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Focusing on the commemoration of the massacre of prisoners in Tartu (Estonia) by communists in January 1919, this article examines the contentious use of massacre narratives by nationalist actors in the emerging Estonian nation-state. One of the victims, Bishop Platon (Kulbusch), the first Estonian to become an Orthodox prelate, became a figure of symbolic importance in Estonia and beyond. The article analyzes the emergence of the cult of the martyr-bishop in interwar Estonia and the involvement of church and secular actors in the process of martyr making. It argues that commemoration of the massacre and Platon's martyrdom had political implications, mobilizing anti-Bolshevik public opinion in the West and allowing the Orthodox Church in Estonia to present itself as an active agent in the making of the Estonian nation-state. Keywords: martyrdom; massacre narratives; nationalism; commemoration; saints; post-secular memory; communism; Orthodox Church, INTRODUCTION Every year since the mid-1990s, the representatives of the two churches in Estonia, the Estonian Apostolic Orthodox Church and the Estonian Evangelical Lutheran Church, have solemnly proceeded on January [...]

I investigate how the direct investment of foreign firms in the United States affects public opinion on immigration. On one hand, when foreign firms invest in the United States, local residents may have job opportunities and a better understanding of foreign cultures following social and work-related interactions with foreign employees at multinationals. As a result, American workers may have a positive attitude toward immigration. On the other hand, when local residents see foreign investment as a foreign acquisition of American assets, or if they experience any unpleasant interactions with foreign nationals at multinationals, foreign investment may result in a negative impact on public perception on immigration. My empirical test of inward investment's impact on public opinion demonstrates the aforementioned contrasting impacts: While more local employees working at foreign multinationals lead to positive sentiments on immigration, the existence of more local affiliates of foreign firms has a negative impact on public opinion of immigration. Keywords: Immigration, Attitudes, Foreign Direct Investment, Inward Investment, Empirical Test, Multinational Corporations, United States, Public Opinion, Employment in Foreign Multinational Corporations, Perceptions of Immigrants. Investigo cómo la inversión de las compañías extranjeras en los EE. UU. afecta la opinión pública acerca de la inmigración. Por un lado, cuando las compañías extranjeras invierten en los Estados Unidos, los residentes podrían tener oportunidades de empleo y una mejor comprensión de las culturas extranjeras después de tener interacciones sociales y laborales con empleados extranjeros en las multinacionales. Como resultado, los trabajadores estadounidenses podrían tener una actitud positiva ante el tema de la inmigración. Por otro lado, cuando los residentes ven la inversión extranjera como una adquisición de bienes estadounidenses, o si tienen interacciones negativas con personas de otros países en las multinacionales, la inversión extranjera podría tener un impacto negativo sobre la percepción del público de la inmigración. Mi examen empírico del impacto de la inversión interna sobre la opinión pública demuestra los impactos contrastantes anteriormente mencionados: a pesar del hecho de que más empleados locales en las multinacionales signifique opiniones más positivas de la inmigración, la existencia de más afiliados locales de compañías extranjeras tiene un impacto negativo en la opinión de la inmigración. Palabras clave: Inmigración, actitudes, inversión extranjera directa, corporaciones multinacionales, opinión pública, empleo en corporaciones multinacionales extranjeras. [phrase omitted] [phrase omitted], Since the late 1980s and the early 1990s, cross-border capital flows have increased substantively due to liberalizing capital controls in both developed and developing economies. In the same period, the [...]

Environmental communication is highlighted more in our everyday lives. From the Clean Power Plan, unveiled by Obama at the Climate Change Summit of Paris 2015, to Trump appointed as Climate Sceptic to the Marrakech Summit 2016, environmental communication is prevalent today. The presence of this issue in the political agenda, calls upon the attention of the media (traditional and social media). This paper shows how influential the Forth Power of a State is in the public opinion, how the State contributes to shaping it, and in which way it is possible to determine a certain social behavior. The paper focuses on European and Asian point of view and is based on the results obtained through the following two methods: a content analysis of the European Media news regarding the Climate Change during the one-year period of 2016 and a quantitative analysis of the questionnaires distributed in two different countries (Romania and China). The main research question that is presented in this paper is: How does the media deal with the environmental communication? Therefore, three main themes are explored. First, the way the media communicates with the public. Second, the length of time media has given to this issue. Third, the effect of the communication process on the European and Asian public opinion. The results demonstrated that there is a major need for the media to give space and importance to the environmental communication, and to regard carefully the way in which they do it. Due to the method of communication, this results in a major consequence of why the public opinion has shown to have almost a negative-neutral attitude regarding this issue. The media, as the mediator between the State and the public, regarding such an issue, failed. Therefore, it is relevant for the two Governments, institutions, such as European Union and NGOs, to know why the public opinion does not react and act, regarding this issue, in the way they expect. Keywords: environmental communication, Chinese media, Romanian media, Introduction Nowadays we are witnessing the shift of the public's interest towards the environment. It is a huge change, given the fact that we are living under the agenda of [...]

