Archive for the ‘Politics’ Category
Blews – what the blogosphere tells you about news
In New Media, Politics on March 30, 2008 at 2:22 amWhile typical news-aggregation sites do a good job of clustering news stories according to topic, they leave the reader without information about which stories figure prominently in political discourse. BLEWS uses political blogs to categorize news stories according to their reception in the conservative and liberal blogospheres. It visualizes information about which stories are linked to from conservative and liberal blogs, and it indicates the level of emotional charge in the discussion of the news story or topic at hand in both political camps. BLEWS also offers a “see the view from the other side” functionality, enabling a reader to compare different views on the same story from different sides of the political spectrum. BLEWS achieves this goal by digesting and analyzing a real-time feed of political-blog posts provided by the Live Labs Social Media platform, adding both link analysis and text analysis of the blog posts.
Emotion & Politics
In Article, Emotion, Politics, Psychology on March 17, 2008 at 7:56 pm- Kimberly Gross
Abstract
Those seeking to frame political issues to their advantage recognize the power of emotional appeals. Yet the study of framing has focused mainly on the cognitive effects of framing rather than on its emotional effects. This study presents the results of two experiments designed to explore the effect of episodic and thematic framing on emotional response and policy opinion. Participants were randomly assigned to read a column arguing against mandatory minimum sentencing that employed either a thematic or one of two episodic frames featuring a woman who received a harsh sentence under the policy. Episodic framing was more emotionally engaging. Furthermore, the specific emotions elicited by the episodic frame—sympathy and pity for the woman featured in the column—were associated with increased opposition to mandatory minimum sentencing. Yet the thematic frame was actually more persuasive once this indirect effect of frame on emotional response was taken into account. The results are consistent with the conclusion that framing effects on policy opinion operate through both affective and cognitive channels. The theoretical and practical implications of the study are discussed.
Source: http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1467-9221.2008.00622.x
이은하의 “한반도 대운하” : 정치와 음악의 모호한 경계
In Politics on March 13, 2008 at 1:32 am류동협 | 2008년 3월 11일 |
이은하가 이명박 정부의 대운하 정책을 지지하는 “한반도 대운하”라는 노래를 발표했다. 가수, 탤런트, 개그맨, 성우, 작가 등이 동네방네 예술단이란 이름으로 참여한 옴니버스 음반 “엠 보이스(M VOICE)”에서 이은하는 “한반도 대운하”를 불렀다. 이 노래는 거리의 시인들의 노현태가 가사를 쓰고 직접 랩을 했다.
이 노래는 한반도 대운하를 건설하면 지역 경제와 한국 경제가 살아난다는 이명박 정부의 구호가 그대로 담겨있다. 대운하의 경제적 효과도 불투명하고 한반도 환경 대재앙이 불을 보듯 뻔한 상황을 애써 외면하고 이 노래는 오로지 “경제”만 칭송한다. 하지만 나는 이 글을 통해 이은하 노래에 담긴 허구적 의미를 분석하지 않는다. 노래의 정치적 영향력이나 정치적 의미를 의도적으로 지우려는 이은하가 얼마나 순수하지 않은지 말하고자 한다.
정치적이 아닌 순수한 노래?
이은하 자신은 정치적 의도는 없고 순수한 마음으로 이 노래를 불렀다고 주장했다.
국민의 한 사람이자 개인적으로는 ‘대운하’의 취지도 좋다고 생각해 이 노래를 불렀지만 이를 정치적으로 확대 해석하지 않았으면 한다. 개인적 입장에서 ‘대운하 건설’이 좋다는 소신을 갖고 있지만, 이 노래를 방송 등 여러 무대에서 적극 홍보하지는 않을 것이기 때문이다. 정치적 해석보다는, 가수 입장에서 곡이 좋아 이 노래를 불렀다고 생각해 주시면 고맙겠다.
이은하, <머니투데이 스타뉴스> 2008년 3월 11일
이 노래는 사랑이나 이별을 노래한 이은하의 “밤차” “아리송해” “너를 못잊어”와 분명히 다르다. 대운하의 사회적 영향은 그 규모가 어마어마하다. 대운하로 수많은 문화재도 사라질 운명이고 걷잡을 수 없이 환경이 파괴될 것이다. 대운하 물류수송의 역할도 미미하고 오히려 비경제적이다. 국민의 피같은 세금이 망국적인 토목공사에 허비될 수 있다. 이런 거대한 사회적 파급효과가 있는 대운하 정책에 대해서 그냥 곡이 좋아 노래를 불렀다는 것은 순진하고 무책임한 말이다. 차라리 소신을 갖고 불렀고 그 사회적 책임도 감수하겠다고 말했어야 한다.
