Enemy Images: Emergence, Consequences and Counteraction
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There are many research studies on the functions and background motives underlying belief in conspiracy theories (Douglas et al. 2017) and also the negative consequences of conspiracy theories (Douglas et al. 2015; see also Chapter 2.7 in this volume). However, we so far only have a limited knowledge of the most practical implications of conspiracy theories: How they can be changed, debunked and modified. This chapter tries to systemically overview and summarise the most important research so far concerning the possibilities of changing conspiracy beliefs via targeted interventions.
I do not take it for granted that there is a consensus over the need for interventions. In the beginning of the chapter, we take a look at the epistemological, moral and democratic arguments on whether, and when, we need to use interventions to reduce conspiracy beliefs. Then we briefly overview some psychological obstacles in the way of interventions. In the next section, we propose a matrix as a theoretical framework for categorising the possible interventions and overview the available academic literature as well as some practical experiences concerning efficient ways of reducing conspiracy beliefs. In the final section, we identify a broader avenue for future research.
A core debate in authoritarianism research relates to the stability of authoritarianism, i.e., whether it is a dispositional phenomenon socialized in early childhood or even genetically predisposed, or whether it is impacted by time-sensitive, exterior conditions. Whereas certain individual authoritarian tendencies emerge as a rather stable personality trait, there is also empirical evidence for a dynamic influence of external factors. This review article provides a conceptual multilevel framework for the study of authoritarianism and offers an insight into the state-of-research on socialization and situational influences, with a particular focus on threat. Findings are discussed with regard to key theories of authoritarianism.
One of the most widespread conspiracy theories in contemporary time in Europe is that of Eurabia, the fear of Muslims replacing the Christian population with Islam. The theory is also often named after Renaud Camus’s book from 2011 titled the Le Grand Remplacement (‘The Great Replacement’). Camus argued that European civilisation and identity was at risk of being subsumed by mass migration. This notion of replacement, or white genocide, has echoed throughout the rhetoric of many anti-migrant far-right movements in the West.
Chris Allen (2010) defines Islamophobia as the negative positioning of Islam and Muslims as the ‘other’, posing a threat to ‘us’. The archetypical Muslim in a Western depiction is, indeed, not only portrayed as inferior, but also as being alien. Inhered in the theory is an apocalyptic view of Muslims dominating and destroying the liberal and democratic Europe.
This fear of subversion is, though, only the first part of the full theory. Its completion usually also takes the form of accusing a domestic elite of betraying the good ordinary people into the hands of the external evil. This chapter analyzes the Eurabia theory and maps how mainly populist leaders in Europe have promoted this theory.
Paradoxes of Media and Information Literacy contributes to ongoing conversations about control of knowledge and different ways of knowing. It does so by analysing why media and information literacy (MIL) is proposed as a solution for addressing the current information crisis.
Questioning why MIL is commonly believed to wield such power, the book throws into sharp relief several paradoxes that are built into common understandings of such literacies. Haider and Sundin take the reader on a journey across different fields of practice, research and policymaking, including librarianship, information studies, teaching and journalism, media and communication and the educational sciences. The authors also consider national information policy proposals and the recommendations of NGOs or international bodies, such as UNESCO and the OECD. Showing that MIL plays an active role in contemporary controversies, such as those on climate change or vaccination, Haider and Sundin argue that such controversies challenge existing notions of fact and ignorance, trust and doubt, and our understanding of information access and information control. The book thus argues for the need to unpack and understand the contradictions forming around these notions in relation to MIL, rather than attempting to arrive at a single, comprehensive definition.
Paradoxes of Media and Information Literacy combines careful analytical and conceptual discussions with an in-depth understanding of information practices and of the contemporary information infrastructure. It is essential reading for scholars and students engaged in library and information studies, media and communication, journalism studies and the educational sciences.
