Dr. Olga Smirnova conducted a webinar on July 2nd “Social Network Structure of Dark Markets,” via “Zoom,” to about 9 people from the DHS and FBI. The basis for the webinar was published as a white paper “Social Network Structure of Dark Markets: Research Summary,” part of the white paper series for the Criminal Investigations and Network Analysis Center (CINA).
See https://cj.msu.edu/_assets/pdfs/cina/CINA-White_Papers-Smirnova_Social_Network_Brief.pdf
The College of Arts & Science’s Center for Survery Research, which includes the political science department’s Peter Francia (director), Jonathan Morris and Baekwan Park, has had their latest poll tracking opinion regarding the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination picked up by RealClear Politics, the national clearinghouse for political polls. A huge breakthrough!
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2020/president/NorthCarolina.html
CONGRATULATIONS to all involved!
American Political Humor: Masters of Satire and Their Impact on U.S. Policy and Culture, by Jody C Baumgartner
This two-volume set surveys the profound impact of political humor and satire on American culture and politics over the years, paying special attention to the explosion of political humor in today’s wide-ranging and turbulent media environment.
Historically, there has been a tendency to regard political satire and humor as a sideshow to the wider world of American politics—entertaining and sometimes insightful, but ultimately only of modest interest to students and others surveying the trajectory of American politics and culture.
This set documents just how mistaken that assumption is. By examining political humor and satire throughout US history, these volumes not only illustrate how expressions of political satire and humor reflect changes in American attitudes about presidents, parties, and issues but also how satirists, comedians, cartoonists, and filmmakers have helped to shape popular attitudes about landmark historical events, major American institutions and movements, and the nation’s political leaders and cultural giants. Finally, this work examines how today’s brand of political humor may be more influential than ever before in shaping American attitudes about the nation in which we live.
Features
See: https://www.abc-clio.com/ABC-CLIOCorporate/product.aspx?pc=A5370C
Dr. Samantha Mosier presents her research (co-authored with Megan Ruxton), “Trust Issues: U.S. Public Preferences for Entities to Protect the Environment,” at the American Political Science Association Annual Meeting in Washington (Sept 2019).
Abstract: “This paper examines which institutions and entities the U.S. general public trusts to protect the environment. Using data from the Natural Marketing Institute 2016 LOHAS survey, we evaluate which institutions and entities are identified by 1,022 respondents as trustworthy to protect the environment (broadly defined). The results suggest there is not a singular institution or entity that is overwhelmingly trusted by the public to protect the environment. Indeed, a significant portion of the population (25%) trusts no one to protect the environment. Level of education is the most consistent explanatory factor for what influences trust. Higher educational achievement is associated with lower levels of trust. Additional, race and regional location also provide keen insights for variation in trust levels.”
This spring Dr. Jonathan Morris presented a paper titled “More Guns, Fewer Shootings? Public Opinion on Mass Shooting Prevention in America,” at the Annual Meeting of the Western Political Science Association, in San Diego. The paper was co-authored with his brother, David Morris, whose PhD is in sociology.
Abstract: “There is a relative dearth of academic work on the public’s perception of arming school teachers, as most existing studies look at opinion on gun control. The purpose of this study is to investigate public opinion on arming school teachers as a solution to curb mass shootings in America. Our main research question asks: What factors contribute to the belief that arming school teachers will cause a decrease in mass shootings? We also ask: What factors contribute to the overall belief that increasing access to guns among law-abiding citizens will decrease mass shootings in America? Using data survey data collected in June 2018, which was shortly following the mass shootings in Las Vegas and Parkland, we investigate these questions in effort to provide a clearer understanding of the belief that more firearms will ultimately reduce the threats of mass shootings.”
Dr. Peter Francia presented his latest research paper, “The Paranoid Style and the Rise of Fake News in American Politics,” at the 2019 American Political Science Association’s annual conference in Washington, DC.
Abstract: In 1964, historian Richard Hofstadter authored the seminal text, The Paranoid Style in American Politics. Fifty-five years later in an era now littered with “fake news” websites and conspiracy theories that can spread rapidly over the Internet, Hofstadter’s investigation into “the politics of the irrational” warrants revisiting.
