Aktuelle Publikationen

Interest groups increasingly communicate with the public, yet we know little abouthow effective they are in shaping opinions. Since interest groups differ from otherpublic communicators, we propose a theory of interest group persuasion. Interestgroups typically have a low public profile, and so most people are unlikely to havestrong attitudes regarding them. Source-related predispositions, such as credibilityassessments, are therefore less relevant in moderating effects of persuasive appeals byinterest groups than those of high-profile communicators. We test this argument inmultiple large-scale studies. A parallel survey and field experiment (N¼4,659) estab-lishes the persuasive potential of low-profile interest groups in both controlled and re-alistic settings. An observational study (N¼700) shows that substantial portions ofthe public are unable to assess interest group credibility. A survey experiment(N¼8,245) demonstrates that credibility assessments moderate the impact of partybut not interest group communication.

Studies have documented how ethnic and religious sentiments shape the voting behavior of Indonesian Muslims. However, to date no studies have carefully measured the relative influence of these sentiments. I fill this gap in the literature by taking advantage of the candidacy of a Christian, ethnic Chinese candidate in the 2017 Jakarta gubernatorial election in Basuki Tjahaja Purnama (Ahok). Employing an original survey of Jakartan Muslims, I show through experimental and correlational analyses that Muslim voters are more opposed to Ahok than non-Muslim voters are and that this opposition is driven more by Ahok's ethnicity, as opposed to his religion. I also show that Muslim voters’ feelings toward ethnic Chinese shape their support for Ahok more than their feelings toward Christians. I discuss how these findings inform our understanding of the limits and extent of religious influence on Muslim voting behavior.

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dc.contributor.author: Hoppe, Alexander

Studying the so-called refugee crisis in Germany, this article asks about the effectiveness of crisis management by a large number of local administrations, each acting upon the same crisis impulse of a high number of asylum seekers who entered the country in 2015 and 2016. Instead of theorizing the exact administrative design features fit for an effective crisis response, the focus is on the ability of administrations to adjust. We conceptualize such shifts in administrative practices as informal and temporary (latent) deviations from routine action along two dimensions of organizational behavior typically dominant in private and nonprofit sector organizations, respectively: internal flexibility and citizen participation (hybridity). Novel survey data from 235 out of 401 German district authorities are reported. We test the effects of different forms of latent hybridization on administrative effectiveness using regression modeling. Findings indicate that changes in administrative practices towards more flexible and participatory action had a positive impact on self-reported crisis management effectiveness. The effect of flexible action was especially pronounced in districts that were allocated higher shares of asylum seekers. These findings advance theory on crisis management and bottom-up implementation, highlighting the ability of local agencies to shift practices as a key explanatory factor for effective administrative action in exceptional situations.

This study analyzes how migrants affect their host country's foreign policy toward their home country by measuring their influence on bilateral emergency aid. I develop the argument that besides political lobbying and the targeting of aid by the donor country, migrants affect emergency aid by providing a linkage between the countries and increasing the salience of a disaster abroad. The empirical analysis shows that the location and size of a country's diaspora is an important predictor of emergency aid flows after natural disasters. Interaction effects provide support for the linkage argument: while the diaspora effect does not increase with the host country's level of democracy, it is strongest with the least severe and most distant disasters.

Bureaucratic representation theory holds that civil servants are not “neutral” in a Weberian sense. Bureaucrats are thought to “actively” represent their communities by trying to make them better off. This article proposes an alternative understanding of individual behavior in representation that emphasizes knowledge sharing instead of patronage, but leads to similar outcomes: Their societal background provides officials with advanced social knowledge about the group(s) they represent, including both informational knowledge (facts about culture, history, politics) and relational knowledge (how people interact). Bureaucratic knowledge linkage is the process of sharing information and managing relations internally and with citizens. An extreme case serves to illustrate knowledge linkage empirically: Survey data from an international organization yield high levels of knowledge asymmetries within staff bodies and subsequent observation of knowledge linkage mechanisms. In generalizing findings, the risks (knowledge distortions) and benefits (attaining public value) of knowledge linkage are discussed for both international and domestic administrations.

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In the digital transformation of public administrations, objectives are no longer simply the implementation of new technology, but the involvement of all stakeholders into the process of digitalization. The Digital Roadmap of the Austrian government emphasizes the need of co-production of public services as a key element to public service delivery and, subsequently, innovation of the public sector. To understand how co-production in digital service delivery is implemented in Austria, we conducted interviews with 41 experts from public administrations in order to understand who is involved in such processes, how they are involved, and what outcomes are to be achieved.

