The Follow Back Problem in a Hyper-Partisan Environment

Many social media users try to obtain as many followers as possible in a social network to gain influence, a challenge that is often referred to as the follow back problem. In this work we study different strategies for this problem in the context of politically polarized social networks and study how political partisanship affect social media users' propensity to follow each other. We test how contact strategy (liking, following) interacts with partisan alignment when trying to induce users to follow back. To do so, we conduct a field experiment on Twitter where we target N=8,104 active users using bot accounts that present as human. We found that users were more than twice as likely to reciprocally follow back bots whose partisanship matched their own. Conversely, when the only form of contact between the bot and the user was the bot liking the user’s posts, the follow rate was extremely low regardless of partisan alignment – and liking a user’s content and following them led to no increase in follow-back relative to just following the user. Finally, we found no partisanship asymmetries, such that Democrats and Republicans preferentially followed co-partisans to the same extent. Our results demonstrate the important impact of following users and having shared partisanship – and the irrelevance of liking users’ content – on solving the follow back problem.

Media Framing on 2018 General Election: A Comparative Content Analysis on Newspapers Coverage Toward Political Parties in Malaysia

This article explores the mainstream media favorability towards political parties in the context of newspaper coverage in Malaysia during the 14th general election in 2018 (GE-14). The newspapers selected for this study are three Malay, two English, two Mandarin and two Tamil newspapers namely: 'Utusan Malaysia,' 'Berita Harian', 'Sinar Harian', 'New Straits Times', 'The Star', 'Nanyang Siang Pau', 'Sin Chew Daily', 'Nanban' and 'Osai'. The background of the newspapers was explored in order to understand the ownerships and approaches in covering the news about GE-14. This study was carried out in two separate phases, in which the data were derived from both periods before and after the GE-14. The data were classified into few categories based on reports on Barisan Nasional (BN), Pakatan Harapan (PH), Gagasan Sejahtera (GS) through the frequencies and percentages of the positive, negative, and neutral forms of coverage. The result of this study implies that in 2018, most of the mainstream media reporting was pro-government, which attributed to the linkage to political parties. Surprisingly, the unprecedented victory of the opposition can be seen to relate to the growth of positive coverage towards Pakatan Harapan, subsequently after the general election. Through content analysis of these selected newspapers, the author discussed gender-related coverage and general issues during the chosen period of the study. Keywords: Mainstream media, media ownership, political partisanship, general election, Malaysia.

Gender and Racial Gaps in Support for Policing and Correctional Reforms: Are the Gaps a Consequence of Political Partisanship?

Divisive criminal justice issues are typically framed through gender and racial lenses, with little empirical work considering the increasing role of political partisanship. Using the 2016 Cooperative Congressional Election Study ( N = 55,000), we estimate multivariate models of support for four policing and correctional reforms. The models initially point to gender gaps and racial gaps. However, as with many public policy issues, support for criminal justice reforms are largely a product of political partisanship—the gender and racial gaps are largely a consequence of gender and racial gaps in partisanship and appear to be driven by white Republican men. As legislative bodies continue to be overrepresented with individuals with the same demographic profile, criminal justice reform prospects are limited.

The COVID States Project #74: Parental Concerns Over COVID Vaccines for Kids

In the U.S., children ages 5 and older are now eligible for COVID-19 vaccination, after the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine received emergency authorization from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in early November 2021. The vaccine had previously been authorized for youth ages 12-17 in Spring 2021. As of December 16, the CDC reported that more than 7 million vaccine doses had been administered to children ages 5-11, and adverse events of concern –those that were resolved with a mild clinical course– had only been identified in less than a dozen kids.How are parents feeling about childhood COVID-19 vaccination in the face of new authorizations and relatively few adverse events of concern? Previously, we examined parents’ concerns about vaccinating kids against COVID-19 in June 2021 and September 2021. In these earlier reports, we discovered that parents’ top five concerns regarding childhood COVID-19 vaccination were: how new the vaccine is, whether the vaccine has been tested enough, whether the vaccine actually works, the short term side effects of the vaccine, and long term side effects of the vaccine. We found that these five parental concerns increased from June to September across several demographic groups. Further, in a separate report we also found that COVID-19 vaccination rates for minors have plateaued from September to November 2021.Now, using survey data from November 2021, we provide an update on the prevalence of these five parental concerns regarding child COVID-19 vaccination, building on the descriptive report about parental intentions from November 2021 survey data. We also examine tendencies and shifts over time for subpopulations of parents, such as by political partisanship, race/ethnicity, gender and age, population density, education level, and likelihood of vaccinating their kids against COVID-19.

