Samer Anabtawi, University College London

Nefarious claims and harmful stereotypes against LGBTIQ+ individuals and communities often predate the visible emergence of an LGBTIQ+ rights movement. While queer- and transphobic discourses evolve over time, the early narratives that construct queer and transgender people as “outgroups” receive little attention in analyses of contemporary movement dynamics. A growing number of studies examine the historical legacies of marginalization and scapegoating by powerful political forces, yet much of this work focuses on the United States and Western Europe. In this paper, I will explore how early queerphobic discourses affect nascent LGBTIQ+ communities and queer activism. Specifically, I will examine the rise of political homophobia in Palestine beginning in the 1980s and trace its various impacts on queer Palestinians and the trajectory of queer and trans activism in Palestine and beyond. The study relies on archived documents, interviews, and thematic analysis to identify dominant narratives and their ongoing impacts on LGBTQ politics in the Arab region. This paper will contribute to a better understanding of the nuances and complexities of LGBTIQ+ rights movements in the Middle East.

Cassy Dorff, Vanderbilt University; Tara McKay, Vanderbilt University; Lauren Chojnacki, Vanderbilt University

Being a member of a minority group shapes political experiences, viewpoints, and behaviors. Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ+) people are more likely to vote compared to the general population. LGBTQ+ people also participate in high-cost political events, such as protests, more often than non-LGBTQ+ people despite greater personal risks and the presence of other physical and mental health disparities that traditionally dampen political participation. This article explores one potential reason LGBTQ+ people may be spurred to participate in costly political acts: victimization. Using a novel survey of 1,256 older LGBTQ+ people living in the American South, we provide evidence that experiencing victimization events such as harassment and discrimination can increase political participation. We further show that there is meaningful variation along two dimensions that affects participation outcomes within the LGBTQ+ population: how often the person was exposed to victimization events over their life-course and how proximate (or personal) the nature of those events were. Individuals who are exposed to more frequent, and more proximate events turnout to protest at rates higher than those with more infrequent and impersonal victimization events.

Kristopher Velasco, Princeton University

All movements experience uneven progress and setback – resulting in contradictory policy environments. Consequently, it is important to disaggregate movements for internal comparisons to understand and overcome such contradictions. This is especially important for global movements to advance LGBT+ rights as countries commonly enact some progressive reforms yet maintain other discriminatory policies. Why? I argue that while articulated as a single cause, global LGBT+ advocacy advances distinct, though interrelated, dimensions of personhood: sexual orientation, gender identity, sex characteristics, and sexual behaviors. Each dimension varies in its recognition as a legitimate form of personhood and this variation helps explain contradictory policy environments. Moreover, known strategies for advancing rights by conferring such legitimacy (e.g., transnational movements, international norms, human rights treaties) may be more amenable to some dimensions over others. I demonstrate this argument by comparing the adoption of rights based on sexual orientation, gender identity, and homosexual behaviors across 152 countries between 1991 and 2019. Results from seemingly unrelated regressions find that known transnational pathways for recognizing personhood and, thus, securing rights vary significantly across each dimension. Findings from this study illuminate why contradictory policy environments exist and how strategies to advance one aspect of LGBT+ rights may hinder others.

Haley V. Norris, Rutgers University

Caucuses are a way for marginalized groups to build institutional power. The role of both women’s and racial/ethnic minority caucuses have been studied in the American and Comparative contexts—and research shows that these spaces facilitate information sharing, networking, and further marginalized group representation. The role of LGBTQ+ parliamentary caucuses is understudied. This paper traces the history and legislative power of three such caucuses in the UK, US, and Canada. Operating in different political systems and with unique histories of institutionalization, this comparative analysis will provide information on the ways that LGBTQ+ descriptive representatives and their allies work to bring LGBTQ+ issues to the forefront in legislative bodies. The first portion of the paper draws attention to this history and opens up future research on the gender and sexuality norms in caucuses. In the second portion of the paper, I evaluate the differences between international and domestic advocacy strategies to determine how LGBTQ representatives mobilize identity for different audiences. Of particular interest is the tool of “gay diplomacy”—the use of sanctions against norm violating countries. One example of this is the recent case of American citizen Brittney Griner’s detainment by Russian authorities. The UK and Canada both participate in Commonwealth activities—making their international advocacy more institutionalized than it is in the US. Using these three cases, I seek to explore two questions: (1) How do LGBTQ representatives advocate for domestic versus international community issues; and (2) How do LGBTQ representatives challenge cisheteronormativity of the legislative space through their advocacy efforts in LGBTQ caucuses? The purpose of this paper is to document the interplay between domestic and international LGBTQ rights advocacy, furthering our understanding of how sexual orientation and gender identity have become a globalized rights project. This paper will contribute to queer scholarship critiquing homonormative representation, LGBT political science’s empirical understanding of political representation, and comparative analyses of institutional norms.

Calla Hummel, University of Miami; Sarah Berens, University of Innsbruck

Migrants send billions of dollars in remittances to family members every year. Many of those migrants are gay, lesbian, bisexual, and trans (LGBTQ+) people who migrated to countries with more protections for LGBTQ+ communities than their home countries. Researchers have studied the economic effects of remittances on migrants’ home countries and are beginning to look at the social effects. Research shows that remittances influence voting, political engagement, and beliefs. Do remittances increase support for LGBTQ+ rights? We argue that relying financially on LGBTQ+ migrants pushes family members to re-examine their beliefs about LGBTQ+ people and the rights they should have in society. We theorize that LGBTQ+ migrants send social as well as economic remittances to relatives in their home countries. We hypothesize that social and economic remittances can travel through three pathways: 1) where relatives rely on LGBTQ+ migrants’ remittances, they are more likely to accept their identities; 2) where relatives see LGBTQ+ migrants being successful in another country, they are more likely to support LGBTQ+ rights in the home country; 3) where LGBTQ+ migrants tell relatives about rights and protections in the host country, relatives are more likely to support similar rights in the home country. To evaluate the hypotheses, we use interviews in Miami, FL and Santiago, Chile, LAPOP data, and a survey with embedded experiments in Mexico. We find a connection between receiving remittances and support for LGBTQ+ rights. In interviews, gay and trans migrants explained that they carefully read about different laws and chose which country to migrate to based on countries’ LGBTQ+ protections. They also recounted that when their families needed money and saw their success, they became more accepting of their gay and trans identities. We find a strong connection between receiving remittances and increased support for LGBTQ+ rights in LAPOP data – even after controlling for age, gender, religiosity, education, and location. We are currently developing a survey with embedded experiments to evaluate the proposed mechanisms. We plan to sample 2000 people in Mexico in early 2023 who receive remittances from either LGBTQ+ or heterosexual relatives and run a conjoint experiment on the LGBTQ+ policies that these families support.

Federica Stagni, Scuola Normale Superiore

The study of social movement coalitions represents a promising subfield in the social movement literature. Over the years, scholars have investigated primarily how coalitions begin and end, paying particular attention to factors that facilitate the emergence of movement and campaign coalitions. The scholarship has thus alternatively studied the internal and external agents that affect the formation of movement alliances looking -among other aspects- at contextual, ideological, organizational and relational ones. Recently, as the last Social Movements Studies Journal’s special issue (Zajak & Haunss, 2022) has shown, additional attention has been given to the study of successful alliances, although this remains a marginal field in the study of bridge-building efforts. However, the issue of maintaining cooperation among distinct activist groups that lasts over time is still largely understudied. This contribution aims to fill this gap. Through an in-depth empirical study of the long-lasting cooperation of Israeli-Palestinian activist organizations in the Palestinian region of the South Hebron Hills, this article singles out various factors that allowed the cooperation to survive intense repression and the menace of time. I specifically consider the case of the #savesusiya campaign, a context that represents the apex of decades of cooperation and solidarity between activists from the two sides of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Methodologically, this contribution relies on a triangulation of data-gathering and data-analyzing. After two months of preliminary fieldwork in Palestine (2019), I selected the region and the case I was interested in following. Then, I carried out a Protest Event Analysis (PEA) that mapped the organizations and groups of activists that actively participated in the campaign in the area. The research process included interviews with members of organizations, movements and independent activists who participated in the campaign. Twenty interviews were coded by utilizing the MaxQDA program. Finally, I had the chance to spend another two months in the field (2022), including an extremely valuable opportunity of living with the communities. I also accompanied and participated in the activists’ meetings and actions, directly experiencing the strong personal links and relationships that distinguish Palestinian and Israeli activist groups in the region. During this period, I continued undertaking interviews bringing my total number up to twenty-five. In addition, I facilitated three focus groups in the village of Susiya.

Jeff L. Feng, Hamilton College

Pride parades have increasingly become corporate affairs and drifted far from their revolutionary roots in queer and trans liberation. In lieu of transformative politics, Pride organizations and privileged LGBTQ+ people seek individual acceptance and rights and reinforce race, gender, class, and settler advantages. Additionally, celebrations such as Washington D.C.’s Capital Pride have invited the Dakota Access Pipeline-backing Wells Fargo into Pride, therefore suggesting that for privileged LGBTQ+ people to secure rights, they must sacrifice queer and trans people of color to climate and environmental injustice. Yet, queer, trans, and Two Spirit organizers forge what I call queer climate justice—an intersectional, joyful, and coalitional praxis—to bridge the queer and trans liberation and climate justice movements, disrupt misinformation that all LGBTQ+ people are wealthy and do not care about the environment or climate, and expand queer movement agendas. This paper analyzes a queer dance party for climate justice in front of Ivanka Trump’s D.C. house in April 2017 and a shutdown of Washington D.C.’s Capital Pride later that year in June. From semi-structured interviews with the protest organizers and content analysis of press releases, Tweets, and media coverage about the protests, I find that queer climate justice organizers reject corporate Pride and build intersectional coalitions by targeting multiple institutions, such as the Wells Fargo, the police, and defense contractors, and assert a revitalized coalitional Pride by dancing for the intersectionally marginalized within the LGBTQ+ community. I reveal the dangers of ignoring LGBTQ+ politics that enable climate injustice and explain the contributions of queer, trans, and Two Spirit activists toward climate justice and bringing Pride parades back to their roots.

Ethel Tungohan, York University

The goal of this paper is to assess the trajectories of migrant activism across Canada during and in the aftermath of COVID. During COVID, there were multiple pressures facing migrant organizers, namely the reality that COVID presented numerous immigration, labour, and health challenges to migrant workers, especially front-facing migrant workers in essential industries. These multiple demands have ironically not led migrant organizers to reduce their capacity to advocate on migrant workers’ behalf but have actually catalyzed their work. The realization that the status quo was not sustainable became widespread, as was the belief that migrant workers’ rights could only truly be guaranteed through the abolition of capitalist structures that have disproportionately led to migrant workers to get sick and to die from COVID. With the provision of more state and civil-society funding opportunities for migrant-led projects, alongside an increased willingness to fight for migrants’ rights, migrant organizing intensified. In the transition to post-COVID economies, migrant workers face new challenges. In fact, research shows that policymakers have forcibly tried to return to normal by pushing through with back-to-work policies that pay little regard to occupational health and safety and labour rights (Weiler, et al., 2022). Migrant workers, as precarious residents of Canada, have very little opportunity to contest these policies because of how their work permits are tied to their employers. In fact, incidents of migrant abuse appeared to have escalated during the post-COVID transition. As a result, migrant organizers are seeing the importance of building coalitions in the wake of COVID-19. Rather than organizing in silos, with migrant workers from different labour sectors and across different racial communities have begun to form short-term and long-term coalitions out of a sense of ‘shared fate.’ Despite differences in political ideology and in agendas, migrant organizations are using intersectional solidarities as the basis for their organizing work. In some instances, these organizations have even built bridges with Indigenous organizations and movements for Black Lives. By examining these various sites of coalition-building, this paper will analyze the viability of migrant coalitions in the post-COVID era, scrutinizing whether and to what extent notions of intersectional solidarities can lead to lasting partnerships.

Rajkamal Singh, University of California, Santa Barbara

Almost every social movement entails some form of partnership between its constituents, with varying degrees of interaction and coordination. One of the most important forms of partnership are coalitions, wherein movement actors join hands to work on common tasks. However, coalition formation can be challenging, especially when structural divisions are politically salient among movement actors. What conditions facilitate the formation of coalitions among structurally divided groups? To answer this question, my project seeks to understand coalition formation in a particularly hard case, namely Indian farmers, who form more than one-third of the country’s population. Farmers in India are a heterogeneous group ridden with deep structural divisions across caste, class, and ideology. These divisions have historically impeded collaboration between social movement organizations, on some occasions even leading to violent conflicts. Yet, in the recent past, Indian farmer organizations have been able to build coalitions that successfully forced the Indian state to implement concessions and reverse their anti-farmers policy agenda. Drawing on in-depth interviews (N=165), participant observations (N=18), and secondary sources, I argue that when organizations lose their capacity to mobilize traditional networks (e.g., caste or class networks), they become more open to collaborating with each other. Specifically, I show that coalitions between farmer organizations became possible after farmer organizations witnessed a decline in their ability to mobilize their caste and class networks. As a result, organizations (a) became open to farmers from regardless of their background to increase their organizational strength, which weakened the salience of caste and class divisions, (b) were no longer constrained by the interests of political elites who had previously aligned with farmer organizations, and most importantly, (c) became motivated to adopt alternative strategies of mobilization to increase their influence vis-a-vis the governments. These factors led to ad-hoc collaborations, which in turn enabled the formation of interorganizational networks. The Indian government’s increasingly repressive and negligent approach further strengthened these networks and helped them coalesce into large-scale coalitions. Coalitions between divided groups, once formed, can be hard to sustain. Several factors such as competing interests, lack of trust, and past rivalries can easily disrupt cooperation. What factors allow divided groups to build durable coalitions then? I address this question in the second part of my project. Leveraging interviews of farmer leaders and field notes from public meetings and protest rallies organized by farmer coalitions, I show that two strategies helped sustain the farmers’ coalition: (a) developing a common minimum agenda around demands that cut across most organizations, and (b) developing a tiered structure in which leadership is controlled by a committee whose mandate is determined by a majority of coalition members. These factors enable a shared commitment, maintain accountability, mitigate leadership rivalries, and allow members to mobilize on organization-specific issues without threats to their autonomy. As exemplified by the success of Indian case, coalitions help strengthen the organizational structure of movements, which helps in safeguarding the movement from repression and cooptation. Coalitions play a crucial role in achieving concrete political outcomes because they facilitate a united and powerful challenge that authorities cannot dismiss as routine opposition. Furthermore, as durable coalitions require extensive interaction between several movement actors, they enhance the strategic repertories of individual organizations and help forge new social ties, which are crucial resources for future mobilizations.

Ashley Anderson, University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill

Labor unions play a critical role in opposing authoritarian regimes; yet in the Middle East their impact has largely been overlooked. In this paper, I showcase the contribution of labor movements to pro-democracy uprisings in the context of the 2011 Arab Spring uprisings in Tunisia. I will show how state-led efforts to exclude and repress the UGTT fostered radical alliances between union elites and opposition movements that politicized labor agendas. Most important, I demonstrate a symbiotic connection between unions’ external and internal political environments, showing how the absence of influential allies in Tunisia enhanced unions’ capacity for political mobilization by driving union elites to invest in internally democratic structures. I argue that internal democracy facilitates labor militancy by solidifying activist commitment, facilitating leadership accountability, and enabling unions to safeguard against autocrats’ attempts to divide the labor movement through strategic misinformation and co-optation. Thus, a key, if paradoxical, insight of the paper is that when autocrats pursue corporatist strategies intended to isolate and depoliticize labor, they unintentionally strengthen unions by providing them with the autonomy and organizational cohesion necessary to effectively challenge the regime.

Be Stone, CUNY-Graduate Center

In this project I investigate the concept of “culpability” in the opioid settlement cases in the U.S. These are a collection of civil lawsuits seeking damages from pharmaceutical companies for their role in the opioid epidemic. While these cases seek to determine corporations’ “liability,” I use digital archival research and ordinary language analysis to examine related terms: “responsibility,” “fault,” “wrongdoing,” and “accountability” in Congressional hearings, legal arguments, and news reports. I contrast this with evidence from the tobacco settlement cases, investigating how our conception of who should be held responsible when individual “addictions” reach epidemic proportions has changed in the last thirty years. My sense is that the debate about who is responsible for “addiction” epidemics will be a site saturated with meaning about collective, mutual, and individual responsibility; potent themes in the American political tradition.

Sumru Atuk, Ithaca College

This paper explores femicide, i.e., gender-related murder of women, in the US as an intersectional and multidimensional policy issue rather than simply a criminal justice problem. In the contemporary US, over 2,000 women are killed annually, mostly by an intimate partner or an acquaintance. Women of color are disproportionately represented among femicide victims. Impunity—e.g., the lack of proper investigation and prosecution of gender-based violence (GBV)—is one of the major issues that lead to femicide (Threadcraft 2017). Attempts to address GBV and impunity in the US have historically focused on criminal justice-oriented legal reforms (e.g., mandatory arrest policies and harsher punishments). The history of the battered women’s movement has revealed, however, that these responses reinforce carceral policies and legitimate state violence against people of color (Richie 2012). Furthermore, they divert attention from the role of social and economic policies and the importance of centering victims’ needs in addressing GBV. It is important to break this pattern for the budding anti-femicide advocacy in the US to succeed. To this end, this paper asks: How can impunity be addressed without reinforcing a carceral system? In answering this question, I employ content and critical discourse analyses of relevant congressional records and complement this data with in-depth interviews with members of grassroots organizations. Drawing from Black feminist scholarship and femicide literature on/from Latin America, I argue that institutional, rather than individual, responsibility should be at the center of the femicide debate. To do so, the American state should be brought (back) into the discussion of femicide, not simply in its capacity to punish but in its responsibility to prevent femicide. The discussion of impunity should include state impunity for enabling femicide (e.g., the lack of efficient firearm regulations and help-seeking options, and racist law enforcement practices). As such, this paper contributes to the efforts to overcome the impunity/carcerality dichotomy and to devise policy solutions that serve intersectional needs. It also situates the US in the global discussions on femicide.

Rebecca Krisel, CUNY Graduate Center

What responsibility do media actors have when reporting on complex, scientific, drug-discovery issues? How does this news coverage affect policy and society? By analyzing media coverage of psychedelics in mainstream U.S. publications since the 1990s, this study explores these important questions. The fast pace at which psychedelic drug policy is changing at all levels of government has led psychedelic watchdog groups such as Psymposia to sound the alarm about the overall lack of critical, investigative media reporting in mainstream news outlets addressing both the existing potential harmful effects of psychedelic use and instances of sexual abuse within clinical settings. Using sentiment analysis, this study quantifies how news coverage of psychedelics became increasingly positive in tone since the 1990s and investigates how the overwhelmingly positive news coverage may have negative consequences for: 1) maintaining objectivity in psychedelic psychiatric research, since research participants may have preconceived expectations of the effects of the trial treatments; 2) adequately warning the public about potential harms of using psychedelics, even in therapeutic settings; and 3) harm reduction measures designed to support those using psychedelics recreationally.

Ariel Gabriella Mekler, Graduate Center, City University of New York

By the fall of 2022, United States legislators introduced 155 anti-LGBTIQ+ bills. The bills disproportionately impact transgender individuals and continue to increase against the backdrop of an August 2022 U.S. country assessment by the United Nations independent expert on sexual orientation and gender identity. Using a queer feminist framework, this interpretative project suggests that U.S. anti-LGBTIQ+ legislation exemplifies egregious international human rights law violations. Drawing on content analysis and archival research, it further argues that despite only ratifying five of the eighteen international human rights treaties, the U.S. must uphold the standards as outlined by the principle of universality and non-discrimination. Understanding the consequences of the domestic on the international and vice versa lends itself to generating better insights into the continuous transnational anti-LGBTIQ+ movements and the greater responsibility of states to protect the most marginalized.

Nikita Dhawan, Technical University Dresden

Should (online) hate speech be protected as free speech? Or should ethnic slurs and discriminatory sexist language be criminalized? Is it the responsibility of the state to protect vulnerable groups from discriminatory and harmful hate speech? Or are nonjuridical forms of opposition to hate speech preferable to state censorship? The paper will address the question if and when certain forms of hate speech should be proscribed. The recent rise in anti-state discourses, particularly on social media platforms, reflect Friedrich Nietzsche’s image of the state as monstre froid (coldest of all cold monsters). However, as Michel Foucault warns, state phobia is an important function of neoliberal governmentality. Against popular antistatist positions, the paper will engage with the Derridian/Spivakian idea of the state as Pharmakon, namely as both poison and medicine. The paper will outline how regulation of hate speech by the state not only protects minorities from injury, but also enables vulnerable individuals and groups access structures of reparations. This would facilitate a more democratic and equal society, wherein the state bears the responsibility to right wrongs. This would be more than just protecting victims of (online) hate speech from offense; rather would entail guaranteeing them dignity as equal members in society.

Yener Bayramoglu, Manchester Metropolitan University

The outbreak of COVID-19 pandemic led to constant negotiation and contestation over meanings and discourses as different actors such as politicians, medical experts, citizens and media institutions intervened into creating a trustworthy narrative about the spread of the disease. Within this framework, digital media emerged as a key player in shaping the narratives over the pandemic and creating new political communication strategies to combat the spread of mis- and disinformation. Drawing on a research project on digital conspiracy theories and hate speech in Germany, this paper will discuss how the fragility of knowledge in the early days of the pandemic created a new challenge for political communication that claimed truth. Of particular interest will be here a tweet by the German Health Ministry (BMG) that addressed rumours about public health measures as “fake news”. By implementing computational discourse analysis on 4875 tweets that discussed the BMGs initial “fake news” tweet, this paper will demonstrate how despite the novelness of the pandemic and digital technologies that were used to spread disinformation, the online backlash recycled past affective discourses, narratives and meanings drawing on collective memory in Germany. Not only older forms of racist and antisemitic narratives were foregrounded, but also Stasi violence in the GDR, Nazism and World War II were scavenged for images to ground the arguments not only against public health measures but also against the German state.

Maria do Mar Castro-Varela, Alice Salomon University of Applied Science

While the proliferation of social media democratized access to information, this simultaneously opened up the possibility of unregulated circulation of disinformation, conspiracy theories and hate speech. This is an area of great public interest on a global level, in which several reports demand more regulations from social media platforms to intervene in the spread of disinformation. Several studies have for instance explored the Russian and Brazilian bots and trolls disseminating anti-democratic, state-phobic and anti-scientific content on western social media platforms, highlighting the political and international character of digital disinformation. The interconnected nature of the online media ecosystem means that conspiracy theories are ubiquitous. A growing body of literature on disinformation, particularly in relation to post-truth politics, focuses on the manipulation of communication technologies that threaten democracies. The impacts of disinformation on people’s behavior in pandemic times has been researched in multiple ways suggesting that it is paramount for national as well as international political institutions to develop strategies to regulate, intervene in and rebalance dissemination on the internet without censoring people or jeopardizing freedom of press and expression. To this end, the paper reflects on different ways to counter disinformation. Berlin based organizations such as “Tactical Tech” counter the spread of disinformation by creating transdisciplinary artistic projects. Before the pandemic, the collaborative project “NOHATE” explicitly dealt with online hate comments regarding “migration” and “asylum”. The paper will present and compare different approaches on how to deal on- and offline with toxic communication, and reflect on the role of the state, when it itself becomes a target of disinformation and mistrust.

Morgan Wack, University of Washington

The comparative efficacy of debunking interventions have yet to be fully explored in the Global South. Though recent work to fill this void have expanded the reach of fact-checking and social correction efforts, no current studies have assessed the broader applicability of these interventions to the specific types of misinformation and platforms prevalent in the Global South. To fill this gap, we first examine a coded subset of Twitter data collected throughout Kenya’s 2022 presidential election campaign to assess the prevalence and composition of misinformation related to electoral integrity. Among the sample of 2,600 posts, we find that less than 45% of the 605 posts containing information with the potential to damage perceptions of election integrity could have been countered with traditional forms of fact-checking. Moreover, less than 20% of the misinformation identified could have plausibly been linked to an official fact-check produced during the election campaign. Use of a supervised learning model suggests that this trend is representative of the composition of our larger database of two million posts. To address the misinformation not currently covered by traditional fact-checking efforts we evaluate a novel method for democratizing debunking efforts that we call “social truth queries”. Building on successful lab studies, these queries rely on user comments which prompt users to question various aspects of the accompanying information, including its veracity, source, and social congruence. Using an online experiment (N=4,300), we show that social truth queries substantially reduce belief in potentially harmful partisan misinformation but are less influential in shifting sharing determinations. Importantly, these effects are not limited to specific types of responses, enabling them to potentially address misinformation more quickly across diverse political and social contexts.

Sumitra Badrinathan, University of Oxford; Simon Chauchard, Leiden University; Niloufer Siddiqui, SUNY, University at Albany

Acts of vigilante violence, most often targeted against religious and sectarian minorities, have become increasingly common in India and Pakistan in recent years. Journalistic accounts often link anti-minority vigilantism to misinformation on social media, leading politicians and activists to call on tech platforms to deal with such false information. Yet, empirically, the precise link between misinformation and support for vigilante violence remains largely unidentified. In this paper we fill this gap by asking what role, if any, misinformation plays in support for vigilantism. On the one hand, false information with a call to action could directly result in collective violence, especially in contexts where such information is readily believed. On the other hand, citizens could be motivated to engage in violence as a result of long-standing societal cleavages, with misinformation playing little to no causal role. To answer these questions, we designed a jointly registered experiment in India and Pakistan using a novel audio medium treatment. We find that countering misinformation significantly reduces support for vigilantism, even amongst the most polarized subgroups of our sample. In addition, elite signaling and beliefs about state positionality do not move respondent beliefs. Our findings have key policy implications as they point to belief change as a potential way to curb collective violence even in highly polarized and tense contexts.

Jessica Gottlieb, University of Houston; Claire Leslie Adida, UCSD; Richard Kouame Moussa, Ecole Nationale Supérieure de Statistique et d’Economie Appliquée

Misinformation has deleterious and potentially destabilizing effects on democracy. As a result, scholars and practitioners alike are investigating strategies to reduce the belief in and dissemination of misinformation. A common strategy is a digital literacy intervention to increase individual capacity to identify misinformation online. This, we argue, ignores identity-based motivations to consume biased media. We offer a theoretical framework that highlights the limitations of strategies that ignore individuals’ directional motives. We propose three interventions that leverage insights on how social identity shapes behavior, and test each with an information experiment in Côte d’Ivoire, a polarized country. We find that a standard digital literacy intervention fails to curb the belief in and spread of misinformation, while our social-identity based interventions limited both. Our findings confirm that misinformation spreads at least in part because individuals are motivated to consume biased media, and caution against strategies that ignore these directional motives.

Tiago Augusto da Silva Ventura, Center for Social Media and Politics; Rajeshwari Majumdar, New York University; Jonathan Nagler, New York University; Joshua A. Tucker, New York University

For years, WhatsApp has been the primary social media application in many Global South countries. Numerous journalist and scholarly accounts suggest that the platform has become a fertile ground for the spread of polarizing content and political misinformation rumors, with some going so far as to assert that WhatsApp could have impacts on electoral outcomes, episodes of violence, and vaccine hesitancy around the world. However, no studies so far have been able to show causal links between WhatsApp usage and these alleged changes in citizens’ attitudes and behavior. To fill this gap, we conducted a field experiment that reduced users’ exposure to media content shared on WhatsApp activity during the Presidential election in Brazil. Our field experiment randomly assigns users to a Media-Constrained WhatsApp, in which we incentivized them not to access any media, image, or video received during the weeks before the election on October 3, 2022. After conducting our Media-Constrained WhatsApp Deactivation for three weeks, we collect survey data from our participants to measure the effects of the deactivation on their ability to identify misinformation, levels of political polarization, and subjective well-being. Our results indicate that removing access to multimedia content on WhatsApp significantly reduces users’ exposure to popular misinformation rumors. These effects are twice the size of a reduction in mainstream media exposure, which we also verified as an effect of the deactivation. However, beyond a reduction in exposure, we uncover results that provide support for a minimalist view of the effects of WhatsApp on attitudes. We do not detect significant effects for beliefs to the same misinformation rumors, as well as aggregate polarization index or subjective well-being. Our study contributes to the growing literature on the causal effects of reducing social media usage on political attitudes and behavior. We extend this literature by focusing on WhatsApp, the largest and most significant social media application in many Global South democracies.

Maria Repnikova, Georgia State University

Over the course of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, China’s high-ranking officials proclaimed neutrality and support for peaceful solutions. Our analysis of China’s state media coverage of the war, however, reveals the presence of a consistent bias toward Russia. Our study, drawing on reporting by China’s core national outlets in both Chinese and English, including Xinhua News, CCTV’s Xinwen Lianbo, and CGTN, uncovers a multifaceted pro-Russia tilt. Specifically, we find that Chinese media frame the West as the core responsible actor behind this conflict, deflate Russia’s aggression and war crimes, highlight Russia’s resilience vis-à-vis the West, and downplay Ukraine’s successes on the battlefield. Rhetorically, pro-Russia leanings are communicated by drawing disproportionately on Russian sources, obfuscating footage from Ukraine, and using indirect language in referring to Russia-caused casualties. We further find that the global Chinese outlets, like CGTN, are more inclusive of Ukraine’s perspective, and critiques of Russia than domestic Chinese outlets. We attribute it to the reputational concerns of CGTN.

Ming Ma, HKBU; Alexander M. Libman, Freie Universität Berlin; Genia Kostka, Freie Universität Berlin

Authoritarian states are consolidating regional blocs to counter the global decoupling and sanction pressures. Extant literature notices authoritarian regimes have been constructing alternative narratives about international events aiming at building legitimacy for their position and actions, but we know little about how these state-sponsored narratives are formulated and spread in the online public sphere. By collecting large-scale text data about regional bloc building from the most popular social media platforms in Russia and China, the two leading authoritarian states of Eurasia authoritarian states, this paper adopts automatized text analysis and critical discourse analysis to interrogate the framing strategies used by authoritarian states, the rhetoric similarity and divergence between state authority, key opinion leaders and the general public as well as the dissemination effectiveness of these narratives. This study enriches our understanding of authoritarian regional alliance-building strategies and the dynamics of authoritarian propaganda from a comparative perspective.

Audrye Wong, University of Southern California

Authoritarian regimes are increasingly using informational tools to reshape global narratives in support of their strategic goals – what I call informational statecraft. While Russia attempts to sow chaos in democratic systems, China’s approach to informational statecraft is driven more by incentives to legitimize and consolidate its rise in international influence. Drawing on a corpus of English-language Facebook posts by Chinese state media and diplomats, this paper examines the content and timing of China’s overseas propaganda and disinformation, using both automated text analysis and qualitative human validation. I find that China more commonly employs strategies of “Autocratic Advantage” – highlighting the capacity of centralized government to deliver better results – than “Democratic Dysfunction” – how democratic institutional failings lead to poor governance outcomes, with the latter strategy opportunistically concentrated around key events in U.S. politics. At the same time, touting the success of China’s model often entails subtly emphasizing distinctive traits of its political system and couching performance in the language of liberal values, rather than explicitly calling for authoritarianism. Moreover, disinformation is usually used on issues seen as threatening China’s key national security interests. These findings underscore how authoritarian regimes can use informational narratives to gain geopolitical influence short of war.

Anfan Chen, The Chinese University of Hong Kong; Kaiping Chen, University of Wisconsin-Madison

Authoritarian governments have adopted a variety of strategies to shape public opinion on digital platforms. Scholars have well documented strategies from hard and soft propaganda, to filtering and censorship of posts and comments in the past decade. However, little is known about how changes in the technological affordances and configurations of a platform might influence public discourse about pro and anti-regime contents. This paper takes advantage of the recent technological shift on Chinese social media platforms, especially Sina Weibo, where the Chinese government made users’ IP locations disclosed on their homepage and whenever publishing a post or comment. This IP address de-anonymization policy was implemented site by site from March to May 2022, as the declared intention for the authoritarian regime was to combat mis(dis)information. This policy happens at the same time with the broader pandemic lockdowns, where different provinces take varying approaches (big vs. small scale lockdowns). One economic consequence is the huge shift in rural-urban migration. This new policy shift on Weibo during the pandemic allows researchers to examine the political economic outcomes of the pandemic control measures that were not able to be addressed previously. And our paper focuses on two questions: 1) how have nationalist narratives changed (i.e., in terms of volume and content) before and after the IP address policy? and 2) how can we use IP addresses-based location traces to capture people’s mobility patterns before and after the lockdown to estimate the size of rural-urban migration? We collected all the posts and comments made by over 300,000 randomly sampled monthly active Weibo users from March 2022 to June 2022, when the de-anonymization policy was rolled out on Weibo. Using a difference in difference (DID) design and computational text analyses, our paper aims to reveal how this new information control strategy in China has on one hand changed public discourse toward more nationalist (pro-regime), but at the same time, poses authoritarian government at the risk of making social cues about the economic impact of COVID-19 lockdowns available to the public.

