The increased usage of information and communication technology and especially the Internet as a vehicle for democratic participation may be regarded in very different ways. First of all, the development of ‘eDemocracy’ may be seen as a matter of increased instrumental opportunity: these applications are purposively developed because the Internet provides new and better ways of reaching the cit...

The article investigates the linguistic and extralinguistic nature of contamination – a word-building pattern that seems to be on the rise in modern English. The relative productivity of contamination is traced down to several factors: first, the speaker’s intention to assert his individuality through punning and word-juggling; second, saving up time and physical and mental effort; third, camou...

This article investigates how experiences with public policies affect levels of civic and polit ical engagement among the poor. Studies of "policy feedback" investigate policies not just as political outcomes, but also as factors that set political forces in motion and shape political agency. To advance this literature, we take up three outstanding questions related to selection bias, the disti...

This research investigates how the impact of persuasive messages in the political domain can be improved when fit is created by subliminally priming recipients' regulatory focus (either promotion or prevention) and by linguistic framing of the message (either strategic approach framing or strategic avoidance framing). Results of two studies show that regulatory fit: a) increases the impact of a...