Fact Checking and Information in the Age of Covid

The Covid-19 pandemic has revealed and accelerated an information crisis as well as a health one. What we discover about Covid 19, how it spreads, to whom and why and how best to mitigate it—all depend on information. The essays in this special section, which this article introduces, explore the importance of information and the fundamental role of fact checkers in understanding how information flows, why mistakes are made, and how to counteract them. Fact checking as an idea and a practice emerged in the early twenty-first century, developed as a positive beacon to counteract a growing sense that information could no longer be trusted. Now, more than a decade after its creation, fact checking sits within a far more complex and chaotic media context, and its expertise and understanding has never been so important. We need to understand what fact checkers do because they are grappling with how to tether us to reality.     

基于网络媒介的突发性公共危机信息传播仿真和管理对策研究

危机信息的健康传播在突发性公共危机管理中至关重要。为了研究突发性公共危机信息在网络环境中传播的特征,本文以复杂适应系统理论为指导,利用多主体建模方法,基于Repast平台模拟突发性公共危机信息在网络媒介中的传播过程。通过模型仿真我们发现突发性公共危机在网络环境中传播的生命周期现象和群极化现象;并且分析比较了各主体属性在不同参数值下的演化结果,探寻危机信息传播的有效方法,为政府如何应对危机管理提供决策支持,以期有效控制突发性公共危机信息在网络环境的恶性传播。     

Toward a new institutional strategy framework for political marketing

The present literature on political marketing strategy has provided important knowledge about how the material context of technologies, polls or competitors influences strategy formulation. However, less attention has been directed to the constraints facing a political organization from the social context related to habits, norms or social conventions. This article thus aims at bringing organizational new institutional theory into the field of political marketing strategy. Accordingly, it is investigated how political organizations when initiating marketing strategies act or react toward institutionalized demands in their environment, such as issues or ideas that are considered socially appropriate. As such, a strategy framework consisting of a phase model and a typology is developed. The phase model is drawn from extant literature within organizational new institutional theory stating that decision makers will (1) scan information from their environment, (2) interpret this incoming information in available cognitive categories and (3), finally, select a strategy premised on their cognitive interpretations. On this ground, we build a novel typology that specifies which political marketing strategy decision makers will select under different cognitive framings of their environment. Here, we delineate four ideal type political marketing strategies—conformity, decoupling, defense and entrepreneurial—that correspond to how organizational decision makers interpret their institutional surroundings. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Obtaining Differentiation Premiums in the Presence of Fee Regulation in the Residential Real Estate Appraisal Industry

In the context of the customary and reasonable pricing standard imposed by the Dodd–Frank Act, this article considers whether residential real estate appraisers are able to obtain differentiation premiums for their services. Regression models estimated using data from the Commonwealth of Virginia offer some evidence that professional certifications and the complexity of an appraisal task are positively associated with fee levels in this type of regulatory environment. However, differentiation premiums appear more difficult to obtain across geographies and when an appraisal is procured by an appraisal management company. The findings suggest appraisers can differentiate themselves from competitors, but also that policymakers should be mindful of the potential for commodification on the residential appraisal industry in select market settings. Since appraisals are a critical component of the mortgage underwriting process, and the majority of housing transactions utilize mortgage debt, developing new understanding of how policies influence appraisers and how the appraisal process makes an important contribution to the housing policy literature.     

Congressional Response to Mandate Elections

Elections from time to time are widely believed to carry a mandate, to express a message about changed policy preferences of the electorate. Whatever the accuracy of such beliefs—a matter about which we are skeptical—perceptions of a mandate should affect the behavior of actors in government. Politicians lack the scholarly luxury of waiting for careful analyses. They must act in the months following elections. We postulate that many will act as if the mandate perceptions were true, veering away from their normal voting patterns. This is driven by election results and interpretations that undermine old calculations about what voters want. As the flow of information gradually changes these perceptions, and the election becomes more distant, members of Congress return to their normal position. We first ask, how would members observe an emerging consensus of mandate? And then we model the duration of the change in behavior in an event‐history framework. That permits a depiction of important movements of the median member and, from this, inferences about policy impact.     

On-line processing in candidate evaluation: The effects of issue order,issue importance,and sophistication

This article reports the results of a study that replicates and extends the impression-driven model of candidate evaluation reported in Lodge, McGraw, and Stroh (1989). This model holds that evaluations are formed and updated on-line as information is encountered, and that as a result, citizens need not rely on specific information available from memory to form their candidate evaluations. In the present work we explore whether the order in which information is encountered, as well as whether information that is personally important, influences the weight accorded to evidence in on-line processing. In addition, differences in information-processing strategies due to political sophistication are examined. The results indicate that important information receives more weight than unimportant information. In addition, the evidence suggests that political sophisticates are more efficient on-line processors than are less sophisticated individuals. The implications of these results for models of candidate evaluation are discussed.     

