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The study investigates the effect of an uncivil comment made by a party representative on social media and tests whether it can lead to a change in observers' attitude toward the party.

Data are collected from 196 respondents using a scenario-based survey. Proposed model is tested using partial least square structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM).

It is found that individual's moral identity and issue involvement influence perceived civility of the online post, which in turn affects attitude toward the party as well as the individual. It is observed that for high partisans, effect of perceived civility on attitude toward the party is stronger compared to low partisans. Party's lack of responsiveness to address the uncivil comment from its representative increases party's incivility accountability and lowers the partisan attitude toward the party.

The study presents a novel understanding of how political party representatives can influence the image of the party by engaging in an uncivil discourse on social media. Results support that strong partisan would react more unfavorably indicating that loyalty toward the party cannot be taken for granted.

The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/OIR-03-2020-0084

This study examined how likeminded Facebook comments with incivility and without supporting evidence influence readers' evaluations of the commenter and online political participation intention. This study also investigated whether the indirect effect of exposure to uncivil comments and comments without evidence on online political participation through evaluations of the commenters is contingent on the strength of partisanship.

The study used a 2 (uncivil comments vs civil comments) × 2 (comments without supporting evidence vs comments with supporting evidence) factorial design with a scenario about reading similar viewpoints about the gun control issue in Facebook comments.

The results showed that compared to exposure to civil agreeing comments, exposure to uncivil likeminded comments resulted in higher levels of negative evaluations of the commenters, which in turn decreased willingness to participate in political activities online. Exposure to comments without evidence led to more negative evaluations of the commenters, but it did not significantly influence online political participation. In addition, the strength of partisanship did not significantly moderate the indirect effect of exposure to uncivil comments and comments without evidence on online political participation through evaluations of the commenters.

Although previous studies have demonstrated the significant effects of incivility and reasoned argument, little is known about whether and how people evaluate ingroup members' comments that are uncivil and lacking reasoned arguments. Most of these studies have examined incivility in political contexts, but few have extended the context to the effect of likeminded comments, especially when the comments are uncivil and lack supporting evidence. The current study aims to fill this gap in the literature.

The purpose of this paper is to provide teachers with research and methodological findings for planning, facilitating and assessing classroom discussions around difficult, political issues.

This paper focuses on navigating political polarization in classroom discussions. The research supported three teaching interns in developing classroom cultures where such discussions could and did happen.

Findings include the importance of having difficult discussions, the methods for doing so successfully and the introduction of a new activity, Daily Independent Listening.

In a climate of heightened partisanship, this research and these teaching examples provide models for all teachers engaging in such important work.

National surveys reveal that sports fans exhibit greater support for athletes, sports teams and leagues endorsing social justice initiatives compared to the general population, highlighting the potential of sports for positive social impact. This study investigates whether such responses are influenced by systematic biases.

Replicating a Nielsen national survey, two experiments explore whether biases affect support for athletes' participation in the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement. The study also examines partisan motivated reasoning as a factor driving sports fans' support for BLM.

While avid fans display stronger endorsement of BLM compared to causal/non-sports fans, evidence suggests that systematic biases distort these responses. When sport identity becomes salient, reported support for the BLM movement becomes inflated.

Researchers often employ self-report surveys to gauge audience perceptions of athlete activism or cause-related initiatives, particularly when assessing their impact. This study's findings indicate that this context is susceptible to SDB.

The study underscores the role of systematic biases in self-report surveys, particularly in socially desirable contexts. People tend to over-report “positive behavior,” leading survey participants to respond more favorably to questions that are socially desirable. Therefore, interpreting survey results with caution becomes essential when the research context is deemed socially (un)desirable. It is crucial for researchers to apply appropriate measures to identify and mitigate systematic response biases. The authors recommend that researchers adopt both procedural and statistical remedies to detect and reduce social desirability biases.

I am the oldest daughter from a family of five girls. I was born in the 1950s and had my first real encounters with feminism as a social movement during the second wave women's liberation movement in the United States in the 1970s. This movement had an important impact on me. Despite the appeal of the women's movement for me, I lived a powerfully gendered life. I had not been allowed to read The Lord of the rings series in school because I was a girl. I detested Barbie dolls and yet was sentenced to hours of play with them if I was to have any social life at all. I had to pretend that I neither liked nor was competent at math and science. My high school boyfriend was paying me a compliment when decades after high school he told me, “At least you never let on that you were smart. I always appreciated that about you.” When I attended the first day of a basic calculus class at a public university in 1981, the professor announced, “No female has ever passed a class with me.” In 1983, I was reprimanded by my elementary school principal for wearing slacks to teach. This was reminiscent of my childhood days when my parents finally, but only, allowed me to wear trousers to school on Fridays. In 1990, my 5-year-old daughter told me, “Well, mom, everyone knows boys are smarter than girls” (of course she has since changed her mind!).

This study aims to examine the role of hope and hate in political leaders’ messages in influencing liberals versus conservatives’ social-distancing behavior during the COVID-19 pandemic. Given the increasing political partisanship across the world today, using the appropriate message framing has important implications for social and public policy.

