Pope John Paul II and Catholic Opinion Toward the Death Penalty and Abortion*

Objective. Research on opinion leadership examines the convergence of opinion between elites and masses on issues of public policy. I examine the confluence of opinion between Pope John Paul II and American Catholics on the death penalty and legalized abortion. Method. I use data from three nationally representative opinion surveys and one statewide survey conducted prior to John Paul's death. Results. The results support the supposition that Catholics who esteemed the pope are more negative in their evaluations of the death penalty and abortion. Conclusions. John Paul II, as leader of the Catholic Church, may have influenced Catholic opinion on political issues.     

Memorable encounters: Ideology,information acquisition,and television news

Many consumers of television news perceive the ideological position held by certain networks as being either consonant with, or dissonant from, their own political beliefs. This raises the question of how the perceived consonance or dissonance of media sources influences the viewer's ability to acquire and recall information. It is possible that being exposed to a consonant media source could lead an individual to pay more attention, whereas the individual would be more inclined to dismiss a dissonant media source. In contrast, however, it is also possible that an individual may pay extra attention to the dissonant media source because it presents a perspective that differs from the one that individual currently holds. Utilizing an experimental research design, I am able to demonstrate that individuals are better able to acquire and recall information presented to them by a media source that they perceive to be ideologically dissonant from their own political position.     

Be Happy Because Your Father Isn't Your Father: An Analysis of Colombian Telenovelas

Critics of mass-mediated culture have long maintained that media such as television, radio, and newspapers are instrumental in propagating class values. In his analysis of Colombian telenovelas, Azriel Bibliowicz argues that this apparently harmless form of entertainment also has a political and ideological base whose implicit messages serve to make its viewers forget reality. Just as Levi Strauss believes that mythsplay a central role in society, Bibliowicz claims that the purpose of myths in telenovelas is to have us lose sight o f the origins of the eristingsocial order and to exonerate the dominant class which controls society's means of production. He gives us an overview of the Colombian television industry, describes how a telenovela is made, and analyzes one-“Manuela”-which contains a social message. Readers will find some interesting similarities and differences between this study of a Colombian popular art form and the articles by Flora and Bonilla de Ramos which focus on the fotonovela and radio in the same country.     

Personal Values and Public Opinion*

Objective. Social science considers values a key motivator of human behavior, yet studies of values in public opinion have tended to focus on more limited political values. I investigate how a general theory of human values ( Schwartz, 1992 ) shapes public opinion. In one dimension, individuals are motivated by a desire for independent thought and action versus conformity to traditional social norms; in the second, individuals are motivated by a desire to care for others versus control or achieve superior social status over them. Methods. Statistical analysis of the European Social Survey, nationally representative surveys in 15 western European nations. Results. Human values are systematically related to a citizen's left‐right self‐identification, displaying appropriate sensitivity to party system context in Scandinavia, and explaining attitudes toward ethnic minority immigration, even when controlling for reasonable alternate explanations. Conclusion. Personal values along these two dimensions of social conflict merit further attention as sources of public opinion.     

The Writing on the Walls: Graffiti as Government Propaganda in Mexico

As pointed out in another article (Flora) contained in this volume, Latin American governments use mass media and popular culture forms to inform the masses and to provide messages which serve as alternatives to those communicated by the “controlled” media. While print and electronic means are effective in reaching large segments of Latin America's urban and rural populations, walls, both public and private, have been utilized as well. As Kenneth Crrieb points out in his article, painting announcements on walls is a common practice in these societies as well as in other nan- Western countries such as the People's Republic of China. Grieb focuses on the phenomenon in Mexico City during the latter protion of Luis Echeverria's presidenc (mid-1970s) when, under his orders, painters decorated walls all over the city with messages proclaiming both political slogans and popular wisdom. Perhaps inspired by his visit to China, Echeverria saw the potential of wall announcements to mobilize the populace to a greater awareness of their social responsibility as Mexican citizens. Grieb lists and comments on several categories of wall announcements which he sees as a mirror of the thoughts of the political leadership as well as an indication of the values it sought to promote.     