Haifeng Huang, University of California, Merced

Propaganda is crucial for maintaining authoritarian rule, and no time is it more important than during crisis events like disasters, when citizens’ trust in the government may be low and government competence may be particularly questioned. Moreover, during crises there will be competing narratives challenging the government and its narratives. But previous studies of propaganda focus on its effects during normal times; the effect of government propaganda about its performances during crises are not well understood. We also do not know how propaganda will fare against competing narratives. This research addresses these questions using two original survey experiments, conducted respectively in early March 2020, when China was still deep in the coronavirus crisis, and in mid-late March, when the crisis had let up. In both experiments, the respondents were reminded of some representative government propaganda, resistance narratives challenging the government, or cross-cutting communication involving both propaganda and resistance. With this unique dataset, the research will shed light on the effects of propaganda, resistance narratives, and the competition between the two on citizens’ political attitudes.

Jianbing Li, University of Kansas; Rigao Liu, University of Kansas

The propaganda machine of authoritarianism does not always depict democracy as a negative enemy that threatens its survival. Instead, existing studies show that citizens in authoritarian countries tend to overestimate the level of democracy in their countries. Taking the conventional wisdom from media effect theory in communication science that media influences peoples’ political attitudes, we aim to explore the question: if authoritarian states utilize media to influence its citizens’ attitudes toward democracy, how is this effect processed? To answer this question, we propose two mechanisms: devaluation and misconception. The former hypothesizes that authoritarian media depict democracy to be a negative trait and the latter hypothesizes that authoritarian media changes citizen’s foundational understandings of democracy with misconceptions. We divide the misconception mechanism into two channels: “This is democracy”, in which media guides people to believe undemocratic traits to be democratic, and “This is not democracy”, in which media guides people to believe democratic traits to be undemocratic. To testify the mechanisms, we use data from World Value Survey, Reporters Without Borders and Freedom House, comparing peoples’ evaluation and understanding of democracy. Our results show that, as authoritarian state’s control over media increases, citizens are more likely to hold a positive view of democracy, which is contrary to the devaluation mechanism. The study also provides a mixed result to the misconception mechanism, showing that as state control over media increases, people are more likely to misunderstand military overturning regime as democratic, yet less likely to misunderstand religious authorities’ interpretations of laws as democratic.

Samuel A. Greene, King’s College London

The management of public opinion is broadly understood as key to the ability of contemporary authoritarian leaders to maintain their power. Thus, autocrats are increasingly seen to prefer a strategy of persuasion to outright coercion, and a burgeoning literature on ‘informational autocracy’ has shed considerable light on the tools available to authoritarian regimes seeking to ensure that their messages and messengers win out. Less is known, however, about how citizens of authoritarian regimes respond to the restrictions placed by leaders on their ability to consume news. This paper addresses this question by delving into the cases of Belarus and Russia, where authorities have deployed a range of tactics: hounding and marginalizing some media outlets, coopting others, and outright shuttering still others. Drawing on a series of original media audience surveys – in Belarus in 2020, 2021 and 2022, and in Russia in 2019, 2020 and 2021 – the paper suggests that news consumers make context-specific decisions about how to cope with top-down information control, navigating the remaining media landscape and relying heavily on cues from their social circles. Further, the evidence suggests that autocrats are most effective at promoting pro-regime news consumption when their interventions are least heavy handed.

Jacob Tucker, Princeton University

Modern authoritarian states rely on propaganda to solve the problem of authoritarian control and are often successful at sustaining very high levels of public popularity (Guriev and Treisman 2022; Matovski 2021; Greene and Robertson 2019). While the dominance of media control in authoritarian states is an intuitive explanation for popularity, the puzzle of modern authoritarianism is that the state must maintain public interest, trust, and reliance on state media in a technological environment where the total control of historic totalitarian regimes (e.g. Kenez 1985; Linz 2000) is impossible. The most technologically capable states like China can rely more on censorship, flooding, and other techniques to limit exposure to alternative forms of information (Roberts 2018), but most regimes lack either the capability or will to engage in near total censorship and instead choose to obtain dominance by winning the competition in the information space (Soldatov and Borogan 2014) and some do so with notable success. For example, prior to Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, a number of independent news sources were allowed to operate in the country, but their viewership was very limited. Outside of Russia, many Russian speakers in Latvia choose to rely solely on Russian state-owned sources of information, even using VPNs to continue accessing Russian state propaganda after it was blocked by the Latvian government in early-2022. The extent to which the audience of authoritarian propaganda will trust it over alternative forms of information suggests the need for scholars to understand the mechanism of this attachment. In this paper, I propose that managed anxiety is a core mechanism that sustains attachment to propaganda that operates in two primary ways. First, anxiety about continuing threats functions as an attention mechanism. By feeding anxiety-inducing narratives each time that a viewer tunes in, propagandists increase the probability that they will return to seek out more information soon. Second, anxieties about the threat of foreign actors and their interference in national politics allows propagandists to decrease trust in alternative sources of information by branding them as agents of these nefarious foreign actors intent on spreading disinformation. I examine the theoretical implications of repeated interactions with anxiety-inducing propaganda and its interaction with the social spread of information and emotions, the distance between propaganda narratives and ground-truth, among other elements of modern authoritarian propaganda by formalizing the theory. I then test the theory observationally using survey data collected during Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in combination with a large corpus of media data. I follow-up this observational evidence with a novel survey experiment. The theory has important implications for the study of authoritarian regimes for both scholars and policymakers. Beyond providing an answer to the puzzle of demand for propaganda, the theory points toward the challenges that alternative media outlets will face in authoritarian environments. I demonstrate that ignoring these challenges risks the dismissal of new information provided by other sources and may even cause backlash effects that inadvertently strengthen the hold of state-owned propaganda on its existing audience. Outside of the authoritarian space, the theory offers an explanation as to why news outlets in democratic states that use similar tactics can over time move an audience to believe in substantial forms of disinformation while rejecting disconfirming information from other sources.

Sergi Martinez, European University Institute

How does highly targeted authoritarian repression affect political behavior? While coercion tends to backfire, I hypothesize that focusing repression on opposition leaders might substantially diminish opposition movements’ human capital and limit their development. This is particularly relevant due to leaders’ high social status: liberal professionals, doctors, or civil servants frequently have such a role. Repressing them means purging the catalyzers of alternative ideas, which ensures authoritarian regimes’ monopoly on narratives and socialization processes. To test this claim, I combine digitized records of individual trials executed by the Fascist war court during the Spanish civil war (1936-1939) in Galicia with original postwar archival data on political behavior in authoritarian and democratic elections and at the municipality level. Results suggest that focusing repression on civic leaders enhances support for autocratic proposals and the regime’s successor parties. In line with the indoctrination hypotheses, repressing schoolteachers and professors emerges as the driver of the main effect. The main results stand when employing worldwide cross-country data on types of repression and turnout in non-democratic elections or examining Pinochet’s legacy on democratic behaviors in Chile. This paper contributes to the existing literature on dictatorships and socialization by paying attention to a second-order effect of violence and connecting two tools previously treated as separate and complementary: repression and indoctrination.

Dimitri Courant, Princeton University; Simon Baeckelandt, Université de Lille

The legitimacy of a deliberative mini-public is not quantitative and aggregative, unlike elections or votes, but qualitative. In accordance with the theories of deliberative democracy, it is the quality of the procedures and the respect of democratic principles that matter. A “good deliberation” is aiming to fight mis- and disinformation by guarantying fair and factual debates. But do mini-public experiments really follow these theoretical imperatives? Are impartiality, fairness and equity really practiced in contemporary deliberative processes? This might be more difficult for citizens’ assemblies since they are the longest and most ambitious type of deliberative mini-publics, spanning over months or even years and invested with official mandates from political decision-making institutions. Furthermore, respecting impartiality could be even harder for climate assemblies, as climate policies are an “open problem” and not a binary or clear cut one. In order to tackle this important issue, we conduct a qualitative analysis of the French Citizen’s Convention for Climate (CCC), based on a complete ethnographic direct observation of the whole process and dozens of in-depth semi-directive interviews with key actors (citizens, organizers, facilitators, experts, stakeholders). We will try to draw pragmatic and normative lessons from the procedural successes and failures of the CCC. Can we say, as the CCC co-chair did, that “neutrality is impossible”? But then what are a biased deliberation and a skewed civic engagement worth? Can they be considered legitimate? Are mis- and disinformation possible in citizens’ assemblies, even if these processes are supposed to be the ultimate example of sound and objective debates? The objective of this paper is to identify criteria of legitimacy and procedural impartiality for the deliberation with the help of a fine ethnography of the Citizens’ Convention for Climate. We propose a framework for distinguishing legitimate from illegitimate interactions and influences within citizens’ assemblies. On the one hand, three criteria are highlighted and operationalized: pluralism, transparency, and fairness. On the other hand, we construct a typology of six “modes of influences” in a mini-public: procedural, classic, semi-formal, discursive, informal, and external.

Thamy Pogrebinschi, WZB Berlin Social Science Center; Mariana Borges Martins da Silva, Oxford University; Maria Dominguez Costa Pinho, The Institute of Social and Political Studies of the State University of Rio de Janeiro

While disinformation became one of the greatest challenges to democracy in recent years, usual measures to contain it such as platform regulation and media literacy seem insufficient to refrain the dangers misinformation poses to political processes, in particular elections. Whilst there is high expectation that both legislative and regulatory bodies will be able to curb the political damage caused by disinformation, the role of other counter-information actors and responses remain less known. Citizen-led initiatives aimed at fighting disinformation are rising in Europe and elsewhere. While research on the topic grows together with the number of civil society organizations and initiatives designed to tackle disinformation, very little is still known as to how citizens can counteract misinformation directed to disrupt political processes and institutions, in particular elections. Looking into Brazil, a country highly impacted by disinformation in previous years especially due to the leadership of far-right authoritarian president Bolsonaro, this paper seeks to examine the part played by citizens in fighting disinformation in electoral processes. We turned to Brazil’s 2022 presidential election to observe how its civil society engaged to avoid the spread of disinformation. We mapped and analyzed over 70 citizen-led initiatives launched in the months preceding the election and identified five strategies advanced by civil society to fight disinformation in the electoral process and beyond. We conclude that, by mobilizing collective intelligence using digital technology, civil society can expand the fight against disinformation beyond usual measures such as fact-checking.

Marta Wojciechowska, King’s College London; Suzanne Hall, King’s College London; Zara Regan, The Policy Institute; Tianne Haggar, King’s College London; Hannah Piggott, King’s College London

Deliberative processes – such as citizen assemblies, deliberative polls or citizen juries – can offer more inclusive and better-informed ways of developing public policy. It has been argued that such processes provide participants with relevant and balanced information and can include members of previously disempowered groups (Beauvais & Warren, 2019; Smith, 2009). While participants can be initially misinformed, deliberation has the potential to correct existing misconceptions (Himmelroos & Rapeli, 2020). Further, thanks to the direct involvement of the citizens, deliberative processes have been argued to build trust and lead to results that are considered legitimate by the broader population (MacKenzie & Warren, 2012; Parkinson, 2006). However, the current deliberative practice tends to be expert-led. Expert-led processes can result in the exclusion of some forms of lived experiences and in incomplete information employed during the development of policy solutions. On the other side, the direct involvement of people with lived experiences during the deliberative processes, especially when the policy issue concerns a public response to a crisis, can raise a range of distinct challenges. These challenges concern working with participants affected by the hardship, researchers’ responsibilities, and the possibility of employing deeply personal experiences to identify workable public policy solutions. Based on the results of the mixed-method research project on the costs-of-living crisis in London (GB), this paper analyses the potential of employing peer research in deliberative processes to target misinformation at the time of crisis. In particular, we analyse the potential of peer-review research approaches to: – Gain a better understanding of the experiences of those experiencing hardship – Counter misinformation among peer researchers about the available help – Counter misinformation during the deliberative events by employing the results of peer research as evidence – Increasing the completeness of information employed for policy development, regarding complex policy issues – Increase in public legitimacy and wider support for the identified solutions As a case study, we employ the results from the research project on the understanding of the lived experience of the cost-of-living crisis in three London local councils. The project involved three stages: (1) a peer research stage (digital ethnography and peer interviews) by the people affected by the crisis, (2) a series of three deliberative workshops with the broader public employing results from the peer review stage to identify policy responses, (3) a policy roundtable involving stakeholders from the local and national government. To understand whether there is wider support for these responses we also employed a cross-sectional longitudinal survey representative of the Great Britain adult population.

Joseph Olayinka Fashagba, Federal University Lokoja

This paper examines the utility of strategic political communication using the traditional and modern media to disseminate dis-information by the newly formed opposition All Progressive Congress (APC) in months leading to the 2015 general election against the then ruling People’s Democratic Party (PDP). The dis-information succeeded in making members of the public have a dim view of the then ruling PDP, and thereby eroded the support base of the party, while couching the APC in a messianic tone. The strategy was effective as evidenced by the fact that the ruling PDP did not only lose the presidential election but also the majority seats it had controlled for sixteen years in both chambers of the national assembly. In this paper, we examine some content of the Dis-information employed, the personnel involve, the nature of (dis/mis)information and how it shaped the 2015 general elections and its outcome. The data for the study is generated from secondary sources, especially from newspapers and online repository. The data will be analyzed qualitatively, using descriptive and explanatory analysis. The paper will argue that, dis-information disseminated against the PDP, starting from 2013 till March 2015 when the general election took place succeeded in eroding the support base of the then ruling party, projected the APC as the best thing to happen to Nigeria and triggered the first power alternation in the history of Nigeria.

Akeem Olalekan Bello, Bamidele Olumilua University of Education, Science and Technology

Democracy provides a veritable platform for people’s involvement in governance. However, the freedom associated with democratic norms and values has been linked to the upsurge of disunity and conflicts in Nigeria and many parts of the world. It has been observed that political engagements among different political divides in Nigeria have been unhealthy with some pockets of violent manifestations. It is, however, getting more worrisome with the emergence and prevalence of hate speeches among politicians. For instance, violence between herdsmen and farmers, religious disagreements, political appointments, terrorism, and even the fight against corruption; are spontaneously given political, religious, and ethnic coloration through the media. Hate speeches have become an instrument of electioneering by political opponents in place of issue-based rivalry among political parties, good leadership-followership interactions, progressive ethnic competition, harmonious religious relations among citizens, socioeconomic development, and others. These dispositions are being propelled by the media. Social media, for instance, has suddenly become an instrument of disunity among Nigerians, while the print media is more sensational than factuality. This changing contour in Nigeria’s political engagements is energizing individuals and groups to use violence in ventilating their disagreements to hateful attitudes directed against them, which is creating serious challenges to governance at all levels. How did Nigeria get to this level? Who are the major culprits? What are the instances? What is the way out? Relying on John Stuart Mill’s tolerance theory, the foregoing questions were answered based on data from primary and secondary sources.

Azeez O. Olaniyan, Federal University, Oye Ekiti

Twitter’s deletion of President Buhari’s tweet and the reprisal ban of the microblogging firm by Nigeria raise questions on social media, national security, and control demands. The decision of Twitter to delete the post of President Buhari where he threatened to unleash violence on separatist movement in his country raises the issue of meddlesomeness of the media tech in the internal affairs of a sovereign state. The reprisal bans of Twitter by Nigeria equally raises the issue of government control of social media, which invariably underlines the tension between national security concerns and citizen rights to information in a democratic setting. In the wake of the Twitter ban, the Nigerian government imposes some conditions to be met by the tech firm, and intensified its planned digital surveillance law that will allow monitoring of the contents of social media communication in Nigeria. The Nigerian move triggers debates on twitter and social media control in other places of the world. Social media plays a vital role of citizen empowerment to participate in governance. However, the increasing rate of spread of fake news and seeming meddlesomeness of social media providers in internal affairs of a country raise some concerns bordering on national security, which threatens orderliness. This paper engages in a rigorous review of events that led to Twitter ban in Nigeria and the whole desire of the state to regulate social media. It situates the study within the global discourse on social media control and the place of citizens’ rights in the face of national security concerns.

Jean-Baptiste Guiatin, Université Thomas Sankara, Ouagadougou

In less than one year Burkina Faso has experienced two coups d’Etat, the self-proclaimed objective of which is to fight against the djihadist insurgency. However, from the government’s perspective this seems to entail some sort of information monitoring. Using a qualitative methodology based on semi-directed field interviews I argue that this information monitoring means curbing the freedom of speech in the name of national security.

Karol Czuba, Nazarbayev University

Government adoption of digital surveillance technologies, from facial recognition to mobile device hacking software, in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) has increased substantially in the wake of improved internet access on the continent. While a growing literature in Political Science has explored the effects of such surveillance on repression, cooptation, and public goods provision in other parts of the world, few scholars have studied the phenomenon in the African context; as a result, available evidence is limited, unsystematic, and largely descriptive. In this paper, I contribute to the existing literature by providing more systematic evidence of government digital surveillance in SSA and explaining the adoption of the technologies that make surveillance possible. I argue that, while such technologies are attractive to all governments, authoritarian regimes vulnerable to societal pressure face especially strong incentives to acquire these relatively costly tools because they help to suppress political mobilization that is particularly threatening to such regimes. To substantiate this claim, I analyze an original dataset that contains all instances of government digital surveillance in SSA undertaken for political purposes (as opposed to, for example, to support public health measures) reported in media sources and publicly available government and inter- and non-governmental organization documents catalogued in online archival repositories. I find that authoritarian governments facing widespread popular discontent and well-organized opposition movements, notably those in Ethiopia and Uganda, employ digital surveillance tools with the highest frequency, although many other autocracies as well as some democracies, such as Kenya and South Africa, also surveil citizens’ online activities. Digital surveillance is almost always targeted at real or perceived government adversaries—opposition politicians, political activists, journalists, and bloggers—usually inside the country but sometimes in the diaspora, rather than indiscriminately at all citizens. Surveillance allows governments to monitor targets’ activities and obstruct political mobilization. The experience of being surveilled meanwhile elicits fear and thus limits both political speech and organization. Accordingly, government digital surveillance serves a primarily repressive role; there is no evidence of a relationship between the use of surveillance technologies and cooptation or provision of private or public goods in SSA. Because intelligence and other law enforcement agencies in SSA generally lack the expertise required to develop the sophisticated digital surveillance tools, they purchase off-the-shelf solutions such as zero-day software exploits, which are expensive but readily available to government customers, from private companies—some of them linked to foreign governments—such as China’s Huawei and Israel’s Circles and NSO Group. As such, the use of digital surveillance is neither associated with nor requires a high level of state capacity. These findings show that the advances in digital surveillance technology amid increased internet adoption present governments with new tools that facilitate regime survival even in conditions of low state capacity. Simultaneously, government reliance on external technology providers entrenches SSA’s dependent status in global economic and political relations.

Mollie Cohen, University of Georgia; Amy Erica Smith, Iowa State University

Around the world, partisan poll watchers observe as elections are conducted and votes tallied. In theory, poll watchers safeguard the integrity of the franchise by ensuring that votes are fairly counted and contesting any irregularities in real time. By protecting parties’ ability to compete on a level playing field, partisan poll watchers should also bolster citizen confidence in the franchise when they are present. Yet, because partisan poll watchers sometimes alter election outcomes, they may raise voters’ suspicion and ultimately decrease their confidence in elections. This paper assesses the effect of partisan poll watchers on voters’ confidence in elections using data from a survey experiment and an exit poll conducted in Peru. We find that voters are, on average, more trusting of elections where partisan poll watchers are present. However, voters express less trust of elections where a single poll watcher represents their least preferred party. Focus group interviews illustrate the mechanisms that underly these average effects. This project has important implications for voters’ beliefs about electoral fairness in the short term and, in the longer term, the legitimacy and stability of democracy.

Travis B. Curtice, Drexel University; Charles David Crabtree, Dartmouth College

Do voters support deploying election observation missions to monitor elections? In this paper, we address these timely questions. Building on but departing from prior work, we argue that citizens’ support for election observation missions likely depends on their partisanship. To test our argument, we conduct a survey experiment with a national sample of about 3,500 Americans in the run-up to the 2020 United States presidential election. Respondents read an adapted news article about the deployment of common interventions in the upcoming election. To test our theoretical expectations, we randomize the partisan source endorsing the interventions. We find that respondents who self-identify as Democrats and Independents/Others are much less likely to support election observers when endorsed by Trump. In addition, Democrats are more likely to support election observers if they read that Biden approves of them. In contrast, Republicans are less likely to support an intervention if they read the same. Our results contribute to ongoing debates about how to promote and defend free elections in backsliding or democratizing countries and, more generally, to the literature on election observation and public opinion.

Susan D. Hyde, University of California, Berkeley; Jennie Barker, University of California-Berkeley; Oren Samet, University of California, Berkeley

In the United States, despite its long history of democracy, recent years have brought about significant concerns with voter trust in the electoral process. In other contexts characterized by low trust in electoral processes and outcomes, domestic non- partisan election observation has helped mitigate these issues. Because the practice is historically rare in the United States, there is limited evidence as to whether it can have such an effect in the U.S. context, especially given increases in partisan polarization around election administration and the acceptance of election outcomes. Can the presence and assessment of nonpartisan domestic election observers persuade voters of the credibility of the election? If so, are there specific aspects of the domestic observation missions that may prove more effective in convincing voters than others? Can training as an observer have effects on trust in electoral institutions beyond a given election? Using two survey experiments fielded in 2022, we find that the general presence and positive assessment of domestic nonpartisan election observers increased confidence in the electoral results and process, especially among Republican respondents, regardless of observer identity. Using a training module, the paper also lays the groundwork for testing the effects of participating as an election observer on confidence in the electoral system.

Daniela Donno, University of Oklahoma; Kelly Elizabeth Morrison, University of Tennessee, Knoxville; Burcu Savun, University of Pittsburgh; Perisa Davutoglu, University of Pittsburgh

By influencing beliefs about electoral quality, international election observation missions (EOMs) play an important role in shaping post-election contention. As the number and variety of EOMs has grown, however, many elections host multiple groups and disagreement among these missions is common. This phenomenon of competing EOM verdicts is particularly prevalent in electoral authoritarian regimes, as leaders seek to invite “friendly” monitors to counteract possible criticism from more established election monitoring organizations. Drawing from research about the varying domestic credibility of EOMs and the demobilizing effects of disinformation, we argue that competing verdicts increase uncertainty about electoral quality, which in turn dampens post-election mobilization. Using newly available data on EOM verdicts as reported in the international media, we show that competing verdicts reduce post-election contention in a sample of 119 developing countries from 1990-2012. A survey experiment in Turkey lends support to the micro foundations of these findings. Our findings provide the first systematic evidence in support of the idea that governments holding flawed elections have incentives to invite multiple election observation missions to hedge against the risk of criticism.

Sharon F. Lean, Wayne State University; Matthew Thomas Lacouture, University of Massachusetts Boston

Nonpartisan citizen election observers are often presented as the future of election observation, thought to be one key to improved citizen confidence in elections and to provide more sustainable support for election integrity than international observers. In this paper we use data gathered by the Varieties of Democracy Project (V-Dem) alongside an original dataset on nonpartisan citizen election observation in twenty-three Latin American and Caribbean countries to test hypotheses about conditions that facilitate or impede domestic nonpartisan election observation. In particular, we are interested in the relationship between election management and domestic election observation. We find that nonpartisan election observation is meaningfully affected by matters of context. This includes the quality of election management, i.e., whether election authorities are partisan, well-resourced and autonomous.

Marine Al Dahdah, French Institute of Pondicherry

Numerous studies have been conducted on digital activism and the emergence of political counterpowers through social media and the internet around the world. Taking India as an example, this paper chooses a very different angle, focusing on how social media are used to maintain power and exacerbate strategic political polarisation. The unprecedented use of digital tools by Narendra Modi, the Indian Prime Minister, and his party (the BJP) has been coined as ‘high-tech populism’. Orchestrated by the BJP’s IT cell, a new class of political professionals is training e-supporters, trolling opponents and administering apps such as ‘TekFog’ to conduct propaganda on a massive scale in India. Through the study of the #MeToo movement, this paper proposes to analyse the specificity of the Indian case and the different techniques of manipulation used to silence the voices of victims and feminists of the #MeTooIndia movement, particularly on Twitter. It empirically assesses precise trolling mechanisms enhanced by apps like TekFog. This case study questions the (non) inclusivity of women in the Twittersphere in India and beyond. More broadly, it allows us to think afresh about the relationship between access to digital technology, democratization processes and gender relations.

Soma Basu, Tampere University

At a time when online spaces, earlier perceived as free forums for digital publics to interact and socialize, are becoming increasingly corporatized, India has emerged as the biggest source of disinformation across the globe. In the last few years, scholars have argued how online hate speech and targeting have spilt into the offline, forcing platform accountability. Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and other prominent social media platforms have rolled out features that attempt to limit the virality of messages and reviewed moderation policies, even if their efficacy is debatable. Meanwhile, India slipped from being the largest, emergent democracy to an electoral autocracy and the digital repression tactics by formal and informal government agents have emerged as a prominent strain of discussions. In continuation of these deliberations, I argue that firstly, there is a rise of homegrown or ‘swadeshi’ applications – Koo, ShareChat, Kutumb, Chingari – in the current climate of hyper-nationalism in India. Secondly, having employed Netnography (Kozinets, 2010) and recorded my reflexive observations (Wilkinson & Patterson, 2014) for 18 months in three communities of the mobile phone application Kutumb, I argue how such applications, under the façade of social platforms, act as management tools for radicalizing and recruiting digital volunteers. These applications are hybrid, intermedial spaces where both formal and informal participants socialize. The moderation policies of these applications and the platform affordances legitimize and incentivize Islamophobia, collective action against minorities and strengthen surveillance and targeting of dissenters. And finally, grounding my research in game theory and principles, I argue how this different form of sociality and public interaction is ‘gamifying’ hate and violence against minorities. While principles of games have either been limited to either actual playing of games or to the domain of marketing and advertisements, it is now increasingly been used by social media platforms, emphasizing the already broken “magic circle” (Consalvo, 2009) and spread of misinformation attributed to the habit of sharing because of “repeated clicking” (Wohn, 2012). This organized and sophisticated management of collective action by Majoritarian Hindus captures the transition of digital repression strategy (Frantz et al., 2020) in autocracies from low intensity to high where a user is posed with a moral dilemma, like in games, to attack or diss a Muslim to become a “good” Hindu.

Jean-Thomas Martelli, Stanford University & International Institute for Asian Studies; Vihang Jumle, Hertie School; Vedant Jumle, University of Mumbai

Is Islamophobia a byproduct of ideological leanings or economic drives? This article explores the drivers of the anti-Muslim discourse on partisan media channels in India. It examines the effect of majoritarian rhetoric on user engagement using key metrics of Republic TV’s The Debate on the popular video-streaming platform YouTube. We argue that vituperative stances against Muslims do not necessarily widen the shows’ audience. On the one hand, when The Debate’s anchor Arnab Goswami explicitly makes anti-Muslim statements, public engagement is weaker than average. On the other hand, Islamophobic innuendos and implicit anti-Muslim bolster views, likes and the volume of comments. We build on existing literature on populist communication to unpack this paradox. We suggest that the anti-Muslim rhetoric produces a better impact when Muslim individuals are presented as evil and corrupt elites, as opposed to when he simply attacks Muslim politicians, clerics, activists and artists on religious or cultural lines. The 2020 suicide case of Sushant Singh Rajput—a popular Hindu Bollywood actor from humble origins—is a case in point. Mr. Goswami advocated the suicide as murder by a ‘gang’ and presented himself as the ‘voice of the people’ against the elites of the Bollywood film industry. He subtly but efficiently portrayed this gang as a Muslim clique. Conversely, his numerous explicit verbal assaults against Muslims have counterproductive effects on gross engagement; this suggests that he is not only trying to maximise viewership, but also seeks ideological alignment with the ruling dispensation to benefit from their active support, favours and protection.

Aasim Khan, IIIT-Delhi; Piyush Kumar, IIIT-Delhi; Kabir Dureja, IIIT-Delhi

With the penetration of the internet beyond the metropolitan areas has seen the emergence of YouTube becoming a major platform for sharing information and news about events on the ground. While some attribute the platform’s algorithm to creating more polarized audiences, it is not clear how exactly viewers access the platform and through what kind of videos emerge at the centre of the networks that organise channels on the platform. In order to grasp this, we use the case of a prominent movement in the north-Indian politics where farmers’ protests led to a great degree of polarization over a span of sixteen months (Aug 2020-Dec2021) and use this case to analyze the role of political ‘influencers’ who became popular on the platform. In this paper, we first discuss the most popular YouTube channels that produced the most influential videos, measured both in terms of the popularity as well as centrality in the overall ecosystem and explain how their production and circulation was reliant not just on the algorithmic aspects of the platform but also on sociology and local production economy of these channels which span towns and cities in the region. Using an original dataset of YouTube videos, we discuss the sociology of YouTube content networks and the way these relate to but also contest the mainstream legacy media networks which are primarily based in cities like Noida and Lucknow. In addition, we also show how these influencers develop roots in the local media economy and discuss their role as ‘entrepreneurial’ political actors who benefit from popular feedback and engagement. The latter aspect is discussed in terms of the comments sections, and we ask if such engagement further emboldens those with extreme agenda on the channel or moderates the content towards a moderate middle ground.

Vihang Jumle, Hertie School; Vignesh Rajahmani, King’s India Institute, King’s College London; Tusharika Deka, University of Nottingham; Sunil Mitra Kumar, King’s India Institute, King’s College London

On 05 August 2019 the Government of India abrogated Article 370 of the Indian constitution, abolishing the special status afforded to the state of Jammu & Kashmir (J&K), while simultaneously dividing it into two Union territories administered directly by the union government. This move has been a long-standing aim of the ruling Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP), as part of their 2014 election manifesto promises, a move the party termed the ‘need of the hour’ to foster economic development and counter corruption. For the people of J&K, this move not only disrupted the course of their lives but also rekindled debates around the democratic rights of ethnic minorities in a Hindu majority state and its implications on constitutionalism in India. On the other hand, this decision also continues to enjoy popular majority support amongst the wider population. It remains, as Prime Minister Modi said, ‘a historic decision’ in the eyes of a considerable chunk of the populace. Against this backdrop, this paper investigates the role of disinformation as a part of political communication by analyzing Twitter data on prevalent trends between 1 August 2019 and 30 November 2019. Twitter is used extensively by Indian politicians and political parties, and thereby offers an apt arena to study dominant discourse and how this is shaped. We find that small groups of heavy tweeters affiliated with the ruling party in India or supporting it play an overwhelming role in shaping the discourse through coordinated efforts, in effect crowding out other voices. While doing so, the discourse itself renders a factually distorted narrative around justifying the demoted status of J&K. The trending tweets that shape this dominant discourse are frequently emotive, invoking sacrifice by Indian soldiers, the historical pain of J&K’s fate, and similar such motifs, in place of empirical facts. So doing, this discourse reduces the space for real debate on themes involving federalism and constitutionally-guaranteed rights – the two issues at the heart of Article 370’s abrogation. We draw conclusions on the ramifications of moderated public discourses marked by disinformation.

Lala Muradova, Universitat Pompeu Fabra

As misperceptions undermine the factual basis for public debate, they pose a serious challenge for expert knowledge and the democratic legitimacy of public policy that is informed by expert evidence. In this paper, we theorize that in times of politicization and polarization of expertise, endorsement of expert information by a minipublic can serve to legitimize expert correction and render it more persuasive in the eyes of individuals. In developing our theoretical argument, we focus on the effect of minipublic on individuals in the wider public – those who did not participate in such institutions. To test our theoretical predictions, we designed, preregistered and fielded two experiments in the US (N=2168) and one experiment in Ireland (N=1125), during two different waves of COVID-19. The results show that minipublic endorsement significantly increases uptake of expert information among (non-participating) citizens. Furthermore, when an expert correction explicitly asserts a scientific consensus, it is as effective as the minipublic endorsement. The findings have implications for the research on misperceptions, expertise and deliberative institutions.

