The present historical moment may seem a particularly inopportune time to review Bowling Alone, Robert Putnam's latest exploration of civic decline in America. After all, the outpouring of volunteerism, solidarity, patriotism, and self-sacrifice displayed by Americans in the wake of the September 11 terrorist attacks appears to fly in the face of Putnam's central argument: that \"social capital\" -defined as \"social networks and the norms of reciprocity and trustworthiness that arise from them\" (p. 19)'has declined to dangerously low levels in America over the last three decades. However, Putnam is not fazed in the least by the recent effusion of solidarity. Quite the contrary, he sees in it the potential to \"reverse what has been a 30to 40-year steady decline in most measures of connectedness or community.\"' As an example of how the current \"war on terrorism\" could generate a durable civic renewal, Putnam points to the burst in civic practices that occurred during and after World War II, which he says \"permanently marked\" the generation that lived through it and had a \"terrific effect on American public life over the last half-century.\" 3 If Americans can follow this example and channel their current civic

Bowling alone: The collapse and revival of American community

Originally published in Contemporary Psychology: APA Review of Books, 1994, Vol 39(2), 225. Reviews the book, The Nature and Origins of Mass Opinion by John Zaller (1992). The author's commendable effort to specify a model of mass opinion formation offers readers an introduction to the prevailing vi

The Nature and Origins of Mass Opinion.

The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion Jonathan Haidt Pantheon Books, 2012One has likely heard that, for the sake of decorum, religion and politics should never be topics of conversation with strangers. Even amongst friends or even when it is known that others hold opposing political or religious views, why is it that discussion of religion and politics leads to visceral-level acrimony and that one's views are right and the other's views are wrong? Professor Jonathan Haidt of the University of Virginia examines the psychological basis of our "righteous minds" without resorting to any of the pejorative labeling that is usually found in a book on politics and religion and eschews a purely comparative approach. Haidt proposes the intriguing hypothesis that our visceral reaction to competing ideologies is a subconscious, rather than leaned, reaction that evolved over human evolution to innate senses of suffering, fairness, cheating and disease, and that moral foundations facilitated intra-group cooperation which in turn conferred survival advantages over other groups. These psychological mechanisms are genetic in origin and not necessarily amenable to rational and voluntary control - this is in part the reason debating one's ideological opposite more often leads to frustration rather than understanding. Haidt also suggests that morality is based on six "psychological systems" or foundations (Moral Foundations Theory), similar to the hypothesized adaptive mental modules which evolved to solve specific problems of survival in the human ancestral environment.While decorum pleads for more civility, it would be better, as Haidt suggests, dragging the issue of partisan politics out into the open in order to understand it and work around our righteous minds. Haidt suggests a few methods by which the level of rhetoric in American politics can be reduced, such that the political parties can at least be cordial as they have been in the past and work together to solve truly pressing social problems.There are a number of fascinating points raised in the current book, but most intriguing is the one that morality, ideology and religion are products of group selection, as adaptations that increased individual cooperation and suppressed selfishness, thereby increasing individual loyalty to the group. That morality, political ideology and religion buttress group survival is probably highly intuitive. However, given the contemporary focus on the individual as the source of adaptations, to the exclusion of all else, to suggest that adaptations such as religion and political ideology arose to enhance survival of groups is heresy or, as Haidt recounts, "foolishness". While previous rejection of group selection itself was due in part to conceptual issues, one could also point out the prevailing individualist social sentiment, "selfish gene" mentality and unrelenting hostility against those who supported the view that group selection did indeed apply to humans and not just to insects. Haidt gives a lengthy and convincing defense of group selection, his main point being that humans can pursue self- interest at the same time they promote self-interest within a group setting - humans are "90 percent chimp, 10 percent bees". One can readily observe in the news and entertainment mediate that religion is a frequent target of derision, even within the scientific community - Haidt points to the strident contempt that the "New Atheists" hold for religion. They claim that religion is purely a by-product of an adaptive psychological trait and as a mere by-product religion serves no useful purpose. However, the religious "sense" has somehow managed to persist in the human psyche. One explanation by the New Atheists of how religion propagated itself is that it is a "parasite" or "virus" which latches onto a susceptible host and induces the host to "infect" others. As a "virus" or "parasite" that is merely interested in its own survival, religion causes people to perform behaviors that do not increase their own reproductive fitness and may even be detrimental to survival, but religion spreads nonetheless. …