Executive summary/Abstract
Background
In the field of terrorism research, the violent radicalisation of individuals towards perpetrating acts of terror has been the subject of academic enquiry for some time. One core focus by social scientists has been the role of narratives in this process. Narratives have the ability to present a socially constructed version of reality which serves the interest of the narrator(s). In the context of terrorism, by depicting violence as a viable antidote to individual vulnerabilities, the narratives purported for propagandistic purposes have the potential to thwart perceptions of instrumentality (a key characteristic of violent radicalisation). In order to prevent this from happening, researchers and counter‐terrorism practitioners have increasingly sought to explore the potential for counter‐narratives; targeted interventions that challenge the rationalisation(s) of violence purported in dominant narratives which, in turn, reconstructs the story. However, there is overwhelming consensus in both government and academic spheres that the concept of the counter‐narrative is underdeveloped and, to date, there has been no synthesis of its effectiveness at targeting violent radicalisation‐related outcomes.
Objectives
The objective of this review was to provide a synthesis of the effectiveness of counter‐narratives in reducing the risk of violent radicalisation.
Search Methods
After a scoping exercise, the literature was identified through four search stages, including key‐word searches of 12 databases, hand searches of reference lists of conceptual papers or books on the topic of counter‐narratives, as well as direct contact with experts and professional agencies in the field.
Selection Criteria
Studies adopting an experimental or quasiexperimental design where at least one of the independent variables involved comparing a counter‐narrative to a control (or comparison exposure) were included in the review.
Data Collection and Analysis
Accounting for duplicates, a total of 2,063 records were identified across two searches. Nineteen studies across 15 publications met the inclusion criteria. These studies were largely of moderate quality and 12 used randomised control trial designs with varying types of controls. The publication years ranged from 2000 to 2018, with the majority of studies published after 2015. The studies represented a range of geographical locations, but the region most heavily represented was North America. In most cases, the dominant narrative(s) “to‐be‐countered” comprised of hostile social constructions of an adversary or “out‐group”. The majority of studies challenged these dominant narratives through the use of stereotype‐challenging, prosocial, or moral “exemplars”. Other techniques included the use of alternative accounts, inoculation and persuasion.
Results
In terms of risk factors for violent radicalisation, there was some disparity on intervention effectiveness. Overall, when pooling all outcomes, the intervention showed a small effect. However, the observed effects varied across different risk factors. Certain approaches (such as counter‐stereotypical exemplars) were effective at targeting realistic threat perceptions, in‐group favouritism and out‐group hostility. However, there was no clear reduction in symbolic threat perceptions or implicit bias. Finally, there was a sparse yet discouraging evidence on the effectiveness of counter‐narrative interventions at targeting primary outcomes related to violent radicalisation, such as intent to act violently.
Authors' Conclusions
The review contributes to existing literature on violent radicalisation‐prevention, highlighting the care and complexity needed to design and evaluate narrative‐based interventions which directly counter existing, dominant narratives. The authors note the challenges of conducting high‐quality research in the area, but nonetheless encourage researchers to strive for experimental rigour within these confines
In this essay, I discuss how the alt-right has brought back into fashion traditional tenets of the reactionary, xenophobic, and often racist far-right, as demonstrated by George Hawley, and how it has managed to make these tenets appear as novel, provocative, and updated to the 21st century U.S. society and digital environment. I argue that to do so, alt-righters relied heavily on the creation, and sometimes reappropriation, of enemy images, with the ultimate goals of provoking outrage, instilling fear and/or hatred towards specific groups, reinforcing a sense of belonging within their own community, or more broadly manipulating collective perceptions and representations, first online then in real life. Indeed, the election of Donald Trump was hailed by the online alt-right as one of their major successes. With the help of irony, subversion, and often carefully engineered propaganda-like messages and images, the alt-right, it boasts, “meme’d into office” the Republican candidate. This paper consequently leads to an analysis of real-life repercussions of such adversarial rhetoric, notably through examples of recent far-right domestic terrorism in the US, and to a reflection on their place in an age of post-truth, fake news, and alternative facts. This contribution focuses on several enemy images. The first is that of the civilizational enemy from the outside, which uses the traditional process of othering. This theme is linked to Trump’s campaign and to his attacks against two major “enemies” of the U.S., namely Hispanics and Muslims. With the alt-right, refugees for example become “rapefugees,” which easily appeals to rampant islamophobia. The second enemy image created by the alt-right consists in its ideological opponents. Here, the function of the enemy image is to discredit opponents and their views (“cuckservative,” “feminazi,” or the sarcastic “Social Justice Warrior”). The third enemy image establishes a link between the first two. It depicts what I would call the “enemy within,” a common thread (or threat) in far-right ideologies. Indeed, cultural Marxism, a widespread conspiracy theory among the alt-right, is what its proponents believe to be the hidden reason for the perceived decline of the Western civilization. According to this worldview, the ideological opponents push a conspiracy against the West and its values. The recurring claims of a liberal bias among the media and academia also belong to this conspiracy theory. It also embraces elements of anti-Semitism, as well as traditional aspects of anti-communism, reminiscent of the historical Red Scares. Such a theory thus provides its believers with a broader narrative, as well as with a common enemy to rally against, and therefore builds a form of intersectionality among various online fringe groups.
This paper intends to demonstrate that the misrepresentation of Native Americans in cinema furthers the logic of differentiation at play in popular culture, focalizing on an irreconcilable enemy image upon which the American self is constructed. The Indian looking glass magnifies America’s lack of self-knowledge. Following Frederic Jackson Turner’s theory of the frontier and the mythologizing of the West at the turn of the 20th century, the Hollywood industry recycled the dual stereotype of the noble Indian and the bloodthirsty savage. This dichotomy deployed through American cinema and literature fits the evolving curve that defines the limits of a cohesive norm and the dominant vision of what the country is, of what it means to be American. As powerful social agents, movies from the period helped shape the way America thought about Native Americans and contributed to a rewriting of History, summoning those fantasized images manufactured by James Fenimore Cooper’s Leatherstocking Tales, dime novels, the paintings of Frederic Remington, Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show, or Thomas Edison’s Kinetoscope. I argue that the disappearance of the positive representation of Indians in the 1910s is part of a wider process of assimilation that legitimizes and reinforces the position of white mainstream society. More specifically, this essay investigates the process through which the Hollywood Indian became a necessary ideological tool supporting the All American Hero and the war effort in both World Wars. King Vidor’s Northwest Passage (1940), a work of implicit propaganda used by the National Education Association, makes the Natives an analogy for the Nazis, thus substituting an enemy image for another. George B. Seitz’s The Vanishing American (1925) is also an emblematic example of the use of a dissolving enemy image. As a biased Darwinism inflected the collective consciousness of what was then thought to be their forthcoming extinction, Native Americans had to merge into the conforming frame of the master race, most effectively through the agency of the Office of Indian Affairs and within Indian boarding schools. The Vanishing American culminates with its main character’s demise: Nophaie’s sacrifice proves the two races can never be mixed, and that if assimilation is to take place, it is only through a whitening process that would lead to the obliteration of the Natives. When Nophaie dies, the moment of his passing is described through a skin color change, his face turning white. While the end of the twenties marked the arrival of synchronized-sound cinema, the Natives lingered “voiceless into the margins”, as a silent mirror image that could not speak, epitomizing what the American self was not (Kilpatrick 1999). To this day, white imagination remains unable to articulate the other’s language and to see beyond these immutable images.
Full article available online in the journal Angles - French Perspectives on the Anglophone World in the volume entitled "Creating the Enemy"
ABSTRACT: In the West, negative stereotypes of Muslims and Islam are not limited to the post-9/11 era, and surface not only in the media and non-fiction but also in literature, fine art, film, and children’s cartoons. This article focuses on depictions following 9/11, specifically on the ways in which the dominant image of the Muslim as ‘enemy’ can be subverted in film through an analysis of Ae Fond Kiss (dir. Ken Loach, 2004). It focuses on questions of identity, and the emergence of what social anthropologists such as Vertovec (1997) label ‘new ethnicities’ (the development of hybrid or syncretic cultural identities). The acknowledgement of new ethnicities can serve to counter facile negative stereotyping and the entrenched bias that sometimes permeate mainstream British media and culture.