사회정치적 의미를 가진 노래는 그냥 곡이 좋은 노래로 들리지 않는다. 음악 감상자는 리듬만 듣는 게 아니라 곡의 가사도 즐긴다. 가사에 분명히 드러난 정치적 의미는 순수한 예술의 영역이 아니라 정치적 영역이다. 노현태에게 그 곡을 받아서 부르는 순간 이은하는 이미 정치적 영역으로 들어온 것이다.
국가 정책으로인해 경제적 이익을 챙기려는 의도나 정치계로 진출한 의도가 없다고 해서 순수한 음악활동이 아니다. 국민들의 삶에 지대한 영향을 미치는 정책을 지지하는 노래를 부르는 것은 충분히 정치적이다. 삶과 관련된 노래는 모두 정치적이다. 정치적인 노래를 부른다고 음악성에 치명적인 손상을 받는 것도 아니니 솔직해지자. 나는 이렇게 정치적인 노래를 부른다고 선언하고 계속 노래부르자. 그리고 반대하는 노래를 부를 사람은 마음대로 불러보라고 하면 어떨까. 정치적 노래가 내 생각과 비슷하면 즐길 수 있고 다르면 자유롭게 비판할 수 있는 문화가 필요하다. 음악이 주제로 삼지 못할 분야는 없다.
정치적 노래를 권장한다
나는 이 노래에 관한 논평을 쓰고 있지만, 내가 바라는 이 노래에 대한 반응은 다른 노래다. 대운하를 반대하는 입장의 가수가 나서서 자신의 생각을 담은 노래를 발표하는 것을 보고 싶다. 대중 음악이라고 사랑 노래만 하라는 법은 없다. 정치적 의미를 담긴 노래도 만들어져서 대중음악이 표현하는 영역이 더 확장되어야 한다.
미국 가수 쉐릴 크로(Sheryl Crow)는 “God Bless This Mess”라는 노래에서 부시 정부의 이라크전을 비판한다. “대통령은 눈물까지 머금은 위로의 말을 했죠. 그리고 그는 우리를 거짓말로 전쟁으로 내몰았어요”
컨트리 가수 딕시 칙(Dixie Chicks)도 콘서트에서 이라크전을 시작한 조지 부시와 같은 텍사스주 출신인 것이 부끄럽다고 부시 대통령을 비난했다가 보수적인 컨트리 방송국에서 방송금지까지 당했다. 하지만 물러서지 않고 “Not Ready To Make Nice”라는 노래로 응대했다. “모두들 시간이 해결해줄거라 말하지만, 나는 여전히 기다려요”
금지곡은 비경제적이다
한국에서 정치적인 노래는 민중가요 전통에서만 찾을 수 있다. 불과 얼마전까지 금지곡으로 대중음악을 통제한 나라였으니까. 1975년 금지곡이 되었던 노래를 살펴보면, 배호가 부른 “0시의 이별”은 통행금지 시간에 이별했다는 이유로 금지당했고 김추자의 “거짓말이야”는 불신풍조를 조장한다고 금지곡이 되었다. 전혀 정치적 의도를 가지고 만든 노래도 아니었는데 정치적 이유로 금지곡이 되던 시대였다.
만일 대운하를 반대하는 노래가 발표되어 인기곡이 된다면 또다시 금지곡이 될까. 이명박 정부가 대중 문화를 철저히 산업으로 본다면 판매가 잘되는 노래는 더욱 권장해야 할 것이다. 금지곡 같은 방법으로 판매를 막는 비경제적, 비실용적 정책을 펴는 것은 모순이 될 것이다. 경제를 살려야할(?) 이명박 정부는 대중문화산업을 탄압해선 안될 일이다.