The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion

How have changes in media affected our everyday experience, behavior, and sense of identity? Such questions have generated endless arguments and speculations, but no thinker has addressed the issue with such force and originality as Joshua Meyrowitz in No Sense of Place. Advancing a daring and sophisticated theory, Meyrowitz shows how television and other electronic media have created new social situations that are no longer shaped by where we are or who is "with" us. While other media experts have limited the debate to message content, Meyrowitz focuses on the ways in which changes in media rearrange "who knows what about whom" and "who knows what compared to whom," making it impossible for us to behave with each other in traditional ways. No Sense of Place explains how the electronic landscape has encouraged the development of: -More adultlike children and more childlike adults; -More career-oriented women and more family-oriented men; and -Leaders who try to act more like the "person next door" and real neighbors who want to have a greater say in local, national, and international affairs. The dramatic changes fostered by electronic media, notes Meyrowitz, are neither entirely good nor entirely bad. In some ways, we are returning to older, pre-literate forms of social behavior, becoming "hunters and gatherers of an information age." In other ways, we are rushing forward into a new social world. New media have helped to liberate many people from restrictive, place-defined roles, but the resulting heightened expectations have also led to new social tensions and frustrations. Once taken-for-granted behaviors are now subject to constant debate and negotiation. The book richly explicates the quadruple pun in its title: Changes in media transform how we sense information and how we make sense of our physical and social places in the world.

No sense of place : the impact of electronic media on socialbehavior

The course is focused on historical texts, most of them philosophical. Context for understanding the texts and the course of democratic development will be provided in lecture and discussions, and by some background readings (Dunn). We begin with the remarkable Athenian democracy, and its frequent enemy the Spartan oligarchy. In Athens legislation was passed directly by an assembly of all citizens, and executive officials were selected by lot rather than by competitive election. Athenian oligarchs such as Plato more admired Sparta, and their disdain for the democracy became the judgment of the ages, until well after the modern democratic revolutions. Marsilius of Padua in the early Middle Ages argued for popular sovereignty. The Italian citystates of the Middle Ages did without kings, and looked back to Rome and Greece for republican models. During the English Civil War republicans debated whether the few or the many should be full citizens of the regime. The English, French, and American revolutions struggled with justifying and establishing a representative democracy suitable for a large state, and relied on election rather than lot to select officials. The English established a constitutional monarchy, admired in Europe, and adapted by the Americans in their republican constitution. The American Revolution helped inspire the French, and the French inspired republican and democratic revolution throughout Europe during the 19 century.

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Democracy and Its Critics

Although many scholars have pointed out problems in framing research, there has been very few systematic examinations of the published literature. To examine the common conceptual debates, the present study content analyzes framing literature from 93 peer-reviewed journals for a decade. Two methods were employed for the sample: First, every journal identified as a “communication journal” in the Journal Citation Report was included; second, keyword searches in electronic databases were used. The main findings showed that framing studies have concentrated more on message design and “unique” frames. Consistent with existing debates, results highlight the lack of research about production of frames and mixed frames. This examination of a decade's published literature reveals better direction for future research.

Conceptual Issues in Framing Theory: A Systematic Examination of a Decade's Literature

Social networking sites SNS currently boast more than half a billion active users worldwide, the majority of which are young people. With notable exceptions, few studies have ventured into the growing political realm that exists on these sites. This study expands research on SNS by examining both what encourages people to express themselves politically in this realm, and what effects such expression may have on classic questions of political participation. We test the proposition that political use of SNS among teens offers a new pathway to their political participation using hierarchical linear regression and panel data analysis. Results demonstrate that political SNS use strongly impacted both levels of and growth in traditional political participation during the 2008 election.

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/jcc4.12048

A New Space for Political Behavior: Political Social Networking and its Democratic Consequences

In recent years, the broad determinants of population health in the United States and other countries have received renewed attention (Kindig and Stoddart 2003; Kunitz 2007; Wilkinson and Marmot 2003). Two principal ideas characterize this emerging population health research. The first is attention to the nonmedical and behavioral determinants of health, highlighting the importance of not only access to medical care and health behaviors but also economic and social determinants of health (referred to here as SDH) such as poverty, education, working conditions, housing conditions, social support, stress, and neighborhood context (e.g., Berkman and Kawachi 2000; Wilkinson and Marmot 2003). The second idea is a focus on the distribution of health, not just the average level of health, across populations (e.g., Kindig 2007; Mechanic 2007). Consequently, recent research has centered on understanding health disparities, particularly those by race and socioeconomic status (SES), and their complex economic, social, and biological determinants (Adler et al. 2007; Berkman and Kawachi 2000; Williams and Jackson 2005).

Despite the great strides in research evidence of persistent racial and SES disparities in health and of the broad determinants of these disparities, effectively communicating these ideas presents formidable challenges. The general public currently believes that access to health care and personal health behaviors are the strongest determinants of health and see other social and economic determinants as less influential (Robert et al. 2008). Indeed, this view is perpetuated by the dominant message of news reports and scientific journals suggesting that people's health status is largely within their control through their health behavior choices (Barrington 2007). This message, however, overlooks the fact that racial and SES disparities in health are not fully explained by differences in unhealthy behaviors or medical care (Evans and Stoddart 1990; Lantz et al. 1998) and that various other factors contribute to disparities in health. It also overlooks the fact that race and SES shape people's resources and opportunities to make healthy behavior choices in the first place, thereby putting people at risk of risks (Link and Phelan 1995). Consequently, a short-term goal of population health researchers and advocates should be to convey to both key stakeholders (policymakers, opinion leaders) and the broader public that health is produced by not only access to health care and individual health behaviors but also other social and economic factors such as poverty, education, and racial discrimination.