FULL TEXT:
https://angles.edel.univ-poitiers.fr/index.php?id=2095
When British soldiers and civilians entered the Allied-occupied Rhineland after the First World War, they were often surprised to discover that the individual Germans they encountered had little in common with the image of the enemy promulgated by British propaganda during the war. While face-to-face encounters with an often disconcertingly friendly civilian population inevitably forced the British to re-evaluate their wartime visions of the enemy, certain negative stereotypes of the German enemy nevertheless persisted in the context of the occupation. Several British commentators even found it necessary to fall back on these stereotypes when trying to explain the friendly attitude of the local population. To some, German friendliness only served to demonstrate the servile disposition of the Germans towards any form of authority; to others, it confirmed the existence of a supposed division in Germany between a liberal, peace-loving and civilized south and west and the “real” enemy, an autocratic, militarist and expansionist Prussia. Moreover, the British self-image in the Rhineland was frequently constructed in opposition to a real or imagined German enemy. The attitude and behaviour of the occupiers was regularly presented as characteristically “British” and measured not only against how the Germans had treated the populations of occupied regions of France and Belgium during the war, but also against how the stereotypical “Hun” would have behaved in the case of a German victory.
According to social identity theory, low self-esteem motivates group members to derogate out-groups, thus achieving positive in-group distinctiveness and boosting self-esteem. According to the Frankfurt School and status politics theorists, low self-esteem motivates collective narcissism (i.e., resentment for insufficient external recognition of the in-group’s importance), which predicts out-group derogation. Empirical support for these propositions has been weak. We revisit them addressing whether (1) low self-esteem predicts out-group derogation via collective narcissism, and (2) this indirect relationship is only observed after partialling out the positive overlap between collective narcissism and in-group satisfaction (i.e., belief that the in-group is of high value and a reason to be proud). Results based on cross-sectional (Study 1, N = 427) and longitudinal (Study 2, N = 853) designs indicated that self-esteem is uniquely, negatively linked to collective narcissism and uniquely, positively linked to in-group satisfaction. Results based on cross-sectional (Study 3, N = 506; Study 4, N = 1059; Study 5, N = 471), longitudinal (Study 6, N = 410), and experimental (Study 7, N = 253) designs corroborated these inferences. Further, they revealed that the positive overlap between collective narcissism and in-group satisfaction obscures the link between self-esteem and out-group derogation.
The notion that individuals adapt their behaviors in ways that are sensitive to the effortfulness of cognitive processing is pervasive in psychology. In the current set of experiments, we provide a test of a cue-utilization account of how individuals decide which course of action is more or less effortful. In particular, we contrast the
influences of time costs and demands on executive control with the influence of an available effort cue. Using a variant of the demand selection task (DST) that specifically focused on making effort-based decisions, we provide evidence that effort-based decisions can be dissociated from both time costs and demands on executive control in a manner predicted by a cue-utilization account.
What fuels radicalization? Is de-radicalization a possibility? The Three Pillars of Radicalization: Needs, Narratives, and Networks addresses these crucial questions by identifying the three major determinants of radicalization that progresses into violent extremism. The first determinant is the need: individuals’ universal desire for personal significance. The second determinant is narrative, which guides members in their “quest for significance.” The third determinant is the network, or membership in one’s group that validates the collective narrative and dispenses rewards like respect and veneration to members who implement it.
In this book, Arie W. Kruglanski, Jocelyn J. Bélanger, and Rohan Gunaratna present a new model of radicalization that takes into account factors that activate the individual’s quest for significance. Synthesizing varied empirical evidence, this volume reinterprets prior theories of radicalization and examines major issues in deradicalization and recidivism, which will only become more relevant as communities continue to negotiate the threat of extremism.
