scholarly journals #MaskOn! #MaskOff! Digital polarization of mask-wearing in the United States during COVID-19

PLoS ONE ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 16 (4) ◽  
pp. e0250817
Author(s):  
Jun Lang ◽  
Wesley W. Erickson ◽  
Zhuo Jing-Schmidt
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Public Opinion ◽  
Media Coverage ◽  
Temporal Trends ◽  
The United States ◽  
Political Polarization ◽  
Health Crisis ◽  
Verbal Representation ◽  
Twitter Users ◽  
The One

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has caused an unprecedented public health crisis worldwide. Its intense politicization constantly made headlines, especially regarding the use of face masks as a safety precaution. However, the extent to which public opinion is polarized on wearing masks has remained anecdotal and the verbal representation of this polarization has not been explored. This study examined the types, themes, temporal trends, and exchange patterns of hashtags about mask wearing posted from March 1 to August 1, 2020 by Twitter users based in the United States. On the one hand, we found a stark rhetorical polarization in terms of semantic antagonism between pro- and anti-mask hashtags, exponential frequency increases of both types of hashtags during the period under study, in parallel to growing COVID-19 case counts, state mask mandates, and media coverage. On the other hand, the results showed an asymmetric participatory polarization in terms of a predominance of pro-mask hashtags along with an “echo chamber” effect in the dominant pro-mask group, which ignored the subversive rhetoric of the anti-mask minority. Notwithstanding the limitations of the research, this study provides a nuanced account of the digital polarization of public opinion on mask wearing. It draws attention to political polarization both as a rhetorical phenomenon and as a participatory process.

“Illegal,” “Undocumented,” or “Unauthorized”: Equivalency Frames, Issue Frames, and Public Opinion on Immigration

2013 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 789-807 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jennifer Merolla ◽  
S. Karthick Ramakrishnan ◽  
Chris Haynes
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Public Opinion ◽  
Media Coverage ◽  
The United States ◽  
Immigration Policies ◽  
Limited Effect ◽  
Issue Frames ◽  
First Time

Immigration has been a salient and contentious topic in the United States, with a great deal of congressional debate, advocacy efforts, and media coverage. Among conservative and liberal groups, there is a vigorous debate over the terms used to describe this population, such as “undocumented” or “illegal,” as both sides perceive significant consequences to public opinion that flow out of this choice in equivalency frames. These same groups also compete over the ways in which immigration policies are framed. Here, for the first time, we examine the use of both types of frames (of immigrants themselves, and the policies affecting them) in media coverage. Importantly, we also test for whether these various frames affect preferences on three different policies of legalization. Our results suggest that efforts to focus on the terms used to describe immigrants have limited effect, and that efforts to frame policy offer greater promise in swaying public opinion on immigration.

The Public Agenda

2019 ◽  
pp. 219-242
Author(s):  
Shaun Bevan ◽  
Will Jennings
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Public Policy ◽  
Public Opinion ◽  
Media Coverage ◽  
The United States ◽  
Survey Question ◽  
Policy Issues ◽  
The Public ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
Public Agenda

This chapter considers the question of what shapes the public agenda and how, in turn, the public agenda influences public policy. It introduces the survey question about the most important problem as a measure of the public agenda—comparing evidence on the policy issues attended to by publics in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Spain, and also the degree to which public opinion itself is subject to “punctuations.” The analysis shows how the public agenda reflects both the problem status and level of media coverage of certain issues (specifically crime and the economy). Lastly, it presents evidence on the correspondence between the priorities of citizens and those of policymakers.

scholarly journals Political Polarization During the COVID-19 Pandemic

2021 ◽  
Vol 3 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sebastian Jungkunz
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Public Opinion ◽  
The United States ◽  
Political Polarization ◽  
Panel Survey ◽  
Political Debate ◽  
The Public ◽  
Economic Distress ◽  
Vignette Experiment ◽  
Negative Sentiment

Affective polarization has increased substantially in the United States and countries of Europe over the last decades and the ramifications of the COVID-19 pandemic have the potential to drastically reinforce such polarization. I investigate the degree and dynamic of affective polarization during the COVID-19 pandemic through a two-wave panel survey with a vignette experiment in Germany fielded in April/May and July/August 2020. I 1) compare the findings to a previous study from 2017, and 2) assess how economic distress due to the crisis changes perceptions of other partisans. Results show that the public today experiences slightly stronger polarization between AfD voters and supporters of other parties. Yet, higher economic distress decreases the negative sentiment of voters of other parties towards AfD supporters. I argue that experiencing economic distress increases the awareness of political debate and the responsiveness to government decisions. Thus, in times of broad cross-party consensus, this can translate into public opinion so that it makes people less hostile towards other partisans.