A Darkening Spring: How Preexisting Distrust Shaped COVID-19 Skepticism

Despite widespread communication of the health risks associated with the COVID-19 virus, many Americans underestimated its risks and were antagonistic regarding preventative measures. Political partisanship has been linked to diverging attitudes towards the virus, but the cognitive processes underlying this divergence remain unclear. Bayesian models fit to data gathered through two preregistered, online surveys administered before (March 13, 2020, N = 850) and during the first-wave (April-May, 2020, N = 1610) of cases in the United States, reveal two preexisting forms of distrust––distrust in Democratic politicians and in medical scientists––that drove initial skepticism about the virus. During the first-wave of cases, additional factors came into play, suggesting that skeptical attitudes became more deeply embedded within a complex network of auxiliary beliefs. These findings highlight how mechanisms that enhance cognitive coherence can drive anti-science attitudes.

How political partisanship can shape memories and perceptions of identical protest events

It is well-recognized that increasingly polarized American partisans subscribe to sharply diverging worldviews. Can partisanship influence Americans to view the world around them differently from one another? In the current research, we explored partisans’ recollections of objective events that occurred during identical footage of a real protest. All participants viewed the same 87-second compilation of footage from a Women’s March protest. Trump supporters (vs. others) recalled seeing a greater number of negative protest tactics and events (e.g., breaking windows, burning things), even though many of these events did not occur. False perceptions among Trump supporters, in turn, predicted beliefs that the protesters’ tactics were extreme, ultimately accounting for greater opposition to the movement and its cause. Our findings point to the possibility of a feedback loop wherein partisanship underlies different perceptions of the exact same politically relevant event, which in turn may allow observers to cling more tightly to their original partisan stance.

Determinants of Ethnic Differences in School Modality Choices During the COVID-19 Crisis

A growing body of research and popular reporting shows racial differences in school modality choices during the COVID-19 crisis, with White students more likely to attend school in person in the fall of 2020 and spring of 2021. This in-person learning gap raises serious equity concerns. We use unique panel survey data to explore possible explanations. We find that a combination of factors may explain these differences. School districts’ offerings, political partisanship, perceived risk from the pandemic, and local COVID-19 outbreaks are all meaningfully associated with and plausibly explain the in-person learning racial gap. Our results illustrate how not only policy decisions but also political leanings and individuals’ beliefs could contribute to inequality in access to learning and illustrate the need for a better understanding of the factors behind observed racial inequalities in education.

Rebecca West on communism’s allure for the intellectuals: An appraisal

Feminist activist, novelist, literary critic, bio-ethnographer, legal autodidact, and political writer: Rebecca West (1892–1983) was a 20th-century phenomenon. She was also a lifelong critic of communism’s appeal to the intelligentsia. Communism, West claimed, was attractive to three groups of intellectuals outside the Soviet bloc: a minority of scientists who viewed politics as merely a sum of technical problems to solve; the emotionally devastated for whom communism was a means of mental reorientation; and a déclassé segment of the middle class who envisaged communism as a means of material and status advancement. I examine West’s three explanations for communism’s allure, and then proceed to evaluate her account. My assessment is both empirical, using sociological data on American and European communist parties, and methodological, examining the techniques of West’s style, a mix of novelistic empathy and unmasking political partisanship. This mixture I consider fatal because while the novel, like historical interpretation, allows a generous understanding of human agents, unmasking tends towards caricature and denunciation.