Contexts and typologies in the analysis of welfare state legitimacy : a social psychological approach to political opinion formation

This dissertation analyses public opinion towards the welfare state across 29 European countries. Based on an interdisciplinary approach combining social psychological, sociological, and public opinion approaches to political opinion formation, it investigates how social position and shared beliefs shape perceived legitimacy of welfare institutions, and how social contexts impact on the processes of opinion formation. Drawing on social representations theory, as well as socialization and self-interest approaches, the dissertation analyses the role of social position in lay support for institutional solidarity. Normative beliefs-defined as preferred views regarding the organisation of social relations-mediate the effect of social position on welfare support. In addition, drawing on public opinion literature, the dissertation analyses opinion formation as a function of country-level structural (e.g., level of social spending, unemployment) and ideological factors (e.g., level of meritocracy). The dissertation comprises two theoretical and four empirical chapters. Three of the empirical chapters use data from the European Social Survey 2008. Using multilevel and typological approaches, the dissertation contributes to welfare attitude literature by showing that normative beliefs, such as distrust or egalitarianism, function as underlying mechanisms that link social position to policy attitudes (Chapter 3), and that characteristics of the national contexts influence the processes of political opinion formation (Chapters 3 and 4). Chapter 5 proposes and predicts a typology of the relationship between attitudes towards solidarity and attitudes towards control, reflecting the two central domains of government intervention. Finally, Chapter 6 examines welfare support in the realm of action and social protest, using data from a survey on Spanish Indigados activists. The findings of this dissertation inform contemporary debates about welfare state legitimacy and retrenchment. - Cette thèse avait pour but d'analyser l'opinion publique envers l'Etat social dans 29 pays européens. Basée sur une approche interdisciplinaire qui combine des perspectives psycho-sociales, sociologiques et d'opinion publique sur la formation d'opinion politique, la thèse étudie comment la position sociale et les croyances partagées façonnent la légitimité perçue des institutions de l'Etat social, et comment les contextes sociaux influencent les processus de formation d'opinion. Basée sur la théorie des représentations sociales, ainsi qu'une approche de socialisation et d'intérêt propre, cette thèse analyse le rôle des positions sociales dans le soutien envers la solidarité institutionnelle. Les croyances normatives-définies comme les visions préférées de l'organisation des rapports sociaux-médiatisent l'effet de la position sociale sur le soutien pour l'Etat social. De plus, s'inspirant de la littérature sur l'opinion publique, la thèse analyse la formation d'opinion en fonction des facteurs structurels (ex. le taux de dépenses sociales, le chômage) et idéologiques (ex. le degré de méritocratie). Cette thèse est composée de deux chapitres théoriques et quatre chapitres empiriques. Trois chapitres empiriques utilisent des données provenant de l'enquête European Social Survey 2008. Appliquant des approches multi-niveux et typoloqiques, la thèse contribue à la littérature sur les attitudes envers l'Etat social en montrant que les croyances normatives, telles que la méfiance ou l'égalitarisme, fonctionnent comme des mécanismes sous-jacents qui relient la position sociale aux attitudes politiques (Chapitre 3), et que les caractéristiques des contextes nationaux influencent les processus de formation d'opinion politique (Chapitres 3 et 4). Le chapitre 5 propose et prédit une typologie sur le rapport entre les attitudes envers la solidarité et celles envers le contrôle, renvoyant à deux domaines centraux de régulation étatique. Enfin, le chapitre 6 examine le soutien à l'Etat social dans le domaine de l'action protestataire, utilisant des données d'une enquête menée auprès des militants espagnols du mouvement des Indignés. Les résultats de cette thèse apportent des éléments qui éclairent les débats contemporains sur la légitimité de l'Etat social et son démantèlement.

Deliberative and non-deliberative persuasion: Mechanisms of opinion formation in EuroPolis

From a normative vantage point, post-deliberative opinions should be linked to the quality of arguments presented during discussion. Yet, there is a dearth of research testing this claim. Our study makes a first attempt to overcome this deficiency. By analyzing a European deliberative poll on third country migration, we explore whether statements backed by reason affect opinions, which we term deliberative persuasion. We contrast deliberative persuasion to non-deliberative persuasion, whereby we explore whether the most frequently repeated position influences opinions. We find that with regard to regularization of irregular immigrants, deliberative persuasion took place. In the context of European involvement in immigration affairs, however, opinions are driven by the most frequently repeated position rather than by the quality of argumentation.