Gender Stereotypes,Information Search,and Voting Behavior in Political Campaigns

It is still unclear exactly how gender influences vote choice. Using an information processing perspective, we argue that instead of directly influencing vote choice, candidate gender guides the amounts and types of information that voters search for during a campaign, and that effects of gender on vote choice ultimately come from differences in information search influenced by candidate gender. Using two unique experimental datasets, we test the effects of candidate gender on vote choice and information search. We find that subjects change their search based on a candidate’s gender, seeking out more competence-related information about female candidates than they do for male candidates, as well as more information related to “compassion issues.” We also find that evaluations of candidates’ traits and issue positions are important predictors of subjects’ vote choice.     

The balancing act of establishing a policy agenda: Conceptualizing and measuring drivers of issue prioritization within interest groups

Interest groups are important intermediaries in Western democracies, with the potential to offer political linkage and form a bridge between the concerns of citizens and the agendas of political elites. While we know an increasing amount about the issue‐based activity of groups, we only have a limited understanding about how they selected these issues to work on. In this article, we examine the process of agenda setting within groups. In particular, we address challenges of conceptualization and measurement. Through a thorough review of the group literature, we identify five main factors that are hypothesized to drive issue prioritization. We operationalize items to tap these factors and then empirically assess this theoretical model relying on data from a survey of national interest groups in Australia. Our findings, from a confirmatory factor analysis, provide support for the multidimensional nature of agenda setting. We discuss how this provides a firm conceptual and methodological foundation for future work examining how groups establish their policy agenda.     

Government as Catalyst: Can It Work Again with Wireless Internet Access?

As the Internet becomes an indispensable component of the global economy, Internet access is an increasingly important prerequisite to exploiting social, economic and educational opportunities. Municipal wireless networks (MWNs), which are wireless Internet access networks created with active local leadership and involvement, are seen as a potential solution. In this case study we describe the development of the Philadelphia MWN including goals, stakeholder expectations, policy, applications, technology, management models, funding, and implementation. The case provides insights on how communities can act as catalysts and use information technology to promote social and economic change. We found that MWNs involve competing private and public sector stakeholders, and it is important to clearly identify the main application of the MWN. We also found that focusing on the digital divide affords both opportunities and risks, and there are powerful external forces that impact MWNs and the underlying technology.     

Congressional dysfunction: An information processing perspective

The public's approval of Congress is at an all time low. The parties seem to have taken the legislative process hostage for their own electoral gain. Whereas traditional arguments about congressional dysfunction focus on polarized voting coalitions or outputs – particularly legislation – in this article we highlight congressional information processing and how it has changed in this highly partisan era. By coding congressional hearings according to the kind of information on which they focus, we find that members of Congress are receiving one‐sided information to a greater degree and are spending less time learning about potential solutions. We use these results to make numerous recommendations for improving how Congress gathers its information.     

Introduction: Blogs, politics and power: a special issue of Public Choice

There is good reason to believe that blogs are changing politics, but we don’t know exactly how. Nor do we know whether the normative consequences of blogs for politics are likely to be good or bad. In this special issue, we and our co-authors undertake the first sustained effort to map the empirical and normative consequences of blogs for politics. We begin by setting out basic information about blogs, and some anecdotal evidence suggesting that they are indeed politically important. We go on to identify the key empirical and normative questions that blogs raise, and discuss the dearth of relevant data in the existing literature. We conclude by summarizing how the authors of the articles gathered in this special issue help fill this gap.     

The Control of Public Networks

ABSTRACT

This paper examines the control of networks, an issue that we believe is critical for explaining the overall effectiveness of public networks. We first discuss why it is important to study the issue and why it has been neglected as a topic by public management and organization scholars. We then present the various types of control and how they are utilized in a network context. Finally, we discuss how the mechanisms of control might be related to network effectiveness, drawing heavily on an understanding of how this relationship is addressed by contingency theorists. We close by posing challenges to researchers for developing new insights into the control of networks and why this knowledge is relevant for public managers and policy makers.     

Numbers in regulatory intermediation: Exploring the role of performance measurement between legitimacy and compliance

Much regulatory intermediation has come to entail forms of calculation and performance measurement. In this paper we analyze the role of performance measurement in regulatory intermediation in a transnational multistakeholder setting where intermediation lacks an official mandate. We do this through a study of the Access to Medicine Index, which ranks pharmaceutical companies in terms of their access to medicine policies and practices in developing countries. We conceptualize multistakeholder intermediaries as “second order rulemakers” reconciling diverse and often competing implicit and explicit rules across the governance field. We then detail various intermediation roles of performance measurement between attaining input and output legitimacy and enticing compliance among targets. Our case demonstrates how the selective formalization of measurement processes and the related ability to move back and forth from the role of intermediary to that of “ad hoc rulemaker” are important conditions for achieving and maintaining legitimacy. Furthermore, it shows that for multistakeholder intermediaries that rely on performance measurement, compliance by targets depends on the uptake of performance information by powerful constituencies. This illustrates how addressing legitimacy concerns and enticing compliance through performance measurement should be examined as co‐emerging processes.     

