Social media echo chambers and satisfaction with democracy among Democrats and Republicans in the aftermath of the 2016 US elections

There is widespread evidence that individuals select information that supports their convictions and worldviews. This behavior yields the formation of echo chambers – environments in which an individual’s own political beliefs are repeated and amplified and dissenting opinions are screened out. Recent research demonstrates that social networking sites such as Facebook or Twitter can facilitate this selection into homogenous networks. Using data from a representative nation-wide online survey, we consider the degree to which respondents’ social media networks resemble virtual echo chambers. We then analyze the effect of these social media echo chambers on satisfaction with democracy among Democrats and Republicans in the aftermath of the 2016 US elections. Our findings reveal that virtual echo chambers boost democratic satisfaction among Republicans but they do not have an effect on system support by self-identified Democrats. Our paper therefore adds to a growing literature linking online behaviors to mass attitudes about politics.     

Call me Caitlyn: making and making over the ‘authentic’ transgender body in Anglo-American popular culture

A conception of transgender identity as an ‘authentic’ gendered core ‘trapped’ within a mismatched corporeality, and made tangible through corporeal transformations, has attained unprecedented legibility in contemporary Anglo-American media. Whilst pop-cultural articulations of this discourse have received some scholarly attention, the question of why this ‘wrong body’ paradigm has solidified as the normative explanation for gender transition within the popular media remains underexplored. This paper argues that this discourse has attained cultural pre-eminence through its convergence with a broader media and commercial zeitgeist, in which corporeal alteration and maintenance are perceived as means of accessing one’s ‘authentic’ self. I analyse the media representations of two transgender celebrities: Caitlyn Jenner and Nadia Almada, alongside the reality TV show TRANSform Me, exploring how these women’s gender transitions have been discursively aligned with a cultural imperative for all women, cisgender or trans, to display their authentic femininity through bodily work. This demonstrates how established tropes of authenticity-via-bodily transformation, have enabled transgender to become culturally legible through the wrong body trope. Problematically, I argue, this process has worked to demarcate ideals of ‘acceptable’ transgender subjectivity: self-sufficient, normatively feminine, and eager to embrace the possibilities for happiness and social integration provided by the commercial domain.     

How Measurement Error in Content Analysis and Self-Reported Media Use Leads to Minimal Media Effect Findings in Linkage Analyses: A Simulation Study

In the debate on minimal media effects and their causes, methodological concerns about measurement are rarely discussed. We argue that even in state-of-the-art media-effects studies that combine measures of media messages and media use (i.e., linkage analyses), measurement error in both the media content analysis and the media use self-reports will typically lead to severely downward-biased effect estimates. We demonstrate this phenomenon using a large Monte Carlo simulation with varying parameters of the content analysis and the survey study. Results show that measurement error in the content analysis and media use variables does indeed lead to smaller effect estimates, especially when the media messages of interest are relatively rare. We discuss these findings as well as possible remedies and implications for future research.     

Exploring frontline work in China

This study of the state frontline workforce breaks new ground by conducting an institutional analysis of rule abidance in the People's Republic of China (PRC). We draw upon a survey (n = 1,721) of Chengguan officers, the main players in regulatory enforcement of civil law in urban China, to explore the influence of autocratic one‐party rule on the meaning of and variation in rule abidance in China. The majority of Chengguan officers are rule followers, and demographic differences show little deviation from this norm. However, institutional factors associated with one‐party rule, particularly upward accountability, the privilege of administrative rank, and unequal access to power and resources, are significant in shaping differences in rule following among Chengguan officers. We conclude with a discussion of the similarities in institutional pressures on urban regulatory policing in China and the United States.     

Internal borderlands: architectures of force and state expansion in India’s central ‘frontier’

India’s Maoist insurgency, a conflict in the geographic heartland of the country, is often portrayed as symptomatic of the underdevelopment and weak governance of the region. Rhetorically, the state has pursued a counter-insurgency strategy premised on a tandem of ‘security’ and development, while emphasising the conflict zone’s rootedness in the nation. This discourse ignores that historically the state has treated the region as a hostile ‘borderland’. This paper argues that the Indian state’s counter-insurgency is structured around a set of strategies of absorption. Drawing on James C. Scott’s examination of Zomia, as well as Henri Lefebvre’s theories of the state and space, this paper examines processes of militarised state expansion. Focusing on the construction of roads, government-controlled resettlement camps, forward operating bases and militarised schools, this paper conceptualises these particular state spaces as ‘architectures of force’: material manifestations of a larger project of highly militarised and acutely violent state-building.     

The EU and the Global Order: Contingent Liberalism

Abstract

Politicians, diplomats and analysts commonly assume that commitment to multilateralism and liberal norms is part of the EU’s very DNA. Increasingly, however, the EU’s commitment to the liberal global order is more selective. We demonstrate the shift to a more contingent liberalism by examining the EU’s recent record in relation to four different challenges: international trade; US leadership; Russian actions in the eastern neighbourhood; and security in the Middle East. We speculate on what this may portend for the EU’s self-identity, European interests and the integrity of the prevailing global order.     

Was ist Rechtspopulismus?

When a new type of party labelled ?right-wing populist“ by political scientists and journalists, arrived on the political scene in Western Europe thirty years ago, many observers thought that it would only be a short-lived manifestation of political protest. Today these parties are present in almost all European countries. Building on an introductory definition, the contribution will assess the root causes of right-wing populism, its ideological and programmatic features, its organizational traits and ways of adressing voters as well as its effects on party systems, governmental policies and the democracy in general. Concluding thoughts offer a number of recommendations how the challengers—which will in all likelihood not disappear in the near future—could be politically contained.     

Economic Voting in Latin America: Rules and Responsibility

The impact of institutions on the economic vote stands as a well‐established proposition for the advanced democracies of Europe. We know less, however, regarding the institutional effects on the economic vote in the developing democracies of Latin America. Carrying out an analysis of presidential elections in 18 Latin American countries, we offer evidence that the usual Eurocentric conceptualization of the clarity of responsibility is not ideal for understanding the economic vote in this region. There does exist a powerful effect of institutions on the economic vote within Latin American democracies, but one uniquely associated with its presidential regimes and dynamic party systems. Rules for these elections—such as concurrence, term limits, and second‐round voting—suggest that we should reconceptualize the notion of the clarity of responsibility in Latin America, focusing more on individuals in power and their constraints, and less on the political parties from which they hail.