Matthew H. Graham, Temple University; Omer Yair, Reichman University

Research suggests that partisanship interferes with peoples’ ability to distinguish between factual and opinion statements. We show that this is partly due to expressive responding: Some partisan respondents claim that congenial opinions are facts, and that uncongenial facts are opinions, because they want to express their attitude toward the statement. Four experiments in the United States and Israel (total N=10,614) show that allowing partisans to either state that a statement is (in)accurate or that they (dis)agree with it substantially reduces partisan differences in fact/opinion classifications, by about 35% in the US and 20% in Israel. Despite this, we find minimal evidence that our treatments increased the proportion of correct classifications. In other words, although expressive responding makes people look more partisan than they really are, it does not lead surveys to underestimate the average person’s ability to distinguish fact from opinion. We conclude by discussing the implications of these findings.

Thomas Wood, The Ohio State University; Yamil Velez, Columbia University; Ethan Porter, George Washington University

A decade’s experimental research has demonstrated that factual corrections reliably improve factual accuracy. Earlier research, and motivated reasoning findings more generally, suggested that experimental subjects were inclined to counter-argue unwelcome factual interventions, and in so doing, inadvertently entrench some factually inaccurate positions. How should we resolve this apparent contradiction? This paper attempts one such resolution by measuring the separate effect of corrections, both without a political inference, and when a clear political inference is attempted. We find that attempting political inferences from a factual intervention sharply blunts factual interventions, but only when those inferences are drawn from a respondent’s opposing ideological position. Along with resolving these apparently inconsistent lines of research, this finding offers clear prescriptive advice for those who provide factual interventions in a mass media setting.

Kenneth Mackie, Florida State University

In a world of low information voters and one-sided cues from parties, how do voters form perceptions about where the parties stand on important issues? Do voters use how they feel about political actors and groups to motivate these perceptions, and do these perceptions influence their own issue attitudes? In other words, in asymmetric information environments, does affective polarization cause issue sorting? Previous work has largely overlooked the interplay between the political information environment and how the interpretation of information by voters affects belief formation. Brady and Sniderman (1985) argue that voters use the likability heuristic to infer the position of a party relative to the other party using how they feel about that party, their own belief, and their prior perception of the party’s position. With the goal of minimizing cognitive inconsistency, voters will adjust their perceptions and affect. Yet, others (e.g., Layman et al. 2010) argue that voters often use perception of party differences to inform their own opinions on issues. I reconcile this literature by introducing the affect magnetism heuristic, which is based on the assumption that voters’ issue attitudes themselves are variable—in some cases, the most fungible aspect at play. In a world full of asymmetric cues, voters use their feelings about political objects to infer unknown or uncertain positions from those they know, and to the degree these political objects are meaningful to the individual they are likely to adapt their beliefs/opinions to reduce cognitive inconsistency (Carsey and Layman 2006). This is most obvious in the case of political parties where voters have strong feelings about and where political strategy lends rise to asymmetric signals by the parties. In short, my theory of affective magnetism argues that voters use how they feel about the two parties in conditions of low/asymmetric information to impute what is needed to complete a cognitive task, such as forming a political judgment, evaluation, or opinion. This initial study will test my theory by simulating the asymmetric information environment parties often induce by way of a survey experiment conducted over two different issue areas–climate change and immigration. Feedback from this initial work will be used to extend this paper to another set of issue areas with the addition of new grant funds.

Abhra Roy, Kennesaw State University, and Tridib Bandyopadhyay, Kennesaw State University
We develop a game theoretic model in which the world is inhabited by two types of agents: smart (she) and gullible (he). Agents are aligned in a queue and receive a message. Every agent is assumed to have a different prior about the truthfulness of the message. Upon receiving the message, each agent must decide whether to forward it as is, filter it (forward only if it is verified) or kill it (stop it from propagating). We assume that a smart agent has a lower cost of verifying the truthfulness of the message but may face a loss in reputation if she propagates false information or fake news. In this context, we determine a) who is more likely to propagate fake news b) when are fake news likely to spread more, i.e., ‘go viral’. Finally, we investigate the welfare considerations under each scenario.

Dorit Geva, Central European University

It seems to be clear to all that Viktor Orban’s attempt to synthesize his illiberal democratic state with European Christian democracy, is an attempt to shape not only the face of Hungary but of all Europe. Christian Democracy has been the most important political force behind the project of European integration. After the Second World War they endorsed democracy and human rights. In more sense than one they also rejected nation state nationalism. Viktor Orban today kidnapped Christian democratic values in order to transform not only Hungary but the whole of Europe into a new Christian nationalism, a European fortress against immigration and liberal rights.

Alberto Spektorowski, Tel Aviv University

Most scholars and observers, in general, portray radical right-wing activists and ideologues as racist and white supremacist. The latter reject ideas of democratic integration of immigrants into the nation and, in particular, show a despise for multiculturalism and post-colonial trends invading political debates in Western societies. Finally, they reject science. While this paper does not deny this claim, it seeks to study the exclusionist position of the radical right from an unexpected post-colonial and pro-diversity perspective. This paper illustrates why and how radical right-wing intellectuals and ideologues make use of post-colonial and pro-cultural diversity theories as tools to exclude rather than include. It tracks the links between early twenty-century nationalist and racist writers, such Maurice Barrés and Charles Maurras, and anti-colonial thinkers as Jean-Joseph Rabearivelo, Africa’s first modern poet and the greatest literary artist of Madagascar, and Leopold Senghor, the African outstanding apostle of Negritude. The intellectual itinerary continues with the anti-colonial position of racist intellectuals such as Gustave Le Bon and Arthur de Gobineau and ends with what I define as the post-colonialism and cultural relativism of the European New Right spearheaded by Alain de Benoist. In doing so, the article reveals a possible common ground between non-Western anti-colonial and right-wing postcolonial intellectuals, explained by a common resistance to liberal cultural colonialism.

Mabel Berezin, Cornell University

Since Trump’s election in 2016, many threats to democracy have emerged in the United States. In the last few years, scholars have identified these threats as constituting an American fascism. This paper asks whether fascism is a useful analytic term to explain the current American political moment? It uses historical material to examines components of American political culture and development to answer this question. The first section of the paper looks at nativist sentiment in the early 20th century; Nazi movements in the United States; and attitudes towards race and ethnicity. It then fast forwards to 2016 and examines how these political legacies of exclusion and American nativism interact with our current political situation.

Antonio Costa Pinto, University of Lisbon

This paper deals with the global diffusion of varieties of corporatism. Powerful processes of institutional transfers and ideological and political diffusion were a hallmark of dictatorships, and corporatism was at the forefront of this process of cross-national diffusion of authoritarian institutions. How did social and political corporatism become a central set of new institutions created by these dictatorships? In what type of critical junctures were they adopted and why did corporatism largely transcend the cultural background of its origins? The paper tackles these issues by adopting a transnational and comparative research design, contributing towards the bypassing of some ‘classificatory’ shortcomings of essentialist interpretations and adding a new ‘institutionalist turn’ to the theoretical and empirical study dictatorships by reassessing their previously neglected dimensions.

Niina Meriläinen, Tampere Univeristy; Candice D. Ortbals, Abilene Christian University; J. Cherie Strachan, The University of Akron

This paper asks how women politicians’ clothing can be used in efforts by the political right to delegitimize progressive women politicians. The paper argues that women’s bodies in public are associated with wantonness and sexuality, and, as a result, their bodies and clothing can be exaggerated to undermine their credibility as capable leaders. The findings emerge from qualitative analysis of multiple cases from Finnish politics, all of which garnered considerable social media reactions. The cases explore the way progressive women in Finnish politics are purposefully attempting to undermine mainstream assumptions about credibility by continuing to wear attractive, feminine attire – as well as the effect such efforts will have on their political careers over time.

Rachel E. Finnell, Bethany College

This paper asks how authoritarian leaders use fashion to signal strength and to control their populaces. In-depth case studies demonstrate how fashion serves as a critical tool in the authoritarian toolbox. The paper concludes that autocrats can present themselves as strong leaders based on their chosen outfits – like the use of military uniforms or tactical gear – or through fashion that reinforces conformity and control, making fashion choices that a populace must obey.

Edward F. Kammerer, Idaho State University; Kellee Kirkpatrick, Idaho State University

This paper asks whether and how body size impacts how voters evaluate women political candidates. Specifically, the paper examines clothing fit as it relates to body size, given the premise that appearance generally is especially important for female political candidates. The paper utilizes a survey experiment in which respondents are shown mock political advertisements with women of varying sizes to determine how their clothing fit and style influences voters’ assessments of their credibility and electability.

Hannah Muzee, Centre for Policy Analysis (CEPA)

This paper asks whether and how fashion is used as a tool to obscure certain deficiencies of political candidates and/ or to keep the electorate distracted from core democratic issues? The paper examines this question in the context of elections for the speakership in Uganda’s 11th parliament, which were marred by controversy. In a bitter election the incumbent Rebecca Kadaga lost to Jacob Oulanyah who soon after succumbed to illness. This left room for his deputy, Anita Amonga, to assume leadership amidst controversy and suspicion of her competency. Amonga, set out to chart a path of her own to create a unique style of leadership. Social media is awash with interest in her fashion sense, albeit with mixed reactions. The study utilizes content analysis of social media Twitter threads, guided by theories of feminism and democracy, to interrogate citizens’ response to women politicians’ appearance in Uganda and its impact on women’s political careers.

Judith Lynn Failer, Indiana University, Bloomington

In this paper, I introduce an analytic framework that can help make sense of the “constitutional crimes” committed by President Trump, his supporters, and members of the Alt-Right (“Trumpers”). Drawing on work by William Harris and Robert Cover, I focus on how constitutional interpretation entails the translation of a two-dimensional document into a three-dimensional world. But what happens when different groups create parallel constitutional worlds? The Trumpers’ “alternative facts” inform their views about how our government should work, which rights we have, and what it means to be “American.” In short, their alternate facts generate an alternate constitution. Looking at clashes between alternative constitutional narratives worlds brings two problems into sharper relief. First, it clarifies how the same text can generate constitutional worlds so different they exert what Mark Brandon describes as a centrifugal force, pushing themselves away from each other. Two sets of political facts, norms, Constitutions, worlds, and groups claiming to be “We the People”—can a constitution keep such different worlds connected? Second, although Trumpers define themselves as Americans, they maintain only superficial ties to the 2D constitutional text. Moreover, the content of their norms point away from government by any constitution. Ultimately, this raises profound questions about whether constitutional theory is capable of reconciling conflicts with anti-constitutional claims.

Keith Rollin Eakins, University of Central Oklahoma

Spring on college campuses inevitably brings blossoming trees, floating frisbees…and fire-breathing evangelical street ministers. College campus quads, those grassy areas where students hang out, attract these peripatetic preachers who fire their theatrical, soul-saving salvos upon unsuspecting passersby or the intrepid few who choose to stop and debate them. These perennial campus rituals are often circus-like and entertaining for those gathering, but they have also spawned speech-related arrests and subsequent court battles. The case facts typically feature verbal sparring over religious, political, and social issues where the campus preachers use vulgar, outrageous insults to make their points, and are arrested for disorderly conduct. Lower court decisions in these cases often support convictions based on the “Fighting Words Doctrine,” established by the Supreme Court in Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire (1942). In Chaplinsky, the Court held that personally abusive words likely to cause a fight when addressed to an ordinary citizen are subject to government prohibition. The Fighting Words Doctrine has proven to be controversial as some view it as anachronistic, while others see it as necessary to preserve civility and order. Thus, scholars have argued for its elimination (Kasper 2021), revitalization (Donoughe 2015), and clarification (Hurdle 1994). However, the extant literature has not adequately addressed the application of the doctrine to “mixed expression” containing both outrageous epithets, and religious or political opinions, on college campus quads. This paper examines the case law and the constitutional and policy arguments related to the application of the fighting words doctrine to aggressive, verbally abusive campus preachers. It concludes that the fighting words doctrine should not apply to profane, vulgar, or insulting speech attendant with religious, political, or social content, especially when uttered on a campus quad, a traditional forum for religious, social, and political debate. References: Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire, 315 U.S. 568 (1942). Donoughe, Kevin P. 2015. “Can Dead Soldiers Revive A “Dead” Doctrine? An Argument for The Revitalization Of “Fighting Words” To Protect Grieving Families Post-Snyder v. Phelps,” 63 Clev. St. L. Rev. 743. Kasper, Eric T. 2021. “No Essential Reason to Restrict the Freedom of Speech: Why it is Time to Knock Out Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire And the Fighting Words Doctrine,” 53 Tex. Tech L. Rev. 613. Hurdle, Melody L. 1994. “R.A.V. v. City of St. Paul: The Continuing Confusion of the Fighting Words Doctrine,” 47 Vand. L.Rev. 1143.

Christina Bambrick, University of Notre Dame; Alejandro Castrillon, University of Notre Dame

In the debates surrounding Big Tech in recent years, many politicians foreground the importance of freedom of speech. However, responsible government on the issue requires weighing many desiderata competing with speech, including the need to curb misinformation that misleads the public or undermines political institutions. Questions about the obligations of Big Tech thus turn on complex, often unspoken political calculi about how to reconcile a plurality of interests and values, speech being only one among these. Drawing lessons from Madison’s understanding of freedom of the press, as well as comparative constitutional experience, this paper offers a path to a fuller, more transparent reckoning of the stakes in regulating Big Tech. We draw from the history of and thought of James Madison, among others, on press freedom, to demonstrate how limitations on rights, competing values, and duties have been conceived in American political thought. This history illustrates a way of understanding rights and duties beyond rights absolutism and does so in a subject area with important parallels to Big Tech. Moreover, we introduce the concepts of limitations analysis and horizontality from comparative law that offer a richer framework to understand and debate duties of private actors, such as tech companies. In transcending a dominant rights talk, these insights from American history and abroad bring competing values to the fore as government actors deliberate the duties Big Tech may or may not have.

Estefania Castaneda Perez, UCLA

The right to dissent and filing a complaint without fear of retaliation are fundamental freedoms separating a democracy from a repressive regime. Dissent is typically understood as a differing opinion or in opposition to policies or the government. At the Mexico-U.S. border, dissent occurs when transborder commuters question, disagree, or formally denounce mistreatment from CBP officers. Protected by the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution and by the Declaration of Human Rights, these rights are essential for democracy and to deter the U.S. government and state actors from subjugating people to complete subordination. These rights, however, have always been limited at the Mexico-U.S. border, where racial profiling, targeted exclusion, and the suspension of civil liberties are normalized under the guise of national security (Kim 2009). Additionally, immigration and border enforcement officials are given ample powers to target the most marginalized community members with no oversight (Inda 2006). This culture of impunity for rights violations by U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has clear implications to rights accessibility and ensuring justice for abusive treatment. There is a gap in the literature that elucidates whether navigating militarized border space and facing the constant threat of punishment complicates transborder commuters’ ability to assert their First Amendment rights, particularly the right to dissent and to complain. Specifically, limited research has examined how communities in the Mexico-U.S. borderlands respond to the constant threat of punishment and the ways retaliation can be experienced depending on varying forms of oppression. This article explores the factors that impact transborder commuters’ capacity to express dissent when enduring abusive treatment or experiencing rights violations from CBP officers. I draw from data collected through participant observations at the port of entry, original survey administered in Ciudad Juárez (n=637) and the Tijuana ports of entry (n=771), and (n=115) interviews I administered to transborder commuters from the Ciudad Juárez, Nogales, and Tijuana border regions. Transborder commuters are U.S. citizens and individuals with various forms of visas that reside in Mexico but regularly cross the Mexico-U.S. border for work, education, or commerce. I find that due to a culture of rights violations and impunity at the border, there are three primary motivations why transborder commuters do not file complaints when they endured abuse. In the first case, individuals distrusted that CBP would be held accountable, and were dissuaded by time and bureaucratic barriers to formally denounce CBP. In the second case, they internalized criminalization and perceived they were undeserving of legal protections. In the last case, experience with or fear of retaliation were key impediments in their ability to express dissent and file complaints for enduring abusive treatment by CBP. Together, these findings elucidate how CBP officers consolidate power by forcing transborder commuters to surrender their rights, blurring the line between coercion and consent. The contributions of this paper lie in expanding research on legal violence by focusing on expressing dissent as the outcome rather than more general rights claims. Doing so provides an understanding of how the threat of retaliation leads to transborder commuters silencing themselves in the face of constant abuse. Additionally, while retaliation has been studied primarily in the context of the workplace, police-civilian interactions, interior immigration enforcement, and deportation threats for immigrant’s activism (Abrego et al. 2020; Zepeda-Millán 2017), lesser has explored retaliation as social control at land ports of entry along the Mexico-U.S. border. This paper expands on theories of retaliation and punishment in immigration, Latino politics, and criminology literatures by centering on everyday occurrences of punishment at land ports of entry to provide empirical evidence of the banality of abuse. The implication of this study lies in demonstrating empirical evidence of the dangers of limiting civil liberties for racialized and marginalized communities, usually under the guise of national security. Law enforcement practices such as stop-and-frisk and SB1070 make perpetual repression a reality for immigrant, Black and Brown communities in the U.S. While the limits on human and civil rights are widely known to occur in military black sites operated by the U.S. government, immigration detention centers, and in situations of emergency that enact martial law, the “state of emergency” remains permanent at the border (De Genova 2013). These measures are dangerous not only for holding CBP accountable, but also for shifting power away from the people and bestowing it fully to authority.

Christiern Santos Rasmussen, European University Institute

Aligning Disinformation and Nord Stream 2: How Russia Differentiates and Strategically Aligns Disinformation Narratives to English, Polish and German Audiences? Christiern Santos Rasmussen Phd-Researcher, European University Institute How does Russian disinformation narratives influence audiences perceptions and do they so uniformly? Despite substantial attention given to Russia disinformation campaigns targeting Western Liberal Democracies, the scholars of International Relations and Security Studies have echoed the same theoretical insights on the weaponization of information, while failed to develop a conceptual mechanism for the manipulation of audiences. Though conceptualizing Russia’s use of digital and analogue communication channels to spread disinformation as coercive application of Soft Power tools, a continuation of the Soviet strategic culture of Asymmetric Measures, Information Warfare or Subversion of Liberal Democracy gives glimpses into the Kremlin’s instrumental understanding of information, these concepts due not explain how information can coerce, subvert, manipulate or influence audiences. Combined with a general neglect of how intended audiences’ cultural context moderate manipulation’s success, this lack of mechanism risks leading to erroneous assumptions of disinformation designs and thereby misevaluating of their effects. Assuming Russian disinformation narratives as being promoted globally as either pro-Russian or anti-Western, risks ignoring that these may be aligned to intended audiences and thereby differ across audiences. This study addresses these issues by bridging Roselle, Miskimmon, and O’Loughlin (2014)’s concept of Strategic Narratives, i.e. States’ attempt of pushing certain interpretations of reality to foreign audiences, with Benford and Snow (2000)’s Strategic Framing Alignment, i.e. when such interpretations are adapted to the intended audiences’ cultural context in hope of maximizing resonance and salience amongst them. By strategically pushing and offering narratives to intended audiences, who rely on narratives to navigate and interpret reality, states can influence audiences’ world perceptions using (dis)information and narratives strategically. However, existing narratives or cultural context influence audiences’ willingness to accept new narratives. This forces state actors to account for intended audiences’ cultural context, when designing strategic narratives. Based on this study argues that Russia’s disinformation campaigns strategically align their disinformation narratives to increase resonance among intended audiences and furthers Russia strategic goals. This argument leads to a theoretical expectation of narrative differentiation between audiences with different cultural contexts. Through two comparative content analyses, the study investigates if Russian disinformation narratives differ between English, German and Polish audiences. The first analysis uses the EUvsDisinfo-database of Russian disinformation to identify differences in which Russian disinformation narratives are pushed. The second analysis focuses on Russia’s controversial Nord Stream 2 pipeline and on how the project and relevant actors were portrayed in articles published by the Kremlin’s major disinformation platform Sputnik, between 2018 to March 2022. The study contributes to existing literature by expanding our knowledge of the sophistication of Russian disinformation campaigns and their relation to the cultural context of intended audiences. Moreover, it warns against overgeneralization of disinformation narratives and shows how Russia has been able to continuously adapt and develop disinformation narratives to real world events and overtime push certain topics on specific issues. It advocates for building societal resilience, by accounting for how exploitable individual audiences’ cultural context are and caution against evaluating risk based on simplified narratives.

Renee Marlin-Bennett, Johns Hopkins University

Spreading disinformation or misinformation is a relatively cheap and easy means of acting hostilely in global politics. Current attention is reasonably focused on the way untruths spread through social media, focusing on the weaponization of existing social rifts by enemies operating from within and outside the state and the consequent danger to democracies. The ability to create or amplify lies (claims known by the speaker to be false) and bullshit (claims that have no connection to truth, to use Frankfurt’s term) is a source of power at multiple scales, deployable by individuals, artificial intelligences, and groups, as well as by states and other more ordinary global actors. But the rapid rise of a global politics of malice made possible by new technologies should not obscure the fact that disseminating dis- and misinformation is not a new political practice. It has been used for millennia, as evidenced by Assyrian cuneiform texts, the Hebrew Bible, and Kautilya’s Arthashastra. The political practice of disseminating falsehoods can be considered a form of soft power because the practice works through attraction: Trickery, seduction, and amusement spark affective attachments that make it easier to believe that the lies and bullshit are credible. Furthermore, disinformation and misinformation are contagious, as those who have come to believe the falsehoods re-spread them. This opens the possibility of accidentally acting hostilely. What does it mean for our understanding of power if incorrect but truly held beliefs are sources of harm? (Also noted: The possibility of harmful truths cannot be ruled out.) This paper will draw upon examples from contemporary social media and ancient texts and interrogate theories of intention and political speech (inter alia, Pocock and Anscombe) to wrestle with how intention matters for soft power and what that means for a global politics of malice open to all. Is the malign soft power of dis- and misinformation fundamentally different from ordinary soft power? Should intention be included in the assessment of power relations, and if so, how? Can insights from a more nuanced theorization of a global politics of malice suggest ways of taming it?

Selim Yilmaz, University of Nottingham

Do states behave similarly to humans? Do theoretical explanations of stigmatisation in the established-outsider theory apply to states? This paper takes an innovative psychoanalysis approach to understand the process of states’ power transitions. Great powers employ stigmatisation towards rising powers as a tool and means to maintain power and delay a power shift. The father of figurational sociology, Norbert Elias, in his established–outsider theory studied social inequalities based on the observation of an English town consisting of three zones. Yet, similar lessons can be drawn from the competition and relationship between states in the international system. States stigmatise for the simple reason of survival and security that is linked to the perception of threat inspired by neorealism. The synthesis of figurational sociology and neorealism creates a unique lens to view world politics differently. Two levels of historical analyses are employed to examine the power competition of great and rising powers from 1900 to 1945, and from 1945 to 2010. Findings suggest that the effort to promote soft power is crucial, and the increasing importance of soft power confirms that reputation and stigmatisation are means to maintain power. Furthermore, great powers do not use stigmatisation on all weaker states, meaning the higher the level of perceived threat, the more likely great powers will stigmatise rising powers to prevent the latter from growing. This research concludes by recommending rising powers to, firstly, expect stigmatisation by the great powers; and, secondly, pre-emptively work on soft power development to prevent aggressive confrontation.

Corey Robinson, Durham University; Scott Watson, University of Victoria

Far-right populist movements and demonstrations that foster and rely upon conspiracy theories are a critical but underexamined site of international politics in the COVID-19 era. Protests against public health and other COVID-19 restrictions transcend the borders of sovereign states and form transnational knowledge controversies—political struggles over power, truth, legitimacy and knowledge, in which actors engage in the discursive contestation of epistemic and political authority. The Freedom Convoy, a sequence of protests, blockades and online campaigns that began in Canada but spread all over the globe, provides an illustrative example of transnational knowledge controversies that animate populist movements based on conspiratorial thinking and ‘stigmatized knowledge’ (Barkun 2015). In this article, we document and conceptualize the discursive contestation of epistemic and political authority in the Freedom Convoy in terms of transnational knowledge controversies about health expertise, emergency governance, pandemic multilateralism and internet regulation. The analysis of transnational knowledge controversies and the stigmatized knowledge that animates them, we contend, reveals an epistemic crisis at the heart of liberal world order and democratic politics, in which the struggle between the perceived forces of globalism and anti-globalism is destabilizing the boundaries between national/global, politics/science and liberalism/illiberalism.

Phillip M. Ayoub, University College London

In the last thirty years, the rights of people who are marginalized by their sexual orientation and gender identity (SOGI) have improved rapidly in many countries. For the most part, these achievements can be traced back to the “spiral model” of factors involving the transnational mobilization of the SOGI-rights movement, the actions of progressive governments in a few pioneering countries, and advances in the human rights frameworks of some IOs. Yet, such successes have not gone unchallenged. A rising and, in recent years, increasingly globally connected resistance works against SOGI rights. It rests predominantly in the hands of transnationally connected social movements—frequently with a religious-nationalist orientation—and conservative governments, actors that now also attempt to lay claim to international human rights law by rewriting or reinterpreting it. Drawing from over a decade of fieldwork and over 240 interviews with SOGI, anti-SOGI, and various state and IO actors, this article explores how the conservative transnational movement functions, in terms of who comprises it and how its agenda is constructed. We argue that these resistances have employed in the last decade many of the same transnational tools that garnered LGBTIQ people their widespread recognition. They also conform to the boomerang and spiral models of human rights diffusion, but in a process we reconceive as a double helix. As the double-helix metaphor suggests, rival TANs have a reciprocal relationship, having to navigate each other’s presence in an interactive space. In other words, both those who seek the advancement of SOGI rights and those who oppose them use related strategies and instruments for mutually exclusive ends.

Alison Brysk, UCSB

Despite modernization in women’s public roles, reproductive rights attitudes and policies are becoming more restrictive in some societies. While existing literature depicts abortion opinion as a clash of feminist pro-choice vs. religious pro-life frames, feminist analysis suggests that nationalism may influence reproductive attitudes. Yet no cross-national research has empirically examined the relationship between ethnonationalist sentiments and abortion attitudes. We use the 2017 European Values Survey to analyze how ethnonationalist attitudes are associated with abortion approval in 30 European countries. We find that strong ethnonational identity and distrust of foreigners are positively correlated with individuals’ disapproval of abortion. Counter-intuitively, this association between abortion attitudes and ethnonationalism is stronger among less religious and more liberal individuals—and in more “modernized” European countries. Our findings contribute a new factor to the cross-national abortion opinion literature and an empirical demonstration of feminist theory with relevance for reproductive rights.

Erica Marat, National Defense University

In patterns of violence across the world, some victims attract strong public support and propel historic levels of collective action, but the vast majority suffer in silence. This book’s puzzle is simple: why are some violent acts more galvanizing than others? I answer the question in two steps. First, by process-tracing mobilization following the gang rape of a 23-year-old student in New Delhi in 2012 and the disappearance of 43 students in Mexico in 2014, I build a theoretical explanation of how some violent acts can trigger unprecedented levels of mobilization in defense of the victims. Second, after exploring the complex process that led to collective outburst in two qualitative cases, I created a dataset of 30 cases of similar mobilization against violence across the globe, ranging from the United States and UK to Kenya and Kyrgyzstan, where activists and the public joined collective action to demand justice for the victims and state responses to violence. While such events—transformative violence—emerge from a complex series of causal mechanisms, they draw a sharp line between victim and repressor. Transformative violence helps consolidate existing activist networks and institutional structures, political opportunities, historical memory, and interpretive frames. Applying findings from the Global South internationally helps uncover systemic inequalities, including in Western countries. In addition to causal mechanisms from qualitative cases, a broader comparison of divergent cases allows for testing of new variables such as political stability, civil society activism, and the rule of law. I find that most cases of violence that sparked large public reaction share similar set of traits – they include mobilization of both grassroots and national-level activists, a type of victim that resonates with the broader public, and a visual narrative of the victim’s suffering.

Amanda Murdie, University of Georgia; Morgan Barney, University of Georgia; Baekkwan Park, University of Missouri

What leads those working on the front lines of a problem to adopt a particular advocacy frame? How does a frame of an issue or problem affect the day-to-day work of non—governmental organizations (NGOs) and advocates? Focusing on framing regarding child, early, and forced marriage (CEFM), we build a unique argument that examines both frame change and frame embedding within advocacy organizations. Frame adoption is not a dichotomous decision but a continuous process, with varying degrees to which a frame can be identified with, adopted, and embedded into an organization. Our argument suggests that the degree of frame embedding cannot come strictly from above or outside the organization; work by donors and outside actors may be able to encourage lip-service to a new frame but will not on their own lead to the full adoption and embedding of a frame in a way that is critical for problem-solving. We test the implications of our argument using a new dataset based on the responses of 1,118 global advocates working on CEFM. Our project is not only the first large-scale survey of CEFM advocates but also one of the first large-scale surveys of advocates and NGOs in general.

Gino Pauselli, University of Pennsylvania; Maria Jose Urzua Valverde, Princeton University; Florencia Montal, Universidad Torcuato Di Tella

The literature on the international promotion of human rights norms has mostly considered how NGOs publicly criticize or praise governments for their human rights records. In contrast, international organizations (IOs) are generally understood as forums for NGOs and states to do the talking or as aggregators of these actors’ opinions in official reports about state practices. Less theoretical work has been devoted to exploring the independent motivations international organizations might have to engage in these actions. We propose that one way to observe these is through the study of spontaneous press releases through which IOs appeal to states’ reputations in order to promote compliance. We study the politics of IO praising and criticizing through press releases in the case of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACmHR). We develop a theory of informants’ access where we expect civil society organizations to influence the Commission’s decision to criticize a country through its press releases. We use newly collected data to test this hypothesis.

Zainab Alam, Howard University

As social media usership continues to expand in regions like South Asia, states, like Pakistan, devise cybercrime legislation with the guise of protecting citizens on and off these digital spaces. With the promulgation of Pakistan’s Prevention of Electronic Crime Act (‘PECA,’ 2016) and the Removal and Blocking of Unlawful Online Content Rules (‘RBUOC,’ 2021), the Pakistani state proclaims to regulate content in the name of national security. The moderation of online freedom of expression, specifically, what gets designated as “unlawful content” is in the hands of censors. Given the lower barriers of entry compared to other media forms, politically marginalized groups seeking rights-based awareness or collective action, also use these online spaces to advocate for their concerns, making these censors key to rights arbitration. Despite the universal recognition that Pakistan is amongst the worst performers when it comes to both internet freedom (Freedom House 2022) and press freedom (Reporters without Borders 2022), little attention has been paid to the modern varieties of censorship that take place in the country’s online spaces. This paper highlights and identifies four key types of censors in the Pakistani Twittersphere (2018-2022): liberal activists or journalists (self-censoring), hyper-nationalists (bullying or blocking anti-nationals), establishment agents (claiming legal authority) and Twitter employees (moderating content). In doing so, through an online ethnography and content analysis, it explores the consequences in terms of freedom of speech for ethno-nationalist rights groups like the Pashtun and Baloch, as well as supporters of the women’s rights movement, the Aurat March.

India’s Opposition Parties and Anti-conversion and Beef Ban Legislation
Madhavi Devasher, University of New Hampshire

In 2014 and 2019, the BJP along with its National Democratic Alliance partners won decisive victories and formed the national government in India. Nationally, the political arena now looks like a dominant party system. The BJP also made notable gains at the state level as well; as of 2022, it along with its allies held over half of all state governments in India. This dominance has allowed it to bring about significant changes in numerous spheres of India’s politics and society, including laws that impact religious freedom. Among the most prominent pieces of legislation has been the new anti-conversion and anti-cow slaughter laws. The former prohibits forced religious conversion but creates significant hurdles for women seeking to marry a man of a different faith. The latter have restricted cattle slaughter to a far greater extent than before, and significantly increased legal penalties. Such laws predominantly impact religious minorities, making them targets for state harassment and vigilante violence. These types of laws have been a prominent part of the BJP’s manifesto nationwide and numerous state governments led by the BJP have banned conversion and cow slaughter in recent years. Troublingly, India’s opposition parties, most of whom espouse a strongly secular orientation, have remained muted on these discriminatory laws. The silence of these opposition parties appears purposeful, to avoid accusations of being too pro-minority. This paper examines the shifting strategy of India’s opposition parties through the lens of the anti-conversion and cow slaughter laws. It argues that the shrinking of political space for other parties and the formation of alliances to combat the rise of the BJP has meant that parties have deprioritized advocacy for marginalized groups like Dalits, Christians, and Muslims, with many parties attempting to mimic the BJP’s exclusivist Hindu orientation. It suggests that the weakness and complicity of the opposition in India further contributes to the erosion of minority security. The paper thus offers insights and contributes to the research on majoritarianism and the rights of minorities in a democracy.