Coverage of The United States-Pakistan Relationsin American Newspapers

2017 ◽  
Vol 16 (3) ◽  
pp. 189-214
Author(s):  
Saqib Riaz
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Public Opinion ◽  
United States Of America ◽  
Media Coverage ◽  
The United States ◽  
Negative Image ◽  
The Public ◽  
Bilateral Relations ◽  
The Media ◽  
One Year

Abstract The relations between the United States of America and Pakistan have a significant impact on the world’s politics as well as in shaping the future of the globe. However, the relations between the two countries have been passing through a lot of ups and downs during the last seven decades. Media have a pivotal role in framing and shaping this ‘love and hate’ relationship. The purpose of this study was to investigate the coverage of the United States-Pakistan relations by the American newspapers because the media coverage shapes the public opinion. Two major newspapers of the United States were content analyzed for a period of one year with the help of Lexis and Nexis and the coverage of Pakistan was measured and analyzed qualitatively as well as quantitatively. The results of the study revealed that the American newspapers portrayed a highly negative image of Pakistan and most of the coverage about the bilateral relations was found as negative.

Looking for Something to Signify

Screen Bodies ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 22-37
Author(s):  
David Yagüe González
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Social Norms ◽  
Daily Life ◽  
The United States ◽  
The One

The behaviors and actions that an individual carries out in their daily life and how they are translated by their society overdetermine the gender one might have—or not—according to social norms. However, do the postulates enounced by feminist and queer Western thinkers still maintain their validity when the context changes? Can the performances of gender carry out their validity when the landscape is other than the one in Europe or the United States? And how can the context of drag complicate these matters? These are the questions that this article will try to answer by analyzing the 2015 movie Viva by Irish director Paddy Breathnach.

Can India Balance China in Asia?

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan Holslag
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Central Asia ◽  
Economic Reforms ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Other ◽  
Military Power ◽  
Regional Power ◽  
Political Fragmentation ◽  
Strong Interest ◽  
The One

The chapter argues that India has a strong interest to balance China and that the two Asian giants will not be able grow together without conflict. However, India will not be able to balance China’s rise. The chapter argues that India remains stuck between nonalignment and nonperformance. On the one hand, it resists the prospect of a new coalition that balances China from the maritime fringes of Eurasia, especially if that coalition is led by the United States. On the other hand, it has failed to strengthen its own capabilities. Its military power lags behind China’s, its efforts to reach out to both East and Central Asia have ended in disappointment, and its economic reforms have gone nowhere. As a result of that economic underachievement, India finds itself also torn between emotional nationalism and paralyzing political fragmentation, which, in turn, will further complicate its role as a regional power.

Raanan Rein, Fútbol, Jews and the Making of Argentina, trans. Marsha Grenzeback. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2014. 166 pp.

2018 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Jewish Identity ◽  
The United States ◽  
Orthodox Jewish ◽  
Literary Representations ◽  
Stanford University ◽  
Common Theme ◽  
American Jews ◽  
The Common ◽  
The One

This chapter reviews the books Fútbol, Jews and the Making of Argentina (2014), by Raanan Rein, translated by Marsha Grenzeback, and Muscling in on New Worlds: Jews, Sport, and the Making of the Americas (2014), edited by Raanan Rein and David M.K. Sheinin. Rein’s book deals with the “making” of Argentina through football (soccer), while Muscling in on New Worlds focuses on the “making” of the Americas (mainly the one America, called the United States) through sports. Muscling in on New Worlds is a collection of essays that seeks to advance the common theme of sport as “an avenue by which Jews threaded the needle of asserting a Jewish identity.” Topics include Jews as boxers, Jews and football, Jews and yoga, Orthodox Jewish athletes, and American Jews and baseball. There are also essays about the cinematic and literary representations of Jews in sports.

Maximus

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Byers
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Political Action ◽  
American Art ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Self ◽  
Postwar Period ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
Art Practices ◽  
The One

This concluding chapter charts the continuing significance of the early postwar moment in Olson’s later work, particularly The Maximus Poems. The philosophical and political concerns of the American avant-garde between 1946 and 1951 play out across The Maximus Poems just as they inform later American art practices. The search of the early postwar American independent left for a source of political action rooted in the embodied individual is seen, on the one hand, to have been personified in the figure of Maximus. At the same time, Maximus’s radical ‘practice of the self’ charts a sophisticated alternative to the Enlightenment humanist subject widely critiqued in the United States in the immediate postwar period.

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