THE PHYSICS OF IDEAS: INFERRING THE MECHANICS OF OPINION FORMATION FROM MACROSCOPIC STATISTICAL PATTERNS

In a microscopic setting, humans behave in rich and unexpected ways. In a macroscopic setting, however, distinctive patterns of group behavior emerge, leading statistical physicists to search for an underlying mechanism. The aim of this dissertation is to analyze the macroscopic patterns of competing ideas in order to discern the mechanics of how group opinions form at the microscopic level. First, we explore the competition of answers in online Q&A (question and answer) boards. We find that a simple individual-level model can capture important features of user behavior, especially as the number of answers to a question grows. Our model further suggests that the wisdom of crowds may be constrained by information overload, in which users are unable to thoroughly evaluate each answer and therefore tend to use heuristics to pick what they believe is the best answer. Next, we explore models of opinion spread among voters to explain observed universal statistical patterns such as rescaled vote distributions and logarithmic vote correlations. We introduce a simple model that can explain both properties, as well as why it takes so long for large groups to reach consensus. An important feature of the model that facilitates agreement with data is that individuals become more stubborn (unwilling to change their opinion) over time. Finally, we explore potential underlying mechanisms for opinion formation in juries, by comparing data to various types of models. We find that different null hypotheses in which jurors do not interact when reaching a decision are in strong disagreement with data compared to a simple interaction model. These findings provide conceptual and mechanistic support for previous work that has found mutual influence can play a large role in group decisions. In addition, by matching our models to data, we are able to infer the time scales over which individuals change their opinions for different jury contexts. We find that these values increase as a function of the trial time, suggesting that jurors and judicial panels exhibit a kind of stubbornness similar to what we include in our model of voting behavior.

L’influence des médias électroniques sur la formation de l’opinion publique : du mythe à la réalité

ans ce texte, l’auteur s’emploie à remettre en cause la méthode utilisée par le droit pour évaluer les dommages causés à une personne par les médias de masse lorsqu’il y a diffamation. Il montre que bien que les médias de masse disposent d’une large diffusion, leur influence réelle sur les personnes qui les consomment est loin d’être aussi évidente. Pour Langelier, divers phénomènes doivent être pris en compte pour évaluer les dommages réels causés aux personnes lorsqu’il y a diffamation. Au nombre de ceux-ci, mentionnons l’état des connaissances issues des sciences sociales sur l’influence potentielle des médias en regard de la formation des opinions individuelles, le degré de pénétration du médium en cause, la composition de l’auditoire auquel le médium s’adresse, le contexte social dans lequel le médium intervient, l’usage social des médias dans la société concernée, le degré de crédibilité dont disposent les médias dans cette société, l’importance relative des médias les uns par rapport aux autres et les raisons d’intérêt public justifiant une telle intervention. De l’examen de chacun de ces facteurs dans le contexte de la société canadienne, l’auteur conclut que l’influence des médias sur la formation de l’opinion publique et des opinions individuelles est relativement faible sinon inexistante. En conséquence, il trouve inappropriées l’orientation, le point de vue et la méthode avec lesquels le droit réalise ses déterminations lorsqu’il y a faute en matière de diffamation. Il appelle donc les juristes à rompre avec les présupposés et les mythes et à adopter une approche plus fine et plus réaliste de ces réalités.

Anisotropic opinion dynamics

We consider the process of opinion formation in a society of interacting agents, where there is a set B of socially accepted rules. In this scenario, we observed that agents, represented by simple feed-forward, adaptive neural networks, may have a conservative attitude (mostly in agreement with B) or liberal attitude (mostly in agreement with neighboring agents) depending on how much their opinions are influenced by their peers. The topology of the network representing the interaction of the society's members is determined by a graph, where the agents' properties are defined over the vertexes and the interagent interactions are defined over the bonds. The adaptability of the agents allows us to model the formation of opinions as an online learning process, where agents learn continuously as new information becomes available to the whole society (online learning). Through the application of statistical mechanics techniques we deduced a set of differential equations describing the dynamics of the system. We observed that by slowly varying the average peer influence in such a way that the agents attitude changes from conservative to liberal and back, the average social opinion develops a hysteresis cycle. Such hysteretic behavior disappears when the variance of the social influence distribution is large enough. In all the cases studied, the change from conservative to liberal behavior is characterized by the emergence of conservative clusters, i.e., a closed knitted set of society members that follow a leader who agrees with the social status quo when the rule B is challenged.