Epistemic trust (ET) describes the willingness to accept new information from another person as trustworthy, generalizable, and relevant. It has been recently proposed that a pervasive failure to establish epistemic trust may underpin personality disorders. Although the introduction of the concept of ET has been inspiring to clinicians and is already impacting the field, the idea that there may be individual differences in ET has yet to be operationalized and tested empirically. This report illustrates the development of an Epistemic trust assessment and describes the protocol for its validation. The sample will include 60 university students. The Trier Social Stress Test for Groups will be administered to induce a state of uncertainty and stress, thereby increasing the relevance of information for the participants. The experiment will entail asking information from the participants about their performance and internal states during a simulated employment interview, and then tracking how participants are able to revise their own judgments about themselves in light of the feedback coming from an expert committee. To control for social desirability and personality disorder traits, the short scale for social desirability (Kurzskala Soziale Erwünschtheit-Gamma) and the Inventory of Personality Organization are utilized. After the procedure, the participants will complete an app-based Epistemic trust questionnaire (ETQ) app. Confirmatory Factor Analysis will be utilized to investigate the structure and dimensionality of the ETQ, and ANOVAs will be used to investigate mean differences within and between persons for ET scores by item category. This study operationalizes a newly developed ET paradigm and provides a framework for the investigation of the theoretical assumptions about the connection of ET and personality functioning.
Propaganda is changing in a Digital Age. What once was a top-down effort to the masses has through the internet become a participatory affair. As people increasingly “plug-in” to online services, a wealth of personal data aggregated by internet giants facilitates the creation and distribution of tailored provocative messaging, which savvy propagandists then push through online communities to unsuspecting target audiences who help spread persuasive content further. In this dynamic information environment, audiences are no longer passive consumers of persuasive content. Instead, they are active agents who participate in its creation, spread and amplification, inadvertently furthering the agenda of propagandists whose messaging resonates with their world view. Propagandists achieve this through behavioural advertising, manipulating internet algorithms, targeting and provoking online echo chambers and communities, and winning traditional media coverage. Often such efforts blur the lines between what is real and what isn’t, when staged activities are obfuscated through astroturfing or botnet amplification to look like an authentic engagement by ordinary users. These methods, alongside the pervasiveness of modern communications in our lives, create ample opportunities for skilled propagandists to set agendas for and influence national political dynamics or policy choices. This chapter explores the emergence of participatory propaganda, drawing from a model first identified during the US 2016 presidential election and subsequently found in online political activity in the UK and Canada using social network and content analysis.
Stereotype research emphasizes systematic processes over seemingly arbitrary contents, but content also may prove systematic. On the basis of stereotypes' intergroup functions, the stereotype content model hypothesizes that (a) 2 primary dimensions are competence and warmth, (b) frequent mixed clusters combine high warmth with low competence (paternalistic) or high competence with low warmth (envious), and (c) distinct emotions (pity, envy, admiration, contempt) differentiate the 4 competence-warmth combinations. Stereotypically, (d) status predicts high competence, and competition predicts low warmth. Nine varied samples rated gender, ethnicity, race, class, age, and disability out-groups. Contrary to antipathy models, 2 dimensions mattered, and many stereotypes were mixed, either pitying (low competence, high warmth subordinates) or envying (high competence, low warmth competitors). Stereotypically, status predicted competence, and competition predicted low warmth.
Table of Contents, Introduction, and Bibliography of Levinas, Adorno, and the Ethics of the Material Other (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2020)
Background
Recent studies have shown that the opposite of Relative Deprivation, Relative Gratification (RG), also leads to negative intergroup attitudes. In previous investigations, RG was manipulated in terms of positive economic expectations.
Aims
The aim of the present research was to examine whether the effect of RG is limited to an economic dimension or if it reflects a more general process that is observable in different domains of comparison. In the first experiment, we choose to gratify – or not – psychology students on a new dimension with an important social value: their intellectual abilities.
Conclusion
As expected, participants of the RG condition expressed a significantly higher level of prejudice towards low status outgroups than participants of the control group. In the second study, we found support for a model in which ethnic identification and group-based dominance mediated the relationship between intelligence based RG and prejudice toward low status ethnic outgroups.
Steiner and Lundberg examine how Israeli Messianic leaders articulate the hope for peace in the Middle East. More specifically, they draw attention to how Messianic leaders understand the Middle Eastern conflicts and whether this understanding could be considered as radical. All of the informants underline the complexity of the conflicts and most of them tend to emphasize their permanence. The informants are pessimists regarding the conflict, half of them describe it in fatalist terms. This colours their hope for peace; they expect an escalation of the Middle Eastern conflicts, even the apocalypse. And lastly, the informants prefer a one-state solution. In comparison to the Israeli political mainstream, like Likud, the Messianic movement is not necessarily radical.