전국민 여론조사에서도 대운하에 대한 반대의견이 더 많은 지금, 이은하의 노래가 인기를 끌기는 힘들 것 같다. 잘해야 한나라당 총선 캠페인 노래로 채택이 될 것이다. 차라리 이 노래가 대중음악계에 어느정도 반향을 불러왔으면 좋으련만, 한때의 사건으로 잊혀질 확률이 더 높다. 노래는 노래로 응대하는 문화가 한국에서 만들어질 수 있기를 은근히 기대해 본다.
오랜만에 활동을 재기한 이은하에게 칭찬하는 글이 아닌 이런 글을 쓰게 되어 유감이다. 노래를 작사한 노현태가 이런 논란에서 소외되어 있어서 유감이다. 노현태는 비판을 혼자서 감내하는 선배가수 이은하를 대신해서 어떤 의도로 이런 노래를 만들었는지 밝히고 자신의 노래를 변호해야 하지 않을까.
한반도 대운하
우리나라 아름다운 산천과 물줄기가 있는데
그 경치를 이제까지 버려두고 있었네
모두가 버려진 물줄기 속에(새로운 희망이 있어)
모두가 노력 한다면(우린 웃을 수 있어)*1000만년을 이어나갈 우리의 꿈이 담긴 한반도 대운하(그 물길 하나) 다시 살아나는 경제 다 함께 웃을 수 있어 우리 할 수 있어(할 수 있어요)
*1000만년을 이어나갈 우리의 꿈이 담긴 한반도 대운하(그 물길 하나로) 다시 살아나는 경제 다 함께 웃을 수 있어 우리 할 수 있어(할 수 있어)
전국에 울려 퍼지는 건강한 웃음소리 되찾고 소외되고
노령화된 시골이 이제 다시 젊어지겠지
버려진 물줄기 속에(새로운 희망이 있어)
모두가 노력 한다면 (우린 웃을 수 있어)*1000만년을 이어나갈 우리의 꿈이 담긴 한반도 대운하(그 물길 하나) 다시 살아나는 경제 다함께 웃을 수 있어 우리 할 수 있어(할 수 있어요)
국민 모두가 바라는 건 아름다운 금수강산 한반도 대운하
소외된 사람들의 휴식처 대한민국 방방 곡곡 사랑이 넘쳐 흘러
내가 원하고 후대 후손이 바라는 한반도 대운하*1000만년을 이어나갈 우리의 꿈이 담긴 한반도 대운하(그 물길 하나) 다시 살아나는 경제 다함께 웃을 수 있어 우리 할 수 있어(할 수 있어)
*1000만년을 이어나갈 우리의 꿈이 담긴 한반도 대운하(그 물길 하나) 다시 살아나는 경제 다 함께 웃을 수 있어 우리 할 수 있어(할 수 있어요)
Blog: http://ryudonghyup.com
Can a Film Change The World?
In Politics on March 7, 2008 at 9:54 pmTime, Thursday, Mar. 06, 2008
By REBECCA WINTERS KEEGAN
Source: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1720100-2,00.html
Matthew Nisbet Report: http://www.centerforsocialmedia.org/files/pdf/docs_on_a_mission.pdf
Confusion or Enlightenment?
In Politics on March 7, 2008 at 7:22 pmCommunication Research, Vol. 35, No. 1, 61-87 (2008)
DOI: 10.1177/0093650207309362
© 2008 SAGE Publications
Confusion or Enlightenment?
How Exposure to Disagreement Moderates the Effects of Political Discussion and Media Use on Candidate Knowledge
Lauren Feldman University of Pennsylvania
Vincent Price
University of Pennsylvania
Recent research has yielded inconsistent findings regarding the relationship between interpersonal discussion and media use in the production of political knowledge. This study seeks to better illuminate this relationship by introducing political disagreement as an additional moderator. Using nationally representative survey data collected during the 2000 primary campaign, the authors find a negative interaction between discussion frequency and disagreement in predicting knowledge of candidate issue positions. This suggests either that the benefits of frequent discussion are stronger for those whose discussion networks are composed of like-minded others or that disagreement facilitates learning only at low levels of discussion frequency. Results also demonstrate that frequent discussion enhances the relationship between debate viewing and issue knowledge among those who reside in politically homogenous networks. In diverse networks, however, the relationship between debate viewing and issue knowledge is weaker for those who regularly talk about politics than those who talk less. Political disagreement is unassociated with knowledge of candidates’ personal backgrounds.