Online news diffusion dynamics and public opinion formation: A case study of the controversy over judges’ personal opinion expression on SNS in Korea

On the Internet, the line between news and opinion becomes blurred in terms of content and form. In this sense, the processes of news diffusion on the Internet and online public opinion formation are integrated. This study selects one Korean example about the private tweet of a judge about government social network service (SNS) regulation and analyzes citation networks from one news/opinion to another news/opinion. By relying on social network analysis (SNA) methods, this study examines how news/opinions diffuse and how they interact and influence each other's ideological frame within agencies sharing the same ideology and between agencies whose ideologies contrast. The results show that public discourse on the Internet is clearly polarized and fragmented along political ideological lines. Additionally, the findings show that the winner is the conservative bloc because it succeeds in achieving within-bloc solidarity and ensures the resonance of news frames with the cultural values of Korean society. Implications for these findings in modern democracy are also discussed.     

Framing public policy: The impacts of political sophistication and nature of public policy

This empirical research investigates how political sophistication moderates framing effects on public opinion and attitudes. It explores when framing effects occur and who could be immune to such framing. Experimental results with multivariate analyses indicate that political sophistication enhances or reduces framing effects in shaping public views and stances, subject to the nature of public policy. When a public policy is promoted that is perceived as an easy issue, framing effects are significant for individuals who are less politically sophisticated. Alternatively, when a hard issue is presented, opposite results are observed. Framing effects are insignificant in promoting an ideological issue regardless of a person's political sophistication.     

Support for torture over time: Interrogating the American public about coercive tactics

In this study, we examine what influences public attitudes toward torture and whether the public's attitude affects or is affected by shifts in presidential policy on torture. We employed ten surveys over five years that looked at approval of torture, as well as two surveys that asked questions about specific methods. We find that public support for torture has risen mildly, but a resilient ambivalence best describes the public's attitude. The public was not affected by the change in government from an administration that strongly supported enhanced interrogation techniques to one that opposed them, and labeled them torture. Public opinion also seemed unaffected by the increased criticism of torture generally. Large majorities oppose most specific methods of interrogation, while at times a majority supports torture in general. We also find support for torture and specific methods is affected most strongly by partisanship and ideology.     

The Festival of Progress: The Globalizing World-System and the Transformation of the Caracas Carnival

While the carnival in Latin America functions as a form of popular entertainment, it can also be viewed as having other roles. Robert Lavenda examines the Caracas carnival as an event which is atonce symptomatic of the social reality that surrounds it and able to bring about change within Venezuelan society. As popular culture, the carnival has been an important mediator in directing this society toward the modern capitalist worJd-system. Lavenda traces how, under the leadership o f Antonio Guzman Blanco, Venezuela took a major step in the second half of the nineteenth certury towards becoming a modern country. Under Guzman's and other modernizers' influence the old carnival, which had been characterized as a wild and rowdy small-group activity, was transformed to bring it into line with contemporary European models, that is, a highly organized and closely monitored mass celebration. The author discusses how the new power relationships that had developed in the city were reflected by the composition of the carnival's governing board. By setting up a series of oppositions between the South American and European versions of the carnival, Caracas' ruling elite hoped to orient the masses away from the former values and towards the latter.     

New Ways to Promote Proenvironmental Behavior: The Application of Persuasion Theory to the Development Of Effective Proenvironmental Public Service Announcements

The goal of this article is to provide specific guidelines to help create effective proenvironmental public service announcements (PSAs). Campaigndesigners are encouraged to initially identify and investigate the optimal target audience and then draft and test reactions by samples of that audience using pilot messages. Designers are also advised to consider research on attitude persistence, memory, and social norms and apply this research to the message content and presentation style. The article concludes with an application of research from social psychology to a series of overallguidelines for effective PSAs. If environmental campaign developers follow these specifications, the chance of PSA success should be enhanced.     

