scholarly journals Creating a Collective Identity in The Digital Age: The Perspective of Behavioural Economics

Politeja ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 17 (5 (68)) ◽  
pp. 85-102
Author(s):  
Łukasz Młyńczyk

This paper comprises four related parts. The first part presents hypotheses regarding the forms of creating a collective identity in the age of digitization and the adopted theoretical assumptions, including conceptualization of concepts. The concept of Daniel Kahneman’s thinking systems is quoted, which was used to analyse the presented phenomenon in relation to the political decisionmaking process. The second section is a presentation of the research problem as a concept that is equivalent to the category of behavioural economics. Next, we explain the pattern of the transition from the left-wing identity policy to its right-wing response. The final part represents an analysis of the Internet collective identity in relation to political risk and profit, while the epilogue presents the political implications of the use of collective identity by measurement tools and consulting entities managing the flow, collection and compilation of data.

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Régis Ebeling ◽  
Carlos Córdova Sáenz ◽  
Jeferson Campos Nobre ◽  
Karin Becker

The worldwide COVID-19 pandemic has struck people’s lives overnight. With an alarming contagious rate and no effective treatments or vaccines, it has evoked all sorts of reactions. In this paper, we propose a framework to analyze how political polarization affects groups’ behavior with opposed stances, using the Brazilian COVID polarized scenario as a case study. Two Twitter groups represent the pro/against social isolation stances referred to as Chloroquiners and Quarenteners. The framework encompasses: a) techniques to automatically infer from users political orientation, b) topic modeling to discover the homogeneity of concerns expressed by each group; c) network analysis and community detection to characterize their behavior as a social network group and d) analysis of linguistic characteristics to identify psychological aspects. Our main findings confirm that Cloroquiners are right-wing partisans, whereas Quarenteners are more related to the left-wing. The political polarization of Chloroquiners and Quarenteners influence the arguments of economy and life, and support/opposition to the president. As a group, the network of Chloroquiners is more closed and connected, and Quarenteners have a more diverse political engagement. In terms of psychological aspects, polarized groups come together on cognitive issues and negative emotions.


Author(s):  
Boris I. Kolonitskii

The article examines the cultural forms of legitimation / delegitimation of authority of the Provisional Government. Particular attention is paid to the personal authority of Alexander Kerensky, including rhetorical (persuasive) devices and visual images which underlay the tactics of praising or condemning him. As the main source, the article uses the newspapers of A.A. Suvorin, namely Malen'kaya gazeta [Little newspaper], Narodnaya gazeta [People’s newspaper], Rus' [Rus], Novaya Rus' [New Rus]. These newspapers are compared with resolutions, letters and diaries, and with publications in other periodicals. The study clarifies some aspects of political isolation of the Provisional Government in the fall of 1917. By this time, the propaganda attack on Kerensky was conducted not only by the Bolsheviks and other left-wing groups but also by the right-wing and conservative publications. The propaganda of the left- and right-wing opponents was significantly different but they had a point of contact: both of them created the image of the “traitor” who was unworthy to remain in power.


Res Publica ◽  
1970 ◽  
Vol 34 (2) ◽  
pp. 175-207
Author(s):  
Bart Maddens

Voters probably do not take a series of relevant issues into consideration but rather vote on the basis of the few issues that happen to be on their minds at the moment of the decision. Issue salience, i.e. the availability of issue-schema's, is to a certain extent determined by the political communication during the election campaign. A content analysis of the debates during the 1991 campaign shows that the socio-economic issues, the ethnic issue and the immigrant issue were on top of the agenda. A similar analysis of the party political broadcasts and the ads in the national newspapers indicates that the parties tried to focus the campaign on the socio-economie issues (christian-democrats, socialists), the functioning of the political system (socialists, liberals) and to a much lesser extent on the environmental issue (greens) and the communal issue (left-wing and right-wing Flemish nationalists). Only the latter nationalist party attempted to prime the immigrant issue. Survey data show that this issue was exceptionally salient in the electorate, as were the ethnic issue and the political system issue.


Author(s):  
Laurențiu Ștefan

In Romania, a highly segmented and extremely volatile party system has contributed to a predominance of coalition governments. Alternation in power by coalitions led by either left-wing or right-wing parties used to be a major feature of Romanian governments. Thus, until a short-lived grand coalition in 2009, ideologically homogeneous coalitions were the general practice. Since then, parties from the right and left of the political spectrum have learned to work together in government. Given the semi-presidential nature of the political regime and the exclusive power to nominate the prime minister, the Romanian president plays an important role in coalition formation. The president also plays a pivotal role by shadowing the prime minister and therefore influencing the governance of coalitions. She has the power to veto ministerial appointments and therefore she can also shape the cabinet line-up. Pre-election coalitions are a common feature, more than two-thirds of Romanian coalition governments have been predicated on such agreements. Coalition agreements dealt with both policy issues and coalition decision-making bodies and the governance mechanisms that have been in most cases enforced and complied with—until the break-up of the coalition and the downfall of the respective government. One very common decision-making body is the Coalition Committee, which has been backed on the operational level by an inner cabinet made up of the prime minister and the deputy prime ministers, which usually are the heads of the junior coalition parties.