Political Pressure,Conformity Pressure,and Performance Information as Drivers of Public Sector Innovation Adoption

Why public organizations adopt and abandon organizational innovations is a key question for any endeavor to explain large-scale developments in the public sector. Supplementing research within public administration on innovation with the related literature on policy diffusion, this article examines how external factors such as conformity pressure from institutionalized models, performance information from other organizations, and political pressure affect innovation adoption. By the use of two survey experiments in very different political contexts—Texas and Denmark—and a difference-in-differences analysis exploiting a reform of the political governance of public schools in Denmark, we find that public managers respond to political pressure. We find no indications that they emulate institutionalized models or learn from performance information from other organizations when they adopt organizational innovations. The results thereby point to political pressure as an important factor behind large-scale adoptions of organizational innovations in the public sector.     

从政务信息谈国家思想库建设：一个案例分析

国家思想库在政治运行过程中起着十分重要的作用,是政府决策不可或缺的有力助手。他们不仅要保持研究工作的独立性与客观性,而且要和政府部门保持密切的联系。在我国,向国家决策层报送政务信息在一定程度上能够反映思想库作用发挥的程度。以中国科学院向国家决策层报送政务信息为案例,运用统计分析的方法分析国家决策层的信息需求,讨论政务信息与国家思想库的关系与作用,对中国科学院更好地发挥国家科学思想库的作用提出政策建议。     

Social heterogeneity and wasteful lobbying

Using a general equilibrium model with endogenous policy, we explore how heterogeneity affects wasteful lobbying by sectoral interest groups. With the help of a simulation approach, we first investigate the impact of information heterogeneity on how lobbies react to a shift from a soft to a strict government budget constraint. Next, we examine how lobbying is influenced by heterogenous perception of the general equilibrium implications of lobbying effort. Finally, we explore the consequences of heterogenous specialization in households' asset portfolios. We conclude that social heterogeneity in information, perceptions, and portfolio compositions increases incentives to lobby.     

Gradual institutional change and media influence: The case of Petrobras in Brazil

The media as a social actor emits discourses that reflect in the institutional context, influencing the process of institutionalization of existing practices. One view about the media in organizational studies is that it is a mechanism of organizational complexity reduction, and in this way, it is the focus of the managers' attention to certain aspects of the environment, which has implications for the way that everyday tasks are accomplished in organizations. In this sense, an interest has emerged to understand how the dissemination of information about the acquisition of a refinery in Pasadena, Texas, by Petrobras was the embryo of an international corruption scandal that compromised the organization's image but was also responsible for the emergence of new organizational practices. The data and information used are from secondary sources: the newspapers and magazines with the largest national circulations. The findings reveal that the media sought to influence individuals by elaborating its understanding of the context without being consistently coherent over time. We propose an analytical model of how the media can act in the gradual change of organizational and actors' practices.     

Listening to the Government: How Information Shapes Responsibility Attributions

Assigning credit and blame in systems of multilevel government, such as federal states, requires information. This paper examines how voters respond to information about policy outcomes when attributing responsibility to multiple levels of government in a European context. Using an experimental design, we show that the responsibility attributions of British voters are affected by perceptual biases, notably their feelings about the government and the European Union (EU). But interestingly, we also find that voters, regardless of their predispositions, are only responsive to information they receive from their national government, whereas they ignore information provided by EU officials. These findings have implications not only for our understanding of attribution in systems of multiple levels of government, but also for how voters use information selectively depending on the credibility of the source.     

The Implications of Framing Effects for Citizen Competence

Social scientists have documented framing effects in a wide range of contexts, including surveys, experiments, and actual political campaigns. Many view work on framing effects as evidence of citizen incompetence—that is, evidence that citizens base their preferences on arbitrary information and/or are subject to extensive elite manipulation. Yet, we continue to lack a consensus on what a framing effect is as well as an understanding of how and when framing effects occur. In this article, I examine (1) the different ways that scholars have employed the concepts of framing and framing effects, (2) how framing effects may violate some basic criteria of citizen competence, and (3) what we know about how and when framing effects work. I conclude that while the evidence to date suggests some isolated cases of incompetence, the more general message is that citizens use frames in a competent and well-reasoned manner.     

Who's Afraid of WikiLeaks? Missed Opportunities in Political Science Research

Leaked information, such as WikiLeaks’ Cablegate, constitutes a unique and valuable data source for researchers interested in a wide variety of policy‐oriented topics. Yet political scientists have avoided using leaked information in their research. This article argues that we can and should use leaked information as a data source in scholarly research. First, the methodological, ethical, and legal challenges related to the use of leaked information in research have been considered, concluding that none of these present serious obstacles. Second, how political scientists can use leaked information to generate novel and unique insights concerning political phenomena using a variety of quantitative and qualitative methods have been shown. Specifically, how leaked documents reveal important details concerning the Trans‐Pacific Partnership negotiations, and how leaked diplomatic cables highlight a significant disparity between the U.S. government's public attitude toward traditional knowledge and its private behavior have been demonstrated.