Reestrutura????o e expans??o do ensino superior p??blico: o programa Reuni na Universidade Federal do Cear?? sob a vis??o dos alunos

Com a institui????o do Programa de Apoio ao Plano de Reestrutura????o e Expans??o das Universidades Federais (Reuni), o governo federal tenta criar condi????es para ampliar o acesso e a perman??ncia dos estudantes na educa????o superior. Nesse contexto, esta pesquisa objetiva investigar a percep????o dos estudantes dos dez centros acad??micos da Universidade Federal do Cear?? (UFC), regularmente matriculados no 2?? semestre de 2008, em rela????o ao Reuni e ?? proposta de ades??o da UFC ao mencionado programa, a partir de uma perspectiva mercadol??gica. Para a determina????o da amostra de entrevistados foi utilizada a f??rmula de Cochran, para popula????es finitas, e amostras aleat??rias estratificadas, resultando em uma amostra de 378 estudantes para um n??vel de confian??a de 95%. Foram utilizadas vari??veis que influenciam o comportamento do p??blico-alvo, tais como renda, grupo social e idade, com foco no marketing educacional. Trata-se de uma pesquisa quantitativa quanto ?? sua natureza, descritiva quanto aos fins e realizada mediante survey. Constatou-se grande desconhecimento sobre o Reuni ??? 50,5% dos entrevistados nunca ouviram falar sobre o programa. Percebeu-se ainda que os estudantes que possuem uma atitude negativa sobre o Reuni aprovam o conte??do da proposta da UFC, da mesma maneira que os estudantes que n??o possuem essa atitude.

As fontes de informação online e a influência na reputação das organizações

Dissertação apresentada à Escola Superior de Comunicação Social como parte dos requisitos para obtenção de grau de mestre em Gestão Estratégica das Relações Públicas.

Campaign effects in direct-democratic votes in Switzerland

The purpose of this article is to analyse the conditions under which referendum campaigns have an impact on voting choices. Based on a model of opinion formation that integrates both campaign effects and partisan effects, we argue that campaign effects vary according to the context of the popular vote (size and type of conflict among the party elite and intensity and direction of the referendum campaign). We test our hypotheses with two-step estimations for hierarchical models on data covering 25 popular votes on foreign, European and immigration policy in Switzerland. Our results show strong campaign effects and they suggest that their strength and nature are indeed highly conditional on the context of the vote: the type of party coalition pre-structures the patterns of individual voting choices, campaign effects are higher when the campaign is highly intense and they are more symmetric when it is balanced.

As copas do mundo de futebol de 1934 e 1938 por meio dos jornais de São Paulo e Rio de Janeiro

Pós-graduação em História - FCLAS

Comunicação pública e democracia digital nos processos de participação cidadã: uma análise do Portal Brasil, sob os princípios de E-engagement

This article conducted an analysis of Portal Brazil, specifically in the areas of “Education” and “Economy and Employment”, by according to the principles of e-engagement defined by the Organization for Economic Co- operation and Development (OECD). For understanding of this work, were elucidated concepts such as public communication - trajectory, principles and relations -, digital democracy, e-government and engagement and civic participation. Through this analysis was realized the importance of public communication in the processes of opinion formation and stimulus to citizen participation, as well as the performance of the internet as a facilitator instrument in the processes of relationship between State and Society

Discurso e identidade feminina na mídia impressa: a evolução da mulher no mercado de trabalho

The female identity in relation to the multiplicity of roles of contemporary women and their evolution in the labor market is the focus of the work that is developed from studies of French line Discourse Analysis refered to Michel Pêcheux and Michel Foucault. The objective is to reflect on the discursive mechanisms of print media, focusing on Veja magazines covers, which, by its verbal and visual language, constructs meaning effects and disseminates certain social thruths about the female changes. Considering that this media aspect plays an important role on society's opinion formation, it is worth to investigate, analyse and describe the elements present on the covers, as seduction and persuasion objects. The work analysis material is formed by six covers published by Veja magazine in the period of 1968-2012, which raise the theme of women in the labor market and show us their evolution and the changes in the representations about the female universe and the work in society

Exploration of implicit theories in the formation of expert opinion in portuguese criminal law

This dissertation examines different aspects involved in the formation of psychologists’ expert opinion in the Portuguese criminal justice system, more precisely, as this opinion is reflected in assessment reports. The present dissertation is comprised of three qualitative studies, the first sought to provide a general portrait of a sample of 106 forensic psychological reports as to their overall quality as measured in terms of relevance and coherence. Results show that the formal markers of quality are present in the sample analysed, a certain number of weaknesses have been observed, notably concerning the internal coherence of the reports as well as the relevance of the information reported on. The second study explored the opinions of 17 Portuguese judges and state prosecutors concerning the use they make of this type of forensic report. It appears that they consider these reports to be useful and very credible, specially so when they have been produced under the auspices of the National Institute of Legal Medicine and Forensic Sciences, which is the state forensic institution. Furthermore, it appears that judges and prosecutors were particularly interested in data that allowed for a personalised portrait of the assessee. The third study sought to better comprehend the conceptual bases on which psychologists construct their reports. To this end, an exploratory study was undertaken with a sample of key-actors; the analysis of their interviews shows that they define their judicial mandate as well as the basic concepts that are associated to this mandate in different ways. A theoretical framework provided by an implicit theories model was used to help understand these results.