Shatakshi Singh, University of California Santa Cruz

India has been engulfed in a series of widespread protests over amendments to citizenship and agricultural laws since 2019. The protestors’ strategies have invited disproportionate legal debates in Indian courtrooms in contrast to the violence and statist repression visited upon the protestors. The courts have acted as critical instruments in aiding the state’s interests in suppressing resistance by enfeebling the constitutionally guaranteed right to protest in India. Focusing on the Indian Supreme Court’s engagement with the widespread anti-Citizenship Amendment protests of 2019 and the Farmer’s protests of 2020, I highlight how the Supreme Court has placed restrictions on resistance in an ostensible endorsement of statist interests. In reimagining the politics of protest, the Supreme Court reinforces the need for restricting protests to passive, gendered, and museumized spaces. Such legal precedents are dangerous as they legitimize the state’s persecution of protestors and the use of excessive security measures. Analyzing the courts’ response to the protests through textual analysis of court proceedings and judgments, I explore how courts can act as tools of legal repression through ideological alignment with strong executive authority, as is the case with Hindu nationalist interests of the Modi government in contemporary India.

Prateek Srivastava, University of Cincinnati

Referred to as Sri Lanka’s “legal black hole” by various human rights groups, the Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA) has gained momentum since the 2019 Easter Day attacks. Implemented in 1979 as a “temporary” measure, PTA was introduced to control rising militancy by both Tamil and Marxist–Leninist communist groups, like the JVP. Containing many clauses that are against international legal norms, it made torture and arbitrary detention possible, under the guise of being used for “national security” and “terrorist threat,” usually based on disinformation and rumors. However, since the end of the war in 2009, it has repeatedly been used to target government opponents and members of minority communities, with similar claims as before. Since the summer of 2022, several have been arrested under the PTA for participating in the nationwide protests against the ongoing economic crises, sparking the debate about the PTA and the nature of its practice again. In this paper, I look at how the Prevention of Terrorism Act allows the majoritarian Sri Lankan government to institutionalize violence against Muslim and Tamil minorities and protesters and opposition figures. To elicit an underlying pattern of legal use, this paper puts out a socio-legal analysis of the media and political rhetoric surrounding PTA cases. Based on textual and discourse analysis as well as semi-structured interviews, I contend that PTA has been utilized in post-war Sri Lanka to build a narrative of the nation-state and national interests, frequently placed against the individual liberties of ethno-religious minorities. My argument is based on textual and discourse analysis as well as semi-structured interviews. I also argue, often based on disinformation, rumors, and smear campaigns, that the act is critical in building a binding Sinhala national identity while also enabling Sinhala-Buddhist nationalism to be used as a political instrument that can subversively monitor and discipline citizens.

Yash Sharma, University of Cincinnati

In the study of ethnoreligious, and majoritarian political agendas, scholarly attention has been disproportionately concentrated on electoral behavior and outcomes. The concerning rise in everyday insecurity associated with such contexts is often overlooked. This paper studies the rise of Hindutva (ideology of Hindu nationalism) in India and the intensification of anti-minority violence, particularly against Muslims. The current period of political violence in India is unparalleled in both form and scale. Since 2014, anti-minority violence in India has moved from ‘spectacular’ and ‘conjunctural’ outbursts towards a climate of state-sanctioned militarism through persistent, quotidian, and low-intensity violence. This is evidenced by an unprecedented rise in instances of lynching’s, mob violence, and state repression of Muslims. Focusing on the network of vigilante groups identified as senas (armies) that are sympathetic to Hindutva and yet strategically distanced from the government, this paper analyzes the ideological motivations and mobilization tactics of Hindutva with a focus on the role of social media, the rise of everyday insecurity, and the emergence of a militarized public sphere. In emphasizing the role of ideology and studying the ‘everyday’ as the site of violence, this paper argument highlights the transformational impact of everyday militarism on social relations, political agency, and the possibilities of democratic futures.

Shinkyu Lee, Oberlin College

Truth-telling is a crucial aspect of many religious practices, but political theorists often contest its status in politics. A strong belief in God’s truth inspires followers to take courageous action against political forces of deception, manipulation, or violence. Yet, truth also has a “tyrannical” character, and religious truth claims can create insensitivity to diversity and depreciate democratic dissension. This paper articulates nuances and complexities in truth and truth-telling through a cross-reading of political theorist Hannah Arendt and anti-Nazi theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Reflecting on the recent scholarly interest in comparing their political theologies, I argue that their thoughts, once reconstructed via a critical dialogue, can provide much-needed insight into applying religious truth claims to politics. Their approaches to truth in politics contain several notable differences, despite their common appreciation of worldliness. In Arendt’s vision of free politics, we need plural voices or opinions. Ultimate truth belongs to God, and human affairs driven by God’s truth would be boring and even meaningless. Reality appears not with confirming an established truth but with people’s continuing to share their different views on how to maintain their common space for freedom. This diagnosis is undeniable when aggressive religious proselytization reminds us of “rigid” or legalistic aspects of religious doctrines and their practices. For Bonhoeffer, however, such a verdict on religious truth and truth-telling in politics is lopsided. In his view, truth can emerge when one is in a living relationship with God and the other person. Reality is revealed as believers continue to deliberate on what it means to be like Christ and live for others in concrete situations. For Arendt, then, a solution to the spread of misinformation, such as post-truth or fake news, is to establish and maintain a robust sense of the public sphere and call for “the care for the public world.” For Bonhoeffer, though, this method is limited and incomplete. Through the person of Christ who suffers for humanity, Bonhoeffer argues, Christians must see the world as a space of solidarity among the oppressed, beyond domination, and a Christ-reality that resists both theocratic legalism and vulgar voluntarism must guide their actions. Thus, Bonhoeffer’s stance on truth and truth-telling informs Christians (and religious believers) of how to formulate public actions when information, reality, and positions are contested. In the end, Bonhoeffer’s political theology supplements what Arendt misses regarding religion and politics. Yet, Arendt’s sharp judgment of the dangers of a modern society driven by consumerism, capitalism, or neoliberalism is more informative than Bonhoeffer’s. Her insight suggests that even a modest version of religious practice, like one inspired by Bonhoefferian Christological reality, cannot remain intact in the face of modern socioeconomic forces. Grounded in Arendt’s “Truth and Politics” and On Revolution and Bonhoeffer’s “What Does It Mean to Tell the Truth?” and Ethics, this cross-reading highlights the dual role of religion in an era of misinformation. Through a novel interpretation of their thoughts, this paper investigates a way for religion to be a conscientious voice in politics yet eschew becoming a tyrannical force itself.

Chase M. Porter, California Baptist University

Disinformation thrives in an environment of political alienation. McDill and Ridley (1962) argued that political alienation involved “apathy as a response to political powerlessness but also a general distrust of political leaders who are the wielders of this power.” According to Gallup polling, public trust in the government is near its historical low. Especially on the American right, this distrust over the past three years has been fostered by perceived failures by the government and public health institutions to effectively respond to the COVID-19 pandemic. I argue that the past three years is not a unique time in American political life for the American right, especially for those on the right who espouse evangelical Christianity. Rather, I demonstrate in this paper that political alienation is a feature of evangelical apocalyptic eschatology, particularly as expressed in the speech-act known as jeremiads. Jeremiads in American political discourse pre-date the founding of the country but have taken a sharp individualistic turn in recent years. The relationship between fear, anxiety, pessimism, apocalyptic eschatology, and conservative jeremiads is admittedly a complex one; thus, I build my argument in several stages. To highlight the communal nature of Puritan jeremiads, I draw upon Wilson McWilliams and his analysis of the fraternal nature of Puritan covenant theology. I briefly review Sacvan Bercovitch’s reading of American jeremiads, with a particular emphasis on how a supposed shift from premillennial to postmillennial eschatology created a tonal shift in the rhetoric of jeremiads. I then turn to the modern jeremiad, modifying Andrew Murphy’s “traditional” and “progressive” scheme of analysis by contending that the modern Christian Right jeremiad is a pessimistic, individualistic othering, whereas the Puritan jeremiad was more optimistic and communal in nature. To explain this pessimistic othering, I then offer an exegesis of dispensationalism (particularly in its most well-known Left Behind formulation), noting the work of Jason Bivins on fear as characteristic of evangelical Christianity and Sharon Crowley’s analysis of the strange mixture between pre- and postmillennial eschatologies which enables the Christian Right to simultaneously work for political reform while seeing the world as destined for eternal judgment. I close with a content analysis of contemporary examples of evangelical jeremiads to demonstrate how this spirit of alienation and othering is alive and well on the American right.

Simone R. Bohn, York University

Brazil’s central government, which has exclusive jurisdiction over establishing the national educational directives in the federation, contemplated adopting an educational initiative to promote a non-homophobic environment in public schools. Some party operatives – especially those tied to the Pentecostal Evangelicals – mobilized in response. In fact, by severely misrepresenting the proposal’s content, its opponents rattled the public, rallied other actors (such as the Catholic Church and, to a lesser extent, the military) to form a veto coalition, and ultimately ended up discrediting it, and preventing it from being implemented. This paper examines the use of misrepresentation and even outright lies to create adversarial policy communities and thwart public policy initiatives.

Dunja Arandjelovic, Clemson University

Overturning Roe v. Wade brought with it numerous disinformation about the spiritual dimension of this decision that spread in the media and on social networks not only in the United States but also outside of it. The information was such that the media practically did not make difference between Evangelical Christians and Christian nationalists, putting them all in the same category and presenting them as a great danger for women’s rights and as the center of misogyny. Such claims have caused a very negative attitude towards religion and the church in the US, putting Evangelical Churches in a very challenging position at a time when the number of religious people in the US is declining. I analyze media articles in the period May – December 2022 and their presentation of the connection between Roe v. Wade overthrowing and Christian ideas with the aim of seeing what are the main spiritual arguments that the media cited when they wrote about this decision. After that, I talk to six pastors of Evangelical Churches (Baptist, Methodist, and Pentecostal) in the American South to check their position on this topic. Are the spiritual arguments used by the media actually the position of the Evangelical Churches? How did disinformation affect the position of these Churches in society and the community? What position should Evangelical Churches take on the issue of abortion in order to stay in line with their beliefs but also protect themselves from inaccurate information placed in the media?

Lea Faure, University of Central Florida

To what extent has COVID impacted religiosity in the United States? This research aims to study potential interactive effect of the pandemic and trust in influencing changes in religiosity across individuals. The main idea of this paper is that, at an individual-level of analysis, people with higher concerns about the COVID-19 pandemic are more likely to see their level of religiosity increase if they have low trust in the government, as they might try to find alternative solutions in their faith, than people with high concerns about COVID-19 with high trust in the government who are more likely to see their level of religiosity decrease or stay the same due to the blame they would put on their deity for this life-altering event. Looking at a multivariate logistic regression analysis based on the General Social Survey (GSS) 2016-2020 Panel Data, results show that very concerned about the COVID-19 pandemic are more likely to see their level of religiosity increase if they have low trust than people very concerned about COVID-19 with high trust, as expected, but that other levels of concern are insignificant. The mixed results lead to question the impact such events can have on religiosity when considering trust in governments and deities as not mutually exclusive.

Timothy W. Luke, Virginia Tech

Nearly a decade ago, Naomi Klein’s global best-seller This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate presented with immense factual detail and intense moral drama the case for how to defend the degradation of Earth’s climate as well as to overcome the denial of this imperative local, national and global policy change. Unfortunately, the book’s title fell short: the contest between the climate and capitalism has intensified, negative trends behind global warming are accelerating, the incidence of more widespread, intense and costly climate disasters has increased, and habits of mind rooted in misinformation, disinformation and post-truth plague today’s climate politics. This study then closely reconsiders how and why so many policy initiatives in climate politics have promoted this lollygagging away another decade. When decisive change could have been made, defensive inertia from logrolling in global conferences, national legislatures, regional regulations and local actions enabled climatological capital to leverage this complex crisis to produce “climate solutions” by 2050 that truly need to be implemented by 2030. Selling more Teslas to the masses in Shanghai, Los Angeles or Berlin makes climate conditions worse, not better. In outlining this critique, the analysis contrasts various climate denialists, delayers and downplayers from Michael Shellenberg, Bjørn Lomborg, Paul Hawken or Gregg Easterbrook, with climate developers, doomsters and defeatists from Bill Gates, Jem Bendell, Bill McKibben or Pablo Servigne to piece together key principles for a workable pragmatics of climate defense that accepts a mix of adaptation, migration, regulation, and mitigation policy that will be needed for many decades to come.

Emily Ray, Sonoma State University; Robert E. Kirsch, Arizona State University

There are many discourses of climate denial deployed in the current context. From empirical ambiguity about “the science,” to the ideological function of climate denial as a precondition for maximizing profit, or even the theological/eschatological belief that human activity is unable to change a divinely ordained lifeworld, these discourses often function in a metonymical way, with “the climate” standing in as a part to describe the whole (capitalism, theodicy, etc.). Information and misinformation can be doubly scrambled when undergoing such translation. This paper proposes to take climate denial as concretely as possible in an attempt to theorize climate denial not as a function of some other condition, but on its own terms of literally denying the climate through creating and sustaining a climate of one’s own. Climate denial is not necessarily to deny the existence of a climate as such; it is a denial of the possibility of a general planetary climate. We refer to this process of building one’s own parallel climate as a feature of “bunkerization.” Bunkerization finds its foothold in the Cold War in the United States, where some families built fallout shelters underground on their property to withstand a nuclear conflagration. Rather than a separate site to reproduce everyday life after an apocalyptic event, bunkerization is the process of turning the home itself into a bunker or an encasement, with attendant technologies of surveillance, stockpiling, and hardening. Bunkerization is an organizing logic that responds to the managed absence of the state in an era of neoliberalism with its individualized responsibilities for managing extreme weather, degraded infrastructure, and a lack of basic public services. Bunkerization runs Szasz’s “inverted quarantine” to its logical conclusion: the inversion is not just to create a separate space that depends on purifying technologies for air, water, and food, but consuming “clean” fundaments of life is in service to creating a discrete climate. Beyond the home, we extend Paul Virilio’s archaeology of the bunker as part of urban development via warfare and continue it into a diagnosis of contemporary life by theorizing the process of bunkerization as a hardening of space as a way to freeze time. Bunkerization works as a theorization of climate denial because it cuts through the positivistic results of science, the climate denial debates as they play out across political and social valances, the ecological damage of overproduction for profit, or divine plans. Whether the impacts of climate change are properly communicated, or epistemically true, bunkerization denies the shared climate altogether and prompts savvy consumers to construct their own hermetically sealed encasements. Bunkerization, however, does not work as a politics of climate change, because rather than engaging the urgent collective action needs of responding to the ongoing climate crisis, it offers an off-ramp for savvy consumers to look out for their own needs and reproduce everyday life in a fortified encasement. Still, bunkerization highlights an important dimension of the politics of climate denial, which is that it not only seeks to provide a retreat from the world but a wholesale reworking of how people relate to it. This is an undertheorized dimension of climate denial but by taking denial literally as a denial of the broader climate in which one lives in favor of creating one’s own parallel alternative climate, we can start to theorize the politics of how this process changes how people relate to the world around them.

Sean Parson, Northern Arizona University

On the Joe Rogan podcast, psychologist and alt-right academic hero Jordan Peterson said: “Well, that is ’cause there is no such thing as climate, right? Climate and everything are the same word, and that’s what bothers me about it, technically. It’s like climate is about everything. Your models aren’t based on everything. Your models are based on a set number of variables. So that means you’ve reduced the variables–which are everything–to that set. Well, how did you decide which set of variables to include in the equation if it’s about everything? That’s not just a criticism; that’s like, if it’s about everything, your models aren’t right. Because your models cannot model everything.” This exchange between Jordan Peterson and his slack-jawed host was panned online, with criticisms highlighting the lack of understanding of scientific modeling and climate research by the self-help guru. These criticisms, especially since Peterson is a climate denier and right-wing troll with close ties to oil and gas lobbies, ring true as Peterson’s discourse functions to muddle the public discussion about climate change further, sowing doubt and confusion. Even with the accurate criticism of his ignorance and bad faith arguing, Jordan Peterson, like a broken clock, unintentionally engages with a fundamental problem with the politics of climate change: the hyperreal, spectacle, nature of climate modeling, and politics. In discussing the first Gulf War in 1991, Jean Baudrillard said, “We prefer the exile of the virtual, of which television is the universal mirror, to the catastrophe of the real.” That war, which was mediated through 24-hour cable news and filtered through the US defense department lens, felt, for most, like a non-war. It did not follow Clausewitz’s famous dictum that “war is politics through another means” but as “absence of politics by another means.” While there are, of course, huge differences between the first gulf war and the politics of climate change, both are mediated in such a way as to promote a de-politicized engagement, a deferral to experts, and the construction of climate disasters as entertainment spectacles for us to consume.

Mary Witlacil, Colorado State University

Despite ever-more-dire climate reports and predictions tech-optimists, eco-capitalists, and climate optimists urge people to believe climate change is a problem to be solved by corporate ingenuity, technological innovation, and billionaire philanthropy. For instance, ClimateOptimist.org delivers a bombastic and persuasive argument that if humanity “believes” we can solve climate change, then humanity can will solutions into being. The ClimateOptimist’s position parallels the best-selling self-help book, The Secret, which asserted that one could use positive thinking and manifestation to solve personal problems. This logic breaks down when faced with intractable personal and/or global problems. One cannot manifest their way out of breast cancer any more than one can manifest their way out of the climate crisis. Beyond concerns about the more delusional aspect of this approach, climate optimism yields to the position taken by Silicone Valley, that climate change is a market problem to be resolved by technological innovation. By relying on capitalism, technological breakthroughs, and billionaires to resolve climate change, the climate crisis empowers the very system and people who created the problem in the first place. Furthermore, when democracy yields to experts, the climate crisis threatens to become a crisis for democracy as well. While climate optimists, eco-managerialists, and tech-optimists do not (on balance) deny the gravity of climate change, their commitment to the power of capitalism and technological innovation to solve climate change is nearly as delusional as the misinformation proffered by climate change deniers. This paper advances the argument that climate optimism is similarly problematic to climate denial as it relies on misinformation, denial (of the severity of the problem or of the problematic nature of solutions), and a miscalculation of risks associated with geoengineering. To develop my argument, this paper draws on theorists of hope, cruel optimism, and pessimism, as well as those who defend optimism and the narrative of progress (e.g., Stephen Pinker and Bjorn Lomborg).

Chloe Ahn, University of Pennsylvania

Following congressional investigations into the harmful impact of social networks on users, both the Democratic and Republican parties are urging the need for social media reforms. A surge of misinformation and hate speech has also spurred public attention on the responsibilities of social media platforms: Both Republicans and Democrats believe that social media should be held more accountable for their political content. However, less is known about why such support for social media regulation has recently increased among Americans. To fill this gap, I conducted a large-scale analysis of US newspapers (N = 10,841) and a survey experiment on a demographically representative sample (N = 1,496), showing that emphasizing profit motives of social media companies and perceiving social media to have a large political influence on others increase support for social media regulation. These findings have implications for understanding how laypeople assess media actors and their influence in society.

Brandon John Sullivan, University of Massachusetts – Boston

Do cyber regime complexes manage misinformation? Recent “drops” of internal documents, more widely known as “Twitter Files”, provide a look into Twitter’s background efforts at content moderation and broader platform trust and safety. In this paper, I provide an overview of this unique form of cooperation within the cyber regime complex (CRCs). Typically understood within the context of international regimes, this paper furthers the literature by describing public-private moderation partnerships as an integral subgenus of CRCs. I engage in a review of the existing literature and a case study of the documents within the Twitter Files, to find evidence supporting this emerging field of investigation. I extend the definitive bounds of this public-private partnership hybrid to introduce a view of novel view of collaboration termed as democratic protection complex. I posit that democratic protection complexes are relevant to discipline and further our understanding of cyber-governance more broadly.

Genia Kostka, Freie Universität Berlin; Alexander M. Libman, Freie Universität Berlin

Authoritarian states have been constructing alternative narratives to liberal discourse by spreading politized disinformation on social media platforms. Existing literature mainly focuses on the diffusion of disinformation and its fluences on the public in democracies, while far too little attention has been paid to the public’s reactions to these falsehoods, especially in the context of international conflict in authoritarian states. This study aims to reveal the factors that influence the public’s acceptance of disinformation in Russia and China during the Russia-Ukraine war. Drawing on the theory of elaboration likelihood model (ELM), we used automatized text analysis techniques and econometrics to interrogate the effects of information readability, argument quality, source authority, and source influence on misinformation acceptance. The study collects post and comments data about a series of disinformation produced by Russia that disseminates broadly on the Russian and Chinese social media Vkontakte and Sina Weibo. Since it is extremely difficult to separate propaganda and disinformation in intensive regional conflicts with large confusion and uncertainty, we only focus on the disinformation debunked by the reputable fact-checking agency NewsGuard. This study extends the application arena of ELM in accounting for the public’s acceptance of misinformation in a war context and also complements the current debate about disinformation acceptance by looking into the disinformation response pattern of public audiences in authoritarian states.

Jon R. Lindsay, Georgia Tech

We do not lack for information about the Russian campaign to influence the 2016 election, but we are still struggling to interpret it. Social scientists will continue to debate the impact of the Russian disinformation campaign for years to come. Its marginal effects are extremely difficult to measure in the face of so many confounding factors. At best, Russia found a perfect patch of soil for its ‘active measures’ to flourish. At worst, Russian disinformation was just a symptom of more serious underlying conditions within American society. The irony here is that more conducive conditions for foreign disinformation may render the foreign campaign irrelevant. But this raises a more general question about political disinformation: is it even a form of deception at all? A conventional assumption is that disinformation works by disguising the truth. The disinformation artist plants fake news, forged documents, and malicious rumors, disguising their true source to frustrate attribution and maintain plausible deniability. As gullible people consume fraudulent content and pass it on to their gullible friends, public opinion shifts in the desired direction. This is the logic of deception, the exploitation of collective trust for competitive gain. If disinformation is indeed deception, furthermore, then it should depend on four conditions that should be familiar by now—access, organization, cooperation, and security. The failure of any of these necessary conditions should lead to the failure of deception. As security is compromised, deception is defeated. Once the lie is unmasked, and the deceiver attributed, disinformation should lose its power. We know all too well, however, that this is usually not what happens. The attribution of Russian involvement in the months prior to the November 2016 election did not end Russian influence in American politics. Instead, Russia became yet another lightning rod for polarized rhetoric. The effects persisted not only during the campaign but long after through a series of controversial investigations and impeachment hearings. The public unmasking of disinformation does not necessarily stop its spread. On the contrary, publicity can amplify its effects. As one side accuses the other of being duped by foreign trolls, the other side reacts with indignation and complains of political bias. As truth becomes politicized, lies are deliberately amplified. The willingness to repeat a questionable rumor, or to debunk it, then becomes a mark of political membership. Thus, for example, “stop the steal” became a rallying cry for the American right after the 2020 election. As more evidence accumulated that nothing was stolen at all, the “big lie” became an even better litmus test for political loyalty in the ensuing years. Sometimes disinformation is not deception at all. This paper provides a fresh interpretation of disinformation in the 2016 election as a political signaling process driven by the witting participation of a political community.

Scott B. Radnitz, University of Washington; Yuan Hsiao, University of Washington

The spread of disinformation has been described by public officials, the media, and communications scholars as a threat to political order, stability, and even democracy itself. One underappreciated effect of this heightened awareness is that partisan or profit-seeking actors may strategically invoke disinformation to raise doubts about, or distract from, politically or financially damaging information. This paper analyzes the effects of the “disinformation discourse” by assessing the extent to which claims about disinformation can lead people to doubt factual information. We ask three related questions. How does the identity of an actor accused of spreading disinformation affect people’s willingness to believe a disinformation claim? How do the identities of actors framing claims about disinformation affect people’s willingness to believe a disinformation claim? Does exposure to claims about disinformation claims lead to reduced trust in democratic institutions or confidence in people’s ability to acquire accurate information? To answer these questions, we conducted original survey experiments in two politically divided countries that have been subject to both domestic and foreign disinformation: the US (n=3,400) and Taiwan (n=2,600). In order to assess how people respond to claims of disinformation, we randomly vary the identities of the claimant and the supposed disinforming actor. To ascertain the range of situations in which such claims resonate, we include statements that are true, false, and hypothetical. Our results indicate, first, in both countries, claims of disinformation have significant negative effects on belief. Second, claims made by co-partisans are unsurprisingly deemed more believable but those made by ostensibly neutral actors vary by the partisanship of the respondent. Third, in both the US and Taiwan, Russia and China are perceived as equally likely to spread disinformation and are perceived as greater threats than domestic political operatives. This paper stakes out new ground in the study of propaganda. We show how the disinformation discourse, coupled with polarized politics, provides cynical actors with a powerful tool to obfuscate facts. These findings point to a downside to the otherwise justified efforts of policy makers, scholars, and media to highlight the threat of disinformation.

Andy Guess, Princeton University; Gordon Pennycook, University of Regina; Shannon C. McGregor, University of North Carolina

Recent studies have found promising evidence that lightweight, scalable tips promoting digital media literacy can improve the overall accuracy of social media users’ sharing intentions and potentially improve their ability to perceive the accuracy of true versus false headlines. However, existing research is designed to test entire bundles, which limits our practical knowledge about whether some kinds of tips are more effective than others and hinders our ability to theorize about mechanisms. We address this limitation by designing two experiments: First, we randomly assign participants to receive one of 10 possible tips; subsequently, we randomize the number of tips (as well as the set of tips shown within that chosen set). Our preliminary results indicate that assignment to any single tip improves sharing but not accuracy discernment on average. In our second experiment, two of the tips stand out as more promising for improving accuracy discernment, but the effect can be washed out if the bundle is too large.

Katy Pearce, University of Washington, Department of Communication

Armenia has experienced substantial political transitions in the past five years. After a 2018 democratic non-violent revolution, Armenia is in the midst of a transition from semi-authoritarianism to a hybrid regime (Freedom House, 2022). But the new regime’s ambitious reform agenda was shattered by the pandemic and an unexpected war with Azerbaijan. Further, political opponents are circling. Amidst all of this, NGOs have expressed concern about mis/disinformation (Freedom House, 2021; IREX, 2022; Media Initiatives Center, 2021). Using nationally representative data (N=1648) collected by a reputable research NGO in late 2021-early 2022, the completed project will present a model for determinants of multiple misinformation concepts with independent variables: demographics, media trust, government trust, political interest, political knowledge, and social media/mobile messaging for four outcomes: misinformation concern, perceived misinformation exposure, belief about motivation for spreading misinformation, and verification behaviors. This project will engage with relevant literature (Boulianne et al., 2022; Humprecht et al., 2021; Neyazi et al., 2021, 2022; Nisbet & Kamenchuk, 2021). This is a unique opportunity to look at factors that contribute to misinformation exposure and strategies for assessing credibility, as well as beliefs about why misinformation exists, particularly in a transitioning democracy Global South context.

Jianing Li, University of South Florida

Scholars have long argued for the importance of skepticism in addressing misinformation. However, exactly what constitutes “healthy” skepticism is largely unknown. While skepticism may be a signal of higher media literacy, concerns arise about how skepticism may be a cover for rejecting truthful but unfavorable information and a tool for knowledge-building within conspiracy theory groups. In this project, I theorize and measure two types of skepticism towards social media misinformation – accuracy- and identity-motivated skepticism – and demonstrate that they have opposing effects on not only factual beliefs, but also information perceptions and behaviors in the long term. First, I construct and validate scales for accuracy- and identity-motivated skepticism, demonstrating that they are two empirically distinct constructs. I then test the effects of these two types of skepticism using a two-wave panel survey experiment in the U.S. When people’s skepticism towards social media misinformation is driven by accuracy motivations, they are less likely to believe in congruent misinformation they later encounter. They also consume more mainstream media, which in turn reinforces accuracy-motivated skepticism. In contrast, when people’s skepticism towards social media misinformation is driven by identity motivations, they not only fall for congruent misinformation they later encounter, but also disregard platform interventions that flag a post as false. Moreover, they are more likely to believe that social media misinformation favors the other side and more likely to intentionally avoid news on social media, both of which form a vicious reinforcement cycle of fueling more identity-motivated skepticism. These findings underscore the importance of differentiating the motivational underpinnings of skepticism and have implications for designing digital media literacy interventions that combat misinformation without perpetuating its contentious nature.

Kristen R. Collins, George Mason University

The rise of digital media appears to herald a new “post-truth era” in which misinformation or disinformation accompanies every political event and the public can no longer separate fact from fiction. Whether it is in political actors purposefully spreading disinformation purporting electoral fraud or broader misinformation relating to the COVID pandemic, these phenomena ultimately appear to threaten the possibility of a common social world that we share with each other. However, this means that “the age of misinformation” is not a result of technology, but a timeless problem due to the inherently constructed nature of our social lives and the contestability of opinion. This paper explores Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s wrestling with opinion, which he personifies and genders, writing “Opinion, queen of the world, is not subject to the power of kings; they are themselves her first slaves” (Letter to D’Alembert on the Spectacles, 74). While political theorists have often turned to Rousseau as a champion of transparency and a democratic resource for inspiring more direct civic participation today, I argue that his political thought rests on pernicious uses of secrecy and surveillance to ritualize republican relations and prevent commercial development from expanding women’s influence beyond the legislator’s (and Rousseau’s) purview. While Rousseau’s criticisms of the influence of celebrity and wealth in electoral politics are especially pertinent to the ways in which private corporations and economic inequality shape political debate and electoral competition today, engaging with his works also warn us how projects aiming to purify and contain opinion can often endanger those who have been historically marginalized and vilified. Nevertheless, this paper seeks neither to vilify, nor idolize, Rousseau, but consider how the ambivalence he exhibited as a political thinker, novelist, and composer can inform our own balance of skepticism and creativity in reimagining democratic politics for the twenty-first century.

Boris Litvin, Eckerd College

The “constructivist turn” in political representation has challenged political theorists to contend with the role of elite claim-making in mobilizing collective identity while subverting commonplace notions that representation entails action on behalf of pregiven constituent preferences. But this approach faces difficulty in accounting for legitimacy given its insights about representation. In short, is it possible to interrogate misrepresentation without asserting some preexisting facts about a constituency? This question is especially pertinent in light of growing worries about everyday citizen encounters with misinformation. If collective identities are constructed, how should political theorists go about interrogating false claims accepted by constituencies? If we can identify false content, can we talk of false acts of representation? This essay holds that these questions stand to benefit from an unlikely interlocutor: Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Scholars have occasionally identified Rousseau as a precursor to the constructivist turn because of his conception of the Lawgiver who renders the Social Contract’s inchoate multitude into a people in the absence of pregiven social foundations. But this scholarly reception does not sit well with Rousseau’s strident rejection of representation in the context of government administration – a problem minimized in recent interpretations. Instead, this essay connects these two aspects of Rousseau’s political thought. It does so by interpreting both as efforts to grapple with the people’s wide-ranging amenability to accepting false claims about themselves. On my reading, the government’s efforts to represent the people’s will cannot help but presume false albeit unstated “facts” about the their identity as passive spectators – a problem Rousseau introduces in his attack on the theater in the Letter to D’Alembert. Indeed, such “facts” resist correction by subsequent claim-making practices, as they serve only to reinforce the people’s interpellation as spectators. In turn, I read the Lawgiver’s intervention through the lens of this problem, arguing that his representative claims endeavor to position the people specifically to interrogate their activities as spectators. Yet such a project requires spectators to be assembled in a particular way – one that Rousseau thematizes in his treatise-turned-novel Emile. Turning to the latter work, I build on recent literature that notices its proclivity to “test” its audience by presenting false content only to challenge readers to question their own practice as spectators to pedagogy. While these tests have received increasing scholarly attention in relation to Emile’s narrative, their relationship to Rousseau’s political vision remains underexamined. My essay connects these dots, arguing that Emile’s use of false content to reorient audiences can help illuminate the animating logic behind some of Rousseau’s most puzzling arguments about political institutions in the Social Contract. Specifically, I locate Emile’s tests at work in Rousseau’s ostensive rejection of “communication” in popular assemblies (SC 2.2), his conceptualization of lawmaking as a recursive “relation between the entire object from one point of view and the entire object from another point of view” (2.6), and his reinterpretation of voting as a practice meant to question one’s estimation of the general will rather than express an individual opinion (4.2). I argue that these cases mark Rousseau’ efforts conceptualize mass assemblies that don’t reinscribe the people’s identity as mere spectators. As such, they advance a conversation about representation, misinformation, and spectatorship undertheorized in the constructivist turn.