While public opinion and media practices present uphill battles to communicate these population health messages, health communication science itself has also made it difficult to effectively deliver them. First, most theories and research in health communication science emphasize strategies to promote individual behavior change rather than strategies to change broader social factors (Viswanath and Emmons 2006). Second, the success of health communication campaigns has generally been determined by the degree to which interventions have changed the overall level of a population's health or health behavior, with less emphasis on the interventions’ effects on the distribution of health or effects within subpopulations (Hornik 2002; Hornik and Ramirez 2006). Therefore, we know more about which communication strategies improve overall population health than we do about which strategies reduce health disparities. Indeed, the goals of increasing overall population health and reducing health disparities sometimes conflict; that is, improvements in one subgroup's health may improve the general population's overall health while simultaneously increasing health disparities among the population's subgroups (Graham 2004; Keppel, Bilheimer, and Gurley 2007; Kindig 2007). Different communication intervention strategies may be required to reduce disparities in population health among groups, as opposed to improving the mean population health, yet we have little evidence regarding the success of a range of intervention strategies in reducing health disparities.

Research in communication science has examined characteristics of messages that enhance individual risk perceptions, attitudes, and behavior (Dillard and Pfau 2002). It is not clear, however, how strategies designed to change individual behavior can be adapted to persuade policymakers and the public of the importance of SDH and disparities in health among groups. Few studies have directly tested message strategies to raise awareness of SDH and health disparities. Nonetheless, researchers and advocates need to develop effective messages, and we believe that communication science has valuable lessons to offer. The aim of this article is, therefore, to review various message strategies developed in the communication science literature and to assess their applicability to raising awareness of SDH and population health disparities. Our goals are to give population health scholars and advocates a framework for thinking about and developing effective message strategies and also an agenda for future research in this area.

We begin by outlining a series of challenges for population health messaging. Next, we review theory and research concerning beliefs about who is responsible for causing poor health and health disparities and their importance to determining support for policies to improve SDH. Informed by this perspective, we identify and review three message design strategies that hold promise for raising awareness of SDH and health disparities: (1) message framing, (2) narratives, and (3) visual imagery. We continue with a discussion of potential pitfalls associated with these message strategies. Throughout, we develop an agenda for future research to refine these message strategies and improve public awareness of SDH and population health disparities. We conclude by acknowledging the review's limitations and summarize promising strategies for future message design, implementation, and research.

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Message Design Strategies to Raise Public Awareness of Social Determinants of Health and Population Health Disparities

The political blogosphere is replete with uncivil discussions and is apt to examine the influence of incivility on news frames. The present study brings in literature from incivility and framing effects and uses two experiments to examine the influence of incivility on news frames for democratic outcomes such as willingness to participate, online participation, openmindedness, and attitude certainty. Primary findings indicate the detrimental effects of incivility causing less openmindedness and more attitude certainty. At the same time, incivility causes more willingness to participate and online participation. More importantly, the findings demonstrate how incivility interacts with news frames. Implications for news framing effects in the social media landscape are discussed.

Does It Matter Where You Read the News Story? Interaction of Incivility and News Frames in the Political Blogosphere

Online sources not only permeate the information-seeking environment of the younger generation, but also have profound influence in shaping their beliefs and behaviors. In this landscape, examining the factors responsible for credibility perceptions of online information is fundamental, particularly for health-related information. Using a 2 (frames: gain vs. loss) × 2 (source: expert vs. non-expert) × 2 (social endorsement: high vs. low) randomized between-subjects experimental design, this study examines the effect of health message framing and the moderating effects of social endorsement and source type on credibility perceptions of Facebook posts. Testing across two issues––physical activity and alcohol consumption––findings indicate that the gain-framed message was perceived as most credible. Additionally, significant three-way interactions suggest that social endorsement and source type affect the relationship between message framing and credibility perceptions. Specifically, the findings demonstrate...

The Importance of ‘Likes’: The Interplay of Message Framing, Source, and Social Endorsement on Credibility Perceptions of Health Information on Facebook

Porismita Borah

Papers

Conceptual Issues in Framing Theory: A Systematic Examination of a Decade's Literature

A New Space for Political Behavior: Political Social Networking and its Democratic Consequences

Message Design Strategies to Raise Public Awareness of Social Determinants of Health and Population Health Disparities

Does It Matter Where You Read the News Story? Interaction of Incivility and News Frames in the Political Blogosphere

The Importance of ‘Likes’: The Interplay of Message Framing, Source, and Social Endorsement on Credibility Perceptions of Health Information on Facebook