Do superdelegates heed public opinion in deciding whom to support in nomination contests or do they follow their own conscience? We examine both individual and environmental factors peculiar to superdelegate decision making to ascertain whether and how they integrate populist considerations into their nomination choices. Via a survey of superdelegates in the 2008 presidential nomination contest, we analyze both the timing of a superdelegate's decision as well as any change in their candidate preference. Superdelegates who prioritize constituent concerns endorse earlier but are no more or less likely to switch their candidate preference during the campaign. Keywords: superdelegates, elite behavior, public opinion, party nominations, The past several decades of elite study have informed researchers that elected officials strive to maintain proximate distance to the policy preferences of their constituents (e.g., Miller and Stokes 1963; [...]

Despite their responsibility for federal policy implementation in the United, States, little research has focused on how presidential nominees and appointees affect public opinion. This study offers the first systematic examination of this overlooked phenomenon. Using a survey with an embedded experimental manipulation, we find that perceived nominee competence is associated with increased trust in government in general, whereas perceptions of favoritism or patronage--characterized here as the nomination of campaign fundraisers--are associated with decreased levels of trust in the same. Notably, perceived nominee ideology has no perceptible effect on trust in government. Keywords: presidency, appointments, trust, public opinion, MTurk, survey experiments, experiments, online experiments, Introduction In recent years, presidential elections in the United States have been followed by near-rampant media speculation over which influential donors, advisors, partisans, and other individuals from the campaign the [...]

Abstract During recent party congresses in China and Vietnam, two highly anticipated candidates for promotion were sidelined. In China, Bo Xilai was arrested for corruption and stripped of his party [...]

This paper examines a series of texts produced in the immediate aftermath of the executions of a highly controversial Ming general Mao Wenlong (1576-1629). Considered representative works of a unique genre, 'shishi xiaoshuo' (novels on current events), these works were written and published at a remarkable speed and are characterized by a distinctive nature of generic hybridity as well as a strong urge for political intervention. This article discusses the sociopolitical implications of shishi xiaoshuo by examining how such works sought to participate in contemporary debates about controversial political figures or events and, ultimately, shape public opinion on them. In addition, it also demonstrates the interplay between fictional writings on contemporary issues and commercial publishing. By examining the textual features of the various works on Mao Wenlong and the intertextual relationships between them, and by situating them in one of the most complicated periods in Chinese history, this article explores the practice of fiction writing on contemporary events and its interplay with the sociopolitical environment in the early seventeenth century., The consecutive executions of two important Ming (1368-1644) generals involved in the empire's warfare with the Manchus in the Liaodong region (east of the Liao River), Mao Wenlong (1576-1629) and [...]

The tendency of well-developed research fields to overtill is well known; a corresponding challenge is the tendency to misunderstand or misapply that research by scholars plowing different plots. The mistaken or incomplete interpretation of research on the public presidency presents a particularly egregious case of poor harvesting. Although political observers and scholars outside the public presidency field project 'going public' as a highly influential weapon, scholars in the field converge on modest expectations in which presidential promotions have limited, selective, and conditional effects. This pattern is illustrated through content analyses of Barack Obama's speeches and the media's coverage of them. The findings correspond with the expectations of the public presidency field: Obama conducted extensive public promotions of his signature legislative accomplishment health reform--and his efforts failed to move media coverage, public opinion, or the legislative process. As research on the public presidency expands its scope and reach, there is a growing opportunity to correct its misapplications and, more positively, to build an unusually diverse research community that spans political theory and the social sciences., Doug Arnold (1982) distinguished between 'overtilled' and 'undertilled' areas of research in American politics. His purpose was to encourage a reallocation of scholarly labor from extensively studied areas with low [...]

