Symbolic Racism and Whites’ Attitudes Towards Punitive and Preventive Crime Policies

This study analyzes the determinants of Whites' support for punitive and preventive crime policies. It focuses on the predictive power of beliefs about race as described by symbolic racism theory. A dataset with 849 White respondents from three waves of the Los Angeles County Social Survey was used. In order to assess the weight of racial factors in crime policy attitudes, the effects of a range of race-neutral attitude determinants were controlled for, namely individual and structural crime attributions, perceived seriousness of crime, crime victimization, conservatism and news exposure. Results show a strong effect of symbolic racism on both types of crime policies, and in particular on punitive policies. High levels of symbolic racism are associated with support for tough, punitive crime policies and with opposition to preventive policies. Sub-dimensions of symbolic racism qualified these relationships, by showing that internal symbolic racism (assessing perceived individual deficiencies of Blacks) was most strongly predictive of punitiveness, whereas external symbolic racism (denial of institutional discrimination) predicted opposition to structural remedies. On the whole, despite the effects of race-neutral factors, the impact of symbolic racism on policy attitudes was substantial. Thus, White public opinion on both punitive and preventive crime policies is at least partially driven by racial prejudice.     

新闻舆论监督侵权行为的界定与防范

因新闻舆论监督而引发的侵权案件呈不断上升的趋势。新闻舆论监督侵权产生的原因主要有新闻事实与法律事实的矛盾、事实和报道之间的矛盾两个方面,要预防侵权行为的发生,应多方着手,特别应注意增强审核意识、法律意识和证据意识。     

Believing in Conspiracy Theories: Evidence from an Exploratory Analysis of Italian Survey Data

Beliefs in conspiracy theories have attracted significant international media attention in recent years. This phenomenon has been studied in the US but while anecdotal evidence suggests it is also widespread among the Italian public, little evidence has been collected to assess it empirically. Using data from a 2016 survey, this pioneering study of the Italian case investigates the extent of diffusion of conspiracy theories among Italians and tests several hypotheses concerning individual determinants. The paper finds that conspiracism is indeed widely diffused in Italy. It is negatively associated with education and positively with religiosity, while no correlation is found with political trust. Beliefs in conspiracies are also related to rightwing orientation and support for the populist Five Star Movement.     

Agenda responsiveness in the European Council: public priorities,policy problems and political attention

The existence of political responsiveness in multi-level systems like the EU remains an open question despite significant recent research on the topic. This article studies whether the European Council responds to the shifting policy priorities of European citizens. More specifically, it explores the synchronic and diachronic associations between what people consider to be the most important problems and the political attention devoted to these issues from 2003 to 2014. The economic crisis after 2008 appears to have made the ranking of public concerns and the European Council agenda more alike. However, a detailed examination of the shifts in prioritisation of single issues over time reveals little evidence for dynamic issue responsiveness. Recently the European Council has paid more attention to the issues that the public considered the most pressing problems but the convergence could possibly be driven by the intensity of the underlying policy problems.     

After the Fukushima Disaster: Japan's Nuclear Policy Change from 2011 to 2012

This article analyzes why and how the cabinet of Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) decided in September 2012 to phase‐out nuclear power plants by 2039—the decision representing a large policy change from previous energy‐supply policy, in which the dependence on nuclear power would continuously grow. In doing so, this article examines the causal relationship between three factors identified on the basis of theoretical models explaining policy change; change in the governing coalition from the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) to DPJ in 2009, the Fukushima accident, and the change in public opinion. Based on opinion poll and deliberative polling data, as well as discourse analyses of DPJ leaders’ statements, the article concludes that the change in public opinion on nuclear energy after the Fukushima accident was crucial in inducing the DPJ's decision to phase‐out nuclear power plants by affecting DPJ leaders' interests in vote‐ and office‐seeking. Finally, I discuss the applicability of the theoretical models developed on the basis of U.S. pluralistic cases to Japan and the issues to be explored for the further development of policy process models.     