Key Words: political discussion • political knowledge • disagreement • news media use • debate viewing • primary campaign
정치기사 ‘오락화’ 바람
In Journalism, Politics on March 4, 2008 at 2:53 pm| 한겨레 2004년05월04일 | ||||||
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Designing Outreach in Virtual Worlds–Politics Online Conference 2008
In New Media, Politics on March 2, 2008 at 2:22 am
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Politics Onlince Conference 2008
In New Media, Politics on March 2, 2008 at 2:17 amThe Politics Online Conference sits at the intersection of smart politics, good governance, transparent democracy, and innovative technology, spotlighting tools, applications, strategies, and ideas that affect a range of functions, from writing policy to organizing democratic movements to running a smarter political campaign to building dialogue with your constituents. People come to the Politics Online Conference to learn about cutting-edge trends and to gain access to the visionaries who make those trends possible. They come to find solutions. They come to discuss their ideas with other experts in the field and outside the Beltway. And they come to network.
The 2008 Politics Online Conference will be held at a new location, the Renaissance Washington, DC Hotel.
Go to http://polc.ipdi.org/
Biases on Identity Politics
In Politics, Psychology on February 25, 2008 at 4:47 pmBlack man vs. white woman
Hillary Clinton contends with gender stereotypes, and Barack Obama with racial ones. Which bias runs deeper in the American psyche? The answer does not bode well for Clinton.
THE BOSTON GLOBE
Sunday, February 24, 2008
Since Sen. Barack Obama emerged as a serious challenger to Sen. Hillary Clinton for the Democratic presidential nomination, the primaries have become, in part, a referendum on whether Americans are more prepared for a woman or a black man in the White House.
The voting has been parsed for signs that the candidates are drawing supporters beyond their particular “minority” demographic. Over the past month and a half, feminist pioneers Gloria Steinem and Robin Morgan have both published essays arguing that Clinton would have long since sewn up the nomination if not for the stubbornness of our national sexism.
And when Clinton’s primary victory in New Hampshire last month caught everyone by surprise, some analysts suggested that the polls had been so wrong beforehand in part because voters in the overwhelmingly white state had been reluctant to share their true, race-based reservations about Obama.
The discussion so far has been rather short on data. There have been surveys asking whether Americans would vote for a black or female candidate for president — according to a December 2007 Gallup poll, 93 percent and 86 percent, respectively, say they would. Those answers should be interpreted with some skepticism, however, because people are often unaware of their biases and don’t tend to reveal them honestly in surveys.
But turn away from the campaign trail, and toward the laboratories where psychologists work, and a fascinating portrait of the primaries emerges. For decades, researchers have been studying bias — how it arises, how it changes, how it fades away. Their work suggests that bias plays a more powerful role in shaping opinions than most people are aware of. And they suggest that the American mind treats race and gender quite differently. Race can evoke more visceral, negative associations, the studies show, but attitudes toward women are more inflexible and — to judge by the current dynamics of the presidential race — ultimately more limiting.
“Gender stereotypes trump race stereotypes in every social science test,” says Alice Eagly, a psychology professor at Northwestern University.
It would be a gross oversimplification to reduce the Democratic race to the white woman versus the black man. Factors such as Obama’s eloquence and inexperience and Clinton’s policy mastery and her association with the ambivalent legacy of her husband have played a larger role in how the race has been talked about. And indeed, this presidential contest can be seen as the country’s attempt to lurch beyond a blinkered, monolithic identity politics.
But in a campaign in which it’s hard to find many substantive policy differences between the leading Democratic contenders, it’s notable how well the psychological research on bias predicts the race we’ve seen so far. Obama’s ability to disarm the initial reservations of an increasing number of white voters as the campaign has progressed — especially over the past couple of weeks, in his string of 11 straight primary and caucus victories — fits with the findings of bias researchers that racial bias is strikingly mutable, and can be mitigated and even erased by everything from clothing and speech cadence to setting and skin tone.
As Clinton has discovered, gender stereotypes are stickier. Women can be seen as ambitious and capable, or they can be seen as likable, a host of studies have shown, but it’s very hard for them to be seen as both — hence the intense scrutiny and much-debated impact of Clinton’s moment of emotional vulnerability in a New Hampshire diner last month.
