scholarly journals Lockdown Lives: A longitudinal study of inter-relationships amongst feelings of loneliness, social contacts and solidarity during the COVID-19 lockdown in early 2020.

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jolien van Breen ◽  
Maja Kutlaca ◽  
Yasin Koc ◽  
Bertus F. Jeronimus ◽  
Anne Margit Reitsema ◽  
...  

In this work, we study how social contacts and feelings of solidarity shape experiences of loneliness during the COVID-19 lockdown in early 2020. We draw on cross-national data, collected across four time points between mid-March until early May 2020. We situate our work within the public debate on these issues and discuss to what extent the public understanding of the impact of lockdown is borne out in the data. Results show, first, that although online contacts are beneficial in combating feelings of loneliness, people who feel more lonely are less likely to make use of this strategy. Second, online contacts do not function as a substitute to face-to-face contacts - in fact, more frequent online contacts in earlier weeks predicted an increase in face-to-face contacts in later weeks. Finally, solidarity played only a small role in shaping people’s feelings of loneliness during lockdown. In sum, our findings suggest that we must look beyond the current focus on online contact and solidarity, if we want to help people address their feelings of loneliness. We hope that this work will be instrumental not only in understanding the impact of the lockdown in early 2020, but also in preparing for possible future lockdown periods.

2021 ◽  
pp. 014616722110366
Author(s):  
Jolien A. van Breen ◽  
Maja Kutlaca ◽  
Yasin Koç ◽  
Bertus F. Jeronimus ◽  
Anne Margit Reitsema ◽  
...  

We examine how social contacts and feelings of solidarity shape experiences of loneliness during the COVID-19 lockdown in early 2020. From the PsyCorona database, we obtained longitudinal data from 23 countries, collected between March and May 2020. The results demonstrated that although online contacts help to reduce feelings of loneliness, people who feel more lonely are less likely to use that strategy. Solidarity played only a small role in shaping feelings of loneliness during lockdown. Thus, it seems we must look beyond the current focus on online contact and solidarity to help people address feelings of loneliness during lockdown. Finally, online contacts did not function as a substitute for face-to-face contacts outside the home—in fact, more frequent online contact in earlier weeks predicted more frequent face-to-face contacts in later weeks. As such, this work provides relevant insights into how individuals manage the impact of restrictions on their social lives.


2021 ◽  
pp. 026858092110609
Author(s):  
Julia C Lerch ◽  
Evan Schofer ◽  
David John Frank ◽  
Wesley Longhofer ◽  
Francisco O Ramirez ◽  
...  

Existing scholarship documents large worldwide increases in women’s participation in the public sphere over recent decades, for example, in education, politics, and the labor force. Some scholars have argued that these changes follow broader trends in world society, especially its growing liberalism, which increasingly has reconfigured social life around the choices of empowered and rights-bearing individuals, regardless of gender. Very recently, however, a variety of populisms and nationalisms have emerged to present alternatives to liberalism, including in the international arena. We explore here their implications for women’s participation in public life. We use cross-national data to analyze changes in women’s participation in higher education, the polity, and the economy 1970–2017. We find that women’s participation on average continues to expand over this period, but there is evidence of a growing cross-national divergence. In most domains, women’s participation tends to be lower in countries linked to illiberal international organizations, especially in the recent-most period.


2019 ◽  
Vol 56 (4) ◽  
pp. 604-614 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yuri M Zhukov ◽  
Christian Davenport ◽  
Nadiya Kostyuk

Researchers today have access to an unprecedented amount of geo-referenced, disaggregated data on political conflict. Because these new data sources use disparate event typologies and units of analysis, findings are rarely comparable across studies. As a result, we are unable to answer basic questions like ‘what does conflict A tell us about conflict B?’ This article introduces xSub – a ‘database of databases’ for disaggregated research on political conflict ( www.x-sub.org ). xSub reduces barriers to comparative subnational research, by empowering researchers to quickly construct custom, analysis-ready datasets. xSub currently features subnational data on conflict in 156 countries, from 21 sources, including large data collections and data from individual scholars. To facilitate comparisons across countries and sources, xSub organizes these data into consistent event categories, actors, spatial units (country, province, district, grid cell, electoral constituency), and time units (year, month, week, and day). This article introduces xSub and illustrates its potential, by investigating the impact of repression on dissent across thousands of subnational datasets.


Politics ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 38 (3) ◽  
pp. 378-390 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrea LP Pirro ◽  
Paul Taggart ◽  
Stijn van Kessel

This article offers comparative findings of the nature of populist Euroscepticism in political parties in contemporary Europe in the face of the Great Recession, migrant crisis, and Brexit. Drawing on case studies included in the Special Issue on France, Germany, Greece, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, and the United Kingdom, the article presents summary cross-national data on the positions of parties, the relative importance of the crisis, the framing of Euroscepticism, and the impact of Euroscepticism in different country cases. We use this data to conclude that there are important differences between left- and right-wing variants of populist Euroscepticism, and that although there is diversity across the cases, there is an overall picture of resilience against populist Euroscepticism.