Noga Rotem, University of Washington

Public and scholarly responses to our “golden-age of conspiracy theory” typically call to dispel fantasy and educate the public about the facts. The last few decades, however, saw various attempts in the humanities to read paranoid fantasy more sympathetically, and symptomatically – as conveying a rather healthy suspicion towards the clandestine powers that oppress us in late modernity. Yet, despite their different attitudes towards conspiracism, both ‘rejectionists’ and ‘sympathizers’ share a faith in the sobering power of truth. Rejectionists seek to reestablish the authority of facts by moving beyond paranoia. Sympathizers seek to salvage the truth that lies underneath the phantasmatic surface of conspiracies. But what if the truth alone cannot emancipate us? This paper argues that our moment of post-truth calls for a third approach to complement the two others. Instead of appealing to a ‘beyond’ or ‘beneath’ of paranoia (as the rejectionists and sympathizers do), I explore the democratic promise of a position that Eve Sedgwick calls – “beside.” To be ‘beside’ paranoia is to risk proximity to its poison, or to “stay with the trouble” (as Donna Haraway puts it in a different context). It is a non-judgmental, yet agonistic position of non-abandonment, a position that recognizes our democratic responsibility not only to expose the truth, but also to hold it, together, as Hannah Arendt puts it. Beside is interested in paranoia not only as a condition of epistemological deprivation but also of affective excess. It thus pays heed to the (potentially democratic) cravings and pleasures that lure people into paranoia in the first place. I find models for this approach in James Baldwin’s thinking of the theorist as the one who “bears witness” in face of racial terror, and in Hannah Arendt’s seeking of “comprehension” in face of totalitarianism and genocide. In the wake of racial terror, when the “air [is] wicked with speculations” as Baldwin puts it, both thinkers avoid or suspend the “drama of exposure” with its fact-checks and with its attempting of rational deliberation. Instead, they speak in favor of fantasy, and on behalf of a present and a future world that must be shared, with friends and enemies. Rather than “lifting the rugs from under the feet of naïve believers,” as Bruno Latour puts it, both thinkers offer us ‘truth’ as something to be cared for, held, together with, and to the side of, others.

Avshalom M. Schwartz, Stanford University

Long before he became president, Donald Trump was spreading conspiracies and misinformation. One of the most memorable examples might be his false claims about Barack Obama’s ‘fake birth certificate.’ While Trump explicitly claimed that Obama was not born in the United States, he often promoted such misinformation and false accusations by “asking questions.” For example, on July 17, 2012, Trump asked on Twitter, “I wonder what the answer is on @BarackObama’s college application to the question: place of birth?” Two days later, he asked, “why doesn’t @BarackObama release his original book proposal which says he was born in Kenya?” The strategy of “just asking questions” is a popular tool used to spread conspiracy theories. Trump and his supporters continued to use it throughout his presidency, including in his attempt to undermine and raise doubts about the legitimacy of the 2022 elections; and Fox News host Tucker Carlson became famous for “asking questions” about the dangers of the COVID-19 pandemic and vaccine safety. Nevertheless, asking questions can serve an important social and political function. Indeed, it is often seen as one of the vital roles played by social and political philosophy—especially by various forms of critical theory. If there is any similarity between these types of question-asking, it may very well be merely superficial. At the very least, these questions are clearly distinguished by their ends and motivations, with Trump and Carlson using questions to spread misinformation and distrust and philosophical questioning (ideally) aiming at the truth or seeking to promote human flourishing and emancipation. Yet, even if this similarity is merely superficial, it may nevertheless be significant. When society faces a deep crisis—when its social, epistemological, and normative foundations are shaken to their core—the practice of radically calling into question society’s beliefs and assumptions can have harmful effects, regardless of the intentions behind it. What, then, is philosophy’s role in such times of unrest? When society faces epistemological crises and confusion, and trust in shared knowledge and authority erodes, what should philosophy do? In this paper, I seek to develop an answer to this question by turning to Plato. I would like to argue that Plato’s understanding of the nature and role of philosophy is developed, in part, in response to a very similar dilemma. Writing in the aftermath of the Peloponnesian War and in a society torn by political debates and epistemological uncertainty, Plato recognized the inherently destabilizing potential of philosophical questions. His own practice of philosophy, I will argue, is shaped by this recognition and is designed, among other things, to address it. I explore these themes by focusing on Plato’s engagement with the sophists, particularly with Callicles of the Gorgias. Socrates’ and Plato’s relationship with the sophists has been, of course, the topic of numerous studies, which highlight the challenge posed by the sophistic moral doctrine, particularly its reliance on some version of moral relativism and skepticism. Callicles may not strictly be a sophist, but it is widely agreed that he is among the more dangerous of Socrates’ political opponents. While scholars often describe Callicles as an “antithesis” or “polar opposite” of Socrates, I will offer in this paper an original analysis of several striking similarities between the two characters. Specifically, I demonstrate that Callicles and Socrates share a sober view of how society molds and shapes individuals using the “witchcraft” and “spells” of its nomoi (laws, customs, norms) and mythoi (stories, fables). I argue that, like a Socratic philosopher, Callicles is able to detach himself from the common views and ideologies that bind most people and holds a critical position toward society’s nomos—its laws, customs, and norms—seeing it for what it truly is: a historical and changeable product of society and not an objective and permanent fact of nature. Understanding these similarities, I will argue, sheds new light on what makes Callicles’ position so challenging. It also demonstrates the potential dangers posed by both philosophy and sophistry, which may undermine trust and belief in the shared moral and political foundations that hold societies together. At the same time, it points us toward an alternative model of philosophical question-asking. Working with the Phaedo, I identify what I call the “therapeutic function” of philosophy. This function does not undermine the importance of questions—even radical questions—to the practice of philosophy. But it does recognize the dangerous effect such radical positions may have on both the individual and society as a whole, thus supplementing philosophical criticism and questioning with a constructive and positive alternative.

Timothy Jones, University of Michigan

Can developmental aid and coercive strategies work in concert to enhance the durability and quality of peace in war-torn communities? This paper offers insight into the relationship between wartime aid and political order by evaluating whether territorial control is a precondition for provisions to be effective in civil wars. Using data from the National Solidarity Program (NSP) on 89,000 projects carried out across Afghanistan from 2002 to 2016, I test whether aid projects implemented in locations where security was first established transition from violence back to peace more quickly during future episodes of insurgent activity than locations where projects were carried out while control was still contested. This research contributes to the field of conflict management and peacebuilding by informing the debate around resource spending in conflicts and the sequencing of priorities to build order. This research also provides insight into the role of diversity, equity, and inclusion in the field of peacebuilding as the NSP sought to improve access to basic services and foster village governance through a democratic process and balanced gender participation.

State Control Over Telecommunications, Surveillance, and Militant Mobilisation
Mehmet Erdem Arslan, University of Essex

The ongoing debate about the effects of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) on conflict focuses on the potential advantages modern ICTs provide to the parties, and mixed results in the literature suggests that actors’ ability to leverage these technologies matter. While rebel groups exploit ICTs for propaganda and coordination purposes, states can capitalize on its control on the network infrastructure to gather intelligence, or sometimes shutdown networks to undermine rebel coordination. However, in these accounts, states’ control over infrastructure assumed to be total and constant, overlooking the variation between states and within states over time on the ownership and control over telecommunication infrastructure. This study aims to fill this lacuna by examining the relationship between states’ ownership of telecommunication companies and emergence of rebel movements. I argue that state ownership and control over telecommunication facilitates efforts of surveillance and elicits better information about opposition movements, which helps to detect emerging rebel movements early on and suppress them before the rebels gain enough power to challenge the government. Using newly released datasets on state ownership and control of telecommunication and militant mobilization, I analyse this relationship with a sample of 49 countries in Africa for the period between 2000-2019.

Shengkuo Hu, University of California, Merced

Does regional autonomy increase or alleviate insurgent violence? I argue that elite-captured regional autonomy enables elites to expropriate citizen wealth, generating citizen grievances that fuel insurgent violence. To test the implications of my theory, I investigate the effect of the creation of two new, autonomous Indian states—Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand—on insurgent violence. Using difference-in-difference and geographical regression discontinuity designs, I find the creation of these states to be associated with statistically and substantively significant increases in Maoist violence. More importantly, the relationship between these new autonomous states and violence is stronger when elites are better able to exploit local resources.

Martin Macias Medellin, University of Michigan

Physical infrastructure is commonly used as a proxy for state reach and capacity. Cities tend to be state strongholds with high concentrations of built-up infrastructures such as buildings and roads, what I call the urban topography. During civil conflict, however, the urban infrastructure might weaken state’s abilities to punish rebellions because they add logistical constraints for governments including limited lines of sight, limited mobility for conventional artillery, and concealment opportunities for insurgents. In this paper, I investigate whether the urban physical infrastructure helps the state to reach and crush dissent or whether it indeed makes cities the hardest terrain to fight on for governments. Using previously unexplored data based on satellite imagery that measures the built-up infrastructure of cities and fine-grained data of more than 140 000 victims from the Syrian civil conflict 2011 to 2016, I investigate whether and how the urban topography affects the levels of government violence. The analysis focuses on a sample of all Syrian cities and a case study of the patterns of violence in the city of Homs.

Jason Hartwig, University of Pennsylvania

Civil wars provide unique periods of disruption where society can be dramatically re-ordered. The management of violence is a central element of the order-building process. I provide a theory of the management of violence during civil war, which I term “security orders.” The emergence of security orders is produced by the interaction of the type of territorial control imposed by combatants and social cohesion of communities they impose rule upon. Combatants vary their approaches to territorial control between direct or indirect control, contingent on the degree to which they rely on local agents and the connection between coercive power and justice mechanisms. Social cohesion is defined by the extent of ethnic, sectarian, or ideological connections within communities. Under direct forms of control, combatants are able to deter mobilization within territory they control and provide dispute resolution mechanisms to alleviate potential grievances in low cohesion communities. By contrast, under indirect forms of control, local agents are able to use their position for gain at the expense of other groups and combatants fail to deter military mobilization. In low social cohesion communities, groups facing threat from local agents and no recourse to dispute resolution mechanisms will exploit opportunity for mobilization and resort towards violence against one another. The theory is applied to the U.S. Civil War and a new dataset of violence collected through extensive archival research. The federal government adopted divergent approaches to controlling territory in loyal Kentucky and secessionist Tennessee amidst the process of emancipation in the two slave-holding states. The collapse of the slave-order threatened the status of white elites, producing significant local resistance to the imposition of the emancipation order and splintering of white co-ethnic communities in addition to violence targeted against enslaved and emancipated people. The theory predicts that as social cohesion collapsed in both states, direct federal control of Tennessee would limit intercommunal violence, while indirect control of Kentucky would produce increased intercommunal violence in the wake of emancipation. Initial empirical results using a difference-in-difference design are consistent with theoretical expectations. The U.S. Civil War is a prominent example of state-building through conflict, offering an important case to understand the micro-foundations of order-building. Further, the conflict possesses unusually good data from official reporting and census records immediately prior to the onset of conflict. The theory and empirical results identify conditions under which activated identity can drive communal violence as part of conflict processes. I further highlight the potential risks of relying on local agents to maintain territorial control when enacting major social programs in the midst of civil wars.

Kim Yi Dionne, University of California, Riverside; Boniface Dulani, Michigan State University; Karen E. Ferree, University of California, San Diego; Adam Harris, University College London; Weiyi Shi, University of California, San Diego

As states and societies seek solutions to stem the tide of the coronavirus pandemic, one key variable has been the willingness of ordinary people to get vaccinated. In this paper, we examine how politics influences individuals’ acceptance of COVID-19 vaccines. More specifically, we contribute to the growing political science literature on the role of trust in shaping response to health crises by studying how partisanship relates to trust and how trust – in both domestic officials and international agencies – shapes vaccine uptake and hesitancy. Our study draws on original survey data from Malawi, a country that relies significantly on foreign aid for health, where citizens have relatively low trust in political leaders, and where mis- and disinformation about vaccines are widespread on social media. While national-level politics in Malawi are competitive, the major political parties have not overtly politicized the COVID-19 pandemic. In a phone survey conducted in late 2021, we asked adult Malawians (N=3,234) about their attitudes toward COVID-19 vaccines and their perceptions of vaccine efficacy and risk. We also measured political affiliation, trust in government, and trust in international actors. A subset of these respondents were also interviewed in April and May of 2020 about trust and political affiliation, allowing us to examine these variables over time. We find strong evidence that political affiliations – in particular, being a partisan of the party that lost power in the July 2020 presidential election or a partisan of the party that gained it – significantly affect trust in government. Power losers experienced substantial drops in trust while power gainers experienced substantial gains. Losing or winning power did not, however, affect trust in the World Health Organization (WHO). Both forms of trust in turn shape vaccine acceptance. Our analysis suggests that international organizations may be able to counterbalance cycles in political trust generated by elections and in so doing improve uptake of public health measures.

Ashley M. Fox, SUNY at Albany

Globally, two major narratives have emerged explaining low vaccine uptake in LMICs, one stressing low availability (inequitable supply) and another stressing low vaccine acceptance by the public due to low trust (low demand). This paper aims to empirically examine the relative contribution of these twin barriers to vaccine uptake. Using nationally-representative survey data including 15,916 responses from 8 African and 9 Western Pacific countries collected in Summer and Fall 2021, we examine national differences in vaccine availability, acceptability and uptake as well as individual-level predictors affecting vaccine uptake that encompass both availability and acceptability. We find that both low availability and acceptability pose barriers to access in a manner that tends to compound in countries with the lowest levels both capacity and trust. Based on these findings we develop a model that suggests a low-capacity and low-trust feedback loop, with compounding effects on policy compliance.

Holly Jarman, University of Michigan; Michelle Falkenbach, Cornell University; Sarah Denise Rozenblum, University of Michigan; Scott L. Greer, University of Michigan

Our objective is to understand the role of formal scientific advice systems in the decision making of governments from a governance perspective. What role does the governance of scientific advice systems play in broader decision making? We used formal documents and media reports to understand the structure of formal advice to the French, German, and UK governments during the COVID-19 pandemic, a crisis that put scientific advice systems under pressure. In all three systems elected leaders were interested in private advice tailored to their needs and sought it through, for example, consultants. The variation we found was in the extent to which established advice systems had clear accountability which gave them insulation from the immediate demands of the executive, which we call autonomy, and transparent to the public. The German system of advice from independent institutions allowed that advice to be highly influential. In France and the UK, the privacy of advice to the government, and the government’s obvious ability to set the questions advisors answered, limited governments’ ability to draw on advice systems for legitimating policy and biased the scientific advice they received. In conclusion: Politicians have incentive to prefer private advice tailored to their agendas which can let them make tradeoffs and use science to legitimate their decisions without scrutiny. There is little evidence that governments’ policies gained legitimacy or were much improved by relatively closed private advice tailored to their leaders’ needs. More independent and transparent scientific advice systems can allow stakeholders and voters to determine whether governments “followed science” and hold them accountable for their tradeoffs.

Matthew Kavanagh, Georgetown University; Renu Singh, Bocconi University

International mechanisms failed to achieve equitable distribution of COVID-19 vaccines—prolonging and deepening the pandemic. To understand why, we conduct process-tracing of the first year of international policymaking on vaccine equity. We find that, in the absence of a single venue for global negotiation, two competing law and policy paradigms emerged. One focused on demand and voluntary action by states and firms, while the alternative focused on opening knowledge and expanding production through national and international law. While these could have been complementary, power inequalities between key actors kept the second paradigm from gaining traction on the global agenda. The failure of the prevailing policy paradigm to secure equity is explained, not by unforeseen technical and financing challenges as some suggest, but by a fundamental misalignment with the political environment. While norm entrepreneurs encouraged sharing, political incentives pushed governments toward securing and hoarding doses. Firms responded to the latter. Mechanisms like COVAX proved incapable of countering these predictable international and domestic political forces. Earlier funding would not likely have changed the behavior of states or firms in the absence of legal commitment. Barring significant geopolitical changes, a shift to include open/supply-focused policies will be necessary to achieve equity in future pandemics.

Jennifer Leonor Erkulwater, University of Richmond

The study of disability in political science suffers a twofold problem. The first is the discipline’s reluctance to center the politics of minoritized identities, such as disability. Second, when it has tackled disability, it has replicated what disability studies scholars have come to recognize as the overriding Whiteness of disability activism and research – that is, the lack of people of color in activist spaces and the scholarly focus on the accomplishments and lived experiences of White people with disabilities. The critique is not meant to denigrate the significance of activists aligned with the modern mainstream disability rights movement or the importance of its legislative achievements. Rather, critique is born of the activist desire, however imperfectly realized in practice, to uplift all people with disabilities and to take on the layered exclusions of ableism, racism, sexism, and heteronormativity. This paper contributes to the ongoing effort by disability studies scholars to rectify the overriding Whiteness in the historiography of disability politics and by political scientists to center race and ethnicity in their analysis of U.S. politics. It argues that understanding why disability is too White (to paraphrase the viral hashtag coined by activist Vilissa Thompson) requires attending, not simply to the intentions and attitudes of individual activists and their organizations, but to the political institutions that structure and channel their activism. Applying theories of discursive institutionalism and policy feedback, this paper examines the period between 1987-1996, specifically the years culminating in the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 and, a few years later, the welfare reform law the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act. Its purpose is to analyze disability, race, and poverty as imbricated systems of oppression and inequality. It draws from the records of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights (LCCHR) to understand how disability became legislatively incorporated under the umbrella of civil rights and how activists navigated competing claims of disability and racial equity. As the premier lobbying arm of the Black freedom struggle, during this period, the LCCHR broadened its agenda from race-based civil rights to embrace disability rights, while at the same time subordinating, its prior attention to welfare rights, busing, and affirmative action – issues that had been organizational priorities for decades. The paper identifies key institutional mechanisms that shaped disability rights legislation, keeping protections against people with disabilities distinct from intersecting claims of racial justice.

Joanna L. Grisinger, Northwestern University

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, physically disabled people were increasingly frustrated about the failure of airline regulators to protect their ability to travel. While airplane manufacturers had poured tremendous amounts of time and money into the passenger experience, air travel had not been designed with the protection of physically disabled travelers in mind. Travelers willing and able to navigate physical hurdles, however, often found themselves stymied by airline staff who were skeptical about physically disabled travelers’ ability to fly on their own. Based on generalized concerns about passengers’ ability to take care of themselves, or to evacuate the airplane quickly in case of an emergency, airline officials frequently turned away travelers without regard for such travelers’ claims about their own abilities. Airlines were able to do so because airline regulation had also not been designed with the protection of physically disabled persons in mind. While airlines were heavily regulated by both the Civil Aeronautics Board and the Federal Aviation Administration, on safety matters they were given wide discretion to turn away passengers. In the early 1970s, physically disabled passengers demanded that the federal government promulgate clearer rules that would limit the discretion of airline employees and protect their own ability to travel. Drawing on an increasingly common set of rights claims used by a variety of contemporary mobilization efforts, on nondiscrimination language in the Federal Aviation Act, and on the expansive promise of section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act, physically disabled travelers argued that they had a right to travel, that airlines (as federally regulated entities) had a duty to carry all passengers, and that the failure to do so was discriminatory. Their demands—and the agencies’ slow response—demonstrates both the possibilities and the difficulties of public interest group mobilization within the administrative state.

Heather Ann Swadley, Swarthmore College; Karen Tani, University of Pennsylvania

The decades after 1960 were a pivotal time for the development of disability class consciousness. Formerly siloed disabled citizens began establishing “centers for independent living” and winning the removal of architectural barriers; parents of disabled children pressed successfully for educational inclusion; deinstitutionalization movements gathered steam as disabled people and their allies exposed inhumane conditions and drew parallels to racial segregation. Perhaps most important, federal lawmakers passed Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, the first piece of sweeping civil rights legislation to address disability-based discrimination. Although implementing regulations followed only after years of advocacy and protest, the 1977 regulations gave disabled people a means of claiming rights in federally funded programs and activities, meaning potentially greater access to everything from transportation, to education, to employment. From today’s vantage point, this was a watershed moment in the development of disabled citizenship—and yet political scientists and historians have devoted relatively little attention to Section 504 and its aftermath. Who were the disabled citizens that Section 504’s drafters and administrators imagined? What was the content and quality of the citizenship they sought to confer? How did actual disabled people engage with Section 504? To the extent they did so, did their understandings or experiences of citizenship change? What might an exploration of disabled citizenship at this anomalous moment tell us about the development of citizenship more generally? To answer these questions, this paper considers archival data from the Disability Rights Education & Defense Fund (DREDF), arguably the most prominent disability rights organization at the time. Specifically, we look to trainings aimed at educating people about their rights under Section 504. These trainings, which ran from 1979 to 1982, were commissioned by the federal government and carried out by DREDF and others. They represent a window of time when key federal administrators not only recognized disabled people as citizens (i.e., people who had civil rights and deserved government resources), but also appeared invested in getting disabled people to recognize themselves as such. The government paid for confident, articulate disabled trainers to get in front of large groups of disabled people and try to instill in them a “rights-bearing attitude,” while also providing practical information for spotting and remedying rights violations. This paper builds upon existing literature, while also suggesting promising new directions. The trainings illustrate how the modern American state recognized (and perhaps tried to produce) disabled citizens, calling to mind the bureaucratic constitution of citizenship discussed by Canaday (2009) and Tani (2016). The consumer-led trainings themselves were “acts of citizenship” as theorized by Isin & Nielsen (2008), for although the trainings were government funded, they gave disabled participants a space to contest and define citizenship for themselves. This paper also contributes to scholarship on administrative law and governance: these trainings reflected a broader participatory revolution in administrative law, which was at once an effort to bring administration closer to the people and a form of “outsourcing” government labor. The paper’s most important contribution, however, will be to the literature on the exclusionary facets of seemingly inclusive visions of citizenship. Our sources show that trainers and trainees with intellectual and developmental disabilities were notably absent. The trainings themselves required that trainers and trainees communicate and negotiate in modalities that were not universally accessible. Moreover, the conception of disabled citizenship produced by these trainings relied on oversimplified understandings of both race and disability, such that being disabled was akin to being Black and there was an assumed 1-to-1 correspondence between White Supremacy and ableism. Finally, these trainings reinforced the idea that disabled people must enact their own citizenship. Placing the onus on individual disabled people to remedy discrimination creates disproportional labor for an already marginalized group. More insidiously, this form of “private enforcement” may undercut state-led efforts at enforcement and recognition. We conclude by connecting our historical findings to present-day understandings of disabled citizenship. Specifically, we address the expectation of private enforcement of disability rights and the embedded analogy between disability and Blackness. We also note the challenge today of enacting alternative visions of disabled citizenship, given the way that disability law has now hardened—making it all the more important to recover historical moments of greater openness and fluidity.

Arthur Blaser, Chapman University

Political scientists have debated the significance of state and non-state actors for decades. The roles of state and non-state actors reflect major changes in international relations, more evident in some places on some issues than others. Evidence from one of the United Nations Human Rights Treaty Bodies, the Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CteRPD), created by the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CnRPD) can provide a partial answer which I hope to explore in this paper. That evidence will be derived from a simple, exploratory, content analysis of reports (submitted by states and shadow reports from non-state actors), from the first session in 2011 to the 28th session in March, 2023, concluding observations, lists of issues, responses to the lists of issues, and follow-up for the now 185 states parties. [That information is online at the High Commissioner’s site.] I will examine variables such as: 1. Region of world, North America/Central and South America/Europe/Asia and the Pacific/Africa/other = Australia? 2. Date: measurement across time 3. Local/regional/global INGOs 4. Anything from National Human Rights Institutions (NHRIS)? 5. Recognition of intersections with race, gender, sexuality, age, ethnicity? I plan to discuss propositions based on others’ assertions such as: P1 Even though the CRPD was an agreement of states, many nonstate actors participate directly or indirectly, among them Disabled People’s Organizations (DPOs), and Non-governmental Organizations (NGOs) that are not DPOs P2: The evidence of nonstate participation generally increases with time P3: There is great attention to social, economic rights including the right to health, COVID related issues P4: There is increasing concern with intersectionality, evident in discussion of such topics as race, gender, and age and disability P5: Geographical unevenness is persistent; nonstate actors are involved to different degrees in different countries’ reporting processes Based on the propositions, I will examine implications such as: 1. Does CRPD activity make a difference? Is there validity to the criticism that it is people talking to themselves. A parallel universe to state elites? 2. Quality of the information that is available. Improved greatly with time but is it disseminated? Importance of data based assessment of the international disability rights movement. 3. Similarities to, differences from other United Nations Treaty Bodies, the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women, the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, the Committee on the Rights of the Child, the Human Rights Committee, and the Committee on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights.

Theresa Man Ling Lee, University of Guelph

This paper is an attempt by the author, who is a political theorist, to offer an interpretation of the empirical findings in a multi-year research project funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, titled “Disabilities and Livelihoods in Canada.” The project involves a partnership between four faculty members of different disciplinary background, including the author, at the University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada, and a handful of community partners in the country. The project was launched in the spring of 2019 with a one-year extension to 2023 due to pandemic-related disruption that had stalled data gathering. The project consists of three different pilot studies that focus on how disabled individuals live from the lens of livelihood by looking at volunteering, art and artistry, and pre-employment support programs for young women with disabilities. Livelihood as such is a conceptual framework adapted from the “sustainable livelihoods approach” (SLA) used in international development policymaking and studies.1 At the core of SLA is the recognition that beyond securing the basic necessities of life, individuals should be able to thrive. Accordingly, SLA aims to support individuals to achieve well-being that goes beyond economic terms. The capabilities approach (CA), originally put forth by Amartya Sen, is incorporated into SLA. SLA is thus committed to the idea that individuals should be able to become the person they want to be and have the means to do so. Notably, SLA has been adopted specifically for disabled people by the UN, as follows: Livelihood, however, goes beyond these basic necessities to encompass the dignity of people’s lives ….The livelihood approach recognizes that persons with disabilities have capabilities, including [for] reducing risk and vulnerability, and exercising their voice. Furthermore, within the context of their lives and communities, there are resources and opportunities. It is this lived experience within a community context that plays an important role in determining the quality of life of persons with disabilities…. The research project was originally conceptualized based on the findings that the livelihoods approach is absent from policymaking and academic studies regarding disability in the global North.3 Yet the positive correlation between disability and poverty is a long noted problem that transcends the North-South divide. Using the livelihoods framework to study the everyday life of disabled individuals in developed countries such as Canada therefore provides us with a more comprehensive picture of understanding disability as a way of life shared among the largest minority group in the world at 15% of its total population and growing. Against this background, the paper argues that it is our moral obligation to understand how disabled individuals live their lives when what is considered to be essential to one’s sense of well-being, which is economic security through employment, is denied to them disproportionately and persistently by society. Such an understanding is a moral obligation for all because disability is a social dynamic rather than a static condition. Moreover, the life of a disabled person may help to shed light on what makes a life livable. Livability is in fact the issue that we all need to address, with or without disability, in a world that faces increasing polarization of economic inequality, both within the rich countries and between the North-South divide, ideological and religious extremism, climate change and environmental degradation, and of course, the ever-expanding virtual world that aims to take over the life world. In her Mary Flexner Lectures at Bryn Mawr College , Judith Butler says, [I]f politics is oriented toward the making and preserving of the conditions that allow for livability, then it seems that the space of appearance is not ever fully separable from questions of infrastructure and architecture, and that they not only condition the action, but take part in the making of the space of politics. Butler continues by noting that this observation is in fact related to an insight in disability studies, which is that “all bodies require support to move.” Indeed, with or without mobility impairment, we all need the streets to move around. There is perhaps more to be learned from how disabled people live their lives.

Robynn Kuhlmann, University of Central Missouri; Daniel C. Lewis, Siena College

Discourse over state election administration reforms has primarily focused on how to expand pools of habitual non-voters. These election reforms include convenience voting methods such as same-day registration and voting, Election Day registration and voting, as well as all-mail elections. While many studies are primarily centered on exploring the factors that draw citizens to participate in politics, they are often conducted ut totum and leave out significant populations such as people with disabilities. Critical to highlight, is that institutional rules may present uniquely to different segments of the electorate. And studies have illustrated that rules such as state election administration laws can have disparate effects on people with disabilities compared to people without disabilities. In more recent state-level research we found that mail-voting rules, for example, decrease the vote-gap between people with disabilities and people without disabilities. We also found that similar to other marginalized groups, strict photo identification laws have disparate effects on people with disabilities. This study expands the evaluation of election administration laws on the vote gap between people with disabilities and people without disabilities at the individual-level for the years 2008 – 2020. We also explore whether these election reforms affect demographic variations of people with disabilities differently.

Michael C. Herron, Dartmouth College; Daniel A. Smith, University of Florida

Millions of American citizens eligible to vote live with disabilities. Many of these individuals need some form of assistance from others when casting ballots in elections. We draw on publicly available administrative data to identify individuals registered to vote in Florida who indicate that they need assistance to vote. Then, utilizing turnout data from the 2020 and 2022 general elections in Florida and employing a difference-in-difference strategy, we estimate the impact of a change in state law in 2021 that limited assistance to registered voters who need help to return their mail ballots. We theorize how the law, which limits the collection of mail ballots, imposes higher costs on the ability of some voters with disabilities to return their mail ballots. We expect to find that older and racial and ethnic minority voters who self-reported that they would need assistance to vote when they registered were more likely to vote by mail in 2020, but two years later after the restrictive law went into effect, were not only less likely to vote by mail, but were less likely to turn out to vote by any method. Our findings have important implications for voting rights challenges to state laws that impinge on the ability of voters with disabilities to fully exercise the franchise.

Melissa Baker, University of Texas at El Paso

Concerns over mental health have grown as a result of the pandemic, particularly because of its status as an invisible disability. Stress, isolation, major life disruptions, and physical consequences of contracting the virus are contributing to an increase in anxiety and depression levels. The American Psychological Association has reported an increase in number of people seeking treatment for mental health concerns in 2021 as a result of this trend. Mental health has effects on many cognitive and social outcomes, including politics. For example, depression and sadness are demobilizing (Landwehr & Ojeda 2021), as is grief (Hobbs, Christakis, & Fowler 2014) as mental illness takes up cognitive resources. We seek to extend this line of work by understanding how mental health is associated with other forms of political engagement and political attitudes. In this paper, we use a large-scale representative survey to understand how mental health relates to a wide range of political attitudes and engagement. This survey spans nine months and draws from a large representative sample of Canadians during the pandemic and the duration of the 2021 Canadian federal election. Outcomes of interest include election-related attitudes, adherence to pandemic-related restrictions, engagement with political media, and policy support. We also consider the relationship between mental health and emotions as it relates to politics, particularly the importance of emotional state and perceived mental health on political attitudes and (dis)engagement with an ongoing campaign cycle.

Ralph Scott, WISERD; Melanie Jones, Cardiff University

While recent scholarship has greatly advanced our knowledge of political inequality by gender and ethnicity, the influence of disability on political attitudes and behaviour is still relatively poorly understood. International research on disability gaps in electoral participation and political efficacy provide valuable insight, yet the influence of disability on party affiliation and support represents a remaining gap in understanding. To address this gap, we use data from the UK’s Household Longitudinal Study (2009-21) and estimate differences in the preferences of disabled and non-disabled people for political parties. The analysis investigates the extent to which such disability gaps are mediated by changes in socio-economic status and political values, as while itself an important question, the analysis also develops our understanding of the influence of socio-economic status on party support without the same endogeneity of other observational studies, given the well-documented negative and involuntary labour market impact that often accompanies disability onset. Finally, we also use panel estimation methods – taking advantage of the longitudinal nature of the dataset – to provide a more credible estimate of the effect of disability by investigating the effects of transitions in disability status. As such, the analysis sheds light on an important and emerging subfield regarding the effects of disability on political behaviour.

