Salient deliberative norm types in comment sections on news sites

Civil and argumentative public discussions are considered crucial for functioning democracies. Among other factors, the quality of user discussions of political issues on news sites depends on prevalent discussion norms. We integrate injunctive and descriptive norms into news comment research, assuming that the degree of salience of the respective norm influences the commenting behavior. Furthermore, we discuss how technical affordances such as default comment sorting determine the comment visibility and thus the salience of norms. Using data from a content analysis of 8162 comments on eight German news sites, we investigate how the two norm types influence deliberative forms of commenting. The results show that different types of salient injunctive and descriptive norms promote norm-compliant commenting. Furthermore, the default comment sorting can determine which comments are more or less salient. The results underline the importance of distinguishing different norm types in analyzing the quality of user comments in comment sections.

COVID-19 vaccine brand hesitancy and other challenges to vaccination in the Philippines

Effective and safe COVID-19 vaccines have been developed at a rapid and unprecedented pace to control the spread of the virus, and prevent hospitalisations and deaths. However, COVID-19 vaccine uptake is challenged by vaccine hesitancy and anti-vaccination sentiments, a global shortage of vaccine supply, and inequitable vaccine distribution especially among low- and middle-income countries including the Philippines. In this paper, we explored vaccination narratives and challenges experienced and observed by Filipinos during the early vaccination period. We interviewed 35 individuals from a subsample of 1,599 survey respondents 18 years and older in the Philippines. The interviews were conducted in Filipino, Cebuano, and/or English via online platforms such as Zoom or via phone call. All interviews were recorded, transcribed verbatim, translated, and analysed using inductive content analysis. To highlight the complex reasons for delaying and/or refusing COVID-19 vaccines, we embedded our findings within the social ecological model. Our analysis showed that individual perceptions play a major role in the decision to vaccinate. Such perceptions are shaped by exposure to (mis)information amplified by the media, the community, and the health system. Social networks may either positively or negatively impact vaccination uptake, depending on their views on vaccines. Political issues contribute to vaccine brand hesitancy, resulting in vaccination delays and refusals. Perceptions about the inefficiency and inflexibility of the system also create additional barriers to the vaccine rollout in the country, especially among vulnerable and marginalised groups. Recognising and addressing concerns at all levels are needed to improve COVID-19 vaccination uptake and reach. Strengthening health literacy is a critical tool to combat misinformation that undermines vaccine confidence. Vaccination systems must also consider the needs of marginalised and vulnerable groups to ensure their access to vaccines. In all these efforts to improve vaccine uptake, governments will need to engage with communities to ‘co-create’ solutions.

Relational Becoming: Considering Classroom Dialogue in Ethico-ontological Terms

This paper draws on Bakhtin’s ethico-ontological vision of dialogue to theorize “relational becoming” on a micro-level. To do so, it introduces three “ethical dimensions of dialogue” (responsibility, responsiveness, and capacitation) and develops the interrelated concepts of addressability and presencing as analytical lenses. Drawing on transcript data from a series of high school and college students’ discussions about controversial political issues, the analysis examines how interlocutors made themselves addressable, addressed each other, and were “presenced” in dialogue. It also discusses the ethico-ontological potential of these interactions, identifying a problematic tendency among interlocutors to not “show up” in verbal discourse in a variety of ways, including, in particular, reliance on abstractions.

Factors influencing the update of beliefs regarding controversial political issues

When updating beliefs in light of new information, people preferentially integrate information that is consistent with their prior beliefs and helps them construe a coherent view of the world. Such a selective integration of new information likely contributes to belief polarisation and compromises public discourse. Therefore, it is crucial to understand the factors that underlie biased belief updating. To this end, I conducted three pre-registered experiments covering different controversial political issues (i.e., Experiment 1: climate change, Experiment 2: speed limit on highways, Experiment 3: immigration in relation to violent crime). The main hypothesis was that negative reappraisal of new information (referred to as “cognitive immunisation”) hinders belief updating. Support for this hypothesis was found only in Experiment 2. In all experiments, the magnitude of the prediction error (i.e., the discrepancy between prior beliefs and new information) was strongly related to belief updating. Across experiments, participants’ general attitudes regarding the respective issue influenced the strength of beliefs, but not their update. The present findings provide some indication that the engagement in cognitive immunisation can lead to the maintenance of beliefs despite disconfirming information. However, by far the largest association with belief updating was with the magnitude of the prediction error.