As the race moves toward the possibly decisive March 4 primaries in Texas and Ohio, Clinton and Obama will have to continue to negotiate the complex demands of campaigning for an office that has been held by an unbroken string of 43 white men. But while this presidential campaign has proven a stage on which these issues can dramatically play out, they also run deeply through the rest of our society. And if the ample literature on bias shows anything, it is that, for all the difficulties Americans have with race, it may prove that attitudes about women are the hardest to change.
Prejudice influenced by context
When psychologists talk about bias, they use three technical categories: stereotyping, prejudice and discrimination. Stereotyping is cognitive bias, the tendency to ascribe to people a set of traits based on the group they belong to (e.g., “black people are good at sports,” “Jews are cheap”). Prejudice is an emotional bias, disliking someone because of their group identity. And discrimination is how we act on the first two.
Sexual prejudice isn’t terribly common — male chauvinists don’t dislike women, they just have particular ideas about their capabilities and how they should behave — but with race, stereotypes tend to go hand-in-hand with prejudice.
Many studies have shown the prevalence of negative associations among white Americans toward blacks. Mahzarin Banaji of Harvard and Anthony Greenwald of the University of Washington have done influential work showing that most whites, whatever their professed racial attitudes, are quicker to associate positive words with images of whites and quicker to associate negative words with blacks. The test they developed, the Implicit Association Test, or IAT, has become one of the most common tools for measuring bias.
Joshua Correll, a psychology professor at the University of Chicago, measures bias in a more dynamic way, looking at associations with danger. In one set of studies he had mostly white participants play a video game in which they had to make split-second “shoot/no-shoot” decisions based on whether the figure on the screen was holding a gun. Most subjects, he found, were more trigger-happy when presented with an image of a black man.
But follow-up studies have also shown that these biases can be sharply reduced, and in some cases even erased. When participants, for example, are shown images of well-liked black public figures before taking the IAT, their anti-black biases disappear.
“We’re finding that racial stereotyping and prejudice are extremely contextual,” says Correll. “You can see real reductions in prejudice, and sometimes it actually reverses,” crossing over into a sort of stereotypic affinity.
And this, Correll argues, works to the advantage of someone like Obama. “You look at Obama, and he represents himself incredibly well,” Correll says. “There are a whole lot of contextual cues that tell us this is someone you don’t need to worry about.”
Some of the most dramatic work in racial bias mitigation was published in 2001 by John Tooby and Leda Cosmides, evolutionary psychologists at the University of California at Santa Barbara, and their then-student Robert Kurzban. In their study, they presented participants with a series of images of people, each with a sentence that the person in the image had supposedly said. Later on, the test subject would be asked to recall who had said what.
What they were after were wrong answers. The ways in which test subjects misattributed quotes betrayed the categories by which they grouped people. Subjects, for example, were far more apt to misattribute something one black man had said to another black man, rather than to a white man or to a woman.
Surprisingly, though, the researchers found that they were able to get people to stop paying attention to race by showing images of people wearing one of two colors of T-shirts, paired with quotes that gave the impression that the T-shirts correlated with membership on different “teams.” In response, test-takers started grouping people on the basis of the T-shirt color rather than their skin color, confusing T-shirt “team members” of different ethnicities with each other.
The researchers didn’t see a similar effect for gender. According to Tooby, “People can cease to notice ethnicity as a factor in how they conceptualize somebody in a way that they don’t seem to be able to with gender.”
Gender stereotypes more stubborn
There is work suggesting that implicit gender stereotypes can also display a degree of mutability, at least among women. Still, psychologists specializing in gender bias say that many studies have shown how strong a force gender stereotyping is.
In one particularly telling strain of research, two sets of participants are asked to comment on something, perhaps a résumé or a speech. To one audience, the person involved is described as a woman, to the other as a man. Time and again, male participants (and, in some cases, women as well) judge the résumé more harshly if it is a woman’s, or say the speech was strident if given by a woman but assertive if given by a man.
Women in these studies are typically judged to be less capable than men with identical qualifications, but it’s not impossible for them to be seen as competent. The problem is that if they’re understood to be capable, the majority of respondents also see them as less likable.
“The deal is that women generally fall into two alternatives: they are either seen as nice but stupid or smart but mean,” says Susan Fiske, a psychology professor at Princeton.