Joshua Thorp, University of Michigan

The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) estimates that between a fifth and a quarter of Americans live with some form of disability. Existing literature emphasizes disability as a social and administrative category with far-reaching implications for the distribution of legal rights and socioeconomic resources. Yet, very little attention has been given to people with disabilities (PWD) as political agents. In particular, scholars have not yet considered the role of disability in shaping the political psychology of disabled Americans. Existing literature has not yet considered whether and how disability might shape political identity, or whether disability might serve as a basis for political mobilization and cohesion in the mass public. This paper examines the extent to which disability constitutes a politically salient social identity among PWD in the United States. Using survey and experimental methods, I examine the individual-level factors motivating subjective identification with disability (“disability ID”), and the implications of disability ID for a range of political attitudes. Across multiple nationally diverse datasets, I find disability to be an important dimension of political identification and cohesion. A substantial minority of American adults with disabilities report strong levels of subjective attachment to PWD as a social group and see their disability as a politically salient feature of their personal identities. Disability ID is stronger among PWD with more visible, long-standing, and functionally limiting conditions, among African-Americans, among younger PWD, and among recipients of disability welfare payments. Further, disability ID is positively associated with support for a range of redistributive policies – including those not explicitly targeted at PWD – with effect sizes comparable to those of political ideology and partisanship.

Jacob Forrest Harrison Smith, Kenyon College

Despite an overall increase in descriptive representation in recent years—and increasing attention in the literature to its benefits—one area that has received relatively less attention from political scientists is the descriptive representation of disabled Americans (e.g., see Bowen and Clark 2014, West 2017, and Fraga, Shah, and Juenke 2020). The purpose of this project is to examine how potential voters perceive hypothetical congressional candidates with disabilities and the additional challenges that Black (and particularly Black female) candidates with disabilities face when seeking to represent their communities. In this paper, I use a conjoint survey experiment to test voters’ willingness to support a hypothetical congressional candidate with a disability. My hypothesis is that voters are less willing to support candidates with disabilities that are unfamiliar to them, but that they are generally more willing to support candidates who have more common disabilities about which the voter is more familiar. For example, many voters are likely to know someone who has diabetes (or they might have diabetes themselves) who wears a continuous glucose monitor and injects insulin to treat their condition. At the same time, voters are relatively less likely to know someone with a hearing disability who uses an American Sign Language Interpreter. Drawing on the contact hypothesis in psychology (e.g., see Allport 1954), I argue that familiarity with someone with a minoritized identity is likely to build greater understanding and acceptance of that person and their identity. Illustrating the power that knowing someone with a minoritized identity can have on reducing prejudice, a 2009 Gallup poll showed a 23-percentage point gap in support for gay marriage between those who knew someone who was openly gay and those who did not.[1] Since a potential voter is more likely to know someone who has diabetes (about 10% of the population) than someone who uses an ASL translator (less than 1% of the population), I expect they will be more willing to support the candidate who wears a continuous glucose monitor for diabetes than the one who uses an ASL translator.[2] Second, I hypothesize that voters will be less willing to support disabled candidates for office who also hold other minoritized identities. The Wikipedia page for “American politicians with disabilities” shows fewer that than 10 percent of those listed are female and fewer than 2 percent are Black.[3] This list is not complete—for example, Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-MA), who has alopecia, is not listed—but the general patterns demonstrate a clear disparity in representation. I expect that conservatives and some moderates will favor more “traditional” candidates, that is those who are cisgendered white men who do not have a disability. These voters, particularly conservatives but also some moderates—are more likely to have a “fixed” worldview (see Hetherington and Weiler 2018) and oppose the social change that an increase in the number of disabled officeholders with other minoritized identities would entail. At the same time, I expect that while liberals who support social progress are more willing to support these candidates, they may have concerns about electability, which may prevent these candidates from winning their party’s nomination. After analyzing the results of my survey experiment, this research will provide a baseline for voters’ attitudes about candidates with disabilities that can be used in future studies, as well as by groups seeking to recruit a more diverse slate of candidates for Congress.

Stefanie Reher, University of Strathclyde; Yulia Lemesheva, University of Strathclyde

Voters often rely on stereotypes about candidates’ characteristics and identities when evaluating them. This means that disabled candidates are likely to think carefully about how to frame their disability in their election campaigns, given that disabled people are commonly perceived as incompetent and weak, while simultaneously being portrayed as inspiring and heroic. Drawing on theoretical and empirical approaches to disability as well as examples of disabled candidates’ campaign material, we develop a set of frames of disability which candidates are likely to use. We propose that, in addition to not addressing their disability at all, the most relevant strategies of disabled candidates are to (i) normalise their disability to avoid being othered; (ii) frame their disability as evidence of individual strength and resilience (“inspiring”); and (iii) emphasize the value of their experience of fighting systemic barriers. In a survey experiment with a factorial design and hypothetical campaign leaflets we test whether and how these three frames affect citizens’ evaluations of the traits and representativeness of disabled candidates as well as their electoral support.

Ari Neeman, Harvard University; Timothy Herbert Callaghan, Boston University

Candidates with disabilities often face distinct challenges in election campaigns. Longtime political observers will recall the 1972 withdrawal of Senator Tom Eagleton from the Democratic Presidential ticket due to media disclosures of his prior hospitalization for depression. More recently, Senator John Fetterman faced media scrutiny and opponent attacks due to lingering effects of a stroke. In this paper, we will examine the impact of disability on voter choice, identify in which candidates and for which voter populations disability is likely to have the greatest impact on candidate selection, and assess the effectiveness of different types of messaging designed to mitigate disability bias on the part of the voting public. Utilizing a Lucid sample of respondents weighted to be nationally representative, we will conduct a two-part experiment to analyze the impact of candidate disability and different messaging strategies for mitigating disability bias. In the first component of our study, we will conduct a conjoint experiment testing a broad range of physical and mental disabilities on the public’s likelihood of voting for a candidate for the US Senate. These include stroke, bipolar disorder, autism, paralysis, blindness, epilepsy, and others. We will also randomize whether the election is in a primary or general election context. In addition to vote choice, we will also test perceptions of candidate ideology in specific issue domains, both generally and within specific issue areas. Each choice set presented to respondents will include a candidate with a disability and a candidate without a disability. Other candidate characteristics (i.e: race/ethnicity, gender, issue positions) will be randomized. Drawing on Reher (2021), we hypothesize that candidate’s disabilities will result in a perception that disabled candidates are more left-wing than comparable non-disabled candidates, particularly in areas related to healthcare and welfare spending. If correct, this may mean that candidate disability’s impact on vote choice will be positive in certain contexts and negative in others. Prior work regarding candidate gender from Ono & Burden (2019) finds that gender bias is strongest among independent voters, as party affiliation drives decision-making among partisan voters. Hypothesizing that these same dynamics apply in the context of disability, we predict that disability bias will be stronger among independent voters than among partisan voters and in primary contexts as opposed to general election ones. In the second component of our experiment, we intend to test different combinations of messaging frames regarding candidate disabilities to assess their effectiveness both individually and in response to specific counter-arguments. Respondents will be presented with one messaging frame from each candidate after they complete their initial conjoint task, then asked to provide new answers regarding vote choice and perceptions of candidate ideology after seeing the messaging frames. Specifically, we will test messaging frames in the forms of tweets from from opposing candidates, with frames from non-disabled candidates intended to exacerbate disability bias and frames from disabled candidates intended to mitigate it. Exacerbating conditions will include frames relating to candidate competence, calls for health transparency, and attempts to highlight the non-disabled candidates superior health without direct reference to opponent. Mitigating frames will include invocation of others with a specific condition, accusations of disability bias, and assertion that experience with a given condition provides a disabled candidate with greater empathy to their constituents’ needs. In addition to testing the impact of specific diagnoses, we will also test for intersectional effects on both a demographic basis (i.e.: does a disability impact female or minority candidates differently than it does male or white candidates) and an ideological basis (i.e.: do voters perceive disability differently depending on if they are more left- or right-wing). Finally, we test for differences based on voter characteristics, evaluating if disability has a different impact on voter preferences based on voter demographics, ideology and partisanship.

Elizabeth J. Evans, Goldsmiths, University of London

How to increase the number of disabled politicians is a topic that has in recent years attracted attention from scholars, as well as from those active within electoral politics and disability rights movements. Given this is a relatively new area of concern, there has perhaps been a tendency to focus on disabled people in toto, with relatively little attention paid to differences amongst and between disabled people. When difference is addressed, this tends to be in relation to difference of impairment type, rather than in relation to other structural forms of oppression such as gender, race, and class. Of course, those writing on disability more broadly readily acknowledge that disabled people do not constitute a homogenous group – indeed the links to and with feminist and critical race studies have been important in the development of much theorising in relation to disability and politics. However, there has been to date less attention paid to how intersectionality might shape disabled people’s experiences of, and approaches towards, the political recruitment and political representational processes. At the same time there has also been less attention paid to the symbolic dimension of representation as it relates to disabled people, and in particular the ways in which representatives are presented, and present themselves, to the wider public. Drawing upon Black feminist theory, and the burgeoning literature examining intersectionality and political representation, this paper proposes to think intersectionally about the relationship between disability and political representation. The research draws upon a case study analysis of the UK in order to examine the ways in which the media represents disabled politicians, and how disabled politicians themselves navigate their identities, through analysis of speeches, interviews and social media engagement. The research contributes to the growing literature on disability and political representation and the importance of ensuring disabled people are present within our legislatures, and more broadly speaks to the wider necessity of thinking intersectionally about disabled people and about disability and politics.

Ekaterina Kolpinskaya, University of Exeter

There are no systematic analyses of institutional practices with regards to disability in the UK Parliament, though some conclusions from gender-sensitive parliaments reports are relevant (Childs 2016; IPU 2011). This gap is particularly noticeable when moving from discussing the elements of physical infrastructure (e.g., wheelchair access) to changes in political culture and behaviours that disproportionately disadvantage parliamentarians with disabilities (e.g., visually or hearing impaired, suffering from clinical depression or anxiety, etc.). Considering the demands of the role, especially of an MP that is more public/constituency facing and visible than that of a peer (Childs 2012), such adjustments can be seen as detrimental to the quality of deliberation in the Chamber and to the wider legislative and political processes (Evans and Reher 2020). This study, an in-depth exploration of institutional culture and environment and of politicians’ and staff’s experiences of inclusion of disabled politicians, aims to fill this gap. This research follows in the footsteps of Emma Crewe (2005; 2015; 2021) and Ilana Gershon (2008; 2011) treating legislatures – in this case, the UK Parliament – and their institutional contexts as sites of contestation (Gershon 2011) that are deeply ritualised and imbued with hierarchy, complex relationships and meanings (Crewe 2021) that are a far cry from more conventional approaches to study political institutions based on rational choice theory. Acknowledging the complexity of any procedural changes to the existing practices in a parliamentary environment, this study feeds its findings through both existing structures by collaborating with the Centre of Excellence for Procedural Practice of the House of Commons.

Ana Bracic, Michigan State University; Mackenzie Israel-Trummel, College of William & Mary ; Allyson Shortle, University of Oklahoma

Are Americans likely to support some refugees, but not others, in their bid for entry into the United States? In this paper, we argue that (1) refugee identity and (2) respondents’ beliefs about identity shape support for granting entry to refugees. First, we hypothesize that Americans will express different levels of support towards refugees based on their gender, sexuality, state of origin, religion, and ability status. Second, we hypothesize that respondents’ beliefs about religious, ethnic, gendered, and abled criteria for “true Americanness”—i.e. ascriptive forms of nationalism—will further shape their attitudes towards granting refugees entry. Specifically, we expect that Americans who subscribe to these four dimensions of nationalism will be less likely to support entry of refugees into the United states when those refugees do not have the respective attributes that are most prized by ascriptive nationalists: being white, being Christian, being straight, being a man, and being abled. We examine these expectations using a pre-registered conjoint survey experiment with a diverse national sample of more than 3,000 American respondents. Our findings support our expectations that Americans use various ascriptive definitions of nationalism to form their support for refugee entry and suggest that categorical exclusions stemming from ascriptive nationalism attitudes are more widespread than prior studies have shown.

Timothy Herbert Callaghan, Boston University; Monica C. Schneider, Miami University; Steven M. Sylvester, Utah Valley University; Kristin Kay Lunz Trujillo, Harvard University

Political scientists have long been interested in how people identify with a particular group and how this identity affects their attitudes toward government and political participation. Prior research in this area has typically focused on demographic groups into which people are born – such as gender/sex, race, and ethnicity. We argue that an under-explored area of identity formation and its impact is how a life event (as opposed to an ascribed identity) morphs into a group identity that shapes participation and political belief systems. In our case, we study the development and consequences of identity in parents of children with a disability, namely Down syndrome (DS). Through multiple focus groups and interviews, we evaluate a hypothesis that external context (in particular, local community groups or Down Syndrome Associations, which vary in size and resources) helps facilitate collective identity politicization, which, in turn, promotes political participation regarding issues related to the disability community.

Our project is unique in its exploration of identity by analyzing not only how major life events impact politicized identity but also identity that results from allyship or a close connection with a group of which one is not a member. Parents, in this instance, are typically not disabled themselves, but come to identify with the disability community through their children. They might participate politically based on the perceived injustices, needs, and interests of their disabled child, for example, by advocating for better education and health care services. Thus, this project expands upon the role that social identity can play not just with in-group political action but also for allied out-group political action – a widely understudied area of politicized social identities. This project also engages with normative questions about how well parents as an allied social identity group advocate for disabled children.

Finally, identity formation among these parents occurs in a context where government policies require at least some participation from the parent. Specifically, parents are required to participate in yearly Individualized Education Plan (IEP) meeting(s) in which parents must, at a minimum, sign for the services their child receives. We conceptualize engagement in the yearly IEP meeting(s) as a form of political participation. Parents have wide latitude and variation in how they accept, push back, and interact with street-level bureaucrats on the child’s IEP team, of which the parent is a legally-defined equal member. As such, we anticipate that identity in tandem with external context (via community groups) will predict active participation in the IEP process and resistance against the school district.

In short, studying parents of children with Down syndrome complicates current models of the relationship between identity, politicized identity, and political participation by examining a group where government processes and community groups help form identity at the same time that political participation necessarily occurs. Moreover, understanding parental identity and participation as allies is crucial to identifying how this group can be both helpful and harmful to the disability community.

Tiina Itkonen, California State University Channel Islands; Michelle Dean, California State University Channel Islands; Jessica L. Lavariega Monforti, California State University Channel Islands; Matthew Zivot, CSU Channel Islands

Universities enroll an increasing number of students with disabilities (Cole and Cawthon, 2015). These include students with specific learning disabilities (SLD) and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), who are among largest growing portion of students with disabilities seeking accommodations in higher education (National Center for Education Statistics, U.S. Department of Education 2013; 2018); but also students on the autism spectrum (Grogan 2015), US student service members and veterans seeking disability services (Hitt et al. 2015), and a rapidly growing number of students with psychiatric conditions, including anxiety and depression (Davis, 2021).

While colleges are generally prepared to make reasonable accommodations under the US federal legislative mandates, students with accommodations take longer to complete their degree, are more likely to drop out, and are at an increased risk for comorbid mental health issues (Atkins et al., 2015). Traditional accommodations (e.g., extra time, an alternative test taking space) are therefore often insufficient to meet a more complex set of academic and social needs (Longtin 2014).

Our case study campus is the newest campus in a larger university system, is designated as a Hispanic Serving Institution, and serves about 7000 students (pre-pandemic). Our earlier study (Itkonen, Dean, & Lee, 2018) examined the demographics of the student body on the case study campus, using two large de-identified data sets from internal Institutional Research. Our results showed that autistic students were significantly more likely to be white, middle class, and have parents with some post-secondary education, compared to other disability groups. Autistic students also received significantly higher amounts of and different accommodations than those with other, invisible disabilities. These results raised questions about higher education access for autistic students of color and other student subgroups, and general issues of equity.

The present study is an attempt is to examine how resources, broadly defined, are acquired, distributed, and re-distributed among entities and divisions to support students with disabilities. Rather than placing the responsibility (or blame) of service design and delivery on individuals such as students, faculty, staff, or administrators, we employ organizational frameworks (Bolman & Deal, 2017) and literatures of bureaucracies (Wilson, 1989) to identify structural components which may serve as barriers to supporting students who receive a variety of accommodations. Bolman & Deal (2013, 2017) outline four distinct lenses with which to examine organizations: (a) structural components (e.g., top down, bottom up, lateral linkages within and across units); (b) the psychology of organizations(e.g., training and needs of employees); (c) the politics of organizations (e.g., scarce resources and competing interests); and (d) the cultural lens (e.g., the values of the organization; the stated versus actual action toward the values). Further, theories of bureaucracies examine issues such as frontline employees’ situational authority to explain variation across job performance (Harklau, 2016; Lipsky, 2010; Meynard-Moody & Musheno, 2003; Wilson, 1989).

These exploratory questions are part of our larger research project:
1. To what extent are disability accommodations services and supports distributed in campus divisions (intake; academic accommodations; technology; wavers in degree courses/programs; housing, other)
2. To what extent are the budgets of those entities separate or shared (e.g., matrixed)?
3. To what extent is there lateral coordination (e.g., across-unit decision-making or coordination) of efforts in intake, accommodations including technology, and student academic program decisions?
4. To what extent is the decision-making centralized v. de-centralized, and in what instances?
5. To what extent are campus structural units (specific to timely graduation initiatives) explicitly targeting students with disabilities and disability support services?
6. To what extent is there overlap/replication of aforementioned existing structural resources, or alternately, gaps or underuse in those resources?

In addition to organizational data systematically collected and analyzed using an organizational model (Minzberg, 1989), qualitative interviews of university administrators, staff and faculty (n = 50) and university students (n = 40) will be examined using mixed methods (Creswell, 2018). Although our data come from a single case study campus, we aim to connect our findings back to theory, using structures as units of analysis, to make general propositions on organizational design issues which may either support or inhibit the equitable education of students with disabilities in higher education.

Elizabeth Thom, Harvard University

Policy feedback theory suggests that public policies can influence political institutions and political behavior among mass publics. Policies generate both resource and interpretive feedback effects, providing tangible benefits and conveying signals about social status and citizenship. One federal social program that is more prevalent in non-metro regions of the country is Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI). Using administrative records from the Social Security Administration and county-level data on industry and civil society from 1999-2020, I examine why positive feedback effects may fail to emerge in communities with high concentrations of SSDI beneficiaries. I argue that positive feedback effects are less likely to appear when successful claims are costly, in terms of time and resources, and when benefit receipt stigmatizes and isolates target populations. Such policy characteristics further hinder feedback processes in economically deprived communities where there is high competition for scarce resources and few substitutes for social capital.

Sumitra Badrinathan, University of Oxford; Simon Chauchard, Leiden University

COVID-19 misinformation dilutes beliefs in science and increases social tensions. How can such misinformation be corrected, especially when it is rooted in long-standing belief systems and group identities? We answer this question with an experiment in India that develops a novel correction strategy (N=1600). Since people with higher levels of religiosity and support for religious nationalist parties are more likely to believe COVID misinformation, we use verses from religious scriptures exhorting people to believe in the truth, alongside corrections, to reduce the uptake of falsehoods. We demonstrate that this technique is significantly effective at improving information processing, even beyond the specific story corrected. We further show that while targeting religious dissonance dilutes beliefs in conspiracy theories, targeting group norms is more effective at reducing medical misinformation. Overall, we demonstrate the importance of religiosity in fueling beliefs in misinformation and underscore that the efficacy of corrections depends on the type of misinformation at hand.

Eric J. Kramon, George Washington University

Partisan animus and affective polarization are on the rise, potentially threatening democracy. Deliberative democracy advocates argue that deliberation can strengthen democracy in part by reducing partisan hostility. Yet whether and why this holds remains under-examined. This paper demonstrates that deliberation can reduce partisan animus by promoting engagement with out-partisan policy perspectives. This engagement builds cognitive empathy, increasing positive affect toward and tolerance of out-partisans. Evidence comes from an online experiment conducted in Honduras. Participants were randomly assigned to deliberation or control. Deliberators were also randomly assigned to defend policies with which they agreed or disagreed (out-partisan perspective). Participation in deliberation reduced affective polarization and out-partisan animus. These reductions were larger and more persistent in the out-partisan perspective group. This result, combined with qualitative evidence from the deliberations, provides evidence that engagement with out-partisan policy viewpoints is an important causal mechanism. Results advance literature on deliberation and inter-partisan relations.

Kenneth F. Greene, University of Texas, Austin; Erin Rossiter, University of Notre Dame; Enrique Seira, ITAM; Alberto Simpser, Instituto Tecnologico Autonomo de Mexico

In many contemporary democracies, political polarization increasingly involves deep-seated intolerance of opposing partisans. The decades-old contact hypothesis suggests that cross-partisan interactions might reduce intolerance if individuals interact with equal social status. We test this idea by implementing collaborative contact between over one thousand pairs of citizens with opposing political sympathies, using the online medium to credibly randomize participants’ relative social status within the interaction. Interacting as equals enhanced tolerant behaviors towards political opponents three weeks after contact, compared to interacting under conditions of inequality or to not interacting. These results demonstrate that a simple, scalable intervention that puts people on equal footing can reduce political polarization and make online contact into a prosocial force.

Robert A. Blair, Brown University; Jessica Gottlieb, University of Houston; Marie Schenk, Lehigh University; Christopher Woods, Brown University

A key contributing factor to the recent trend of increasing partisan polarization in the United States is increased partisan sorting in physical and online spaces. Most voters live with little to no exposure to voters from the other party. Geographic partisan clustering has not been this extreme since the Civil War. While growing partisan polarization has spawned a wide array of organizations and interventions aiming to counteract it, most existing attempts to reduce partisan animus involve or promote intergroup contact. But physical and online sorting means that intergroup contact will involve (often costly) organization and (often futile) persuasion as people are largely averse to spending time with out-party members. In this study, we evaluate one type of depolarizing intervention that entirely sidesteps this concern. The intervention is designed explicitly around changing behaviors within rather than across partisan groups. In particular, we evaluate an online workshop that teaches participants skills to “depolarize within.” These skills involve first recognizing one’s own tendency toward outgroup animus, challenging that tendency, learning how to use non-polarizing language when talking about the outgroup, and learning skills to challenge ingroup members when they use polarizing language. These skills could be taught in a homogeneous or mixed-partisan setting. But, importantly, they are best practiced in the real world among ingroup members. We present rigorous evidence from a randomized control trial that you can meaningfully impact affective polarization without leaving the comfort of your own group. Perhaps surprisingly, we find that decreases in affective polarization among the treatment group is driven by declining outgroup animus and not by increasing warmth toward the ingroup. Given the increasing physical and online sorting of partisans in our country, these findings suggest that 

José Ramón Enríquez, Harvard University; Julio Solis Arce, Harvard University

Citizens’ perception of levels of polarization is in part shaped by the language with which political opponents refer to each other. In the context of Mexico, the government and opposition have developed a lengthy vocabulary to refer to each other in a derogatory manner, sometimes with words exceeding partisan tribalism and associated with class or race. Social media like Twitter is a virtual space where content that uses this “polarizing language” is generated en masse. Even if it is only a subset of users that generates this content, if most of the political content includes the use of polarizing language this might increase the perception of polarization for the average citizen. Most importantly, it might set a new standard or social norm of what is considered acceptable political debate. In the first part of the project, we design and implement an intervention to reduce the use of polarizing language by Twitter users. In partnership with a NGO in Mexico, we code a bot that reacts to Tweets using polarizing language. We probe and pit against each other various messages to persuade users to abandon the use of polarizing language, ranging from a reminder of the value of respect in a democracy to exposing the use of such politically loaded language to their close social network. After the delivery of the message, we measure subsequent use of polarizing language by treated accounts as the main outcome. This first part of the project will be followed up by further work exploring mechanisms of behavioral change as well as if the results have an impact on the perceptions of polarization from average citizens. We believe that the intervention has important consequences in the design of scalable policies to reduce polarization in developing and developed democracies.

Ionut Popescu, Texas State University, San Marcos

What international relations theoretical framework best explains the dynamics of great power politics in today’s international security environment? In the new era of Great Power Competition (GPC), the answer to this question is critical for deciding the best course of US foreign policy in the years, and perhaps decades, to come. There are major competing predictions among the various schools of US grand strategy regarding the goals and expected behavior of Beijing and Moscow vis-a-vis Washington in the new GPC era. This paper examines four competing approaches (liberal internationalism, conservative internationalism, defensive realism, and offensive realism), and argues that the last one best encapsulates the most important developments in great power relations over the past decade. The paper details the distinctive theoretical predictions of the four approaches, and uses recent actions and statements by US, Chinese, and Russian leaders to show the better accuracy of offensive realist explanations compared to the alternatives. Consequently, in the final section of the paper, I argue that the United States should adopt an offensive realist grand strategy focused primarily on containing China’s hegemonic ambitions, and secondarily on restraining Russia’s revisionist tendencies.

Mariya Grinberg, University of Chicago

How do states manage their decline? I argue that the existing literature creates a false choice between preventive war and retrenchment as solutions for state decline. These two strategies cannot be substitutable policy alternatives as they solve different decline problems. States facing decline compared to projected power estimate are dealing with a problem of inadequate domestic growth; as a solution they require a strategy that can ease the domestic constraints on growth, such as retrenchment or protectionism. States facing decline compared to a rival state are dealing with a problem of differential growth rates; as a solution they require a strategy that limits the rival’s growth, such as preventive war or containment. Not only do states have different toolboxes for different decline scenarios, but the tools are not interchangeable between them, as they tend to fix one problem by making the other worse off.

Eliza Gheorghe, Bilkent University

One of the key assumptions in Offensive Realism holds that great powers inherently possess some offensive military capability, which they can use to hurt or destroy their rivals. Because of this capacity to launch surprise attacks, great powers fear each other. Experiencing angst is understandable when great powers expect their competitors to remain powerful or grow stronger. But what happens when great powers experience decline? Power Transition Theory has explored the processes through which challengers replace hegemons (Organski 1958; Copeland 2000; Shifrinson 2018) but has left unanswered the question of how states react to their competitors’ downfall. This paper proposes the following argument: the fear assumption applies only to situations where power trajectories are ascendant. When great powers see their rivals’ offensive capabilities decrease, they experience schadenfreude – delight at others’ misfortune. I examine these dynamics by looking at how the United States and the People’s Republic of China took pleasure in each other’s setbacks during the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic. This rejoicing is apparent in politicians’ public statements and in the media coverage of how each government handled the crisis, occasionally involving disinformation and overstatements. Using content analysis, I show that perceptions of decline informed both Washington’s and Beijing’s schadenfreude, a behavior that complements the fear the United States and China feel when they view each other as being ‘on the rise.’

Moritz S. Graefrath, Harvard Kennedy School

In the current debate on what grand strategy the United States should adopt as it confronts the threat of a rising China, discussions of “power vacuums” and their role in great power politics have taken center stage. Those who believe that power vacuums undermine U.S. security because they are inevitably filled by other powers tend to fiercely oppose calls for the United States to withdraw from its commitments abroad. Meanwhile, those who are more sanguine about the possible consequences of creating power vacuums tend to advocate for the United States to adopt a more restrained grand strategy. Seeking to allow for an informed debate on the issue, this piece develops the conceptual and theoretical groundwork necessary to adjudicate between the opposing sides. After proposing a conceptualization of power vacuums as political spaces experiencing international authority collapse, I develop and test a theory of great power responses to power vacuums. I argue that great powers only compete for authority over power vacuums when they fear an adversary’s control over the respective space would shift the geopolitical balance of power in its favor. Which strategy a great power employs towards a power vacuum in which it has a strategic interest – specifically, whether it resorts to military means or not – primarily depends on the interaction of two factors: first, whether a genuinely vital interest or only an important interest is at stake; and second, whether the collapse of international authority coincides with the collapse of national authority structures in the respective political space.

Deen Freelon, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

While mis- and disinformation have attracted substantial attention in political science and related disciplines over the past several years, researchers quickly moved past the binary “fake/real news” paradigm that anchored early studies. Recent developments in political content classification have led to the widespread use of empirical rankings of web sites by content quality. High-quality sites consistently deliver accurate and verifiable information as transparently as is feasible, while low-quality sites are rife with distortions, manipulations, and outright falsehoods (although some content may be true). Sites ranked in the middle deliver an inconsistent mix of true and deceptive content. We combine one such scale with a unique research design that integrates survey data with personalized timeline content from Twitter to discover the demographic and psychographic characteristics (prominently including race, gender, and ideology) most associated with substantial proportions of high- and low-quality content. We further classify the Twitter accounts appearing most often in our users’ timelines by gender, race, and ideology to better understand how low- and high-quality political content is targeted and distributed.

Jenn M. Jackson, Syracuse University

For decades, much debate has existed about the relative political importance and efficacy of social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook in mobilizing politically disenfranchised and socially excluded groups like young, Black, queer, and immigrant Americans. In this age of misinformation, the lack of confidence in the veracity of online news sourced from increasingly unknown sources has only undermined social media’s potential benefits to society. However, young Black Americans continue to navigate social media in innovative ways which create and sustain new political spaces rife with transformative possibilities to fundamentally alter the political landscape of American Politics. This has been clearly articulated in the mass uprisings after the killings of Trayvon Martin in 2012, Michael Brown in 2014, and, more recently, George Floyd in 2020. In this article, I ask, how have young Black Americans leveraged social media to build alternative political spaces for movement organizing, political knowledge transmission, and social identity affirmation? Further, what is the radical potential for Black space making in the digital age? Using 100 interviews collected with young Black Americans between 2018 and 2022, I show that many see social media as a central component not only in their social world-building but in building more radical political outlooks among their demographic. Moreover, for many, social media, like Twitter, remains a site for the building of politically revolutionary ideas and attitudes which extend into brick-and-mortar style political organizing and collective action.

Lilliana Hall Mason, Johns Hopkins University

This paper uses new experimental evidence from CES 2022 data to examine the effect of pro-social information on attitudes toward political violence. The paper also analyzes covariates such as partisan identity, social dominance orientation, and moral disengagement.

Shannon C. McGregor, University of North Carolina

A dominant strain of scholarship across political science and communication has focused on the informational elements of democracy. Policy makers, reformers, and academics are deeply concerned about factual information – in the wake of Brexit and the 2016 U.S. presidential election, this has led to an intense focus on mis- and disinformation, especially on social media platforms (see Bernstein, 2021; Simon & Camargo, 2021). At the same time, recent work in political science argues that politics – and by extension campaigns – are fundamentally about identity (Achen & Bartels, 2016; Mason, 2018). Left unexplored in this work is how and why identity is constructed and communicated to the public. Political communication should be understood and analyzed not only for their informational basis, but also as a performance of identity ownership (Kreiss et al., 2021). This study examines this phenomenon on social media, which are fundamentally platforms for constructing and performing social identities. To explicate the nature of political identity ownership, we develop a typology of political identity appeals within campaign advertisements on social media. We apply this schema to a quantitative content analysis of 2020 presidential candidate ads on Facebook, quantifying the scope and nature of in-group and out-group political identity appeals. Understanding social media as vehicles primarily for the construction and maintenance of identity – in political ads and beyond – is fundamental for assessing under which conditions social media can be good, bad, and/or downright ugly for a society and for democracy. While “identity politics” has lately been hurled as a pejorative in the public sphere, its origin in the Combahee River Collective Statement (Collective, 1977) arguing for civil and human rights for Black women helps underscore the myriad of ways in which identity can be evoked in movements both toward and from democracy.

Andrew I. Thompson, George Washington University

The United States has been undergoing democratic backsliding in its recent era. This idea captures the shift away from democratic norms, the erosion of trust in democratic institutions, and a general lack of confidence in the rule and function of democracy as a system of government. Racial threat, scholars have found, is a core driver of anti-democratic attitudes in the public. But how pervasive is racial threat? In this project, I argue that racial threat is chronically salient among the American public. It is an idea that has come to be so activated in the minds of Americans that different, non-threatening information and ideas generate the same threatened reactions. I use multiple complex and simple primes across a series of experiments to show racial threat is chronically salient, and importantly for those concerned with democratic backsliding – when that threat is primed it also causes Americans to express more anti-democratic views.