Social Media and Youth Political Participation at the Time of Political Polarization: A Study on University Students in Indonesia during the 2017 Jakarta Gubernatorial Election

<p>Some studies theorized social media as fostering youth political participation by facilitating the development of online participatory cultures (Jenkins, 2009). Online participatory cultures provide young citizens with opportunities to discuss and gain information about political topics, create capacity for action by promoting digital skills and norms for group interaction, and facilitate recruitment into civic and political life (Kahne et al., 2013). Against the backdrop of this discourse, this research aims to investigate social media and youth political participation in Indonesia’s context. This project’s research questions ask: How politics is experienced by Indonesian youth and how social media is used by them to engage with political activities? To answer those questions, this research conducted a survey (n=265) and interviews (n=29) with students from three universities in Jakarta. This research adopted grounded theory approach in analysing the data. This research revealed that social media in general provides affordances for youth to engage with activities related to political conversation and social-political campaign (as indicated by the findings that social media attracts more numbers of youth participating in these two categories of activity). Thus, this research in part support propositions advocated by the thesis of online participatory cultures that social media facilitates youth political participation. However, under the specific context of ethnic and religious-based political polarization which happened during this research, this research also revealed that the salient form of social media use by youth is in fact monitoring political conversation. This activity is driven by the sense of “kepo” (the drive to asses how others are thinking, feeling, and responding to certain political issues) and has the effect on youth’s fear of social isolation (in the form of fear of breaking relationship with others). Eventually, this activity leads youth to the act of silence (in the form of refraining political expression on social media). In this case, this research (unintentionally) confirm the theory of spiral of silence proposed by Elizabeth Noelle-Neumann (1984). Finally, this research contributes to the academic discourse by providing a critical insight into the way social media could lead its users to the process of spiral of silence i.e. by exacerbating the fear of social isolation obtained from the activity of social surveillance (in the form of monitoring political conversation).</p>

Social Media and Youth Political Participation at the Time of Political Polarization: A Study on University Students in Indonesia during the 2017 Jakarta Gubernatorial Election

<p>Some studies theorized social media as fostering youth political participation by facilitating the development of online participatory cultures (Jenkins, 2009). Online participatory cultures provide young citizens with opportunities to discuss and gain information about political topics, create capacity for action by promoting digital skills and norms for group interaction, and facilitate recruitment into civic and political life (Kahne et al., 2013). Against the backdrop of this discourse, this research aims to investigate social media and youth political participation in Indonesia’s context. This project’s research questions ask: How politics is experienced by Indonesian youth and how social media is used by them to engage with political activities? To answer those questions, this research conducted a survey (n=265) and interviews (n=29) with students from three universities in Jakarta. This research adopted grounded theory approach in analysing the data. This research revealed that social media in general provides affordances for youth to engage with activities related to political conversation and social-political campaign (as indicated by the findings that social media attracts more numbers of youth participating in these two categories of activity). Thus, this research in part support propositions advocated by the thesis of online participatory cultures that social media facilitates youth political participation. However, under the specific context of ethnic and religious-based political polarization which happened during this research, this research also revealed that the salient form of social media use by youth is in fact monitoring political conversation. This activity is driven by the sense of “kepo” (the drive to asses how others are thinking, feeling, and responding to certain political issues) and has the effect on youth’s fear of social isolation (in the form of fear of breaking relationship with others). Eventually, this activity leads youth to the act of silence (in the form of refraining political expression on social media). In this case, this research (unintentionally) confirm the theory of spiral of silence proposed by Elizabeth Noelle-Neumann (1984). Finally, this research contributes to the academic discourse by providing a critical insight into the way social media could lead its users to the process of spiral of silence i.e. by exacerbating the fear of social isolation obtained from the activity of social surveillance (in the form of monitoring political conversation).</p>