In the aftermath of the Norwegian terror attacks of 22 July 2011, the question of agency with regard to the convicted perpetrator, Anders Behring Breivik, has frequently been discussed. Did he really act on his own? Were his actions self-directed? Was he, as a typical ‘lone wolf’, inspired by the prevalent far-right concept of ‘leaderless resistance’ or, simply, a blind tool, a string puppet pushed and pulled by dark forces, as some commentators have claimed? His cut-and-paste manifesto points to inspiration from ideas circulating in the European Counter Jihad Movement (ECJM), in itself a contradictory mix of ideological positions. A number of these ideas were given new life when the so-called ‘populist right-wing movement of indignation’, the Patriotische Europäer Gegen die Islamisierung des Abendlandes (PEGIDA) took to the streets of Dresden in the autumn of 2014. The driving force behind PEGIDA, Lutz Bachmann, with a past as petty criminal and doorman, is an unlikely front man for one of the most successful political initiatives in post-unification Germany. Comparing Breivik and PEGIDA, Önnerfors argues that the ECJM is part of the ‘third generation’ of right-wing discourse that is without a consistent world view, dominant leaders and prolific ideologues. Instead, in a new atmosphere of ‘politics of passion’ and ‘post-politics’, fuzzy ECJM ideology turns into a screen upon which diffuse uneasiness with current political affairs can be projected and channelled. Outside the scope of Önnerfors's article but worth noting is the considerable impact these developments have had on electoral support for right-wing populist parties such as the Front National in France, the Alternative für Deutschland in Germany and the Sverigedemokraterna in Sweden.
A truly international, authoritative A–Z guide to five centuries of propaganda, in both wartime and peacetime, which covers key moments, techniques, concepts, and some of the most influential propagandists in history.
This fascinating survey provides a comprehensive introduction to propaganda, its changing nature, its practitioners, and its impact on the past five centuries of world history. Written by leading experts, it covers the masters of the art from Joseph Goebbels to Mohandas Gandhi and examines enormously influential works of persuasion such asUncle Tom's Cabin, techniques such as films and posters, and key concepts like black propaganda and brainwashing.
Case studies reveal the role of mass persuasion during the Reformation, and wars throughout history. Regional studies cover propaganda superpowers, such as Russia, China, and the United States, as well as little-known propaganda campaigns in Southeast Asia, Ireland, and Scandinavia. The book traces the evolution of propaganda from the era of printed handbills to computer fakery, and profiles such brilliant practitioners of the art as Third Reich film director Leni Riefenstahl and 19th-century cartoonist Thomas Nast, whose works helped to bring the notorious Boss Tweed to justice.
The scope of cyberspace weapons is expanding from the physical network domain to the cognitive information domain. Technologies such as network penetration, public opinion guidance and attacks, cognitive intervention and control will become the main development directions. Controlling public opinion and controlling audiences will become the cyberspace cognitive domain. In recent years, emerging network media such as social networks and mobile communication networks have played an important organizational and planning role in a series of significant events, which are likely to cause severe threats to national security and even the international community’s stability. We analyzed and clarified social network actors, environment, scene, manipulation and ethical framework. We conclude that social public opinion weapons are mainly divided into six categories: Bot, Botnet, Troll, Manipulate real people and events, Cyborg, and Hacked or stolen. Since social network warfare is a brand new war situation in the context of great powers, in social media, the confrontation of camps can be observed. States use social media platforms to penetrate and media war, and its Internet space monitor and build defenses. A digital wall has been placed horizontally on the boundary of the virtual space. In recent years, as the trend towards weaponization of social media has become increasingly apparent, military powers such as the United Kingdom, the United States, and Russia have taken the initiative to take the lead in the field of social media. All countries continue to strengthen the research on fundamental cognitive theories. Many basic research projects that integrate information, biology, network, and cognition have been launched one after another. The combat practice shows that the effectiveness of social media even exceeds some traditional combat methods. With the prominent role of social media in modern warfare, its combat use has become increasingly widespread and has gradually become a force multiplier in modern warfare. At present, the deployment of weapons directed by social network users in significant countries is mainly focused on incident and public opinion reconnaissance, sentiment analysis, and active intervention. Our research enumerates the social weapon component model and software architecture. In short, all countries are using social media to spread political propaganda and influence the digital information ecosystem. This article enhances our understanding and development trend of public opinion wars in the social network, and proposes an architecture system for the social weapon arsenal. The technical means, scale, scope, and precision of social media weapons have been continuously improved. It is gaining momentum to reshape the cyberspace security pattern of various countries fundamentally.
