IN THE STUDY of politics and political choice there are long-running streams of studies, proceeding along a common channel, with the later studies drawing out and testing the implications of the earlier. Broadly, these works have followed one of two opposing strategies—pushing one argument to its limit or pulling together apparently irreconcilable arguments. Mancur Olson’s work on collective ch...

A photo-elicitation and a collage construction technique provide insights into citizens of the United Arab Emirates' (UAE) awareness of the negative effects of fast-food consumption, the relationship between awareness and UAE fast-food consumption, and the discourses used by the UAE when resisting fast-food consumption. The study draws on two disciplinary backdrops: risk awareness and resistanc...

Current research into patient advocacy focuses on attempts of patient groups to mobilise resources and to influence researchers, pharmaceutical companies and policy-makers. This paper adopts a 'framing political opportunities' approach to draw attention to other kinds of advocacy strategies. In a case study of breast cancer patient advocacy of Herceptin reimbursement, it is shown how patient gr...

Therapists treating individuals who have been traumatized by violent political repression may undergo intense emotional responses, ranging from denial to overidentification. In discussing these reactions, establishment of a therapeutic alliance and awareness of the sociopolitical context of the trauma are highlighted as central elements in the treatment process.

Some recent systems accurately produce high-level situational awareness by mining traffic in Twitter. Where these systems have been successful, there has been no attempt to evaluate Twitter streams for source reliability and information credibility because the situations have not been adversarial. The use of Twitter in recent political dissent in the Mideast makes the need for computationally t...

This paper employs panel data to estimate the effects of awareness and political partisanship on post-convention candidate evaluations. The theoretical framework proposed by John Zaller (1992) is employed; however, a functional form that differs greatly from Zaller’s proposed model is derived from Zaller’s assumption and then estimated using standard OLS regression. I find that partisans of the...

Opinion mining, which aims the automatic processing of subjective information, has become a key field. In the political context, the awareness of people’s sentiment towards their representatives, public organizations, political parties or politicians, can support political decisions, campaign moves, government policies, marketing strategies, etc. This paper describes a case study over opinions ...

Social and/or political involvement within the population is often argued to enhance public sector performance. The underlying idea is that engagement fosters political awareness and interest and increases the public’s monitoring ability. Still, although extensive voter involvement may put pressure on policy-makers, it might also send a vague message in that diverging objectives are likely to e...