2020 ◽  
Vol 64 (9) ◽  
pp. 1638-1665 ◽  
Author(s):  
Devorah Manekin ◽  
Reed M. Wood

Female combatants play a central role in rebel efforts to cultivate and disseminate positive narratives regarding the movement and its political goals. Yet, the effectiveness of such strategies in shaping audience attitudes or generating tangible benefits for the group remains unclear. We propose and test a theory regarding the channels through which female fighters advance rebel goals. We argue that female fighters positively influence audience attitudes toward rebel groups by strengthening observers’ beliefs about their legitimacy and their decision to use armed tactics. We further contend that these effects directly help them secure support from transnational nonstate actors and indirectly promote state support. We assess our arguments by combining a novel survey experiment in two countries with analyses of new cross-national data on female combatants and information about transnational support for rebels. The empirical results support our arguments and demonstrate the impact of gender framing on rebel efforts to secure support.


2016 ◽  
Vol 60 (8) ◽  
pp. 1446-1472 ◽  
Author(s):  
Reed M. Wood ◽  
Thorin M. Wright

Natural disasters often cause significant human suffering. They may also provide incentives for states to escalate repression against their citizens. We argue that state authorities escalate repression in the wake of natural disasters because the combination of increased grievances and declining state control produced by disasters creates windows of opportunity for dissident mobilization and challenges to state authority. We also investigate the impact of the post-disaster humanitarian aid on this relationship. Specifically, we argue that inflows of aid in the immediate aftermath of disasters are likely to dampen the impact of disasters on repression. However, we expect that this effect is greater when aid flows to more democratic states. We examine these interrelated hypotheses using cross-national data on immediate-onset natural disasters and state violations of physical integrity rights between 1977 and 2009 as well as newly collected foreign aid data disaggregated by sector. The results provide support for both our general argument and the corollary hypotheses.


2006 ◽  
Vol 36 (2) ◽  
pp. 269-290 ◽  
Author(s):  
JOHN GEER ◽  
RICHARD R. LAU

Scholars have invested a great deal of effort in trying to estimate the impact of political campaigns on the public. While progress has been made, one fundamental problem continues to plague our attempts to study campaigns: the lack of good, detailed data about the behaviour of candidates. In the United States, for instance, the presidential battle is a national struggle that unfolds locally on the stages of fifty states, yet most data collection efforts have treated presidential elections as if they were national contests, conducted (implicitly) in an identical manner across the entire country. Using available (national) data as a baseline and theory to predict plausible variations from that baseline, the authors devise a method for simulating variation in presidential campaigns across states and over election years—one of the crucial missing pieces of the puzzle. Their method generates a range of plausible effects, which is often narrow enough to shed light on important hypotheses. It can be employed whenever data are available at a more aggregate level than is desirable. This method is then applied to assess the debate over the impact of attack advertising on turnout. This approach suggests that campaign negativism stimulated (rather than demobilized) turnout in presidential elections from 1980 through 2000.


2003 ◽  
Vol 25 (3) ◽  
pp. 49-59 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vivien Ellen Rose ◽  
Julie Corley

A review of Not for Ourselves Alone, a historical documentary film by Ken Burns about Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony's leadership of the nineteenthcentury women's rights movement, indicates serious concerns about the impact of historical documentary filmmaking on public understanding of the past. New ways to engage the public in the process of historical analysis and understanding are suggested.


Author(s):  
A. Avilova ◽  
A. Gutnick ◽  
Y. Kvashnin ◽  
V. Olenchenko ◽  
N. Toganova ◽  
...  

The article is devoted to the European Parliament elections held in May 2014. Their results are analyzed on two levels – national and pan-European. On the national one the authors provide case studies of the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Poland, Italy and Greece. The impact of economic crisis and later the severe public debt crisis in Eurozone countries on the EU Parliament elections is estimated. Another factor examined in the study is the public awareness of the EU’s institutions in everyday life. The authors point out the contradiction between the public opinion on these institutions and the ongoing process of further integration due to the crises in such fields as finances and government expenditures. The latest process is viewed by the experts as a positive one, but the lack of public understanding resulted in abstention, protest voting and the rise of right-wing and populist parties. The national case studies showed that the situation varied from country to country. In some of them the pan-European agenda has played a greater role, in others it influenced the elections, but in the end they were mainly a referendum on the national government performance. The case of the UK illustrated the first tendency, but partly also the second one: the elections not only put the question about the country’s role in the EU, but also reflected the citizens’ discontent in mainstream politics. France, Greece and partly Italy showed that the voters disapprove the EU politics, especially concerning such fields as immigration and economic and debt crisis. The Polish case demonstrates that the lack of information on the EU’s institutions can jeopardize the positions of centrist parties even in a very pro-European country. The election results in FRG confirm that the Germans are trying to identify their country’s role in the European institutions and find the right attitude toward its growing responsibility for the integration process.


Author(s):  
Elena  Caoduro

The bombings on March 11, 2004 in Madrid and on July 7, 2005 in London brought terror to the heart of Europe and amplified the feelings of fear, disbelief and suspicion developed as a consequence of 9/11 trauma. This article departs from Hollywood discourses on international terrorism to investigate how European cinema reflected upon these tragedies. Focusing on the films Fremder Freund (The Friend, Elmar Fischer, 2003)and London River (Rachid Bouchareb, 2009), it outlines the peculiarities of European cinema in dealing with international terrorism and thus analyses the representation of Islamic fundamentalism and more generally, Muslim communities. The films stimulate the public debate about contemporary society and the role of British and German institutions in developing “home-grown” terrorists. The article argues that these films avoid any explicit attempts of commemorating and memorialising these tragic events, but they contextualise the attacks engaging with issues of multiculturalism rather than commenting on the problem of international crime and terrorism.


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