Marisa Abrajano, University of California, San Diego; Marianna Garcia, UC San Diego; Aaron Pope, New York University; Robert Vidigal, Stony Brook University; Edwin Kamau, New York University; Joshua A. Tucker, New York University; Jonathan Nagler, New York University

Social media is used by millions of Americans to acquire political news and information. Most of this research has focused on understanding the way social media consumption affects the political behavior and preferences of White Americans. Much less is known about Latinos’ political activity on social media, who are not only the largest racial/ethnic minority group in the U.S., but they also continue to exhibit diverse political preferences. Moreover, about 30% of Latinos rely primarily on Spanish-language news sources (Spanish-dominant Latinos) and another 30% are bilingual. Given that Spanish-language social media is not as heavily monitored for misinformation than its English-language counterparts (Valencia 2021, Paul 2021), Spanish-dominant Latinos who rely on social media for news may be more susceptible to political misinformation than those Latinos who are exposed to English-language social media. We address this contention by fielding an original study that sampled 2,636 Latino respondents and 1,370 non-Latino respondents. The Latino respondents were roughly equally divided between English-dominant, Spanish-dominant, and bilingual speakers. Additionally, over 1,739 respondents provided us with access to their Twitter accounts, access to their Facebook activity, or installed a web-browsing plug-in that enabled us to capture their browsing activity, and/or provided us with their YouTube viewing history. This information allows us to directly monitor their online activity – rather than relying on self-reports. We are thus able to find out the type of information and what issues Latinos follow on social media, as well as what types of mainstream media and other online media they examine. And in the case of bilingual Latinos, we can examine whether they follow specific information on Spanish versus English and vice versa. And, we are able to relate that to their political knowledge, as well as their beliefs in various pieces of misinformation that circulated during the 2022 midterm elections. Consistent with our expectations, Latinos who rely on Spanish-language social media are more likely to believe in political misinformation, such as the existence of election fraud in the 2020 Presidential election, versus those who use both English and Spanish social media news sources. We observe a similar pattern amongst Latinos on several prominent pieces of misinformation that circulated during the 2022 U.S. elections. Altogether, our study is one of the first to analyze digital trace data for Latinos in the U.S. across a variety of platforms as well as in both English and Spanish, and together with our self-reported survey data, provides important insights on how it shapes their political preferences and opinions.

Kayo Mimizuka, University of Texas at Austin; Katlyn Glover, University of Texas at Austin; Inga Kristina, University of Texas at Austin; Samuel Woolley, University of Texas at Austin

While social networking services, such as Facebook and Twitter, remain popular platforms for sharing and discussing news in the United States, such communication are increasingly occurring within private chat apps that have grown elsewhere around the world (Newman et al., 2019). However, extant studies on social communication on news and politics have largely focused on Facebook and Twitter, and how private spaces within chat apps are used for these purposes is less systematically studied (Rossini et al., 2021). This paper will examine how diaspora communities in the United States—who rely heavily on chat apps for daily communications—engage in news and political talk on these platforms, and experience mis- and disinformation. Previous research suggests that features of chat apps, which allow users to form small groups and limit the reach of shared messages, can increase privacy and control, facilitating political expression among minority groups (Khazraee & Losey, 2016; Velasquez et al., 2021). Simultaneously, popularity of encrypted chat apps has created a heightened concern about the spread of false information (Newman et al., 2021), because it is “impossible to know what is being shared” (Wardle & Derakhshan, 2017). Racial identity is an important vector of how individuals may be consuming and targeted by false content as part of daily communication on digital platforms (Freelon et al., 2022). However, few existing academic research describe the details of how different groups of color including diaspora communities—important and persuadable part of political constituencies—are affected by mis- and disinformation. Focusing on three different diaspora communities in Texas – Chinese Americans in Houston, Indian Americans in Houston, and Mexican Americans in San Antonio – this paper will answer the following research questions: – How do members of diasporic communities use chat apps for news consumption and political talk? – How are they exposed to and affected by mis- and disinformation on chat apps? – How do they respond to mis- and disinformation they encounter on chat apps? Methodologically, this paper will rely on data collected through qualitative, semi-structured interviews conducted in the run-up to the 2022 U.S. midterm elections with a total of 61 people who identify as part of one of the three diaspora communities. The term “diaspora communities” is defined not by nationality or U.S. citizenship, but by how the members of these communities identify themselves, and the regular use of chat apps with people in the U.S. and in their country of cultural heritage who share the same socio-cultural context. We show that: – While our interviewees do not perceive chat apps as a trusted source of news, they are nevertheless being exposed to political news through a few family members and close friends who actively share news content, often in an unsolicited manner. Their political news consumption on chat apps is accidental, rather than voluntary. – As a result, interviewees also noted that the flux of what they believe is mis- and disinformation is normalized on chat apps. Chat groups with their trusted family and close friends are the primary channels through which they are exposed to mis- and disinformation, as opposed to strangers or accounts with malicious intent—“democratically dysfunctional news sharing” (Chadwick et al., 2018) is rife on chat apps. – Furthermore, the echo chamber of close family and friends within chat app spaces often makes it harder for people to correct false information or call out on those who spread it, eventually resulting in a withdrawal from political conversation altogether. In sum, this paper will add to the existing literature on the use of chat app in news consumption and political talk by delineating the experiences of its users with nuances. This paper will also advance scholarship on disinformation and its impacts on minority communities, specifically Chinese Americans in Houston, Indian Americans in Houston, and Mexican Americans in San Antonio.

Sarah Nguyễn, University of Washington; Rachel Moran, University of Washington; Celestine Le, University of Washington

For the 2022 US Midterm Election period, we developed language specific community partnerships and tested new information sharing workflows in an attempt to incorporate monitoring of Spanish and Vietnamese language social media posts into the rapid response research of mis/disinformation narratives. Like fitting a square peg into a round hole, identifying and analyzing information in Spanish and Vietnamese languages using traditional mis/disinformation rapid response models was met with difficulties. This paper will provide an overview of our experiences in applying a mis/disinformation rapid response model to Spanish and Vietnamese social media posts and a path forward to acknowledge and improve the methods for future cross language research. Through community-based participatory methods, Facebook and YouTube social media analysis, and autoethnographic-inspired interviews with researchers and community partners, we have come to learn about the gaps that rapid response mis/disinformation processes include when working with language specific community organizations. In collaboration with Viet Fact Check and the National Hispanic Media Coalition, we established partnerships to guide our focus of identifying and monitoring salient narratives in Vietnamese and Spanish and to integrate each individual organizations’ community media monitoring needs into our own research efforts. We found that community organization needs were not met within the pre-existing rapid response models and there is opportunity to address the lack of support regarding data infrastructure, knowledge expertise, and topics of analysis when researching mis/disinformation in Vietnamese and Spanish. This paper will provide an in-depth overview of our mixed methods approach to cross-language research in relation to the tools and protocols established for the Election Integrity Partnership 2022 Rapid Response monitoring model. This methodological reflection will be grounding in the conceptualizations of mis/disinformation research and how these can be expanded in order to include non-English language-centric online political content. Issues that we faced included (1) platform and data access, (2) in-scope topics of analysis (i.e. community interest in political updates), and (3) a sustainable flow of information between researchers and community organizations. Our findings, and lack thereof, of the spread of online mis/disinformation narratives during the 2022 Midterm Elections will also demonstrate the need to improve our procedural understanding of mis/disinformation research during political events. As we identify what is known and unknown, we look to incorporate insight into: (RQ1) how can we move forward to support information sharing efforts between researchers and partner organizations?; and, (RQ2) how can we approach language-specific problematic information according to community specific needs? This research has provided a clear path towards opportunities such as to (1) develop information monitoring tools for grassroots organizations, (2) to identify the diversity of in-language dialects and their relation to historical, social, and cultural contexts that impact political beliefs, and (3) to disaggregate demographic differences (i.e. geographic, age, politics of country of origin) within language-specific media to provide evidence for trust and political leanings in information.

Martin Johannes Riedl, University of Tennessee, Knoxville; Samuel Woolley, University of Texas at Austin

Chat and messaging apps fulfill central communicative functions in people’s lives – for work, as well as for play. They boast chat functions for intimate conversation with few, and broadcast functions to talk to many, and often also incorporate affordances for playing games, sending payments and gifts, or to hold digital copies of vaccination passports (Ha et al., 2015; Kim & Lim, 2015). This also manifests in how researchers describe such apps: For example, WhatsApp has been referred to as a ‘domesticated’ (Matassi & Boczkowski) platform – submerging into the background and understood as an infrastructural given – or as a ‘technology of life’ (Cruz & Harindranath). The Chinese app WeChat, as well as the Korean app KakaoTalk, have each been described as a ‘super app’ (Huang & Miao, 2021; Steinberg; Han Li Huang 2022), a place where users can carry out a broad range of activities without ever feeling the need to leave. While chat and messaging apps fulfill central communicative functions in people’s day-to-day activities, they are also known to be rife with false and misleading information – in the United States as well as in other locales such as Brazil, India, or Israel (Evangelista & Bruno, 2019; Gursky et al., 2022; Soares et al., 2021; Kazemi et al., 2022; Kligler-Vilenchik, 2022). The closed-off nature of chat apps, the central role of forwarding and sharing content in groups which often strips critical context cues from threads, and the difficulty with or lack of fact-checking and platform interventions, often combined with end-to-end encrypted communications, makes chat apps an opportune place for the distribution and spread of false and misleading information. Some chat apps are disproportionately used among specific racial/ethnic subpopulations of Americans and diasporic/immigrant communities. For instance, WhatsApp enjoys popularity among Hispanic Americans (Gursky et al., 2021; Auxier & Anderson, 2021), WeChat among Chinese Americans (Yam, 2022). At the same time, there appears to be a renewed interest among political parties in the United States in targeting minority communities with political advertising, to recruit voters at times when margins are thin. This provides fertile grounds for the possibility of political misinformation to spread on chat apps (Riedl et al., 2022; Asian American Disinformation Table, 2022). In line with critical disinformation studies’ (Kuo & Marwick, 2021) imperative to center sociocultural, historical, and (geo)political dimensions when studying the spread of misinformation, we submit to the statement that “disinformation is not race neutral” (Asian American Disinformation Table, 2023). At the same time, the field of disinformation and misinformation studies remains highly Anglocentric (Nguyen et al., 2022). This study seeks to contribute to mend this void. We home in on one app, in one cultural context – KakaoTalk and its use among Korean Americans. The United States is home to the largest diaspora community of Koreans, before China and Japan (Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of South Korea, 2021). In 2018, 3% of all immigrant eligible voters in the United States were born in Korea (Budiman et al., 2020). KakaoTalk was launched in 2010 by the Korean company Kakao Inc (Hjorth, 2014). Following immense growth since, the company now provides a range of ancillary and connected apps and services such as the story-sharing app KakaoStory (Kim et al., 2015). Its idiosyncrasy is that it is primarily used by Korean people and members of Korean diasporas (Jin & Joon, 2016; Jung et al., 2014). The app has a high penetration rate in Korea, with 47.6 million monthly active users in a country of 51.7 million. This compares to 53.6 million monthly active KakaoTalk users worldwide (Kakao, 2022; World Bank, 2021). The app also enjoys popularity with members of the Korean American community – consisting of U.S.-born Korean Americans, and Korean-born Americans, who use the platform to stay in contact with loved ones and friends back home, as well as to connect with family members in the U.S. (Park, 2016; Park & Lemish, 2019). We focus on the app’s pivotal role as a community communication tool for Korean Americans, a platform to talk with family back home in Korea and with family in the United States. We critically center the role of political talk on KakaoTalk – where/in what contexts it happens, what politics it pertains to (U.S. vs. Korea), and under what circumstances politics is actively avoided by the people using the app to speak with family and friends. Additionally, we discuss the role that political misinformation plays on KakaoTalk. Our study centers the experiences of Korean Americans with KakaoTalk through in-depth interviews with members of the community.

Samantha Bradshaw, Stanford University; Dorian Christoph Quelle, University of Zurich; Mona Elswah, University of Oxford

Since the 2016 Presidential Elections in the United States, Russian information operations on social media have received significant academic and policy attention. Here, scholarship has focused largely on the covert strategies of the Russian-based Internet Research Agency (Howard et al 2018; DiResta et al 2018; Freelon and Lokot 2020; Lukito et al. 2020; Bradshaw & Henle, 2021). However, less research has examined overt propaganda and the role of state-backed media in contemporary influence operations (see Jamieson 2018, Elswah & Howard, 2020). As an integral part of Russia’s “full spectrum” information operations (Bradshaw et al 2022; Goldstein & DiResta 2022), Russian entities have made significant investments in the production of news, particularly for audiences in the Global South (Crilley and Chatterje-Doody, 2020; Ribello et al 2020). Despite millions of dollars spent in digital and broadcast news production for audiences outside of the United States and Europe, less research has focused on understanding the overt strategies and narratives used to shape news and misinformation in non-Western contexts. Currently, it is an interesting time to study the role of Russian state-backed media in global misinformation and disinformation. Following the invasion of Ukraine, Russian state-backed media faced significant sanctions from the European Union (Pamment, 2022; Sauer 2022). Social media companies also took several steps to label, demote and suspend Russian channels from their platforms. However, there was significant criticism that platforms did not adequately limit the reach of non-English and regionally-specific channels, who continued to generate large volumes of engagement during the invasion (ISD, 2022). Our paper contributes to both the growing body of research theorizing and understanding the role of overt media in contemporary information operations, as well as the critical body of research on disinformation that examines enforcement disparities across language and geographies. To make this argument, our paper analyzes Russian-state-backed media coverage of the Ukraine war across twelve different languages (Arabic, German, English, French, Italian, Japanese, Polish, Russian, Serbian, Spanish, Turkish, and Vietnamese) on Facebook. Using CrowdTangle, we collected all of the posts by official RT or Sputnik Facebook pages between January 2022 and November 2022 (or 264,835 posts from 26 Facebook pages). In addition to collecting the post data, we also extracted and translated the URLs contained in the posts. We then filtered our dataset to posts or articles that mentioned Ukraine (41,346 unique posts and articles). We apply a mixed-methods approach that uses topic modeling and qualitative content analysis, allowing us to measure and analyze how different narratives are constructed and spread to audiences across different regions. While we are in the preliminary stage of analysis, our work has already found thematic differences in news coverage, audience engagement, and activity across regionally-specific channels. Our findings build on the academic scholarship theorizing the role of Russian state-backed media in overt propaganda campaigns by analyzing how these organizations shape news during times of conflict and increased sanctions. But, more importantly, this work also allows us to evaluate the reach and impact of Russian state-backed channels on social media across languages that have received significantly less scholarly and public attention, and that often face less robust content moderation enforcement efforts due to issues around platform capacity (and interest). While the narratives of Russian state-backed media have been explored in the context of the US and Europe, our comparative work extends a lens to the global context and under-studied regions in Africa, Latin America, and the Middle East.

Zachariah Wheeler, Providence College

The rise of right-wing populism in the US has provoked new discussions about polarization and extremism’s threat to liberal democracy. Followers of Trump, it is claimed, have abandoned the norms of the political process and have embraced authoritarianism. This paper argues that the appeal of anti-liberal extremism reflects the declining power of post-cold war legitimation narratives, affected by new social and cultural cleavages that correspond most to education. The research draws on historical and sociological accounts to explore how the significance of higher education in the post-industrial economy has affected new class divisions, and thus shifting the ideological terrain of American politics. These changes have incentivized adjustments in both parties’ public rhetoric meant to capture new bases of electoral power. In the case of the Democrats, the aim has been to form a post-New Deal majority made up primarily of college-educated professionals. Trumpism and “national conservatism” (as represented by figures such as Josh Hawley and J.D. Vance) represents a parallel effort to construct a working-class, Republican coalition. Focusing on the Democratic side, my analysis explores how ideological tendencies, identified by Democratic strategists with college-educated voters, have shaped the party’s response to worsening social and economic conditions among their former, working-class base. Specifically, I emphasize how meritocracy became more central to Democrats’ framing of economic decline as the party embraced more neoliberal policies on trade and the ‘New Economy’. Meritocracy is often framed by Democratic advocates as a way of reducing inequality by creating greater access to social mobility. The aim, it is claimed, is to produce a system that will award political and economic power according to an individual’s ability or virtue, rather than arbitrary or unearned advantage. But, when analyzed, many meritocratic statements made by Democratic figures use the principle to justify lowered expectations, arguing that workers must become responsible for their own conditions, rather than rely on the party to actively defend their interests politically. This reflects a long-term goal emphasized in the elite literature: creating a coalition whose expectations for the party are more compatible with neoliberal, market policies. Through an analysis of key documents, I show that elite figures in the party believed support from college-educated professionals could be consolidated into an enduring coalition through a non-redistributive, “progressive neoliberalism”. Through a political theoretical analysis, I analyze how the party adopted rhetorical appeals that prohibited economic demands by promoting a view of social justice that emphasized exclusion from opportunity as the most legitimate basis for political grievance. This analysis focuses on how these conceptual points reinforce one another, producing an ideological narrative that limits majoritarian, democratic demands in ways that benefit right populists. These trends on the Democratic side help clarify the terms on which right-wing populists are ideologically challenging liberalism, and why they are garnering increased support from a multiracial cohort of non-college educated voters.

Samuel Beckenhauer, Virginia Tech

The proliferation of conspiracy theory discourse has become an issue of national security in the United States, as the spread of conspiratorial narratives has been linked to the rise of extremist thinking and behavior that threatens democratic norms. In addition, in recent years, conspiratorial narratives have also migrated to the heart of electoral politics, as accusations of electoral interference and stolen elections have taken center stage. Historically, it has been generally understood that conspiracy theories are mediations on a loss of control or autonomy. Yet it is precisely the issue of control that has been underexamined. In this study, I raise the following question: what are the technological, discursive, and political conditions for the production, proliferation, and governance of conspiracy theories? I argue that by using conspiracy theory discourse as a lens, one can understand the impoverishment of the public sphere in the United States. Using conspiracy theories as a lens and by drawing on critical studies on populism and political sociology, I mobilize Peter Mair’s analysis of the decreasing political representation of political parties, Péter Csigó’s analysis of speculation and mediatic undecidability, Scott Lash and John Urry’s understanding of disorganized capitalism, and Timothy Luke’s conceptualization of informational society to theorize what I call the ‘scripted political’. The scripted political is characterized by excesses of information, the attempt to steer action through ‘Big Data’, and the simultaneous inability for anyone to exert sovereign control. I conceptualize conspiracy theory as a speculative genre of thought and practice that attempts to simultaneously signify meaning and to proliferate endlessly within a context in which political action has been constrained. I argue that by centering the question of political control, it becomes possible to understand how despite its logical incoherency, conspiracy thinking is a genre well suited to the contemporary political landscape, as it can offer a powerful affective charge and a coherent social identity by producing stark moral distinctions between good and evil, and identifying various political enemies. This study offers a corrective to predominant modes of analyzing and governing conspiracy theory, which are guided by a methodological individualism that conceives conspiracy theory either as the deficiency of the individual to properly enact their rational capacities or as the result of lacking the proper information. Such approaches overlook the fact that one in two individuals in the United States today subscribes to at least one conspiracy theory. Methodologically individualist approaches to conspiracy theory are ultimately limited since they are unable to take into account the broader political trends that create the fertile ground for conspiracy thinking and ultimately are unable to recognize the political claims articulated by a range of conspiracy theories. In this sense, I offer a contribution to the mainstreaming of extremism within the United States by identifying the conditions of possibility for the production, proliferation, and governance of conspiracy theory discourse.

Deborah L. Wheeler, U.S. Naval Academy

Why have we seen a significant swing to the right politically and an increase in racially/ethnically targeted violence/hate speech in France and Israel? What can we learn about the so-called global threat to democracy through a comparative study of France and Israel’s 2022 electoral outcomes and both countries’ increasingly polarized political culture? Original fieldwork conducted in 2019 in Israel; and 2020 and 2022 in France informs both cases. In this paper I argue that ethno-nationalism, minority violence, systemic racism/discrimination, and post-colonial tensions impact both countries’ far right resurgence at the polls and in the practice of everyday life. An Inclusive-ethnocracy (France) and an Exclusive-ethnocracy (Israel) result in urban, political, cultural, and power divisions which threaten to undermine the democratic fabric of both countries in ways illuminated by the comparison. France is a liberal democracy with a long history of protecting civil rights. In France, for example, hate speech is illegal, and punishable by fines and imprisonment. The country has struggled recently with a resurgence of ethno-nationalism which threatens the country’s minorities as well as the country’s liberalism. Violence against minorities is also on the rise; especially violence directed at Black men who are frequently targeted as immigrants; or not being French enough. (Desai, 2022) Marine Le Pen’s National Rally’s unanticipated success in parliamentary elections in 2022 with an 800% increase in seats, is symptomatic of the threat to democracy examined in this case study. Similarly, Israel, as Shamir and Segiv-Shifter observe, is “a real-life laboratory for the study of the impact of conflict and threat on the values and practice of democracy.” A significant body of research addresses Palestinian-Israeli counter-nationalist violence and hate, especially of late with the increase in missile warfare between the IDF and Hamas. An increasingly tense relationship between Jewish religious/nationalist movements and Arabs who are citizens of Israel, however, has emerged, as demonstrated in the May 2021 Lod riots and lynching on both Arab and Jewish sides. This escalation of intra-communal hatred and violence within the geographic boundaries of Israel’s democracy, (e.g. excluding the West Bank and Gaza) deserves greater attention given its polarizing/paralyzing effect on Israeli politics. Challenges to Israeli democracy, including the Jewish Nation-State Law (2018) and so-called loyalty law (2008 amendment to the 1952 Citizenship Law) in addition to recent efforts to limit the power of the Supreme Court are symptomatic of these challenges. This case study will examine why Jewish nationalist and extremist elements are increasingly empowered through the democratic process in Israel. The results of the Nov. 1, 2022 election provide important data on how (and why) Israel is more polarized now than ever before. Together these two case studies on political polarization and the mainstreaming of extremism reveal democracy’s yield of increasingly ethno-nationalist political culture. The fact that both countries struggle with a “Muslim problem” which has expressed itself violently suggests that cycles of violence, although resulting in a decrease in deaths over the past decade in both countries, may be linked with ethnocratic tendencies, polarization and a swing to the right electorally in both countries, for reasons explored through the comparison.

Andrew Cesare Miller, United States Naval Academy

Violence is a persistent feature of many electoral processes in the Global South. The violence unfolds in countries around the world including in Nigeria, India, Mexico and Jamaica, among elsewhere. This study explores the mechanisms of how political extremism manifests surrounding elections with a particular focus on the role of criminal groups. How do politicians use criminal groups to generate politically extreme violence to advance their electoral prospects? To what extent are online platforms (Facebook, Twitter, etc.) effective coordinating tools for criminal groups to promote extremist violence during elections? The study will evaluate these questions in the context of the 2023 Nigerian presidential election elections. Polls in the country are often marred by violence between supporters of the two main rival parties, the All Progressives Congress (APC) and the People’s Democratic Party (PDP). The study aims to understand the mechanisms that drive APC and PDP supporters—in particular, those supporters affiliated with criminal groups—to engage in violence in this context. The study evaluates the extent to which the violence is driven by out-group animus for those in the opposing party relative to the extent to which it is incentivized by non-ideological drivers. The project will present an initial analysis of online data collected for evaluating political extremism surrounding the upcoming elections.

Nejla Asimovic, NYU; Mateo Vasquez Cortes, Instituto Tecnologico Autonomo de Mexico; Kevin Munger, Pennsylvania State University

More than 6 million Venezuelans fled the country as refugees and migrants, in what constitutes one of the largest external displacement crises in recent history (2022, UNHCR). Nearly two million of Venezuelans fled to Colombia (USAID 2021), where they continue to face various legal, economic, and social barriers. Internet access barriers may reduce not only the amount of information that migrants can obtain about economic and assistance opportunities, which are available online, but also their ability to expand or sustain their social ties or verify truthfulness of the information received through social media. In this project, we study how internet access barriers affect integration and migrant wellbeing in contexts of limited state capacity and economic constraints. In particular, we assess the effects of enhanced data access (by providing mobile data credit) on migrants’ knowledge and interest in existing government assistance programs, the expansion and maintenance of their social networks, and their levels of psychological well-being. We further evaluate whether complementing this enhanced data provision with access to WhatsApp groups which facilitate an exchange of accurate information (in collaboration with the National Planning Department of the Government of Colombia) leads to better socio-economic outcomes for the forcibly displaced and migrant community.

Laura Jakli, Harvard University

Political scientists still have limited tools to extract political meaning from short texts, which poses challenges to the study of polarization in online communities. As an alternative to text analysis, I propose a repeated cross-sectional approach that combines two stages of network analysis to detect changes in mass discourse on social media. This cross-sectional approach features before-after comparisons made more valid with covariate conditioning (on network ideology). Once cross-sectional comparisons are constructed in the first stage of network analysis, I leverage the network ideology of who is being retweeted by whom to proxy for in-network discursive shifts. I describe how this two-stage network analysis makes it possible to capture three discursive shifts: (1) polarization, (2) moderation, and (3) destigmatization. Then, I use it to examine the effects of high salience news events on Twitter discourse. I find that in day-to-day social media discourse, Twitter users across the ideological spectrum express predictably partisan opinions on a range of political topics. Following major news events salient to those topics, sampled users’ retweet networks sometimes moderate, sometimes polarize, while at other points, users across a broad range of ideological communities retweet others situated in more extreme networks. I refer to this last type of shift as networked destigmatization. I conclude by discussing how this two-stage framework can help political scientists understand the effects of politicized events on public attitudes.

Alexandra Arons Siegel, University of Coloardo Boulder; Chagai Weiss, Stanford University; Alexandra Scacco, WZB Berlin Social Science Center

A large (and growing) literature indicates that intergroup prejudice is driven at least in part by informational deficits. Common arguments suggest that providing in-group members with accurate information about out-groups may help correct misperceptions, facilitate perspective-taking, and in turn reduce prejudice. In this paper, we employ a range of empirical strategies to critically evaluate the role that online information, particularly when conveyed through social media, plays in intergroup relations in Israel, and reach less optimistic conclusions. We first use observational data from Facebook to show that, in contrast to Palestinians, who frequently use the platform to discuss issues relating to the Israeli occupation of East Jerusalem and the West Bank, Israelis rarely engage with these topics online. Second, through a Facebook-embedded field experiment, we test the effects of exposing Israelis – in a naturalistic setting – to news about the Palestinians’ daily lives in East Jerusalem. We find that this exposure does not affect intergroup attitudes and, if anything, modestly decreases engagement with outgroup social media content. Third, we use a set of survey-embedded behavioral exercises to provide additional evidence of “intergroup avoidance” on the part of Israelis and suggest that pessimism about the future of intergroup relations and mistrust of out-group sources and argumentation are primarily responsible for this avoidance. Finally, drawing on these findings, we design a survey experiment to test different strategies to encourage constructive Israeli engagement with online content about their Palestinian neighbors.

Erin Elizabeth Walk, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

How information spreads on social media and what individual characteristics or behaviors drive migration to radical echo chambers is a topic of much debate in political science. As the most widely used platform in the US with the most representative user base (Pew Research 2021), as well as a host for embedded content across the web, the wide-ranging impact of YouTube makes it a prime platform for understanding this phenomenon. Though researchers have addressed questions of polarization and extreme content through a combination of surveys and interventions, these as well as large scale explorations of behavior over time focus on desktop data and access to a set of pre-labelled channels. This paper uses novel longitudinal data on individuals’ YouTube consumption from mobile data provider mFour to consider how patterns of user viewing behavior, the networks of YouTube channels they watch, and their demographics influence viewing over time. In particular, we consider whether an individual’s history of watching YouTube videos with implicit messages regarding polarizing topics, as found using content analysis of video transcripts, increases the likelihood that they will watch more videos of this type in the future. We further evaluate data such as the ads they are served on YouTube and their activity on other social networking sites to obtain a holistic understanding of their internet presence. Finally, we discuss the distinction between results related to individual choices and behaviors and those related to YouTube’s recommendation algorithm as well as implications for policy and future research.

Julie Elizabeth Dowsett, York University

This paper responds to calls for the revival of the scholarly study of propaganda (that is, “propaganda studies”) in critical political science, particularly with respect to the rise of Trumpism. I suggest that Trumpian propaganda is the latest incarnation of something that has been part of American politics and business for over a century. I locate the roots of American propaganda in the political theory and business practices of Edward Bernays (1891-1995) and his wife and business partner Doris Fleischman Bernays (1891-1980). The Bernays’ theory and practice of propaganda was influenced by the work of Sigmund Freud (Edward’s uncle) on the relationship between individual, family, and larger group psychology. I contend that the Bernays’ theory of propaganda—that is, as a necessary control from above by an authoritarian father-substitute who keeps the irrational masses from descending into the chaos of democracy—was operationalized by the Bernays’ in the past and by Trump and Trumpism more recently. In the case of both Edward Bernays and Donald Trump, their individual authoritarian dysfunctions were translated into national political dysfunctions. In order to make this argument, I will draw upon my extensive archival research on Bernays and Fleischman Bernays, my interview with their daughter Anne Bernays, and my analysis of Mary Trump’s writings on her uncle. This paper is important for two reasons: first, it highlights the degree to which the American authoritarianism underpinning Trumpism is not new; and second, it introduces a framework (that is, Bernaysian theory) that is largely unknown in the discipline of political science and useful to those in critical political science who study the political right.

Lisa Pace Vetter, University of Maryland, Baltimore County

Misinformation and disinformation is often characterized as recent political phenomena, the seemingly inevitable byproduct of the emergence of politicized mainstream media sources such as Fox News and MSNBC and social media, a development that reaches its apex (or nadir?) with the Trump presidency and shows no signs of abating. However, it is important to note that misinformation and disinformation have been deeply embedded in the American project since the founding. Indeed, the abolitionist and early women’s rights movements provide ample opportunities to see misinformation and disinformation at work. Abolitionists and early women’s rights advocates were maligned and vilified by their opponents who sought to dehumanize them and mischaracterize their efforts in various ways. It should not be overlooked, however, that the abolitionists and early women’s rights advocates employed their own versions of misinformation and disinformation—often targeting their opponents in similar ways. This paper seeks to examine the scare tactics and propaganda deployed by both sides to advance their interests. Of particular interest will be pro-slavery tracts that sought to portray enslaved peoples as passive and inhuman, antislavery works that characterized slave-holders as morally bankrupt and wholly unjust, anti-suffragists who imagined that granting women greater rights would effectively “desex” them and upend cherished traditions in American society, and early women’s rights advocates such as Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony who created the “myth of Seneca Falls,” carefully crafting the narrative of the movement to advance their goals. I will expand on my previous work on nineteenth century American abolitionism and early women’s rights and incorporate new material from my current research project.

William De Soto, Texas State University

Walter Lippmann famously worried in his classic text Public Opinion that the inability of Americans to rationally interpret information limited their ability to be successful citizens. This fear about the limits of citizens’ ability to be good citizens is a prominent theme in American political thought. This paper examines this debate about the capacity of Americans to function in a democracy in the context of contemporary debates about two pressing issues: the twin crises of democracy and the climate. Like the writers of The Federalist Papers, burgeoning literature expresses fear that populist authoritarianism threatens the viability of our republic. Similarly, Americans often say in surveys that climate change is not a real phenomenon despite the testimony of nearly every scientific association and the majority of federal government scientists. Can our republic survive when citizens disregard the overwhelming evidence that the climate crisis requires urgent action? What do these crises tell us about the viability of democratic government? What do they tell us about the capacity of our government to address problems that may soon overwhelm us all?

Robert P. Saldin, University of Montana; Robert M. Eisinger, Circana

As Benjamin Franklin purportedly quipped to an inquiring Philadelphian, the Constitutional Convention had established “a republic, if you can keep it.” In creating that republic, the Founders had deliberately chosen to empower the people. While the suffrage was limited to a subset of white men, for its time this was a radical step toward democracy. Franklin’s hesitancy about this experiment’s long-term prospects was rooted in the recognition that democracies had historically been prone to a debilitating weakness rooted in the very people to whom the Founders had just entrusted the country. The preeminent apprehension informing the Madisonian system and the Constitution was an acknowledgement that individuals are not naturally imbued with the kind of sensibilities on which democratic republics are predicated. Specifically, the Framers worried that “the people” could quickly devolve into “the mob” and that demagogues could rise to power by exploiting internal tensions. The key to success, then, was finding a way to empower the people while tempering their susceptibility to passionate, illiberal excess. The major part of the Founders’ solution was to create a set of carefully structured institutions designed to cool the passions that threatened liberal democracy. Following ratification of the Constitution, additional institutions, namely the political party system and the media, came to play a gatekeeping role that served to buttress American democracy from the pathologies of the illiberal mob and demagogues. Recently, the pathologies that have long been associated with democracy have been on full display in the United States and have threatened the American political system in ways that few of us could have imagined we would see in our lifetimes. The Framers understood and assumed that the mass citizenry would be susceptible to illiberal appeals and took this into account when designing the system. What’s surprising, however, is the extent to which the institutions that are supposed to protect our democracy from these impulses are now fueling them. That is, the institutions that have generally served to help American democracy function properly have been inverted. The devices that have tempered the pathologies of democracy have now been turned on their head and serve to exacerbate the very problems they once held in check. We look at four key institutions — two constitutional (Congress and Presidency) and two extra-constitutional (the party system and the media) — to illustrate how they now aggravate the excesses that they are supposed to temper. As a result, institutional fixes — particularly “hardball” reforms like adding new states or increasing the number of Supreme Court justices — are unlikely to ameliorate the situation; they are more likely to inflame it. Rather than continue to look to our institutions to save us, we need an updated version of a philosophic tradition that emphasized the importance of local communities rather than our governing institutions; common citizens rather than leaders. The republican tradition and its concept of “virtue” can be traced from the Ancient political philosophers through the arguments made by the Anti-Federalist critics of the Constitution and on to the observations of Alexis de Tocqueville. The tradition’s key insight is that while institutional arrangements are certainly important, they are far from sufficient. A polity also requires a populace with virtue, understood as a commitment to citizenship and engagement in one’s community. People aren’t born into virtue, but they are capable of developing it through practice. It is therefore important to actively cultivate virtue, and this is best done by creating opportunities for regularly engaging with one’s fellow citizens. In contrast to an institutional mindset, an emphasis on virtue is more about the process than the outcome because it is the process of engaging with others in a collective enterprise that develops the habits of the heart that a free society depends on.

