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The Declaration of Independence is arguably the most important document in American politics. It is recognized by many as the founding document of the United States and lauded for continuing to have ideological significance in modern politics. However, there are others who would argue that the Declaration of Independence is certainly an important historical document, yet deserves to remain a part of history and has no bearing on modern politics, the future of American politics or continuing political ideology. Regardless of the opinions held, the Declaration of Independence undoubtedly is being used in modern politics by both conservative and liberal political thinkers as a means to justify political platforms. Interpreting Independence: Rewriting America through Readings of the Declaration of Independence (Chapter 3 - Natural Law & Conservative Declarationism) by Jessica Brand is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License

Verbal aggression in digital discourse has emerged as a substantial focus of interest for scholars wishing to examine how conflicts begin, unfold and end on Twitter, YouTube, blogs, and WhatsApp. However, despite all the scholarly attention that Facebook has received since its origin, verbal aggression on Facebook is still relatively under-researched. This paper examines verbal aggression online in the political discourse of Congo-Brazzaville Facebook users. More specifically, quantitative along with qualitative analyses of a dataset of 9,330 Facebook comments were jointly carried out. One critical finding is that explicit aggressive comments are overwhelmingly pervasive and on the increase, pointing to the conclusion that historical, social, sociolinguistic, and political factors are to a larger extent instigators of verbal aggression on Facebook. Furthermore, users employ different strategies to express or intensify verbal aggression, favoring explicit expressions of aggression such as insult and abuse over others like teasing.

Self-immolation has been used as a political tool by various oppressed groups, including Kurdish refugees. To examine sociodemographic correlates of the views on self-immolation, we carried out semi-structured interviews with 54 Kurdish refugees (18 women, 36 men). The majority of these refugees (74.1%) indicated that they did not expect self-immolations to help in obtaining freedom for Kurdistan. Their opinions on this issue were uniform across educational and occupational levels, gender, number of years since escape, and other socio-demographic variables, except age. Younger refugees were less likely to see self-immolation as politically effective. The belief in self-immolation was uncorrelated with the frequency of post-traumatic nightmares dealing with the escape from or persecution in Kurdistan.

AbstractA large literature demonstrates that conservatives have greater needs for certainty than liberals. This suggests an asymmetry hypothesis: Conservatives are less open to new information that conflicts with their political identity and, in turn, political accountability will be lower on the right than the left. However, recent work suggests that liberals and conservatives are equally prone to politically motivated reasoning (PMR). The present article confronts this puzzle. First, we identify significant limitations of extant studies evaluating the asymmetry hypothesis and deploy two national survey experiments to address them. Second, we provide the first direct test of the key theoretical claim underpinning the asymmetry hypothesis: epistemic needs for certainty promote PMR. We find little evidence for the asymmetry hypothesis. Importantly, however, we also find no evidence that epistemic needs promote PMR. That is, although conservatives report greater needs for certainty than liberals, these needs are not a major source of political bias.

If the individuals who are most likely to perceive media bias no longer encounter, via selective exposure, media content they might consider biased, why are perceptions of media bias so pervasive? We argue that many people who engage in politically motivated selective exposure also perceive "the media" in general to be biased. Relying on a survey of adults in the U.S. state of Wisconsin, which has witnessed particularly contentious and divisive political events since 2011, this study examines self-reported patterns of selective exposure to partisan media while accounting for the role of the local communication ecology in encouraging or discouraging partisan media selectivity. It also tests the idea that selective exposure is related to a generalized perception of media bias—the idea that "the media" in general are biased while self-selected media are not. Finally, the study tests a moderated mediation model showing the structure of relationships among political opinion extremity, selective exposure, and perceived media bias. Results suggest (a) a positive relationship between political opinion extremity and selective exposure, (b) opposite patterns of relationships between selective exposure and perceived media bias about self-selected and general media, respectively, and (c) evidence of moderated mediation among political opinion extremity, selective exposure, and perceived media bias.

This book outlines the complexity in understanding different forms of cyber-attacks, the actors involved, and their motivations. It explores key challenges in investigating and prosecuting politically motivated cyber-attacks, the lack of consistency in regulatory frameworks, and the grey zone this creates for cybercriminals to operate in

This paper reports the results of a study of income smoothing in the oil refining industry for years 1971 through 1989. Evidence of a political motivation to practice such smoothing behavior is also reported. The methodology follows closely that of Ronen and Sadan (1981) which found strong smoothing behavior for oil firms in the 1953 to 1972 period. Two types of smoothing behavior were examined classificatory and intertemporal. Based on the analysis, oil firms were found to have a strong political motivation to manage reported earnings. There was no evidence of significant classificatory smoothing behavior by the 26 firms in the study. However, there was significant intertemporal smoothing behavior suggested, although to a less degree than that suggested by Ronen and Sadan. This reduction in smoothing behavior seems to indicate that over the past 20 years standard setters have been somewhat successful in reducing purely arbitrary accounting choices.

© 2019, © 2019 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. An emerging body of literature discusses how restorative justice can contribute to the response to terrorism. This paper expresses concerns about the uncritical acceptance of many orthodox assumptions about terrorism inherent in the search for a "restorative response" to terrorism. When restorative justice embraces the label "terrorism" in what appears to be a politically neutral sense, rather than opening up a critical discussion of realities of political violence and the factors that had propelled it, it may form part of the efforts designed to inculcate "truths" that help control political dissent. With its key aspiration being to restore a presumed healthy order disrupted by terrorist offences, restorative justice may be enlisted to help entrench social relations that led to the violence in the first place. The paper illustrates this danger by examining attempts to use restorative justice techniques by Spanish authorities in the aftermath of ETA or Euskadi Ta Askatasuna ("Basque Homeland and Freedom") violence. It is argued that rather than searching for a "restorative response" to terrorism, a more adequate framework for restorative justice in the aftermath of politically motivated violence may be found within broader projects of reparation for historical injustices, remembering and political reconciliation.

We demonstrate effects of political preferences on interpersonal interactions in the environment of the highly unstable and volatile party system of the Czech Republic. The effects of partisanship on interpersonal relations are compared to the effects of attitudes on a salient issue. Two experiments confirm the potential of political partisanship to affect the individual's ingroup preferences and outgroup biases, which can influence willingness to converse with others in the context of an unstable party system. In a conjoint experiment, dis/agreement on immigration has comparable effects on interpersonal interactions. Avoidance of interactions with out-partisans is amplified when out-partisans talk about politics often. The patterns of ingroup preferences and outgroup biases are replicated in a trust game experiment. Both partisanship and immigration attitudes influence how subjects interact with others. Given the political context, the study provides a hard test of politically motivated ingroup and outgroup biases stemming both from party and policy preferences.