Suchergebnisse

Within the field of political psychology studies, the main goal of the present study is to investigate in depth the role played by two different forms – E-Tactics vs E-Movement – of social media activism on the quality of discourses and their possible level of acquired empowerment. Two Italian cases of e-minorities (Teatro Valle Occupato and Roars) will be analysed in terms of argumentative moves following a pragma-dialectic perspective in order to observe how they can construct a possible process of conscientization. Results, achieved by means of quanti-qualitative methods, highlight how E-Tactics (Teatro Valle Occupato), differently from E-Movement (Roars), can better promote normative but also creative forms of argumentations, as activists can claim for their rights but mainly also promote value change. This type of activism is strongly correlated to political participation, differently from E-Movement, mainly oriented to individual empowerment.

Research on socially aware systems requires fine-grained knowledge of the mechanisms of persuasion in order to promote civic knowledge and aware political participation. Within humor studies, political parody is generally considered a simple pleasant weapon for political evaluation, currently explained by referring to the so called "just a joke effect" (Nabi et al., 2007). Indeed the funny side of parody can induce positive emotions, but it also includes a discrediting act that sometimes produces a "bitter laughter." The present study aims to understand the role played by negative and moral emotions aroused by parody. A parody is defined as a communicative behavior (a discourse, text, body movement, song) that imitates a communicative behavior or trait displayed by some Target by reproducing it in a distorted way, with the aim of making fun of the Target. Based on a socio-cognitive approach, a distinction is made between "surface" and "deep" parody (Poggi and D'Errico, 2013), with the former simply imitating behaviors actually displayed by the Target, and the latter implying a (humorous) re-categorization of the Target. The paper studies the effect of these two different types of parody on persuasion processes. Results show that the deep parody, as opposed to surface parody, triggers more negative emotions, and in particular indignation, that in turn lead to more negative evaluations of the Target. Moreover, the moral priming of parody is influenced by the Target politician's gender.

The paper presents a model of Schadenfreude, pleasure at another's misfortune, resulting in a typology of cases of this emotion. Four types are singled out: Compensation, Identification, Aversion, and Injustice Schadenfreude. The typology is first tested on a corpus of 472 comments drawn from three social media, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Then a specific corpus of comments is collected and analyzed concerning a specific case of Injustice Schadenfreude, the posts concerning Brexit, United Kingdom leaving the European Union. From the analysis, it emerges that spatial or factual closeness does not look necessary to feel Schadenfreude. Finally, a lexicometric automatic analysis is conducted on the general corpus of Italian comments collected using several hashtags and enriched by comments about the fire of Notre Dame, showing how even complex emotions like Schadenfreude can be automatically extracted from social media.

This book explores the use of technology to detect, predict and understand social cues, in order to analyze and prevent conflict. Traditional human sciences approaches are enriched with the latest developments in Social Signal Processing aimed at an automatic understanding of conflict and negotiation. Communication?both verbal and non-verbal, within the context of a conflict?is studied with the aim of promoting the use of intelligent machines that automatically measure and understand the escalation of conflict, and are able to manage it, in order to support the negotiation process. Particular attention is paid to the integration of human sciences findings with computational approaches, from the application of correct methodologies for the collection of valid data to the development of computational approaches inspired by research on verbal and multimodal communication. In the words of the trade unionist Pierre Carniti, "We should reevaluate conflict, since without conflict there is no social justice." With this in mind, this volume does not approach conflict simply as an obstacle to be overcome, but as a concept to be fully analyzed. The philosophical, linguistic and psychological aspects of conflict, once understood, can be used to promote conflict management as a means for change and social justice.

Abstract
Humble leadership can be described as a positive psychological feature that allows leaders to admit their limitations, be open to new ideas, and give a voice to others while also recognizing their merits. The present study (n = 268 participants) explored the persuasive effects of a female politician communicating a humble stance by considering the role emotional displays at play (joy, calmness, sadness, and anger) when discussing a moral issue (hosting immigrants). The results revealed that the politician elicited positive emotions and evaluations of her competence and benevolence, especially when exhibiting a sad facial display, by contributing to the intention to accept the moral gist of her persuasive message. Overall, these 'gendered' effects are discussed in relation to the 'political authenticity', which can be perceived as high especially when the humble message is connected with several social reasons, as is the case with gender or social status.

International audience ; A leader's charisma is conveyed by multiple aspects of his perceivable behavior among which the acoustic-prosodic characteristics of speech. We present here a study on the perception of charisma in political speech that aims to investigate the notion of charisma and to validate a theoretical framework on a multidimensional scale of charisma perception. The study points out that a multidimensional approach of charisma allows to better analyze which factors are related to specific aspects of speech. We finally clustered the charismatic voice of an Italian political leader in three factors: Proactive-Attracting, Benevolent-Competent and Authoritarian-Threatening.

International audience ; A leader's charisma is conveyed by multiple aspects of his perceivable behavior among which the acoustic-prosodic characteristics of speech. We present here a study on the perception of charisma in political speech that aims to investigate the notion of charisma and to validate a theoretical framework on a multidimensional scale of charisma perception. The study points out that a multidimensional approach of charisma allows to better analyze which factors are related to specific aspects of speech. We finally clustered the charismatic voice of an Italian political leader in three factors: Proactive-Attracting, Benevolent-Competent and Authoritarian-Threatening.

International audience ; The charisma of the leader is conveyed through multiple aspects: his ideas and vision and his perceivable verbal and non verbal behaviors. Among these perceivable behaviors there are the acoustic characteristics of speech. We present here a study on the perception of charisma in political speech. We collected speech statements with different illocutionary value taken from two speeches given by Umberto Bossi, the leader of an Italian party, before and after a stroke which caused him a voice disorder. Stimuli from the two condition differed significantly in the acoustic-prosodic features. In the first part of the study 40 French listeners rated normal speech stimuli (20 pre- and 20 post-stroke) and in the second part 22 French (11 pre- and 11 post-stroke) and 31 Italians (15 pre- and 16 post-stroke) rated the de-lexicalized version of the same stimuli. Results for the first part of the study show that pitch contour in Bossi's pre-stroke speech positively influence the perception of his speech as charismatic, as opposed to those some years after the stroke. Results for the de-lexicalized speech confirm for French listeners our hypothesis of the influence of the pitch contour in Bossi's charisma perception but they are controversial for Italian participants that seem to perceive Bossi as more charismatic in the post-stroke condition.

International audience ; The charisma of the leader is conveyed through multiple aspects: his ideas and vision and his perceivable verbal and non verbal behaviors. Among these perceivable behaviors there are the acoustic characteristics of speech. We present here a study on the perception of charisma in political speech. We collected speech statements with different illocutionary value taken from two speeches given by Umberto Bossi, the leader of an Italian party, before and after a stroke which caused him a voice disorder. Stimuli from the two condition differed significantly in the acoustic-prosodic features. In the first part of the study 40 French listeners rated normal speech stimuli (20 pre- and 20 post-stroke) and in the second part 22 French (11 pre- and 11 post-stroke) and 31 Italians (15 pre- and 16 post-stroke) rated the de-lexicalized version of the same stimuli. Results for the first part of the study show that pitch contour in Bossi's pre-stroke speech positively influence the perception of his speech as charismatic, as opposed to those some years after the stroke. Results for the de-lexicalized speech confirm for French listeners our hypothesis of the influence of the pitch contour in Bossi's charisma perception but they are controversial for Italian participants that seem to perceive Bossi as more charismatic in the post-stroke condition.

Online mothering is an arising and multifaceted phenomenon as the online world offers unique opportunities and risks in a particularly challenging period. The overall aim of this work is to investigate the features of the hashtag movement #itcouldbeme, which was born after a terrible news event concerning a newborn's death, specifically concerning (a) the e-activation levels; (b) the emotional arousal; (c) the potential presence of deconstruction of stereotypes concerning intensive mothering. To investigate positioning, reactions, and emotions, a database of 394 online posts gathered from popular Italian social networks was created, manually codified, and analyzed through the chi-square test. The results enabled us to deepen the associations among these variables, thus revealing the opportunities for empowerment offered by the socio-cultural positioning, different emotional pathways, and adhesion to this online movement. Finally, implications for professionals and public health issues are discussed.

This book constitutes the thoroughly refereed post-conference proceedings of the International Workshop on Multimodal Communication in Political Speech: Shaping Minds and Social Actions, held in Rome, Italy, during November 10-12, 2010. The 16 regular papers were carefully reviewed and selected from 33 submissions and presented with three key-notes. The purpose of the Political Speech workshops is to provide a forum for discussing research areas of persuasive agents and social signal processing. This book covers topics on multimodal aspects of political communication, including persuasion, fallacies, racist discourse, as well as music, autobiographic memories, metonymies, dominant postures, rhetorical strategies, interruptions, intonation, and voice appeal

Referring to the mainstream studies based on the personalization's hypothesis, which positively evaluates signals of dominance shown by leaders, the analysis of Obama's rhetoric stays a relevant exception. His risky recall, during his political talks, of his social difficulties as a child of a mixed couple was in fact one of the more surprising aspects of his success. Nevertheless, reactions to his autobiographical sharing were scarcely explored. Based on the idea that these self-disclosures signal his responsivity toward the audience of low social condition and can, therefore, be defined as a sign of humility, this research aims to test if coherence between Obama's words and his facial expressions of contempt, due to the seriousness of social injustices endured in his childhood, may influence the receivers' perception of such unexpected communication. Before reading a brief autobiographical sharing taken from a "Back-to-school" speech, a highly ritualized monolog the US President addresses each year to students, 175 Italian participants were presented with a photo of Obama displaying either an expression of contempt (taken from the video of the speech) or a neutral expression. Comparisons between self-assessments of perceptions and reactions of participants assigned to the two experimental conditions show that a facial expression of contempt, coherent with words describing his school difficulties, has been crucial for perceiving this humble political discourse as authentic and not as a simple socially desirable posturing. More studies seem to be needed, however, to understand how humble speech could enhance the positive face of leaders or backfire against them.