We study a tractable opinion dynamics model that generates long-run disagreements and persistent opinion fluctuations. Our model involves an inhomogeneous stochastic gossip process of continuous opinion dynamics in a society [...]

Public opinion matters in environmental policy making. This study examines how individuals form opinions on three distinct environmental topics--climate change, the importance of environmental protection relative to job creation, and wilderness protection. Previous research focusing on environmental concern has yielded conflicting or inconclusive results. We argue that how citizens form attitudes within the environmental domain varies across environmental dimensions and that high information costs cause citizens to engage in heuristic processing to form their opinions. We empirically test our hypothesis by analyzing original data collected from the 2010 Cooperative Congressional Election Survey. We find that with more complex issues, citizens rely on familiar shortcuts such as party identification, ideology, and the media. With less complex issues, demographic factors are predictors ofattitudes, lending support to arguments that citizens use familiar shortcuts when processing political and policy information. Keywords: Environmental Public Opinion, Climate Change, Wilderness Protection, Political Affiliation, Environmental Policy, Heuristics, Information Costs, Environmental Protection, Policy Making. La opinion publica importa al hacer politicas ambientales. Este estudio examina como los individuos forman opiniones sobre tres temas ambientales distintos--cambio climatico, la importancia del cuidado ambiental respecto a la creacion de empleos, y la proteccion de la vida salvaje. Investigaciones pasadas enfocadas en el cuidado ambiental han producido resultados contradictorios o inconclusos. Nosotros argumentamos que la forma en la que los ciudadanos forman posturas dentro del ambito ambiental varia a traves de las distintas dimensiones ambientales y que altos costos de informacion causa que los ciudadanos usen reglas heuristicas para procesar la informacion y formar su opinion. Ponemos a prueba nuestra hipotesis analizando informacion obtenida del 2010 Cooperative Congressional Election Survey. Encontramos que para temas mas complejos los ciudadanos se basan en medios familiares como identification partidaria, ideologia y medios de comunicacion. Para temas menos complejos, los factores demograficos pueden predecir las posturas, dando soporte a argumentos que sostienen que los ciudadanos usan atajos familiares para procesar informacion politica y sobre politicas publicas., Public opinion matters in policy making. Scholarly literature is rife with works demonstrating the integral role public opinion plays in the policy-making process (Canes-Wrone and Shotts 2004; Page and Shapiro [...]

How does age influence public opinion regarding controversial social issues? The issues at stake are: attitudes toward Muslims, Jews, Affirmative Action, immigration, abortion, and gays and lesbians. While we understand the importance of including opinions toward African-Americans among these categories, we found little data on opinions toward this group by age. We also discuss opinions toward Darwin's theory of evolution and stem cell research since they were issues that pitted science against religion in American society and were important topics of intense political discussion. The selection of issues is based on the importance of these issues in public debate and electoral politics. A number of these issues, mainly those related to opinions toward religious and racial groups, reflect the development of American society and draw lines of possible disagreements and social cleavages. Keywords Public opinion * United States * Gender, Our purpose is to draw attention to the important factor of age in shaping public attitudes. We aim to explore issues where age makes a clear difference, issues where it [...]

It is widely believed that Canada's role in the world is inextricably linked to its national identity: to be Canadian, it is thought, is to be a global citizen on [...]

The purpose of this essay is to examine the attitude of politicians and the evolution of public opinion in Quebec following the intense debate around the 'reasonable accommodation' issue. In [...]

The debate over the welfare state in the United States has unfolded in the throes of a very long-running tension between on one hand, a deep-seated belief that charity corrupts [...]