In recent years-particularly since the beginning of the refugee crisis in 2015-the political debate about issues of Islamophobia and resentment of Muslims has gained new momentum. Our research contributes to the growing experimental literature focusing on these phenomena. Unlike most previous empirical investigations, the present study does not examine "large scale" discrimination against Muslim minorities in situations which occur only periodically throughout an individual's life (e.g., on the rental-, labor-, or partner market); rather, it sheds light on (minor) discrimination events that occur on a day-to-day basis. Such "everyday discrimination" has been shown to be particularly detrimental to physical and psychological health. Specifically, our research examines the effect of open displays of religious identification-wearing a Muslim headscarf-on everyday discrimination against female Muslims. We report the results of two natural field experiments in Switzerland designed to examine such forms of day-to-day discrimination. Study 1 focuses on differential sanctioning, whereas study 2 investigates differences regarding helping behavior. We found pronounced discrimination against women wearing a headscarf in two distinctly different types of everyday interactions. In both scenarios, headscarf-wearing confederates were treated less favorably than bare-headed ones: they were sanctioned more often for violating the "stand right, walk left"-norm on escalators and received less help when asking for a favor (borrowing a mobile phone for an urgent call).

The Alternative for Germany party (AfD) has been more successful electorally in eastern than in western Germany. In this paper, we look at nativism coupled with populist attitudes as possible contributors to the 2017 federal electoral outcome. We compare two alternative mechanisms for the varying election results, the first being whether individuals living in eastern Germany are, on average, more nativist and populist inclined; the second, whether nativism and populism are more salient when these voters go to the polls. The results show that there indeed exists a slightly higher level of nativist and populist sentiment among the east German citizens than among the west Germans. This difference concerns older east Germans in particular, who were politically socialised during the German separation. Furthermore, elements of nativist and populist ideas explain electoral support for the AfD in both parts of the country, but nativism appears to be more relevant in the east. Overall, the analysis of the short-term campaign panel data from the German Longitudinal Election Study suggests that the inspected ideational foundations contribute to the east–west gap in AfD support without accounting for it completely.

Why do some leaders respect constitutional provisions like presidential term limits, while others do not? For all regimes, constitutions are important reference texts that provide some basic rules of the game. Within this framework, term limits and electoral laws are crucial because they are directly concerned with the exercise of power. Using Geddes’ regime typology, this article is proposing a regime-oriented approach to explain the variation on the African continent. Democracies, party-based regimes, and military regimes are surely different from each other, but they have a degree of depersonalisation in common that is not found in personalist regimes. For the latter type, term limits are a question of regime survival. Personalist rulers will therefore seek to amend or ignore constitutions, but their success will depend on the cohesion of their ruling coalition. The argument will be illustrated with two case studies: Togo and Tanzania.

Background:
The COVID-19 pandemic has been accompanied by an infodemic, in which a plethora of false information has been rapidly disseminated online, leading to serious harm worldwide.

Objective:
This study aims to analyze the prevalence of common misinformation related to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Methods:
We conducted an online survey via social media platforms and a survey company to determine whether respondents have been exposed to a broad set of false claims and fact-checked information on the disease.

Results:
We obtained more than 41,000 responses from 1257 participants in 85 countries, but for our analysis, we only included responses from 35 countries that had at least 15 respondents. We identified a strong negative correlation between a country’s Gross Domestic Product per-capita and the prevalence of misinformation, with poorer countries having a higher prevalence of misinformation (Spearman ρ=–0.72; P<.001). We also found that fact checks spread to a lesser degree than their respective false claims, following a sublinear trend (β=.64).

Conclusions:
Our results imply that the potential harm of misinformation could be more substantial for low-income countries than high-income countries. Countries with poor infrastructures might have to combat not only the spreading pandemic but also the COVID-19 infodemic, which can derail efforts in saving lives.

In the last 10 years, many canonical findings in the social sciences appear unreliable. This so-called “replication crisis” has spurred calls for open science practices, which aim to increase the reproducibility, replicability, and generalizability of findings. Communication research is subject to many of the same challenges that have caused low replicability in other fields. As a result, we propose an agenda for adopting open science practices in Communication, which includes the following seven suggestions: (1) publish materials, data, and code; (2) preregister studies and submit registered reports; (3) conduct replications; (4) collaborate; (5) foster open science skills; (6) implement Transparency and Openness Promotion Guidelines; and (7) incentivize open science practices. Although in our agenda we focus mostly on quantitative research, we also reflect on open science practices relevant to qualitative research. We conclude by discussing potential objections and concerns associated with open science practices.

The present study aimed to integrate the social identity approach to health and well-being with social network analysis. Previous research on the effects of social network centrality on stress has yielded mixed results. Building on the social identity approach, we argued that these mixed results can be explained, in part, by taking into account the degree to which individuals identify with the social network. We hence hypothesized that the effects of social network centrality on stress are moderated by social identification. Using a full roster method, we assessed the social network of first-year psychology students right after the start of their study programme and three months later. The effects of network centrality (betweenness, closeness, eigenvector centrality) and social identification on stress were examined using structural equation models. As predicted, our results revealed a significant interaction between network centrality and social identification on stress: For weakly or moderately identified students, network centrality was positively related to stress. By contrast, for strongly identified students, network centrality was unrelated to stress. In conclusion, our results point to the perils of being well-connected yet not feeling like one belongs to a group.