Adam M. McMahon, The College of New Jersey

Why do U.S. presidents consider alternatives to war when armed conflict is the path ultimately chosen? Using a structured focused comparison, I analyze the decision-making process the George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush presidential administrations chose to pursue the Persian Gulf War in 1990 and the Iraq War in 2003, respectively. I argue two factors explain the failure to pursue alternative courses of action: (1) cherry-picking of evidence combined with (2) the role of misinformation in pushing two presidents to choose a path of war. In January 1991, Secretary of State James Baker met with Iraqi Foreign Minister Tariq Aziz in Geneva, Switzerland as part of a last-ditch effort to avert the conflict. However, this was but one leg of a longer tour in order to build coalition partners for the invasion of Iraq. Previously, the Nayirah testimony, falsely provided before Congress in October 1990, convinced Congress and the president of the need to counter Saddam Hussein and his takeover of Kuwait. Twelve years later, President George W. Bush pursued a preventive war in Iraq to stop Hussein from obtaining weapons of mass destruction (WMD). By cherry picking evidence, such as the claim that Iraq sought yellow cake uranium in Niger, neoconservatives within the Bush administration convinced the American public to support a war of choice. While UN weapons inspectors requested more time to verify Hussein did not possess such weapons, Bush 43 promised a United Nations Security Council vote to authorize the use of force. However, facing the threat of a veto from France, the White House relied on previous authorizations from the UNSC in addition to an authorization vote in Congress to conduct the war. These last attempts to prevent war therefore represent key examples of American presidents utilizing misinformation to justify war. Additionally, this research brings to the forefront of analysis the contextual factors, such as the consequences of decisions of past presidents (sometimes referred to as “legacy chains”), which then limit the range of potential options to future executives. By pushing back Iraqi forces in the early 1990s without removing Hussein from power, Bush 41 set up the conditions for Bush 43 to complete the ouster of Iraq’s dictator over a decade later. This research utilizes archival materials from the Bush 41 and Bush 43 presidential libraries, as well as Secretary Baker’s papers at Princeton’s Mudd Library. It is significant given contemporary debates in the United States on how to identify potential “off ramps,” or alternatives to hostilities, for Russian President Vladimir Putin to prevent escalation as his war of aggression against Ukraine. Given fears about the use of nuclear weapons during the conflict, the question of the seriousness of alternate courses of action considered by decision makers is crucial.

Nicolas Audignon, Université Paris-Panthéon-Assas

Drawing on five years of comparative research on the presidential transitions of two American and three French presidents, Obama, Trump, Sarkozy, Hollande, and Macron, this paper aims to explore the challenges of mis- and disinformation in an always more scrutinized political environment. Indeed, the rise of populism brought by the election of Donald Trump shed a light on the challenges “truth” poses, both for those who made transparency a campaign issue and for those whose campaign was based on some ambiguity. The extent to which this poses leadership challenges in the context of these presidents’ takeovers is very specific to each presidency. From an institutional point of view, the presidency is a dense grid of norms and expectations that constrains the way this role is interpreted. Lately, the presidentialization of politics (Poguntke & Webb, 2005) reinforced this focus on norms such as being factual or transparency. However, if leadership is about “facilitating change through the recognition and exploitation of opportunities in the president’s environment” (George C. Edwards III, 2009), avoiding the costs that come with the need for a meticulous organization respecting these norms is an opportunity among others. Indeed, always being factual is a norm that, as important can it be, represents in some instances costs, more than benefits. The presidential transition and the first hundred days are institutionally very normed. This leads us to analyze this density of norms as a challenge and a cost in itself, as the need for factual information does not match the low degree of certainty existing at this stage: nominations are still ongoing, and it takes time to “learn the job”; some policy choices still have to be made; alliances are not yet fully defined. Appointing someone that criticized the president’s agenda during the campaign is an example of an instance in which the discourse can benefit from not acknowledging this reality. This is essential to understand how the “window of political opportunity” aspect of this changeover leads to defining new roles, structures, and power relationships within the administration and between the administration, the legislature, and the media. This paper is in accordance with observations from the division call 23. Mis- and disinformation prompt a fundamental rethinking of how we approach executive power in our research, although it is in unexpected ways, especially in the case of Donald Trump and the rise of populism associated with his election. For instance, unlike what one might think, spreading misinformation actually made it easier for Trump in many areas to go through his first hundred days. Conversely, it made Obama’s first hundred days way harder for him and his administration, as he wanted to be nuanced, transparent, and pedagogical. The bar was raised: empirically, it translates to more staff and the need for a more thorough organization, leading to various challenges. We will explore these impacts through three dimensions commonly used to understand how political elites take action: Policy; Office; and Votes (Müller, Strom, 1999). Studying the first hundred days through this lens allows us to then classify the challenges presidents encounter. The “Votes” dimension forces us to focus on elements such as the way the presidential image is shaped, both for the public opinion (first speeches; ceremonies; symbols) and relative to their relationship with the media (management of controversies and criticisms, etc). Accepting a controversial image can sometimes alleviate the need to get the political capacity to assemble teams to shape the presidential image. The “Office” aspect leads up to focus on the way presidents appoint their administrations to maximize results by limiting negative externalities. With each key nomination being scrutinized and criticized, keeping an eye on how this information is presented to the world is essential. The “Policy” aspect relates to several elements, such as: the position and shifts in terms of a political platform following the election; implementation of campaign promises; passing laws; and agenda organization. Three aspects must be considered in this age of mis- and disinformation; on what ground are these policies taken; how are they presented to the public opinion; is this presentation consistent with what is being done. All of these dimensions play a major role in shaping the presidential transition process and the first hundred days as a whole. Different strategies are pursued by various presidents, with different implications. If the difference between a presidential system and a semi-presidential one is important, it is far from being the only variable to consider. Based on three types of data and the process-tracing method, this paper includes interviews with staff of presidents, media material, testimonial material, and institutional data. As a former Visiting Scholar at the Miller Center (UVA), I will also rely on their work titled the “First-Year Project” and the center’s considerable resources.

Steven Patrick Schrage, Johns Hopkins University

Over ten years of research at Harvard, the University of Cambridge and Johns Hopkins using insider interviews and new internet data sources showed how largely unexamined presidential campaign decisions shaped future presidents’ policies, teams, and their administrations’ outcomes. Both the current spread of mis or disinformation among voters and the flexible, unstructured nature of many presidential campaigns brings significant risks of mis and disinformation impacting the future presidents’ world views, policies and advisers at this critical stage. This paper will use the framework built in earlier papers and an upcoming book to examine how ideas, policies and advisers linked to mis or disinformation took root during the 2016 and 2024 campaigns. In the case of the winning candidates, Trump in 2016 and Biden and 2024, it will evaluate how these campaign mis or disinformation factors impacted later administration results. The final section of the paper will examine the early stages of 2024 candidates’ campaigns up to the weeks before the APSA Annual Meeting. Specifically, it will use the earlier framework to examine how mis and disinformation has impact their campaigns so far and the potential ramifications for each candidate if elected.

Heath Brown, City University of New York, Graduate Center and John Jay College

Fearful of misinformation, US presidential candidates have historically kept transition planning secret, so concerned have they been about misleading accusations of “counting the drapes of the White House” by opponents. The consequence of this has been a paradox for scholars of the presidency and public administration: just as the democracy reaches its zenith with millions casting votes, some of the most important personnel and policy decisions are made with almost no transparency at all. What is the consequence of this for understanding the earliest days of a new presidential administration and its longer term impacts on the presidency and executive politics? The 2020 presidential election was no exception; in fact, with concerns about cybersecurity and coordinated disinformation peaking, it was a central concern of the Biden-Harris team. At the same time, however, the Biden-Harris team responded to a national movement for racial equity and justice that called for more openness to new ideas and new political actors. How then did the Biden-Harris transition team adjust to this peculiar information-environment, both before as well as after the election? How did it balance the demand to address concerns about dis/misinformation and calls for greater openness? This paper uses elite interviews with nearly 30 members of the transition team to explain how Biden and Harris designed and executed a transition plan in this complex environment. The findings suggest the team succeeded in executing a plan that shielded team members from a variety of cyber threats. Yet, in adopting such a strict plan, other aims of the incoming administration, including prioritizing racial justice and collaboration, were not fulfilled. These findings have implications for understanding presidential transitions, specifically, but also the on-going dis-misinformation environment faced by presidents and the consequences of various administrative responses, generally.

Benjamin Noble, Washington University in St. Louis

Do presidential speeches persuade the public? Existing research holds that presidents cannot change Americans’ policy preferences through speechmaking, with a focus on which policies presidents promote. Yet we know less about how presidents approach persuasion. I argue that presidents use factual rhetoric to change minds and make affective appeals to mobilize their base. I test these hypotheses using a nationally-representative survey experiment in which participants read a snippet from a real presidential speech about a policy proposal. These excerpts differ in how presidents persuade: whether they make factual arguments, affective appeals, or neither. In line with my argument, I find that factual statements increase support for the president’s position broadly while emotional messaging increases issue salience and intent to participate in politics among existing supporters. This research has implications for how we understand presidential persuasion and the efficacy of going public.

Kaitlin Peach, University of Oklahoma; Hank Jenkins-Smith, University of Oklahoma

In our increasingly accessible and open information environment, we are seeing an age-old problem of disinformation become increasingly visible and pose a challenge to governmental and societal processes. Disinformation is as old as politics itself yet is playing a greater role in the policymaking process as it is spread rapidly on social media. To add to the problem of the quantity of disinformation, government officials at all levels are increasingly being elected on the basis of mis- and disinformation and those policymakers are basing decisions upon that information. This leads to the following questions: What is the role of disinformation in the policy process, and how is disinformation viewed under the major policy process theories and frameworks? Information is a key part of policy process theory research, yet the specific role of disinformation in the policy process requires further development. The field of public policy is based upon notions of rationality and bounded rationality, as well as evidence-based analysis as a basis for public policy. The literature has approached the role of expert-based information and information more generally and has approached disinformation by questioning existing theories’ ability to engage with disinformation and the post-truth world more broadly (Jones and McBeth 2020; Perl, Howelett, and Ramesh 2018). However, this literature has argued that a lack of acceptance of the “truth” or “facts” is not, in fact, due to bounded rationality or an inability to learn the facts but might instead be a purposeful tool within the policy process (Perl, Howelett, and Ramesh 2018; Paul and Haddad 2019). While this has been touched upon in some of the literature, it is important to explore the role of disinformation in the policy process more. Disinformation, like other forms of information, has a complex role within the policy process. It can be a tool used by policymakers to sway opinion through narratives that define problems and potential solution sets and establish coalitions, while at the same time can pose a challenge to policy processes by limiting the ability of coalitions to agree on policy options, can change how institutions operate and can limit the potential of cross-coalition learning. This paper is theoretical and will examine the role disinformation plays in several key theories of the policy process, such as the Punctuated Equilibrium Theory, the Advocacy Coalition Framework, and the Narrative Policy Framework. Across the policy process theories, we can observe that disinformation messaging works to form and strengthen coalitions by appealing to policy core and deep core beliefs while inhibiting cross-coalition learning by working to further divide groups. This paper will contribute to the policy process literature by assessing the way disinformation interacts with elements of policy process theories and, through this assessment, that disinformation is both a strategic tool that actors use to achieve policy goals and a roadblock to cross-coalition coordination, all of which has implications for policy across substantive areas, such as the way problems are defined, and policy alternatives are selected.

Amogh Dhar Sharma, University of Oxford

Over the last decade, India has become a quintessential example of the scourge of disinformation. A particular manifestation of this problem has been seen in the sphere of competitive electoral politics wherein leading political parties have invested heavily in creating an elaborate ‘disinformation machinery’ that consists of social media cells, troll armies, ‘Big Data’ analysts, and professional political consultants to disseminate their partisan propaganda. In this paper, I analyze the practices through which political disinformation is produced, financed, and circulated in countries like India, and I use this analysis to evaluate how statutory regulations (pertaining to election campaigns and political communication) need to evolve in order to ensure a democratic level playing field. To do this, this paper uses the lens of political finance to explore the aggregate and distributional costs associated with the circulation of political disinformation in India. By drawing upon semi-structured interviews and ethnographic fieldwork conducted in India between 2015 and 2022, I outline three important dimensions along which the ‘costs’ associated with misinformation should be accounted for and the regulatory mechanisms needed. Firstly, I take note of the exorbitant expenditure incurred by parties in India’s election campaigns and the hidden costs of misinformation within it. Despite regulatory oversight and mandatory requirement to disclose campaign expenditure, political finance in India has become increasingly opaque. I highlight the legal loopholes and other strategies through which the costs of running the disinformation machinery are rendered invisible by political parties. Understanding these underhand strategies becomes a necessary step in the effort to put a price tag on political disinformation. Secondly, I argue that in order to sustain the disinformation machinery, parties and politicians have created new patronage networks and that this in turn generates fresh costs that are borne by the state exchequer. Drawing upon short case studies, I illustrate some of the ways in which disinformation and state patronage are interlinked. Thirdly, I argue that political disinformation in India also carries distributional costs insofar as the individuals who run the disinformation machinery and benefit from the aforementioned political patronage are existing socio-economic elites. I demonstrate this fact by disaggregating the sociological profile of the parties’ campaign staff along the axis of class, caste, and gender. Doing so helps highlight that scholars of disinformation need to study not merely aggregate costs, but also look at the disaggregated allocation of rewards and costs. Such an approach is of considerable relevance in the Global South where pre-existing inequalities and privileges intersect with the politics of disinformation.

Yutong Si, Northeastern University; Dipa Desai, Northeastern University; Diana Bozhilova, New College of the Humanities London; Sheila M Puffer, Northeastern University; Jennie Stephens, Northeastern University

Large, multinational oil and gas companies have been investing for decades in obstructing action on climate change, with a recent strategy shift away from outright climate denial to more nuanced discourses of climate delay. Communication on social media is an underanalyzed part of the fossil fuel industry’s strategy to delay the energy transition away from fossil fuels to a renewable future. This study examines how four companies (Shell, ExxonMobil, BP, and TotalEnergies) are communicating about the renewable transition by analyzing tweets published by their global Twitter accounts. Each of these companies tweet about different renewable technologies in the context of showcasing their own renewable projects; TotalEnergies focuses mostly on solar, ExxonMobil focuses on biofuels, and geothermal and hydropower are hardly mentioned by any of the companies. The number of tweets mentioning renewables increased rapidly after 2015. Topic modeling on tweets about renewables shows that renewables are often mentioned together with natural gas emphasizing how both are essential for emissions reductions. Topic modeling on tweets about natural gas reveals how companies highlight the social good of natural gas including promoting its role in emissions reductions, presenting natural gas as a fuel for a cleaner future, and emphasizing how critical natural gas is to meet growing societal demand for energy. This pattern of communication – linking renewables to natural gas and promoting natural gas as part of their corporate response to climate change – suggests an evolution of fossil fuel companies’ strategic efforts to delay the energy transition and obstruct climate action.

Chaejeong Park, Seoul National University

Today’s policy process unfolds in a political landscape where misinformation spreads faster and more widely. Policy implementation is a step of substantially embodying the contents of the policy after policymaking. It is crucial because the success of the policy depends on it. However, previous theoretical and empirical work has not adequately considered the perception of the policy-target group by placing the success leverage of implementation mainly on bureaucrats or bureaucracies. Especially when policy-target groups are exposed to misinformation about the policy (e.g., misinformation or disinformation by politicians having the incentive to propagate ambiguous information about a particular policy), this can ultimately negatively affect society by weakening compliance to policy or leading to noncompliance. This paper aims to provide the psychological mechanisms that policy-target groups do not comply with and theoretical and evidence-based insights into the potential influence of misinformation on the perception and behavior of policy-target groups by conducting a series of experiments. Specifically, I first examine the factors that influence policy implementation suggested in existing studies and then discuss that misinformation can also be a factor of non-compliance from an information-processing perspective. Next, based on political science and psychology literature, I establish various hypotheses on the relationship between noncompliance of the policy-target group and misinformation, conduct experiments for testing hypotheses, and then present the results. Finally, to fundamentally solve the policy implementation problem, I discuss that it should start with understanding the policy implementation in the political landscape represented by misinformation and the perception of the policy-target groups. This study contributes to supplementing the policy implementation research that has seen a decline in academic interest, identifying the potential causes of noncompliance with specific policies, and reflecting various concepts of democracy, which is crucial in political science in implementation research. Key words: misinformation, noncompliance of policy target group, belief echoes, policy implementation

Matt Grossmann, Michigan State University; David A. Hopkins, Boston College

The two major parties increasingly differ not only over what policies should be enacted but also over who should be in charge of developing, evaluating, and implementing these policies. Democratic politicians, institutions, activists, and voters are likely to respect the judgment of professional issue experts. Republicans at both the elite and mass levels have become less deferential to credentialed expertise—and more skeptical that those who claim it use their authority to impose liberal ideology rather than offering objective, evidence-driven assessments of problems and potential solutions. In this paper, we demonstrate the progression and implications of this growing partisan conflict. We track its long history but explain the current intensity, especially over the role of experts in policymaking, as a manifestation of a change in the parties’ constituencies. As the Democrats have become the favored party of well-educated voters while Republicans have gained popularity among whites without college degrees, each party has responded differently to an increasingly complicated and technical policy world dominated by degree-holding professionals. Democrats have furthered their embrace of experts while Republicans have more openly challenged them. Democrats say Republicans are channeling misinformation while Republicans say their views are being dismissed by smug elitists. The paper analyzes the interaction between the rising tide of expertise-driven policymaking and the backlash associated with polarization around expertise and education in three key policy domains: (1) public health, especially pandemic response, (2) environmental policy, especially climate change, and (3) higher education, especially the content of university curricula. We draw upon evidence from policy proposals, elite rhetoric, opinion surveys, appointment choices, congressional bill sponsorship, and interest group activity to demonstrate the parties’ increasingly distinct models of governance. In each area, liberal social movements have come to reflect the increased incorporation of college graduates by increasingly choosing well-credentialed leadership; justifying their causes by citing intellectual concepts, authorities, and research; and prizing representation in high-status institutions. Democrats reward experts in staffing and consulting while Republicans prefer political operatives and media spokespersons. Democrats now see themselves as the informed party, defending education institutions as pillars of democracy while claiming to “trust the science” when forming policy positions. Republicans have entered a populist phase with hostility toward universities, professors, and students, with conservative media increasingly portraying college campuses as hotspots of radical leftism while Republican politicians rhetorically and financially target universities. Republican voters no longer report trusting researchers to deliver non-partisan information, preferring to accept and promote the claims of overtly ideological alternative sources claiming to represent common sense (often dismissed by Democrats as mis- or disinformation). We trace this pattern in all three policy areas, including its recent acceleration. During the COVID-19 pandemic, an initial broad, bipartisan attitude of deference towards scientific and public health experts was soon followed by a more familiar dynamic of partisan dispute; while Democrats lionized Anthony Fauci and other public health authorities, Republicans questioned the efficacy of COVID restrictions and even vaccines. On climate change, Democrats argue that the world faces an unprecedented crisis requiring the empowerment of issue experts to formulate an array of specific countermeasures requiring government action, while Republicans’ lack of trust in scientific experts causes them to dismiss warnings of future environmental disaster and view scientists as acting in their own self-interest. And in higher education, culture war politics have come to dominate previously economically-focused policy debates—especially reflecting conservatives’ suspicions that professors are using their position to promote Critical Race Theory, gender non-conformity, and other progressive ideas. Republicans now see higher education policy, including re-evaluations of tenure, university governance, and financial support from government, as critical not only for reforming higher education but for limiting cultural liberals’ influence on K-12 education, the business world, and society as a whole. We argue that these three policy areas are harbingers of future debates, where the politics of expertise becomes ever more central. The electoral and ideological conflict between the parties has become a battle between technocratic and populist visions of governance that increasingly matches the parties’ self-images and constituencies, reinforcing partisan divergence in style and substance.

Irina Andreeva, University at Buffalo; Abigail Grey Reinbold, University at Buffalo; Madeline Taggart, University at Buffalo; Tahleen A. Lattimer, University at Buffalo, SUNY; Stephanie Gillis, University at Buffalo; Alexandra Vuich, University at Buffalo; Raphaela Velho, University at Buffalo; Emily Lapan, University at Buffalo; Lindsay Hahn, University at Buffalo

TikTok has the potential to expose users to content created by political extremists, defined as those who subscribe to fringe, often violent, right-wing (RW) or left-wing (LW) ideologies (O’Connor, 2021). Extremist social media users often leverage trending audio and humor (Weimann & Masri, 2021; Zhang et al., 2021) to increase the chances users will stumble upon their videos. Videos’ reach and consequences are further heightened when they contain moral appeals, as moralized content is more likely to be both shared online (Brady et al., 2020), and to instigate behaviors, including violence, in observers (Skitka & Morgan, 2014). TikTok’s reach among young audiences underscores the importance of investigating its content to understand and intervene in extremists’ use of TikTok as a megaphone. Guided by moral foundations theory (Haidt & Joseph, 2007), we conducted a quantitative content analysis on a sample of politically extreme LW/RW TikTok videos to assess whether they contained behavioral calls to action, moral appeals, content intended to be political or humorous, and whether these content types were associated with greater audience engagement (i.e., video likes or shares). We adopted a list of RW-extremist TikTok accounts identified by O’Connor (2021) and snowball-sampled LW-extremist accounts advocating revolutionary LW movements (i.e., Communism, Marxism, Lenin). Randomly sampling up to 10 videos from each account resulted in a total of N=1,615 videos created by n=94 RW- and n=108 LW-extremist accounts (Mfollowers=23,539; SD=61,344; Median=1663). Intercoder reliability exceeded κ > .70 for all variables. Coding and data analysis are ongoing; expected completion is February 2023.

Elizabeth Radziszewski, University of Maryland; Sean Thomas Doody, University of Maryland; Caroline Orr Bueno, University of Maryland

This paper examines pro-Russia discourse on Twitter surrounding significant events in Ukraine War using original analysis of messages. We focus on how narratives related to physical threats, cultural threats, and political threats of the enemy feature in different types of events. We examine whether narrative focused on Ukraine’s physical and cultural threat to Russia is more likely to be used in the context of battle events to win domestic support for the war rather than in response to political developments, such as NATO expansion, and in response to civilian massacres. We posit that pro-Russian discourse is more likely to focus on Russia’s rivals (Ukraine and NATO) threat to global order for non-battle and civilian casualties’ events to appeal to international audiences. Finally, we examine variation in the content of narrative depending on the source to test whether individual users are more likely to disseminate pro-Russian discourse that focuses on physical/cultural threats rather than political threats posed by the enemy. To examine variation in discourse we analyze the content of tweet messages two weeks prior the event, during the event, and two weeks after the events across two battle events, two civilian massacre events, and two political events.

Megan Rutter, University of Maryland; Alexandra M. Williams, University of Maryland (UMD) – START

The rise of social media, the subsequent evolution of individuals ingesting news from personal networks rather than vetted sources, and the propensity of journalistic sources to act as unintentional amplifiers of disinformation has led to an increase in peoples’ exposure to mis- and disinformation generally. There has been a lot of research on the proliferation of mis- and disinformation across social media platforms; however, the same level of attention has not been focused on the impact of mis- and disinformation on individuals and their subsequent actions. Employing the Influence-to-Action Model (I-AM) (Sin, Rutter, & Washburn 2022), this paper examines medical mis- and disinformation within the context of COVID-19 to measure and assess the impact of mis- and disinformation related to the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States. We first compiled a dataset of the most salient COVID-19 mis- and dis-information narratives between 2020 and 2021 to extract a selection of artifacts. We then employ I-AM on each artifact individually as well as by theme to assess the relative impact of the messaging. Finally, we evaluate each I-AM output against real-world events (e.g., anti-vaccine and/or anti-masking mandate protests, etc.). Our findings show that I-AM was able to effectively anticipate when medical mis- and disinformation can lead to increases in individual’s actions. These findings provide a foundation for future research into the impact of specific medical disinformation messaging and a replicable methodology to parse potentially harmful and actionable mis- and disinformation within the medical and public health information domains.

Lindsay Hahn, University at Buffalo; Tahleen A. Lattimer, University at Buffalo, SUNY; Madeline Taggart, University at Buffalo; Rebecca Frazer, The Ohio State University; Kurt Braddock, American University

A growing body of research suggests violent extremism can be thought of as a moral reasoning process in which an actor violates one moral value (e.g., compassion for others) in order to uphold a value deemed more important (e.g., justice for my people; Fiske & Rai, 2015; Kruglanski et al., 2009). Given the centrality of moral values for instigating extremist violence, appeals to actors’ morality may be critical for countering their support for violent causes. Guided by inoculation theory, the present work attempted to confer attitudinal resistance to persuasion by extremist propaganda via pre-emptive exposure to a weakened version of an argument (i.e., an inoculation message; McGuire, 1961, 1964). We adopted measures and materials from Braddock (2022; tinyurl.com/inoc-conditions). Before reading propaganda from a terrorist organization, participants read either no inoculation as a control, a traditional inoculation containing weakened versions of the propaganda’s arguments and defenses against them, or, new to the present study, a moral inoculation containing everything from the traditional inoculation, and weakened versions of the propaganda’s moral arguments and defenses against them. Initial results from N = 203 participants suggest that the moral inoculation was better than the traditional (non-moral) inoculation for inducing anger, but no better at inducing anger than the no-inoculation condition. The moral inoculation was no better than the traditional inoculation for inducing counter-arguing, decreasing source-credibility, or decreasing support for the violent group. These results suggest that despite morality’s role in instigating violent extremism, moral appeals may be less central for dissuading violence

Caroline Orr Bueno, University of Maryland; Rhyner Washburn, University of Maryland

Issues of disinformation, narrative control, and information dominance have traditionally been conceptualized and measured using positive indicators — i.e., the presence of something — such as supply (e.g., quantity of websites or articles; volume of news coverage) and demand (e.g., public interest in a topic; Google Trends and keyword queries) of content. But beneath the surface of these observable patterns, trends, and narrative battles lies a vulnerability that often remains hidden until it has been exploited. This vulnerability — which we term “Information Dark Spaces (IDS)” — manifests in the form of data deficits, data voids, and other types of information vacuums that occur when avenues for and outlets of credible information are overrun by unbridled public demand, discoverability through search engines underperforms or is nonexistent, interpretability of discoverable information is unusable or doesn’t meet the needs of the public, or the topic and relevant keywords simply do not yet exist in cyberspace. Information Dark Spaces can manifest organically or be purposely manufactured; arise during breaking news events, crises, viral moments, or buildup over long expanses of time. As such, abuse or weaponization of IDS by state or non-state actors unquestionably poses a significant challenge to the broader goal of defending against mis-, dis-, and mal-information (MDM) by such actors. Therefore, the goal of this paper is to define and operationalize Information Dark Spaces, provide examples of IDS challenges, and introduce follow-on development for a framework to identify and measure IDS.

April Renee Biccum, Australian National University

Global Citizenship is a concept with increasing currency. A variety of both governmental and non-governmental actors self-ascribe as global citizens and through policy and socially media driven activism entreat others to do the same. Global Citizenship has also become a way of describing Corporate Social Responsibility and a variety of elite actors also affix the concept to their platforms and organizations. This paper is a comparison of two different but connected ways in which Global Citizenship as a concept is being put to work by two different groups to achieve political aims: one is an educational reform movement, Global Citizenship Education (GCE), the other is a corporate lobby group, the Global Citizen Forum (GCF), lobbying International Organizations for Citizenship by Investment Programs. Both adopt a platform of ‘social justice’ and political activism under the banner of Global Citizenship. Both are trying to entreat people to see themselves as Global Citizens and in so doing change the world through the ‘transformation’ of the self. GCE incorporates a variety of social movement knowledges into a form of pedagogy and curriculum that, if adopted by states, will orient the attitudes, aptitudes and behaviours of young people. The GCF includes corporate elite and celebrities, some of whom are themselves refugees, mobilizing on a platform of change through philanthropy and citizen by investment programs. This paper is a mixed method interpretive study of the use of the concept ‘Global Citizenship’ in two apparently disparate spaces. It will show how immersive study of the use of the internet by these groups and critical analysis of discursive practices garners observations and insight which cannot be obtained through any other mode of inquiry. It will ruminate on the political significance of the use of this politically constitutive concept. A kind of insight that can only be achieved with Interpretivist Methods.

Jason Blakely, Pepperdine University

The interpretive turn allows for a paradigm shift in how readers approach the word-object relationship in the human sciences. Theories in the human sciences are often conceptualized as descriptive and explanatory in such a way that the word (or theoretical account) exists largely outside the object of inquiry (or the social-political process). By contrast, interpretivism makes it possible to read social science theories inside the stream of culture and politics—not straightforwardly descriptive but instead generative of social realities. This paper explores the worldmaking capacities of theories in the human sciences, proposing various breaches of the word-object split. These include not only narrative causal forms, like top-down technocratic imposition and techno-populist upsurges, but also non-causal forms, like ideological resonances and hypothetical, as-if scenarios. Grasping the radically different relationship between word-object in the human sciences opens up new empirical topics for investigation as well as a form of social theory that has normative and critical dimensions.

Nick Cheesman, Australian National University

Proliferating mis- and dis-information raises concerns regarding the competency of political science to ascertain and analyze facts about state violence. Agents of mis- and dis-information themselves generate and mediate data about state violence with which political scientists work. To understand what has happened and why, political scientists have to take their contending narratives into account. But political science’s task is not adjudicatory. It is to make theoretically robust inferences about how state violence is possible, and about its causes and consequences. To acquit themselves of this task, political scientists need epistemological bearings. How can interpretivism help? Interpretivists start from the premise that there is no hard kernel of truth hidden in the performance of state violence. Every act can sustain multiple interpretations. But this is not to repudiate facts; it is to reorient ourselves to them, and stimulate inquiries that destabilize justificatory accounts of state violence by querying assumptions about its instrumentality and rationality. It is to be motivated to develop more sophisticated methodologies with which to understand how competing interpretations of state violence form and circulate, how certain ones predominate, and with what effects. In this paper, I discuss how. I begin by reviewing recent exemplary interpretive studies on varieties and manifestations of state violence. I then outline a methodology for study of state violence interpretively, drawing on textual and ethnographic research into torture practiced by police and soldiers in Thailand that I have conducted since 2017. By attending to how texts and text analogues about state violence are imbricated in social relations and adopting reading practices that emancipate them from authorial intentions, I show how interpretive inquiry makes engaged yet critical interpretations of state violence both possible and necessary. Interpretivists do not expose political science to credible charges of relativism. Instead, they push against the facile idea that the meaning of torture or any other type of state violence can be reduced to the relation of means to ends. In this way, interpretivism resists the politics of truth that invest state violence with reason and presume it reasonable. They position political science to produce more trustworthy accounts about state violence than those that give credence to false motives for its performance and apologize for its practice on grounds of public order or political necessity.

Mark Bevir, University of California, Berkeley

At the heart of an interpretive political science is opposition to social-scientific naturalism. Interpretive political scientists reject the idea that social explanations should model themselves on the natural sciences; they focus, instead, on the peculiarly human aspects of human behavior: the meanings and intentions of human actors and, therefore, the historical contingency of human actions. However, this approach does not require us to reject generally accepted research methods, although it does dramatically change the way we think about methods, encouraging us to learn from the humanities and to blur genres. An interpretive approach also prompts us to remember the ethical implications of the fact that we are studying human agents, not passive objects, a reminder that is especially pertinent for deliberative democrats after the empirical turn.