Comparing Push and Pull Factors Affecting Migration

The purpose of this research was to conduct a comparison of the push and pull factors affecting migration between Poland and Romania. The study aimed to find out which among the push and pull factors have a greater effect overall and individually on the migration activities. The study was conducted using primary data collected from migrants in both countries using a structured questionnaire. There were data from 298 and 288 surveys for Poland and Romania, respectively. The push and pull migration framework was applied to guide the study. The model suitability was confirmed satisfactory on validity, reliability and factor analysis. The hypothesis was analyzed and evaluated using multiple regression analysis. The findings of the study indicated that pull factors have a greater influence on migration in these two countries as compared to the push factors. Five out of six (economic, political and social in Poland and economic and political in Romania) pull factors were found significant as compared to two (social in Poland and in Romania) out of six push factors. Pull economic factors were significant determinants of migration in all the countries. Pull political factors were found to have the highest effect in both countries, because they influenced migrants in Romania. Economic factors are the major factors that influence migration, including the hope of finding better jobs and better life in the foreign countries, and these factors should be addressed in the effort to reduce migration. In addition, political issues such as unfair legal system, violent conflicts, underdevelopment, poverty, political instability and corruption should be addressed to control the issue of migration.

Main body

Recently, misinformation has increasingly impacted public discourse and public safety. From the COVID-19 pandemic to national elections, society is increasingly examining the negative impact of misinformation. Exposure to misinformation has been linked to conflicting perceptions of social, economic, and political issues, which leads to polarization, radicalization, and even acts of violence. While research has examined the development and spreading of misinformation, little has been done to examine the processes of being exposed to, and influenced by, misinformation. This paper uses Reinforcement Sensitivity Theory to examine the effect of individual differences in personality traits related to the behavioral inhibition system on the behavioral and cognitive response to exposure to misinformation online. Trait BIS was related to how much individuals positively engaged with misinformation, as well as intentions for activism and radicalism. These findings suggest that high uncertainty/anxiety may increase engagement with and influence by misinformation.

Analyzing Political Polarization on Social Media by Deleting Bot Spamming

Social media platforms are part of everyday life, allowing the interconnection of people around the world in large discussion groups relating to every topic, including important social or political issues. Therefore, social media have become a valuable source of information-rich data, commonly referred to as Social Big Data, effectively exploitable to study the behavior of people, their opinions, moods, interests and activities. However, these powerful communication platforms can be also used to manipulate conversation, polluting online content and altering the popularity of users, through spamming activities and misinformation spreading. Recent studies have shown the use on social media of automatic entities, defined as social bots, that appear as legitimate users by imitating human behavior aimed at influencing discussions of any kind, including political issues. In this paper we present a new methodology, namely TIMBRE (Time-aware opInion Mining via Bot REmoval), aimed at discovering the polarity of social media users during election campaigns characterized by the rivalry of political factions. This methodology is temporally aware and relies on a keyword-based classification of posts and users. Moreover, it recognizes and filters out data produced by social media bots, which aim to alter public opinion about political candidates, thus avoiding heavily biased information. The proposed methodology has been applied to a case study that analyzes the polarization of a large number of Twitter users during the 2016 US presidential election. The achieved results show the benefits brought by both removing bots and taking into account temporal aspects in the forecasting process, revealing the high accuracy and effectiveness of the proposed approach. Finally, we investigated how the presence of social bots may affect political discussion by studying the 2016 US presidential election. Specifically, we analyzed the main differences between human and artificial political support, estimating also the influence of social bots on legitimate users.

Power Consolidation of Jokowi's Administration: The Role of the Social Media and Political Issues in Indonesian Democracy

Joko Widodo (Jokowi) is the first Indonesian Democratic President elected by the peripheral people and not the elite. Jokowi is the only Indonesian President that is not the leader of any political party. Therefore, the President was faced with the issues of power consolidation in the initial administrative years. Some professional elites failed the President because they assumed a possible overthrown. During the presidential election in 2019 with Prabowo Subianto, Jokowi took K. H. Ma'ruf Amien as a vice presidential candidate and was attacked by China and the Indonesian Communist Party (ICP/PKI). However, Jokowi was re-elected for the second period (2019-2024) due to his close relationship with Indonesians, which is different from other presidents. Received: 23 August 2021 / Accepted: 24 November 2021 / Published: 3 January 2022