Students of local politics have argued American federalism implies little role for local tastes in policy making. Peterson (1979) anticipates the pursuit of a productive tax base will depress subnational government spending on social services, while promoting developmental policies. We investigate the role public opinion plays in county-level redistributive, developmental, and allocational program spending in California, using a novel measure of county political ideology. Our findings challenge expectations that local governments are uniformly biased against redistribution. We find that social service spending varies across counties as a function of ideological orientation. In several policy areas, institutional structure mediates the responsiveness of officials. Keywords: policy representation; local politics; political ideology; public policy

A contemporary rise in multiracial self-identification provokes a number of questions about the significance that this racial identity may hold for American politics. This research focuses on the political attitudes of multiracial Americans to determine how multiracial identities may influence individual public opinion. I offer a test of three competing theoretical models of multiracial political attitude formation: Classic Assimilation, Minority Trumping, and New Identity Formation. This research finds that, generally, multiracial individuals who self-identify as such develop political opinions that parallel with their minority counterparts. Keywords: racial identity; multiracial; race relations; public opinion

The authors argue in this study that religious beliefs play a significant role in predicting American public opinion on foreign policy issues in the Middle East. Their findings reveal that Evangelical Christians have remained strong supporters of a hawkish foreign policy toward the Middle East, even as overall public support for the Iraq War declines. They also find that Evangelicals are among the strongest supporters of Israel and hold more negative views of Islam than others. These results reinforce the growing importance of the 'faith factor' in public opinion and American politics as a whole. Keywords: Evangelical Christians; foreign policy; Middle East; public opinion; religion

This essay examines changing public opinion on a contentious political topic in the province of Alberta, namely, the two waves of 'welfare reform' initiated by the Conservative government from the mid-1990s onwards. Province-wide public opinion data collected in 1995 and 2004 are compared to determine whether support for government spending on social assistance decreased following a decade of Conservative government preoccupation with deficit/debt reduction, or increased because the deficit had been eliminated, the provincial debt was about to be cleared, and the government began asking how budget surpluses should be managed. We find that support for social assistance increased, substantially, and among all population sub-groups. In fact, even back in 1995, there was surprisingly little support for cuts to welfare spending. The implications of this disconnect between public preferences and government policies for low-income Albertans and other citizens are discussed. Cet essai se penche sur le changement de l'opinion publique sur un sujet politique controverse dans la province de l'Alberta, a savoir, les deux vagues de la << reforme du bien-etre social >> instauree par le gouvernement conservateur a partir du milieu des annees 90. Les donnees de l'opinion publique recueillies a l'echelle de la province en 1995 et en 2004 ont ete comparees en vue de determiner si le soutien financier du gouvernement en matiere d'aide sociale a diminue apres une dizaine d'annees avec au pouvoir, un gouvernement conservateur soucieux de reduire le deficit/dette, ou s'il a augmente en raison de l'elimination du deficit, la dette provinciale etant sur le point d'etre reglee et le gouvernement ayant commence a demander comment gerer les excedents budgetaires. Les auteurs constatent une augmentation considerable de ce soutien a l'aide sociale et ce, parmi tous les sous-groupes de la population. De fait, on constate avec etonnement, que meme en 1995, peu de soutien etait apporte aux reductions des depenses de bien-etre social. Les implications de cette separation entre les preferences publiques et les politiques gouvernementales pour les Albertains a faible revenu, et les autres citoyens, font l'objet d'une discussion.

Inoculation messages employed in past studies have been consistently preventative. Yet, if inoculation strategies are to be used in mass media campaigns, researchers need to know what the effects will be on all audience members--not just those known to support a message sponsor's position. A 3-phase experiment was conducted involving 558 participants. Linear regression analyses identified that initially supportive, neutral, and opposed subjects exposed to the inoculation message reported significantly more positive attitudes toward the study topic of agricultural biotechnology following an attack message than did their respective controls. The inoculation message contributed to significantly increased threat levels among initially neutral and opposed subjects and marginally increased counterarguing output among initially supportive and neutral subjects. Additionally, counterarguing partially mediated final attitudes for inoculated supportive subjects. doi:10.1111/j.1468-2958.2007.00303.x

Introduction Higher education is increasingly becoming an issue for political campaigns and candidates. The 2004 presidential campaign even included a heated exchange regarding the funding of the Pell Grant program [...]

