Algorithmic Curation and Users’ Civic Attitudes: A Study on Facebook News Feed Results

Facebook users are exposed to diverse news and political content; this means that Facebook is a significant tool for the enhancement of civic participation and engagement in politics. However, it has been argued that Facebook, through its algorithmic curation reinforces the pre-existing attitudes of individuals, rather than challenging or potentially altering them. The objective of this study is to elucidate the emotional and behavioural impact of the personalization of Facebook users’ News Feeds results, and thereby to uncover a possible link between their online and offline civic attitudes. Firstly, we investigate the extent to which users’ Facebook News Feeds results are personalized and customized to fit users’ pre-existing civic attitudes and political interests. Secondly, we explore whether users embody new roles as a result of their emotional and behavioural interaction with political content on Facebook. Our methodology is based on a quantitative survey involving 108 participants. Our findings indicate that, while Facebook can potentially expose users to varying political views and beliefs, it tends to reinforce existing civic attitudes and validate what users already hold to be true. Furthermore, we find that users themselves often assume a proactive stance towards Facebook News Feed results, acquiring roles in which they filter and even censor the content to which they are exposed and thus trying to obfuscate algorithmic curation.

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‘There shall be no musical servitude’: Towards a Multitudinous Shostakovich in the West

Journal of the Royal Musical Association ◽

10.1017/rma.2020.19 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 145 (2) ◽

pp. 495-505

Author(s):

EIRINI DIAMANTOULI

Keyword(s):

Cold War ◽

Communist Party ◽

The Other ◽

The Political ◽

Musical Style ◽

The West ◽

Political Views ◽

Political Interests ◽

The One ◽

The Cold War

Ideologically motivated attempts to elucidate Shostakovich’s political views and to determine whether and how they may be coded into his compositions have come to characterize the Western reception of the composer’s works since his death in 1975. Fuelled by the political oppositions of the cold war, Shostakovich’s posthumous reputation in the West has been largely shaped by two conflicting perspectives. These have positioned him on the one hand as a secret dissident, bent and broken under the unbearable strain of totalitarianism, made heroic through his veiled musical resistance to Communism; and on the other hand as a composer compromised by his capitulation to the regime – represented in an anachronistic musical style. Both perspectives surrender Shostakovich and his music to a crude oversimplification driven by vested political interests. Western listeners thus conditioned are primed to hear either the coded dissidence of a tragic victim of Communist brutality or the sinister submission of a ‘loyal son of the Communist Party’.1 For those prepared to accept Shostakovich as a ‘tragic victim’, the publication of his purported memoirs in 1979, ‘as related to and edited by’ the author Solomon Volkov, presents a tantalizing conclusion: bitterly yet discreetly scornful of the Stalinist regime, Shostakovich was indeed a secret dissident and this dissidence was made tangible in his music.

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Civic Participation Profiles and Predictors Among French-Canadian Youths Transitioning Into Adulthood: A Person-Centered Study

Emerging Adulthood ◽

10.1177/2167696820970689 ◽

2020 ◽

pp. 216769682097068

Author(s):

Marie-Pier Vézina ◽

François Poulin

Keyword(s):

Young Adults ◽

Community Service ◽

Latent Class ◽

Civic Participation ◽

Educational Aspirations ◽

Political Life ◽

Future Research ◽

French Canadian ◽

Civic Attitudes ◽

Logistic Regressions

How do young adults get involved in community and political life and what distinguishes those who are engaged from those who are not? In an attempt to answer these questions, the current study examines civic participation (CP) profiles, and their predictors, among 311 French-Canadian youths transitioning into adulthood. Latent Class Analysis (LCA) and multinomial logistic regressions were performed. Four CP profiles were identified: unengaged ( N = 198; 64%), political specialists ( N = 47; 15%), community service specialists ( N = 31; 10%) and dual activists ( N = 35; 11%). Higher civic attitudes, altruistic orientation, political attentiveness and educational aspirations predicted active CP profile membership. Implications for future research are discussed.

