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This document is a collection of abstracts from articles published in the journal International Affairs. The articles cover a range of topics related to the impact of smartphones and digital connectivity on global crises. Some of the topics include information warfare in eastern Congo, the role of smartphones in shaping political dynamics in Mali, and the use of digital platforms in the Somali Horn of Africa. The articles provide insights into the ways in which smartphones and digital technologies are shaping various aspects of global affairs. Additionally, the document includes policy paper executive summaries on topics such as the failures of western foreign policy and the potential of circular economy solutions for European Union strategic autonomy. These summaries offer a brief overview of each paper's main arguments and findings, providing library patrons with a starting point for further exploration of these topics. [Extracted from the article]

The aim of this paper is to defend moral relativism from the accusation that it would make it irrational to classify past changes in public opinion as instances of moral progress, for they would constitute an improvement only from our current point of view. The argument is this. For our assessment of a change in public opinion as an instance of moral progress to be rational, we need to take the moral claims made before the change to be false simpliciter while being open to the possibility that we ourselves change our minds at some point. These two things can be made compatible if we construe moral relativism as taking the truth of moral claims to be relative to the context of assessment. Thus understood, moral relativism is in fact the only view that makes room for talk of moral progress, as the rest of candidate positions make it irrational. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Public views on international organizations (IOs) have become a matter of central concern. While actors in world politics increasingly try to legitimize or delegitimize IOs, scholars have begun investigating such phenomena systematically. This paper provides the most comprehensive IO (de)legitimation study to date. Building on cueing theory, and considering input as well as output legitimacy, I examine the isolated and combined effects of delegitimation and self-legitimation on public perceptions of IOs. I concentrate on government criticism and citizen protests as two salient practices of delegitimation. In investigating self-legitimation, I focus on IOs' public statements and institutional reforms. I study public opinion on the UN, World Bank, and WHO, as IOs of different functional scopes and levels of salience. In 2021, I conducted survey experiments on more than 32,000 citizens in ten countries worldwide (Australia, Canada, Colombia, Egypt, France, Hungary, Indonesia, Kenya, South Korea, and Turkey) – weighted by age, gender, region, and education. My main findings are: Delegitimation by governments and citizen protests has some limited effectiveness, depending on the IO in question. While IO self-legitimization statements and reforms in themselves do not boost public support for IOs, they are generally effective at neutralizing delegitimation attempts by governments and citizen protests. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We report on the results of a survey we conducted on the Japanese public's attitudes toward astronomy. This survey was conducted via an online questionnaire, with 2000 responses received. Based on these data, we present what kind of interest the general public in Japan has in astronomy. We also conducted a questionnaire survey of those involved in communicating astronomy to the public, in order to examine how they differ from the general public. The results suggest that while there are clear differences between these groups in terms of their engagement in astronomy, there is also continuity between them when looking at their attributes in more detail. The data presented in this paper could help us to promote the communication of astronomy to the public. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The International Journal of Public Opinion Research has published a brief about the activities of the World Association for Public Opinion Research (WAPOR) and its members. The 76th WAPOR conference was held in Salzburg, Austria, with 306 participants from 63 countries. The conference featured workshops, panels, and keynote addresses on topics such as artificial intelligence, COVID and public opinion research, and sentiment and conspiracy. WAPOR also announced the election of new officers, awarded prizes for outstanding papers, released a report on the freedom to publish opinion polls, updated its constitution, and announced the 77th annual conference in Seoul, South Korea. Additionally, WAPOR conducted webinars on surveying hard-to-reach populations, gridded population sampling, and data visualization. [Extracted from the article]