Although trust in government has been declining for all Americans, Black Americans continue to be significantly less trusting than their White counterparts. Scholars have typically relied on the political reality model to explain this gap, arguing that lower trust among Blacks stems from their exclusion from power. Given contemporary gains in Black office holding, we revisit this question in the context of urban politics. Based on a sample of 104 municipalities we find that Black descriptive representation has very limited direct effects on trust, but appears to affect the distribution of policing policies across cities, and that substantive police policies increase Black and White Americans' trust in local police. Overall, our findings extend conventional conceptualizations of substantive benefits while raising questions about the symbolic value of Black political representation. Keywords: minority political incorporation; trust; police policy; urban politics

A critique of William Godwin's political thriller, 'Things As They Are; or, The Adventures of Caleb Williams', aims to determine how the history of public opinion enables an original reading of the text and to establish how it offers a unique perspective on the history of public opinion. Godwin's portrayal of the realm of public opinion sums up certain key developments in its consolidation as an exclusive realm at the end of the 18th century, revealing how the issue of plebeian inclusion in this realm was a defining aspect of its development.

The statistical analysis of the results of an online opinion poll conducted to measure customer satisfaction, based on the study of six different attributes, is presented.

This report analyzes Palestinian opinion surveys over the past decade, tracking the shifting levels of support for Fatah and political Islam according to various indicators (e.g., refugee status, age, gender, occupation, and income level) and linking the shifts to political developments on the ground; the data are organized to highlight the impact of the second intifada. Among the interesting findings is the sharp gender division in support for the two movements, with women constituting the majority of political Islam's support and men dominating support for Fatah. Less surprising is Hamas's growing support in the poorest segment of the population, showing a degree of social 'class' polarization. The author ends with a brief analysis of the results of the 2006 legislative elections in the light of the survey findings.

A study on the public opinions in Russians on economic reforms occurring across the globe is presented. The study focuses on people who do not respond to such surveys or offer no opinions.

Public acceptance is often seen as a key reason why water-recycling technology is (accepted or) rejected. A common assumption is that projects fail because the general public is unable to comprehend specialist information about risk and the belief that if the public were better informed, they would accept change more readily. This article suggests that rhetoric about acceptance is counterproductive in progressing sustainability as it does not address issues relating to institutional arrangements and reinforces a dichotomy between expert and lay groups. Instead, it is argued that institutional change is needed to build opportunities for constructive public engagement. The failure to implement sustainable water use through recycling can be understood as the result of several factors including present cost structures for water, institutional conservatism, administrative fragmentation, and inadequate involvement of communities in planning. Achieving sustainable water use through recycling may require better coordination between agencies and integrated government policies. Keywords: water recycling; institutional approach: risk; public acceptance; community engagement

This study investigates the differential effects of exposure and attention to news and of interpersonal communication on change in public opinion under the condition of one-sided or two-sided information flows. Based on Zaller's theory of public opinion dynamics, for less politically sophisticated individuals, we expected media to influence changes in opinion under the condition of a one-sided message flow. We further expected politically sophisticated individuals to rely more on cues for opinion change stemming from interpersonal communication. The study draws on two-wave panel surveys and media content analyses of television news and national newspapers. The results confirmed our hypotheses and showed media effects for less politically sophisticated individuals under the condition of a one-sided message flow and effects of interpersonal communication for politically sophisticated individuals. Media had no effect under the condition of a two-sided message flow. The study concludes with a discussion of the conditionality of media effects and the moderating role of political sophistication. Keywords: public opinion; John Zaller; media message flow; interpersonal communication; political sophistication

During a 6-month period analyzed in this study, a small number of ideologically like-minded participants dominated a listserve created in a small Midwestern city for discussion of public-policy issues. That dominant group exerted an oligarchy of opinion that led to online discussions about, and raises larger questions about, whether the listserve was achieving its goal of 'creating a community-wide discussion.' This study examines two controversial issues about which the preponderance of opinion expressed online did not reflect the preponderance of opinion expressed in letters to the editor in two newspapers in the same city and, in one case, at the ballot box. Also examined are online conversations about how the dominant opinion on the listserve may have caused some subscribers to participate as 'lurkers' rather than as writers who expressed their opinions online. Note: The best way to show the flavor of the listserve was to quote extensively from messages posted there. Many of those messages contained mechanical and/or grammatical errors. Because the errors were so common, using the traditional 'sic' to cite them would have disrupted the narrative flow of this study and may have been construed as an implicit--and unfairly negative--criticism of the quality of the postings. As such, the messages were quoted verbatim, and 'sic' was not used to identify errors.