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Opposition potential of Russians’ civil participation: results of the cluster analysis

Political science (RU) ◽

10.31249/poln/2021.03.06 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

A.Yu. Dombrovskaya ◽

A.V. Sinyakov

Keyword(s):

Civic Participation ◽

Research Question ◽

Basic Research ◽

Russian Society ◽

Neutral Position ◽

Information Flows ◽

Research Perspective ◽

Civic Attitudes ◽

The One ◽

The Relationship

The basic research question of the undertaken empirical analysis is the question of the relationship between loyalism and oppositionism, activeness and passivity in the process of forming strategies for civic participation of Russians. Within the framework of the theoretical review that precedes the applied analysis, the authors systematize a significant layer of special studies on the concept, essence, factors of formation and typology of strategies for civic participation. On this basis, the author's method of empirical research of Russian civic activism is proposed. The basic method for collecting factual data is the All-Russian Mass Survey of Russians, represented by territory of residence, gender and age of respondents (N = 1600 people). The clustering method (K-means, SPSS Statistics 26.0) of the survey database identified 12 types of civic participation of Russians. Two indicators for the typology were used: the intensity of civic participation and the modality of the attitude towards the current government. Significant results of the study are the identification of the proportion of representatives of each cluster and the establishment of the relationship between belonging to the type of civic participation and the value and socio-demographic characteristics of Russians. It has been established that the oppositional attitude of Russians' civic attitudes is associated with their pragmatic guidelines, striving for liberal values, high readiness to participate in political and civic actions in online and offline formats, perception of civic activity as a platform free from state participation. The study shows the absolute dominance of a detached neutral position with a relatively insignificant spread of active loyalist and critical positions in the society of the Russian Federation. On the one hand, this indicates the absence of a high potential for protest activity in Russian society. On the other hand, a rather small share of active loyalists in Russian society can limit public consolidation around the official course of the current government. As a research perspective, the author substantiates the need for cybermetric measurement (using big data tools) to support the Russian user audience of external and internal protest-oriented disintegrating information flows, and the degree of approval of constructive consolidating flows aimed at the formation of loyalist sentiments in society, as well as dynamic and discursive characteristics. these information flows.

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The role of multi-platform news consumption in explaining civic participation during the COVID-19 pandemic: A communication mediation approach

New Media & Society ◽

10.1177/14614448211058701 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 146144482110587

Author(s):

Cato Waeterloos ◽

Michel Walrave ◽

Koen Ponnet

Keyword(s):

Social Media ◽

Structural Equation ◽

Civic Participation ◽

Civic Attitudes ◽

News Consumption ◽

Orientation Response ◽

Different Types ◽

Orientation Stimulus ◽

Shed Light

This study employs the orientation–stimulus–reasoning–orientation–response (O-S-R-O-R) framework to examine how multi-platform news consumption is associated with civic participation during the COVID-19 pandemic (offline and via social media) and how this relation is mediated by civic talk and civic attitudes. A survey was administered to 1500 adults in Belgium. Results from structural equation modelling indicate how civic talk with weak ties is not associated with civic attitudes or participation. Analysis of indirect effects reveals that multi-platform news consumption stimulates two different types of participation, through civic talk with strong ties and civic attitudes. The results shed light on previously unexplored pathways towards participation, while providing support for the O-S-R-O-R framework and highlighting the role of social media as an emerging arena for civic participation.

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Bowling with Veterans: The Impact of Military Service on Subsequent Civic Engagement

10.31235/osf.io/wg4md ◽

2016 ◽

Author(s):

Chris Bourg

Keyword(s):

Civic Engagement ◽

Military Service ◽

Civic Participation ◽

Civic Involvement ◽

Civic Attitudes ◽

Civic Values ◽

Us Military ◽

Civic Activity ◽

Volunteer Force ◽

The Impact

From Tocqueville to Putnam, scholars have argued that civic engagement is not only the key to a healthy democracy, but also that civic engagement begats more civic engagement. In this paper I examine the effects of military service on subsequent civic engagement. The key finding is that men who served in the US military prior to the advent of All-Volunteer Force (AVF) in 1973 are actually less civically engaged than those who never served. Military service has no significant effect on civic attitudes. These findings represent an especially powerful challenge to the notion that civic participation begets more civic participation. The fact that serving the citizenry through military duty actually decreases one’s subsequent civic involvement indicates that we cannot assume that all forms of civic activity are equally effective at inculcating their participants with civic values and habits. In fact, these findings indicate a need for a more refined conceptualization of the relationships between civic activity and future civic involvement.

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