The authors use two Natural Language Processing (NLP) methods – a pretrained package (HateSonar) and a classifier built to implement our supervised neural network-based model architecture using RoBERTa – to analyze 61,466 tweets by each US state’s governor and two senators with the goal of examining the association between message factors invoking hate and hope and increased or decreased social distancing from March to May 2020. The authors examine individuals’ social-distancing behaviors (the amount of nonessential driving undertaken) using data from 3,047 US counties between March 13 and May 31, 2020, as reported by Google COVID-19 Community Mobility Reports and the New York Times repository of COVID-19 data.

The results show that for conservative state leaders, the use of hate increases nonessential driving of state residents. However, when these leaders use hope in their speech, nonessential driving of state residents decreases. For liberal state leaders, the use of hate displays a directionally different result as compared to their conservative counterparts.

Amid the emergence of new analytic techniques and novel data sources, the findings demonstrate that the use of global positioning systems data and social media analysis can provide valuable and precise insights into individual behavior. They also contribute to the literature on political ideology and emotion by demonstrating the use of specific emotion appeals in targeting specific consumer segments based on their political ideology.

The findings have significant implications for policymakers and public health officials regarding the importance of considering partisanship when developing and implementing public health policies. As partisanship continues to increase, applying the appropriate emotion appeal in messages will become increasingly crucial. The findings can help marketers and policymakers develop more effective social marketing campaigns by tailoring specific appeals given the political identity of the consumer.

Using Neural NLP methods, this study identifies the specific factors linking social media messaging from political leaders and increased compliance with health directives in a partisan population.

Purpose – Although scholars have long been interested in how social movements use mass media to forward their goals, sociological research almost exclusively focuses on the ability of activist groups to get their ideas and organizations in general audience, mainstream media coverage. This paper contributes to a more systematic understanding of media coverage outcomes by broadening the range of outlets considered relevant to political discourse. In addition to mainstream venues, we consider conservative and liberal/left outlets in our analysis of social movement organization media coverage.

Method – Using negative binomial regression, we analyze how organizational characteristics, organizational frames, political elites, and event type affect the rates of social movement organization media coverage in mainstream and partisan news venues.

Findings – We find that the independent variables play very different roles in mainstream and partisan media coverage outcomes. Specifically, while organizational characteristics and frames often enhance the media coverage outcomes of activist groups in mainstream venues, political elites have no effect at all. In contrast, organizational characteristics and frames do not affect social movement media coverage in partisan outlets, whereas political elites and event type do.

Originality of the paper – Conceptually, this research broadens how scholars think about the relationship between social movement groups and mass media as well as the factors that influence media outcomes.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the dynamics and transformative potential associated with counter accounts. It explores how counter-accountants’ attempts to rearticulate animal production result in their own identity becoming constructed during the conflict setting and how this identity subsequently relates to the transformative potential of the counter accounts.

The paper investigates counter accounts released during an animal rights activists’ campaign against industrial meat and dairy production in Finland. The counter accounts, consisting of secretly filmed videos from pig farms, contrasted the official depiction of animal farming and received wide publicity over several years. The main empirical data set consists of 21 interviews with a variety of parties that have a stake in the conflict. This data set is supplemented with a broad set of published documentary material.

The authors find that the counter accounts managed, to some extent, to rearticulate the meaning of animal production, potentially resulting in the emergence of small-scale societal effects. When trying to undermine the counter-accountants’ radical political demand, the dominant social groups not only dismissed the counter accounts but also attempted to constitute the counter-accountants’ identity as irresponsible, militant and negligent, drawing a firm political boundary between “them” and “us.” Likewise, the counter-accountants seemed reluctant to communicate with representatives of the dominant regime, resulting in an antagonistic as opposed to an agonistic relationship between the two political groups. The paper also discusses ethical questions concerning the production of counter accounts, the importance of having a clearly articulated political vision, and the challenges related to evaluating whether the counter accounts have been successful.

The paper provides insights into the design, use and reception of counter accounts in a real-life social setting, thus providing a direct response to a recent call by Thomson et al. (2015). The paper illustrates the usefulness of the conceptual dynamic conflict arena framework presented by Thomson et al. (2015), and makes use of discourse theory (Laclau and Mouffe, 1985; Laclau, 2005, 2001, 1996) to highlight how in exploring the transformative potential of counter accounts it is necessary to also consider how the identity of the counter-accountants becomes constructed and understood. Furthermore, the paper also seeks to advance the connections between accounting research and significant global problems by investigating an ethically and environmentally disputed industry, and by engaging with the interrelationships between accounts and accountability in the context of socio-ecological change.

In recent decades, oxytocin (OT) has been extensively studied across disciplines. Yet, the role of OT has been discussed little in the context of politics. This chapter proposes that studying the role of this hormone can enrich and advance the study of politics. The chapter reviews the previous findings on OT categorized into two sections: one that focuses on the biological mechanisms and therapeutic potentials and another that focuses on the effects on social behaviors. This review is not exhaustive but is intended to bring political scientists up to date with the progress in OT studies. Next, this chapter highlights that studying the role of OT in political context will benefit both the OT and political science literature, since there is currently a great interest in the context-dependent nature of OT. I highlight several research questions that can be answered at this intersection. Rather than waiting for other disciplines to complete unfolding the precise role of OT, students of biopolitics can make important contributions. Political science can further understand the biological underpinnings of concern for others and partisan behaviors, while OT applied to real-world settings would demonstrate how different contexts shape its effects.