The Effects of Issue Salience,Elite Influence,and Policy Content on Public Opinion

When do citizens rely on party cues, and when do they incorporate policy-relevant information into their political attitudes? Recent research suggests that members of the public, when they possess some policy-relevant information, use that information as much as they use party cues when forming political attitudes. We aim to advance this research by specifying conditions that motivate people to use content over cues and vice versa. Specifically, we believe that increased issue salience motivates people to go beyond heuristics and engage in the systematic processing of policy-relevant information. Using data from a survey experiment that isolates the effects of policy-relevant information, party cues, and issue salience, we find that people are more likely to incorporate policy-relevant information when thinking about hydraulic fracturing (fracking), a relatively high-salience issue. When thinking about storm-water management, a relatively low-salience issue, people are more likely to rely on party cues.     

Race,Interracial Families,and Political Advertising in the Obama Era: Experimental Evidence

Across two studies of race and interracial families in political advertising, this article finds that significant benefits accrue to Black candidates who present themselves as part of interracial families. These findings suggest Black candidates are more likely to succeed when they engage in displays of “racial novelty,” or counter-stereotypical behavior, provided that behavior signals closer affinity to White voters. For Study 1, we tested four original advertisements for a fictitious political candidate, in which we varied only the candidate’s race and the race of his son. The Black candidate with the White son prevailed over all other combinations, with respondents finding him the most trustworthy, most qualified for office, most likely to share their values, and most likely to care about people like them. For Study 2, we tested four new original advertisements for a fictitious Black candidate, varying only the candidate’s profession and the race of his son. We find, again, that Black candidates who display non-Black children do significantly better than Black candidates who display racially homogeneous families. However, we observe much more modest benefits for a Black candidate who practices a racially novel profession. We view these results as demonstrating that Black candidates are more likely to reap the rewards of racial novelty only when they are willing to provide a personal, rather than professional, signal of their affinity for Whites. As Study 2 shows, White voters in particular are responsive to personal (rather than professional) demonstrations of racial novelty. This affirms the logic of “New Racism,” whereby Blacks are looked favorably upon if they exhibit behavior associated with Whites, but penalized otherwise.     

The influence of pretrial exposure to community outrage and victim hardship on guilt judgments

Although the courts have explicitly expressed concerns about the effects of public sentiment on juries in highly publicized cases, no research has isolated the degree to which jurors’ exposure to community outrage and/or prospective social interactions in the community independently influence judgments of guilt. In the current research, jury eligible undergraduates were randomly assigned to conditions in a 2 (negative defendant facts pretrial publicity (PTP): present vs. absent)?×?2 (community outrage PTP: present vs. absent)?×?2 (anticipated social interaction: present vs. absent) between subjects factorial design. In an online session, participants read articles containing PTP (or not), and two days later they arrived at the lab to serve as mock jurors in a murder case – before the trial they were instructed (or not) that they would interact with people from the community in which the case was taking place. Neither PTP containing extra-evidentiary facts about the defendant nor prospective interaction with the community had main or interactive effects on guilt measures; however, mock jurors rated the defendant as more likely to be guilty when they read information about community outrage and hardships on victims. These findings suggest future avenues of PTP research focusing on community outrage and victim impacts.     

Are self-identified Christian fundamentalists really more supportive of capital punishment? Exploring the relationship between fundamentalism and death penalty attitudes

Christian fundamentalism has often been linked to death penalty support, despite mixed results across more than a decade of empirical studies. More recently, a line of research has emerged that has called for a reconceptualization of fundamentalism as harsh and rigid, instead of being more a multifaceted concept. In the spirit of this call, we investigated the relative importance of Christian fundamentalism on death penalty attitudes when compared with non-religious social attitudes. Using 1,560 respondents from the 2008 General Social Survey data, we found self-identified Christian fundamentalism, though not biblical literalism or religious denomination, remained a significant predictor of death penalty attitudes when attitudes toward LGBT marriage equality were included in the model. Unexpectedly, white women who endorsed LGBT marriage equality were also more likely to support the death penalty. Based on our findings, we discuss implications and areas for future research.     

Web信息挖掘在涉警舆情监控分析系统建设中的应用研究

互联网已成为当前涉警舆情监控的重点,如何获取更多更准确的网络涉警舆情信息,为预警和决策服务,是摆在各政法部门面前的重要任务。Web信息挖掘作为一种新兴的数据挖掘技术,可以有效地从互联网上获取并分析相关舆情,达到监控预警的目的,为处置网络涉警舆情提供很大帮助。