Cogitatio Press (E-Journals)
Not a member yet
2055 research outputs found
Sort by
Reforming the Institutions of Eurozone Governance
Get PDFThe Eurozone has faced repeated crises and has experienced profound transformations in the past years. This thematic issue seeks to address the questions arising from the changing governance structure of the Eurozone. First, how have the negotiations, pressures of the crises and reforms impacted the relationships between key actors like EU institutions and Member States? Second, where did national positions come from and what role did domestic politics play in the negotiations? And finally, to what extent has the evolution of Eurozone governance left room for adequate control mechanisms and democratic debate? The articles in this issue highlight the developing role of Member States, domestic politics and democratic and legal control mechanisms
Clashing Tactics, Clashing Generations: The Politics of the School Strikes for Climate in Belgium
Get PDFMuch has been written about the challenges of tackling climate change in post-political times. However, times have changed significantly since the onset of the debate on post-politics in environmental scholarship. We have entered a politicised, even polarised world which, as this article argues, a number of voices within the climate movement paradoxically try to bring together again. This article scrutinises new climate movements in a changing world, focusing on the School Strikes for Climate in Belgium. It shows how the movement, through the establishment of an intergenerational conflict line and a strong politicisation of tactics, has succeeded in putting the topic at the heart of the public agenda for months on end. By claiming that we need mobilisation, not studying, the movement went straight against the hegemonic, technocratic understanding of climate politics at the time. However, by keeping its demands empty and establishing a homogenised fault line, the movement made itself vulnerable to forms of neutralisation and recuperation by forces which have an interest in restoring the post-political consensus around technocratic and market-oriented answers to climate change. This might also partly explain its gradual decline. Instead of recycling post-political discourses of the past, this article claims, the challenge is to seize the ‘populist moment’ and build a politicised movement around climate change. One way of doing that is by no longer projecting climate change into the future but reframing the ‘now’ as the moment of crisis which calls on us to build another future
The Relationship between Ethno-Linguistic Composition of Social Networks and Activity Space: A Study Using Mobile Phone Data
Get PDFThis study is a contribution to the discussion on the ethnic segregation cycle, through the examination of individuals’ activity spaces—including residence and workplace—and from the perspective of social networks. Bridging social ties can be a key factor in higher minority inclusion and in breaking the vicious circle of segregation. We compare the spatial behaviour of two ethno-linguistic population groups living in Tallinn, Estonia’s capital city (Estonian-speaking majority and Russian-speaking minority), each of which have co- and interethnic social networks, through the use of mobile positioning (call detail records) and call-graph data. Among our main findings, we show firstly that interethnic social networks are more common for the Russian-speaking minority population. The probability of having an interethnic network is related to the ethno-linguistic composition of the residential district concerned; districts with a higher proportion of residents from another ethnic group tend to favour interethnic networks more. Secondly, the activity space is related to the ethno-linguistic composition of the social networks. Spatial behaviour is most expansive for Estonian speakers with co-ethnic networks, and most constrained for Russian speakers with co-ethnic networks. At the same time, speakers of Estonian and Russian with interethnic networks show rather similar spatial behaviours: They tend to visit more districts where the proportion of people from the other ethno-linguistic group is higher. Interethnic networks are therefore related to spatial behaviour, which can indicate interethnic meeting points and locations, something that is regarded as being important in assimilation and segregation cycle theories
Framing Inspirational Content: Narrative Effects on Attributions and Helping
Get PDFMedia coverage often construes stories of misfortune as inspirational accounts of individuals overcoming challenges. These reports fail to address the systemic issues that have predisposed these individuals to their current situation, and may have unintended consequences when it comes to the ability to collectively address these failings as a society. The current research examines how audiences are affected by inspirational narrative framings by comparing responses to a narrative that has inspirational coverage of a social challenge to one that includes direct acknowledgement of the larger systemic failings. Participants (N = 495) were randomly assigned to 1) read an inspirational story about a boy saving up to buy a wheelchair for his friend, 2) read a version of the story that emphasized the need for increased disability funding/services, or 3) a no-story control group. Both story conditions raised readers’ willingness to help people with disabilities. Importantly, emphasizing social responsibility shifted readers’ perceptions: readers of the social responsibility story were less likely to believe an individual with a disability was responsible for paying for their medical devices, believed that some collective measures would have higher efficacy, and viewed the situation as less fair. Even though individuals in the social responsibility condition found the story less enjoyable, they were equally transported into it compared to the inspirational version, and were equally likely to want to share the story with others. Our results offer clear guidelines for media practitioners covering individual struggles and systemic issues within society
The Winner Doesn’t Take It All: Analyzing Audience Responses to an Inspirational Sports Narrative
Get PDFApplying a dual-process rationale, this study explored the cognitive and affective mechanisms involved in the processing of hedonic versus eudaimonic film clips and their putatively distinct inspirational effects. The two types of narratives were operationalized in terms of complete and incomplete goal satisfaction in the film endings. Participants either watched the final boxing match from Rocky, where the protagonist loses the fight, but achieves self-mastery and finds love (eudaimonic narrative) or from Rocky II, where he wins against his opponent (hedonic narrative). A combination of continuous measures of how pleasant participants felt (slider ratings) and psychophysiological measures (heart rate, galvanic skin response [GSR], pulse volume amplitude [PVA]) indicating cognitive load and arousal was used to track the audience responses while watching a compilation of the same intro and the different fight versions. Results revealed that arousal was more strongly associated with participants’ affective scores during the hedonic (winning) version than during the eudaimonic (losing) one. Furthermore, participants experience more positive affect and arousal after watching the protagonist win the match compared to those that watched him lose. Lastly, participants in the eudaimonic condition were more likely to be inspired to exercise afterward. Implications of our results are discussed
Close to Beijing: Geographic Biases in People’s Daily
Get PDFInequities in China are reflected within state-run media coverage due to its specific role “guiding public opinion,” and with our study we contribute to the geographic turn in the Chinese context with regard to media and journalism. As a subject of a spatial study, China is unique due to several factors: geographic diversity, authoritarian control, and centralized media. By analyzing text from 53,000 articles published in People’s Daily (rénmín rìbào, 人民日報) from January 2016 to August 2020, we examine how the amount of news coverage varies by region within China, how topics and sentiments manifest in different places, and how coverage varies with regard to foreign countries. Automated methods were used to detect place names from the articles and geoparse them to specific locations, combining spatial analysis, topic modeling and sentiment analysis to identify geographic biases in news coverage in an authoritarian context. We found remarkably uniform and positive coverage domestically, but substantial differences towards coverage of different foreign countries
Ressentiment: A Complex Emotion or an Emotional Mechanism of Psychic Defences?