In this paper, I draw on the concept of the “paranoid style” originally developed by Hofstadter, but with a quantitative twist. Psychologists Allan Fenigstein and Peter Vanable (1992) developed a now widely used survey instrument to assess paranoid thought. Using data from an original nationwide and demographically representative survey of more than 800 adults that combines the Fenigstein and Vanable paranoia instrument with questions about popular present-day political conspiracies and well-publicized fake news stories, my research asks the question: Is there a relationship between paranoia and one’s willingness to accept or deny established political facts?
Drawing on Hofstadter’s earlier work about the “paranoid style,” I hypothesize that in today’s sometimes confusing information environment, which includes both credible and fake news, paranoia plays a significant role in understanding why some Americans are more susceptible than others to believing misinformation popularized through fake news websites. The results of this research confirm my expectations and raise potentially serious implications for democratic theory, which holds that an informed citizenry is necessary for elections and government to function properly. By examining the theory of the “paranoid style” in today’s modern context, this research offers potentially useful insights into better understanding why some people are better able to differentiate facts from fiction in the political arena. These results have clear and obvious implications for the future of American democracy.
Francia also served as a discussant on the panel, “Budgets and Attitudes Toward Economic Policy,” and as a panelist for the “Author Meets Critics” roundtable, “Who Donates in Campaigns.”
Recently published research from our own Hanna Kassab: “Military Intervention and the Destabilization of Target States” Journal of Studies and Applied Research on Third Sector, vol, 2 no, 2, (2019): 19-35 (with Kaitlyn Rose).
ABSTRACT: This article examines the use of foreign military intervention (FMI) through the international relations theory of liberalism. As intra-state conflict is becoming increasingly transnational in nature, FMI has become a powerful foreign policy tool in the post-Cold War era. Often, the use of military intervention is aimed to promote liberal democracy and humanitarian values. This often requires a dynamic change to the target state’s centralized power structure. In turn, this transfer of power has repeatedly allowed for long-standing power vacuums to emerge. This article uses a qualitative approach when examining the cases of Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and Syria to provide a more encompassing detail of the intended and unintended consequences of FMI, as well as prospects for the future of these nations, all of which have been plagued by civil strife, violence, and human rights violations in recent years.
Congratulations Hanna!
Dr. Jonathan Morris, with Dr. Jody Baumgartner and Robert Lichter, recently published “Negative News and Late-night Comedy about Presidential Candidates” in HUMOR.
Abstract: “In this paper we explore the creation of jokes told on late night talk shows targeted at major party nominees for president from 1992–2008. We hypothesize that the number of jokes told about candidates are related to variations in polling numbers, mainstream media coverage, and party identification of the candidates. Our results show a positive relationship between the number of jokes told at a candidate’s expense and the amount of negative news coverage about the candidate. In addition, we find that Republicans are targeted with more frequency than Democrats. Results suggest that favorability ratings and whether or not a presidential candidate is an incumbent has no effect on the number of jokes targeting a candidate.
See https://www.degruyter.com/view/j/humr.2019.32.issue-4/humor-2018-0067/humor-2018-0067.xml.
Dr. Samantha Mosier has a new article published in Politics in the Life Sciences titled “Policies as species: Viewing and classifying policy from an evolutionary biology perspective.”
“This article proposes equating policies as species to develop a better understanding of how policies emerge, change, and diffuse across policymaking environments. Scholars have long shown an interest in understanding policy change and reinvention, whether incremental or nonincremental. The two subfields of public policy that can answer how and why policies change are not unified, leading to difficulty in comprehensively assessing policy emergence and change. The policy species concept bridges knowledge of the policy process and knowledge in the policy process by creating an operationalized definition of public policy and suggesting a process for classifying policies to observe subsequent behavior. Drawing from the field of biology, the policy species framework outlines how policies possess genotypes and phenotypes, which dictate what a policy is and how it can change. In tracing genotypic and phenetic change over time, policy evolution and change is more easily discernible. In turn, a more precise picture of how policies function is painted.”
See https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/politics-and-the-life-sciences/article/policies-as-species/7BF1B832C6BB839BC3C6FD5C65581288.
The Center for Survey Research issued a survey report for the July 4th holiday entitled, “More Than Money: Happiness in the United States 243 Years After Independence.” The report generated media attention on television, radio, and in several newspapers. I appeared on the radio program, “Talk of the Town,” to discuss the results of the report. I also was a guest on radio with Patrick Johnson of WTEM in July to discuss the CSR’s findings on public opinion in North Carolina towards sports gambling legalization and the legalization of recreational marijuana use.
Below are links to some of the coverage the report received: