined as: 1) performing tests, treatments, procedures, and/or consults that were not indicated or potentially harmful (n=169) and/or 2) care that should have been provided within a non-emergent context for a non-urgent patient (n=143). Emergency physicians highlighted the role of system-level factors and system failures that result in ED presentations as definitions of unnecessary care (n=69). They also noted a distinction between providing necessary care for a non-urgent patient and performing inappropriate/non-evidenced based care. Finally, a tension emerged in their description of frustration with patient expectations (n=17) and/or non-ED referrals (n=24) for specific tests, treatments, and/or procedures. These frustrations were juxtaposed by participants who asserted that “in a patient-centred care environment, no care is unnecessary” (Participant 50; n=12). Conclusion: Variation in the definition of unnecessary ED care is evident among EPs and illustrates that EPs’ conceptualization of unnecessary care is more nuanced than current campaigns addressing ED care improvements represent. This may contribute to a perceived lack of uptake or support for these initiatives. Further exploring EPs perceptions of these campaigns has the potential to improve EP engagement and influence the language utilized by these programs.


2019 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 325-342 ◽  
Author(s):  
John G. Bullock ◽  
Gabriel Lenz

If citizens are to hold politicians accountable for their performance, they probably must have some sense of the relevant facts, such as whether the economy is growing. In surveys, Democrats and Republicans often claim to hold different beliefs about these facts, which raises normative concerns. However, it is not clear that their divergent survey responses reflect actual divergence of beliefs. In this review, we conclude that partisan divergence in survey responses is often not due to sincere, considered differences of belief that fall along party lines—but determining what it is due to is difficult. We review the evidence for possible explanations, especially insincere responding and congenial inference. Research in this area is still nascent, and much more will be required before we can speak with precision about the causes of partisan divergence in responses to factual questions.


Author(s):  
Jon Kingzette

Abstract Scholars, the media, and ordinary people alike express alarm at the apparent loathing between Democrats and Republicans in the mass public. However, the evidence of such loathing typically comes from survey items that measure attitudes toward the Democratic and Republican Parties, rather than attitudes toward ordinary partisans. Using a nationally representative survey, I find that Democrats and Republicans have substantially more positive feelings toward ordinary people belonging to the opposing party than they do toward politicians in the opposing party and the opposing party itself. These results indicate that research relying on measures of feelings toward the opposing “Party” vastly overstates levels of partisan animosity in the American public and demonstrate the need to distinguish between attitudes toward party elites and ordinary partisans in future research.


Author(s):  
Freideriki Carmen Mamali ◽  
Christine M. Lehane ◽  
Walter Wittich ◽  
Natalina Martiniello ◽  
Jesper Dammeyer

Author(s):  
A. Saenko ◽  

After the Second World War the former eastern provinces of Germany, called the Recovered Territories, were joined to Poland. The purpose of the study is to identify the main approaches to the development of the historical and cultural heritage of new territories, presented on the pages of the Polish magazine “Osadnik” (1946–1948), using the methods of computerized text analysis. It is concluded that two interrelated tendencies were the main ones in the policy of the state – the removal from the cultural landscape German features and the return of its Polish appearance.


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