Leon Festinger was born in Brooklyn, New York, on 8 May 1919 to Russian-Jewish immigrants, Alex Festinger and Sara Solomon Festinger. Leon’s father, an embroidery manufacturer, had left Russia an atheist and a radical, and he remained faithful to these convictions throughout his life. In his youth, Leon attended Boys’ High School, in Brooklyn. A number of authors have penned comprehensive biographies of his early life. Among the best are those written by his colleagues Jack W. Brehm and George A. Milite (see Brehm 1998, Milite 2001, both cited under Legacy).
Cambridge Core - International Relations and International Organisations - Weaponized Words - by Kurt Braddock
Purpose
While online reviews are of paramount importance in brand evaluations and purchase decisions, the impact of a reviewer’s attractiveness is not well understood. To bridge that gap, this paper aims to explore how physical attractiveness cues through profile photos influence customers’ brand evaluations.
Design/methodology/approach
The first study assesses the impact of attractiveness and review valence on brand evaluations. The authors used an experimental design and tested the model with an ANCOVA. Study 2 examines the impact of attractiveness in the context of multiple reviews and tests attractiveness heuristic as the underlying mechanism.
Findings
The findings indicate that when an attractive (vs less-attractive) reviewer writes a positive review, brand evaluations are enhanced. However, such an effect does not occur with a negative review. With multiple reviews varying in valence, cognitive load activates the use of an attractiveness heuristic when a positive review is written by an attractive (vs less-attractive) reviewer, thus leading to enhanced brand evaluations.
Originality/value
These findings highlight the presence of the attractiveness halo effect in online reviews and offer important implications to social media marketers. While previous studies have largely focused on review characteristics (e.g. star ratings, strength of the argument, etc.), this study focuses on reviewer characteristics (i.e. attractiveness) and cognitive biases associated with online brand evaluations.
In light of current efforts at addressing the dangers of fake news, this article will revisit the international law relevant to the phenomenon - in particular, the prohibition of intervention, the 1936 International Convention on the Use of Broadcasting in the Cause of Peace and the 1953 Convention on the International Right of Correction. It will be argued that important lessons can be learned from the League of Nations' efforts in the interwar period and the United Nations' (UN) activities in the immediate post-World War II era, while taking into account the new challenges that arise from modern communication technology. Taking up the League of Nations' and UN's distinction between false and distorted news, the international legal framework will be tested, in particular, against the coverage of the 2016 'Lisa case' by Russian government-funded media. This coverage is widely considered to be fake news aimed at destabilizing Germany's society and institutions. The article argues that false news can be subject to repressive regulation in a sensible manner. Distorted news, however, will have to be tolerated legally since prohibitions in this regard would be too prone to abuse. A free and pluralist media, complemented by an appropriate governmental information policy, remains the best answer to fake news in all of its forms. Due diligence obligations of fact-checking, transparency and remedies that are effective despite difficulties in attribution, and despite a lack of universal acceptance, could likewise be conducive.
Like many of the 'greats' of social psychology, Muzafer Sherif is frequently cited in the textbooks for his most famous research - on the autokinetic effect, and the Boys' Camp Studies. At the same time, his wider intellectual and political perspective, and his vision of the discipline as a whole, has generally been ignored Recently, however social scientists from across the world have started to pay attention to Sherif's critical contribution to social psychology. Books have been written, symposia organised. So, what was Sherif's wider contribution? And what was the context from which it arose?.