Get PDFRessentiment is central for understanding the psychological foundations of reactionary politics, right-wing populism, Islamic fundamentalism, and radicalism. In this article we theorise ressentiment as an emotional mechanism which, reinforcing a morally superior sense of victimhood, expedites two parallel transvaluation processes: What was once desired or valued, yet unattainable, is reassessed as something undesirable and rotten, and one’s own self from being inferior, a loser, is reassessed as being noble and superior. We establish negative emotions of envy, shame, and inefficacious anger as the main triggers of ressentiment, with their associated feelings of inferiority and impotence, which target the vulnerable self. We identify the outcomes of ressentiment as other-directed negative emotions of resentment, indignation, and hatred, reinforced and validated by social sharing. We map the psychological structure of ressentiment in four stages, each employing idiosyncratic defences that depend on the ego-strength of the individual to deliver the transvaluation of the self and its values, and finally detail how social sharing consolidates the outcome emotions, values, and identities in ressentiment through shallow twinship bonds with like-minded peers. Our interdisciplinary theoretical account integrates classic philosophical scholarship of ressentiment and its contemporary proponents in philosophy and sociology, which highlight envy as the prime driver of ressentiment; it also considers the sociological approaches that focus on the repression and transmutation of shame and its social consequences, as well as the psychoanalytic scholarship on psychic defences and political psychology models on the emotionality of decision-making. We conclude the article by elaborating the political implications of ressentiment as the emotional mechanism of grievance politics
Resentment and Coping With the Democratic Dilemma
Get PDFResentment is a complex, multi-layered emotion, within which perceptions of unfairness and feelings of anger are central. When linked to politics, it has predominantly been associated with the alleged “crisis of representative democracy” and populism. However, recent studies have shown that resentment can intervene positively in people’s relations to politics and political institutions by facilitating certain types of political participation (Capelos & Demertzis, 2018). Despite this, the concept of resentment, and hence its role in contemporary representative democracy, is often poorly defined, with empirical investigations of its manifestation(s) remaining scarce. Borrowing a conceptualization of resentment as “resentful affectivity,” our article draws on the analysis of focus groups carried out in Belgium (2019–2020) with individuals where resentful affectivity is likely to be observed (i.e., contemporary movements of contestation such as the Yellow Vests, Youth for Climate, and individuals who occupy a socially disadvantaged position). We find that experiences of intense anger, fear, disappointment, and the unfairness of representative democracy, i.e., of how representative democracy works on the ground, coexist simultaneously with remaining hopes in the democratic system. We show how this complex blend of emotions confronts citizens with what we call a “democratic dilemma.” We document the different ways in which citizens cope with this dilemma and conclude by highlighting both the positive and negative ways in which resentment intervenes in the contemporary “crisis of representative democracy.
Using Campaign Communications to Analyze Civility in Ranked Choice Voting Elections
Get PDFTheory suggests that ranked choice voting (RCV) may create a more civil campaign environment. As voters must rank candidates, the candidates have an incentive to work with each other more collaboratively. This study uses text analysis software (LIWC) to examine candidate tweets and newspaper articles in RCV versus specifically-chosen plurality cities for evidence of positivity or negativity. In quantitatively comparing the tweets, the results are mixed among the cities. Qualitatively, candidates seem to be more likely to engage each other in RCV cities than in plurality cities. Using LIWC to analyze newspaper articles for campaign tone, one can see that RCV city articles have significantly more positive than negative words. This is the first published study to use direct campaign communication data to study RCV elections and campaign civility. This research validates survey research indicating that citizens perceive RCV campaigns are more civil
Lessons from the Use of Ranked Choice Voting in American Presidential Primaries
Get PDFGrounded in experience in 2020, both major political parties have reasons to expand use of ranked choice voting (RCV) in their 2024 presidential primaries. RCV may offer a ‘win-win’ solution benefiting both the parties and their voters. RCV would build on both the pre-1968 American tradition of parties determining a coalitional presidential nominee through multiple ballots at party conventions and the modern practice of allowing voters to effectively choose their nominees in primaries. Increasingly used by parties around the world in picking their leaders, RCV may allow voters to crowd-source a coalitional nominee. Most published research about RCV focuses on state and local elections. In contrast, this article analyzes the impact on voters, candidates, and parties from five state Democratic parties using RCV in party-run presidential nomination contests in 2020. First, it uses polls and results to examine how more widespread use of RCV might have affected the trajectory of contests for the 2016 Republican nomination. Second, it contrasts how more than three million voters in the 2020 Democratic presidential primaries backed withdrawn candidates with the low rate of such wasted votes for withdrawn candidates in the states with RCV ballots. Finally, it concludes with an examination of how RCV might best interact with the parties’ current rules and potential changes to those rules