Political Brands: Can Parties Be Distinguished by Their Online Brand Personality?

This paper investigates whether five English political parties are differentiating themselves based on the brand personality they are communicating through their websites. The relative brand positions of five English political parties are analyzed using Aaker's brand personality scale. The text from each party website is analyzed using content analysis and a dictionary-based tool. The results are plotted in relation to one another on a correspondence analysis map. We find that the two main dimensions on which parties’ brand personalities differ relate to the trade-offs between communicating competence and communicating sincerity and between communicating sophistication and communicating ruggedness. We find that parties’ brand personalities are distinctive, with the exception of the Green Party, and that the position of one party, the United Kingdom Independence Party, is particularly distinctive. Our research uses Aaker's existing framework for thinking about brand personalities, rather than creating a new framework for politics. By using an existing framework, we are able to use tools developed in other disciplines and show their usefulness for the study of political marketing.     

Evaluation in Nonprofit Organizations: An Empirical Analysis

Many factors influence the extent to which nonprofit organizations engage in evaluation. Drawing on organization theory, nonprofit scholarship, and public administration research, we propose a set of hypotheses concerning the interrelationships between organizational characteristics and various aspects of nonprofit evaluation. We test these hypotheses using combined data from an original national survey and IRS Forms 990. Analysis reveals that although higher levels of staff compensation support many aspects of evaluation, higher levels of executive compensation exert negative effects. Additionally, evaluation culture mediates the effects of several variables on evaluation rigor and frequency. Practical implications are discussed for scholars and practitioners.     

Missing the overlap between theory and practice: Patten’s ‘equal recognition’ in the face of the Catalan case

Drawing on the particularities of Catalonia (and related cases), the general point of this contribution is to argue that Patten’s equal recognition theory is modeled upon a too-restricted set of empirical assumptions, a circumstance that might harm its value as a tool for the orientation, evaluation, and reform of public policy. What is absent in Patten’s account – or at least not properly inserted into it – are four built-in modules that we have named ‘history’, ‘democracy’, ‘international relations’, and ‘migration’. When it comes to recognition of minorities, the past matters more often than Patten is willing to accept; democracy can lead to permanent departures from equal recognition on the part of self-governing national minorities; in the recognition game, there are other relevant players than simply states and their minorities; and one of these players, namely immigrant groups, can (albeit involuntarily) distort equal recognition schemes.     

Linkedin Users’ Self-Brand Congruence,Attitudes and Social Media Use Integration

This article describes a sample of LinkedIn users in South Africa. The main purpose of the study reported on was to compile a consumer profile of LinkedIn users based on several measures (e.g. usage behaviour, self- and brand-personality traits and attitudes towards the LinkedIn brand). The study contributes to the literature by including users’ personality traits, perceived brand-personality traits, self-brand congruence (SBC) and social media use integration (SMUI) in the investigation. Self-congruity theory was used as a basis to examine SBC in the LinkedIn context. The study entailed a cross-sectional quantitative design using a survey of LinkedIn users in Gauteng, the economic hub of South Africa. The primary results indicated that despite low usage patterns, users’ SBC is high and their attitudes towards the LinkedIn brand are positive. SMUI is not prevalent, yet it correlates positively with brand attitude.     

Political mobilization in East Central Europe

This article provides an introduction to the special thematic section on political mobilization in East Central Europe. Based on a brief presentation of the main arguments of the individual articles, the authors discuss the recent political volatility in East Central Europe. They highlight the tension between fierce political rhetoric and populist policies on the one hand, and low levels of voter turnout and overall political participation in the region on the other. The authors argue that recent cases of successful as well as unsuccessful political mobilization in East Central Europe point to structural re-alignments in the region’s political landscape. In particular, the parties that are successful are those that manage to communicate their visions in new ways and whose messages resonate with nested attitudes and preferences of the electorate. These parties typically rally against the so-called establishment and claim for themselves an anti-hegemonic agenda. The introductory essay also asserts that these developments in East Central Europe deserve attention for their potential Europe-wide repercussions – especially the idea of “illiberal democracy,” which combines populist mobilization and autocratic demobilization and finds adherents also in more established European democracies.     

Caveat: addressing public justification as an empirical phenomenon

ABSTRACT

Instead of a conclusion, this special issue ends with a discussion between Liah Greenfeld, on the one hand, and Uriel Abulof and Markus Kornprobst, on the other hand, about the merits of studying public justification and how best to do so. Greenfeld suggests that public justification is predicated on the autonomy of the political sphere, the importance ascribed to public views, and to the prevalence of justification. Seeing public justification as ultimately a cultural phenomenon, this caveat urges scholars to study it in only specific historical contexts, which are, for now, limited to predominantly ‘Western liberal democracies’.     

着力营造回族—穆斯林文化氛围——宁夏发展内陆开放型经济的一个视角

努力营造浓郁的回族—穆斯林文化氛围,是宁夏发展内陆开放型经济,把宁夏打造成中国面向穆斯林国家的经济文化交流中心的基础性工程,对于突出鲜明的回族特色和增强世界穆斯林国家的认同感有重要作用。为此,应当以显性化、普遍化、规模化、日常化为原则,以具有可视性的外在表现形式或载体为着力点,采取有力措施,从建筑风格、服装服饰、饮食居住、艺术文化、节日文化、文字语言等方面努力加强建设。     

中国传统官本位思想生发的文化生态根源

官本位思想是中国传统政治文化和政治实践的集中体现:农耕社会对权威的服从是官本位思想滋生繁衍的社会生活基础;血缘宗法制度和家国一体的社会结构进一步固化了社会尊卑等级关系;以等级特权为核心的官僚体制为官本位思想提供了体制上的安排和制度上的保障;官僚阶层对社会政治、经济资源的垄断和控制,形成了凭借官职等级控制、支配社会资源的利益驱动和价值导向;科举制度把社会各阶层特别是社会精英阶层的价值取向引导到追求功名利禄上来;中国传统文化对礼治的尊崇为官本位思想的发展提供了理论基石。     

编辑在文化建构中的作用

在人类精神文化的构建和发展中,编辑具有独特的文化积累、传播和创造作用。它是大众文化传播体系的缔造者和管理者,是文化编辑物的生产者和历史文化的积累者,是现代文化制造和创新的导向中心。