Amy Cuddy, a psychologist at Northwestern, suggests that the durability of gender stereotypes stems in part from the fact that most people have far more exposure to people of the opposite gender than to people of different races. As a result, they feel more entitled to their attitudes about gender.
“Contact hasn’t undermined these stereotypes, and it might even strengthen them,” she says. “Many people don’t believe seeing women as kind or soft is a stereotype. They’re not even going to question it, because they think it’s a good thing.”
Tooby takes a more biological view. As he argues, in the prehistoric environment in which our brains evolved, race had no meaning — no one could travel far enough to meet anyone who didn’t look like them. Gender, on the other hand, meant a lot. It predicted what someone’s status would be, what their priorities were, whether they were a potential rival or partner.
Indeed, the only other trait that we notice as strongly as gender, Tooby points out, is age. Clinton is 60 years old, Obama 46. And no matter who wins the Democratic nomination, the face-off against the 71-year-old John McCain might introduce a whole new aspect to the identity politics of the campaign.
Source: http://www.statesman.com/search/content/editorial/stories/insight/02/24/0224bias.html
Understanding citizen perceptions of science controversy: bridging the ethnographic—survey research divide
In Journalism, Politics, Science, Uncategorized on February 15, 2008 at 2:57 amMatthew C. Nisbet School of Communication, American University, 4400 Massachusetts Avenue, NW, Washington, D.C. 20016, USA, nisbetmc@gmail.com
Robert K. Goidel Manship School of Mass Communication at Louisiana State University
Using the contemporary debate in the United States over embryonic stem cell research as a test case, we outline a theoretical framework that points to the central impact of value predispositions, schema, political knowledge, and forms of mass media use in shaping public perceptions of science. In the process, by proposing an alternative approach to the dominant science literacy model, we address the existing divide between survey-based and ethnographic studies. Analyzing nationally representative survey data collected in the US in the fall of 2003, our findings suggest that value predispositions related to Christian conservatism and social ideology, along with schema related to abortion and reservations about science, serve as primary influences on citizen evaluations of embryonic stem cell research and therapeutic cloning, while our measure of issue-specific political knowledge had no statistically significant impact. In addition, after all controls, attention to newspaper coverage along with various forms of genre-specific entertainment television use have unique influences on citizen evaluations, suggesting that the mass media provide an important part of the social context by which citizens judge controversial science. Other survey results since our data collection in 2003 lend support to our findings. Religious and ideological values appear to filter the influence of information disseminated by scientific institutions. We conclude by discussing future research that connects findings from ethnographic studies with survey-based approaches.
Public Understanding of Science, Vol. 16, No. 4, 421-440 (2007)
Measuring Deliberation’s Content: A Coding
In Article, Politics on February 14, 2008 at 3:42 pmBy Jennifer Stromer-Galley
Abstract
This paper details a content analysis scheme to measure the quality of political deliberationp in face-to-face and online groups. Much of deliberation research studies the outcomes of deliberation, but there has been a lack of analysis of what groups actually do when tasked with deliberating.
The coding scheme was developed out of the theoretical literature on deliberation and further enhanced by the empirical literature on small groups, deliberation, online political talk, and conversation analysis. Strict standards for creating coding schemes were followed to ensure a valid and reliable coding process. Results of the coding of deliberations on the topic of public schools suggest that participants produced a fairly high level of reasoned opinion expression, but not necessarily on the topic which they were asked to deliberate. It is hoped that the code scheme can be utilized by practitioners and researchers of political and social deliberations.
KEYWORDS: Deliberation, Content Analysis, Deliberative Theoryhttp://services.bepress.com/jpd/vol3/iss1/art12/.
Book Review–Coming Soon
In Book, Politics, Youth on February 14, 2008 at 3:50 amThe Good Citizen: How a Younger Generation is Reshaping American Politics (Paperback)
by Russell J. Dalton (Author)
Politics: Web 2.0: An International Conference
In Event, Politics on February 14, 2008 at 2:28 amNew Political Communication Unit, Department of Politics and International Relations, Royal Holloway, University of London, April 17-18, 2008.
Sponsors: Routledge Publishers, Polity Press, Royal Holloway Research Strategy Fund.
Source: http://newpolcom.rhul.ac.uk/politics-web-2-0-conference/