Business Mobilization and Public Policy in the U.S. States*

Objective. The goal of this study is to examine how the political mobilization of business interests influences aggregate public policy outputs in the states. We examine the relationship between business mobilization and general state policy liberalism, as well as policy that we term state “business policy climate.” Methods. We construct a measure of the “business policy climate” from a number of tax and regulatory indicators in the states and examine whether business influences it and policy liberalism using ordinary least squares regression. Results. The analysis shows that business mobilization does not influence general policy liberalism but is a significant influence on a state's business policy climate. Specifically, the dominance of a state's campaign finance system by business interests makes policy more favorable toward business. Conclusions. The extent of business mobilization in a state is an important influence on public policy outputs but is constrained by the activities of other political actors such as unions.     

Propagating the New Zealand ideal

From 1829 to the 1860s, Edward Gibbon Wakefield applied domestic ideas of reform to the British Empire and successfully mobilized public opinion in favor of continued British imperial endeavors. Through a widespread dissemination of literature, Wakefield and his New Zealand Company reshaped British imperial ideas. The success of the Company's organized public and political campaign encouraged settlers to travel to New Zealand and mobilized public opinion in favor of the colonization of New Zealand. The Company's renewed propaganda in the mid-1840s saved their own efforts, and also changed the public and political discourse of imperialism. By the late 1840s, newspapers, journals, and Parliamentary Debates were no longer discussing if colonization should occur, but rather what British colonial practice should include.     

Leadership and culture in the Welsh Assembly: investigating path-dependency

This study of the developing Welsh Assembly (WA) provides a unique opportunity to comprehend how the values and public statements of a democratic institution's initial and ongoing leadership develop its structure and culture. We track the evolution of a new democratic institution and investigate relationships between leadership, path-dependency and cultural development. In this paper, Welsh Assembly Member (AM) leadership is analysed in relation to sources of path-dependency in the WA. Two sets of interviews and surveys provide AM perspectives of the Assembly in relation to the evolving leadership capability and institutional culture.     

Links between friends’ behaviors and the emergence of leadership in childhood: A genetically informed study of twins

Using a genetically informed design, this study examined whether children's leadership behavior varied as a function of their reciprocal friends’ behavioral characteristics. Specifically, we tested (a) whether friends’ use of a dual strategy (specifically, indirect aggression with prosocial behavior) was associated with children's leadership behavior and (b) whether, in line with a gene‐environment interaction (GxE), the predictive association between friends’ behaviors and children's leadership behavior varied depending on the child's genetic likelihood for leadership. The sample comprised 239 Monozygotic and same‐sex Dizygotic twin pairs (50% boys) assessed in grade 4 (mean age = 10.4 years, SD = 0.26). Reciprocal friendship and children's and their friends’ prosocial, indirectly aggressive, and physically aggressive behaviors were measured via peer nominations. Children's and friends’ leadership was measured through teacher ratings. Multilevel regression analyses revealed that children's genetic likelihood for leadership was positively associated with their leadership behavior. Moreover, the higher their genetic likelihood for leadership, the more children displayed increased leadership behavior when friends showed a combination of indirect aggression and prosocial behavior (GxE). These results underline the role of friends’ behaviors in explaining children's leadership. Socializing with bistrategic friends seems to foster leadership skills especially in children with a genetic likelihood for leadership.     

Who says what to whom: Why messengers and citizen beliefs matter in social policy framing

Issue frames (i.e., the thematic slants that elites use to structure issue debates) have been shown to alter how citizens think about social policy issues. However, support for a social policy issue not only depends on how the issue is framed, but also on the source or “messenger” associated with the frame. For the most part, issue frames have been faceless and research has failed to consider how characteristics of the frame's messenger such as expertise and trustworthiness influence citizens. The present study examines the influence that gun control frames and their messengers have on a variety of dependent variables. The results show that source cues moderate the impact of the frames, even when controlling for other variables. Specifically, credible sources significantly augment the effects of a frame while spokespersons with a perceived bias tend to weaken the frame's arguments and impact. These results point toward a more complex framing theory: public support for social issues depends on how the issue is framed, as well as who presents the message.     

Habermas's Theological Turn?