Author(s):  
Christian Klösch

Division and Radicalisation. German Liberals and German Nationals 1850–1918. The developments in the 19th century laid the foundation for the spectrum of political parties that have determined the political landscape of Austria to the present day. Initially, German nationalism was shaped by a “liberal-thinking upper bourgeoisie”, but when the German National bloc broke up in the 1880s, an “aristocratically thinking petty bourgeoisie” took the lead. The political biography of Georg von Schönerer (1842–1921) reflects this development. From the remains of the German liberal ideology arose not only social democracy and Christian socialism but a German national “right wing”, economically liberal and state-supporting, and a “left wing”, ethnic, racist and anti-Semitic. These wings overlapped in many ways and their proponents often changed positions. Ultimately, Austrian German nationalist parties laid the ideological foundation upon which in the 20th century National Socialism built its ideology.


2016 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 26-48 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gintaras Aleknonis ◽  
Renata Matkevičienė

Abstract The research on populism and populist political communication in Lithuania is rather limited, regardless of the fact that populist movements and politicians are influential on national and local political levels; they also receive sufficient support from a significant share of the population. Because the Western European research tradition is concentrated on the challenges of right-wing populism, Lithuanian political scientists distinguish right-wing populism as more significant in comparison to left-wing populism. Although Lithuanian researchers note, that in the balance of the left-right wing populists, Lithuania stands out with the majority of left-wing populists, in comparison to the popularity and number of right-wing populists in neighbouring countries. Despite the interest of scholars in various fields of policy research in Lithuania, there is still a lack of research on populist political communication, and what interest does exist is mostly concentrated on analysis of practical issues within the political arena, e.g. the study of the processes of political elections. The analysis of populist political communication in Lithuania revealed that populism is a relatively oft-mentioned topic in Lithuanian scientific discourse, but in most cases remains on the margins of other research. The theoretical work presents the assumptions based on the analysis of the political situation in Lithuania and examples from other countries. The empirical research of populism is scarce, and in most cases based on content analysis of political documents and media reports.


2015 ◽  
Vol 23 (3) ◽  
pp. 193-204 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthijs Rooduijn ◽  
Tjitske Akkerman

How is populism distributed over the political spectrum? Are right-wing parties more populist than left-wing parties? Based on the analysis of 32 parties in five Western European countries between 1989 and 2008, we show that radical parties on both the left and the right are inclined to employ a populist discourse. This is a striking finding, because populism in Western Europe has typically been associated with the radical right; only some particular radical left parties have been labeled populist as well. This article suggests that the contemporary radical left in Western Europe is generally populist. Our explanation is that many contemporary radical left parties are not traditionally communist or socialist (anymore). They do not focus on the ‘proletariat’, but glorify a more general category: the ‘good people’. Moreover, they do not reject the system of liberal democracy as such, but only criticize the political and/or economic elites within that system.


2015 ◽  
Vol 41 (10) ◽  
pp. 1096-1111
Author(s):  
Andreea Stoian ◽  
Delia Tatu-Cornea

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine the influence of the political partisanship of government in charges of returns on the European stock markets. The authors found a large body of research investigating this issue for the case of US stock market but less evidence for the European stock markets. Design/methodology/approach – The authors employ a panel data model with fixed-effects and an additional dynamic panel model using the bias-corrected LSDV estimator on a data set consisting of monthly and quarterly data. The data range from 2000 to 2010 and cover 20 European Union (EU) countries. The authors test several hypotheses, and run distinct regressions using political, financial, and economic variables. The authors also divide the data set into two sub-samples in order to reveal the distinctions between advanced and emerging economies in the EU. Findings – The authors find that stock markets perform better under right-wing administrations. The result is consistent for the advanced EU economies, but the authors found no robust evidence in that sense for emerging countries. Additionally, the authors show that European stock market preferences for right/left-wing administrations is not necessarily related to the beliefs about the size of unemployment, inflation, deficit, and/or debt, which opens the field for further research in this area. Originality/value – The study contributes to existing knowledge. It examines if Wall Street folklore, asserting for many decades that stock markets perform better under right-wing governments, also holds for European stock markets given the distinctions in the political and financial systems between USA and Europe. Moreover, the authors underline the introduction in the analysis of the Central and Eastern European countries.


2021 ◽  
Vol 6 ◽  
Author(s):  
Svenja Kopyciok ◽  
Hilary Silver

Given rising populist nationalism and multiplying meanings of “right” and “left,” this paper assesses whether Europeans who identify as extremely left-wing on the political spectrum hold anti-immigrant attitudes. In contrast to right-wing xenophobes, we further examine whether the political left, who conventionally emphasize class conflict, oppose immigrants less for cultural reasons and more for materialist reasons. We also consider whether socioeconomic status and values traditionally associated with the political left—favoring redistributive policies, egalitarianism, or social rights to benefits and services for immigrants—temper left- more than right-wing xenophobia. We find that a surprisingly large share of those who identify as far left do express extremely xenophobic attitudes, and we profile them in contrast to far right xenophobes. With logistic regression analysis of nine waves of the European Social Survey (2002–2018), we find that, all things equal, socioeconomic status influences far left xenophobia more than far right xenophobia, but inegalitarian values, less support for redistributive policies, and welfare chauvinism can only partially account for far left xenophobia and unexpectedly do not distinguish it from far right xenophobia. This implies that far left parties might adopt anti-immigrant policies to try to retain their loyal voters, even though such policies do not comport with broader left-wing values and may increase racial and ethnic inequality. Controlling for demographic and attitudinal differences reduces the probability of xenophobia among the far left by about sixty percent, but there remains some residual anti-immigrant attitudes among this group still to be explained.


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