During the Pahlavi period in Iran (1925-79), poor and working-class families were more likely to expect young sons to work to support the household. These boys, in turn, were more autonomous. Middle-class families, on the other hand, protected and controlled boys. Researchers have assumed that religious zealotry was the primary inspiration for boys to enlist in the Iran-Iraq War (1980-88) after the 1979 Islamic Revolution, ignoring the ways in which class inflected boyhood. While religious fervor may have been a motivation for some of the poor and working-class Iranian boys (between ten and fourteen) who enlisted, the expectation that they work took precedence. Moreover, at least some of these boys were eager to participate in war-front masculine homosociality rather than remain in feminized domestic spaces. This study analyzes biographies, census data, newspaper accounts, and original oral history interviews.
In previous theory and research dealing with relative deprivation (RD), the role of relative gratification (RG), the opposite of RD, was relatively overlooked. Two experiments (N = 245) tested the impact of both RD and RG on prejudice toward socially significant outgroups. Experiment 1 manipulated temporal RD and RG by confronting participants to declining (RD) or improving (RG) job opportunities and found no effect of RD on prejudice but reliable effects of RG. Experiment 2 manipulated group RD and RG and found increased levels of generalized prejudice in both conditions while participants in the group RG condition showed, in addition, increased ingroup bias, greater willingness to support and act in favor of restrictive immigration policies, and higher social dominance orientation than the control group. These findings confirm the role of group RD and establish RG as an equally important, if not more central, variable in the psychology of intergroup relations. © 2002 by the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, Inc.
According to the extended contact hypothesis, knowing that in-group members have cross-group friends improves attitudes toward this out-group. This meta-analysis covers the 20 years of research that currently exists on the extended contact hypothesis, and consists of 248 effect sizes from 115 studies. The aggregate relationship between extended contact and intergroup attitudes was r = .25, 95% confidence interval (CI) = [.22, .27], which reduced to r = .17, 95% CI = [.14, .19] after removing direct friendship’s contribution; these results suggest that extended contact’s hypothesized relationship to intergroup attitudes is small-to-medium and exists independently of direct friendship. This relationship was larger when extended contact was perceived versus actual, highlighting the importance of perception in extended contact. Current results on extended contact mostly resembled their direct friendship counterparts, suggesting similarity between these contact types. These unique insights about extended contact and its relationship with direct friendship should enrich and spur growth within this literature.
Lies spread faster than the truth
There is worldwide concern over false news and the possibility that it can influence political, economic, and social well-being. To understand how false news spreads, Vosoughi et al. used a data set of rumor cascades on Twitter from 2006 to 2017. About 126,000 rumors were spread by ∼3 million people. False news reached more people than the truth; the top 1% of false news cascades diffused to between 1000 and 100,000 people, whereas the truth rarely diffused to more than 1000 people. Falsehood also diffused faster than the truth. The degree of novelty and the emotional reactions of recipients may be responsible for the differences observed.
Science , this issue p. 1146
The Dynamics of Persuasion has been a staple resource for teaching persuasion for nearly two decades. Author Richard M. Perloff speaks to students in a style that is engaging and informational, explaining key theories and research as well as providing timely and relevant examples. The companion website includes materials for both students and instructors, expanding the pedagogical utilities and facilitating adoptions. The sixth edition includes: • updated theoretical and applied research in a variety of areas, including framing, inoculation, and self-affirmation; • new studies of health campaigns; • expanded coverage of social media marketing; • enhanced discussion of the Elaboration Likelihood Model in light of continued research and new applications to everyday persuasion. The fundamentals of the book - emphasis on theory, clear-cut explanation of findings, in-depth discussion of persuasion processes and effects, and easy-to-follow real-world applications - continue in the sixth edition.
Throughout history, both military and commercial entities around the world have utilized these methods, and even since the formalization of psychological operations during WW2 our methods have improved greatly, but we are still only touching the ‘tip of the iceberg’, so to speak, of what is truly possible.