Since the turn of the millennium Jürgen Habermas's contributions to social and political theory have been increasingly turning toward matters of religious and theological relevance. This article weighs up the import and coherence of Habermas's recent reflections on religious belief and its relationship to reason and modernity in Western philosophical culture. At the forefront of the analysis stands Habermas's conception of appropriate “limits” and “boundaries” between the domains of knowledge and faith and the possibility and desirability of a process of “discursive translation” of contents of religious language into forms of secularized, universalizing moral argument. The article defends the thesis that Habermas's project of a rapprochement between contents of religious language and norms of scientific thinking founders on its attempt to reconcile too many different, conceptually centrifugal tendencies. However, these difficulties and inconsistencies in Habermas's recent thinking remain instructive and ought to continue to engage the interest of scholars concerned today with the question of how far the philosophy of the social sciences can and cannot accommodate commitments to theism in the practice of research.     

Presentation of Partisanship: Constituency Connections and Partisan Congressional Activity*

Objectives. This article explores how House members relate their involvement in partisan Washington activity to constituency representation. Methods. Building on Fenno's familiar conception of home style, I argue that certain House members have an incentive to develop a partisan home style that emphasizes party activity in Washington. I examine this relationship by studying the extended party leadership (party committees and whip networks), looking for connections between member/constituency characteristics and extended leaders' choices to advertise partisan leadership activity on their official websites. Logit models are used to test for relationships between these variables. Results. Members vary widely in whether and how they communicate their partisan activity, with constituency factors, career stage, and majority party status all affecting the choice. Conclusions. House members make strategic choices about incorporating partisan Washington activity into their home style.     

Differences in Actual and Perceived Online Skills: The Role of Gender*

Objective. The literature on gender and technology use finds that women and men differ significantly in their attitudes toward their technological abilities. Concurrently, existing work on science and math abilities of students suggests that such perceived differences do not always translate into actual disparities. We examine the yet‐neglected area concerning gender differences with respect to Internet‐use ability. In particular, we test how self‐perceived abilities are related to actual abilities and how these may differ by gender. Methods. We use new data on web‐use skill to test empirically whether there are differences in men's and women's abilities to navigate online content. We draw on a diverse sample of adult Internet users to investigate the questions raised. Results. Findings suggest that men and women do not differ greatly in their online abilities. However, we find that women's self‐assessed skill is significantly lower than that of men. Conclusions. Women's lower self‐assessment regarding their web‐use skills may affect significantly the extent of their online behavior and the types of uses to which they put the medium. We discuss the implications of these findings for social inequality.     

Leadership and Listening: The Reception of User Voice in Today's Public Services

Over the last decade leadership has become a watchword in public service provision, especially in its association with the seemingly ubiquitous ‘delivery’ agenda. As leadership styles change in response to developments in the contemporary public service environment, it has become imperative for service providers to find ways to listen to service users. However, listening is itself widely recognized as an underdeveloped public sector competency. This article addresses the relationship between leadership and listening. Using findings from recent research, it identifies a ‘listening gap’ in public services, before pointing to ways in which this gap might be better understood and subsequently narrowed. In doing so, it seeks to present new ideas about the essential balance between ‘leadership’ and ‘listening’, and how this can be struck in today's public service environment. First, the nature of the user voice is examined. By talking to service users who have communicated their views in different ways in each of three different services (housing, social care and leisure), the article seeks to understand the nature of users' ‘projects’ in the expression of their views. These projects are compared with those of public service leaders. Second, the congruence (or incongruence) of these projects is considered through a comparison of the world views of both users and leaders. Finally, aspects of the context are considered in the discussion of the way public service organizations might go about defining the relationship between leadership and listening.     

Trust and health in Eastern Europe: Conceptions of a new society

Little attention has been paid to why trends and levels of mortality and morbidity differ in Eastern Europe and few studies have addressed people's own perceptions of their new political system – perceptions which per se may be important for social development. The aim of the present study was to analyse the extent to which trust and economic circumstances affect self‐rated health in Poland, Estonia and Russia and how much health differences between the countries can be explained by these factors. A better economy and higher trust were related to better individual health, while economic factors seemed most important for inter‐country differences. It is probable that both institutional factors and individual perceptions contribute to people's well‐being, but in terms of social policy, an improved welfare system may be the most effective way forward.