Beliefism (noun): Discrimination against people who disagree with us.

Do you avoid people who are strongly against immigration? Or strongly for trans rights? Against abortion? For drug legalisation? We might like to think that we're tolerant, but many of us struggle to engage with people whose opinions differ strongly from our own, even if they might have something useful to contribute to the debate. That means we're falling victim to what behavioural scientist Professor Paul Dolan defines as Beliefism: discrimination against those with different beliefs to us.

Drawing on the evidence from across the social sciences, Dolan shows how easy it is for us to divide ourselves into opposing camps - and how harmful that can be. Using the central metaphor of the duck-rabbit illusion - where the same image can be viewed as one animal or the other - the book shows that looking at an issue from only one perspective can lead to bad decisions and unnecessary conflict. The world would be a better place if there was less beliefism and Dolan shows how more tolerance is only possible "by design". We need to embed less beliefism into our organisations and lives and he provides a checklist called EMBRACE to help us do that.

Combining curiosity, irreverence and warmth, Beliefism is a definitive behavioural science take by a leader in his field. Whether it's among friends, at university or at work, being less beliefist will make you a better partner or parent, and a more effective buddy or boss.

New media forums have created a unique opportunity for citizens to participate in a variety of social and political contexts. As new social technologies are being utilized in a variety of ways, the public is able to interact more effectively in activities within their communities. The Handbook of Research on Citizen Engagement and Public Participation in the Era of New Media addresses opportunities and challenges in the theory and practice of public involvement in social media. Highlighting various communication modes and best practices being utilized in citizen-involvement activities, this book is a critical reference source for professionals, consultants, university teachers, practitioners, community organizers, government administrators, citizens, and activists.

This book presents absorbing and critical expert perspectives on the post-truth phenomenon that has infiltrated the U.S. political system, media, and populace. Deception in politics is nothing new, but the quantity of unsubstantiated statements in America today is unprecedented. False notions, fake news, "alternative facts," and opinions are being pitched from sources including the White House, Congress, and the American population via Twitter, Facebook, and online news sites as well as print, television, and radio. Such a widespread spectacle instantly captures the attention of people nationwide, but disagreement has the nation almost bordering on civil war over the definition of "the truth" and what this book calls "post-truth." In this text, C.G. Prado and expert contributors present varied perspectives on post-truth, its authoritarian implications for the nation, and how we can approach information to differentiate between truth and post-truth. Speaking to general readers, students, and scholars alike, chapters include text on the historical and social events that initiated and developed post-truth and why some people are more prone than others to accept and perpetuate post-truth. They also discuss post-truth as a threat to democracy. Analyzes Trump-administration-generated mistruths in a discussion of post-truth America Presents varied concerns, perspectives, and thought-provoking topics in clear, accessible, and engaging words Explains the historical and social circumstances that led to post-truth Details why some people are more apt to embrace and spread post-truth Outlines actions to defeat post-truth

Presidential Image has become an integral part of the campaign, presidency and legacy of Modern American presidents. Across the 20th century to the age of Trump, presidential image has dominated media coverage and public consciousness, winning elections, gaining support for their leadership in office and shaping their reputation in history. Is the creation of the presidential image part of a carefully conceived public relations strategy or result of the president's critics and opponents? Can the way the media interpret a presidents' actions and words alter their image? And how much influence do cultural outputs contribute to the construction of a presidential image? Using ten presidential case studies. this edited collection features contributions from scholars and political journalists from the UK and America, to analyse aspects of Presidential Image that shaped their perceived effectiveness as America's leader, and to explore this complex, controversial, and continuous element of modern presidential politics.

From the self-described 'black, lesbian, mother, warrior, poet', these soaring, urgent essays on the power of women, poetry and anger are filled with darkness and light. Penguin Modern: fifty new books celebrating the pioneering spirit of the iconic Penguin Modern Classics series, with each one offering a concentrated hit of its contemporary, international flavour. Here are authors ranging from Kathy Acker to James Baldwin, Truman Capote to Stanislaw Lem and George Orwell to Shirley Jackson; essays radical and inspiring; poems moving and disturbing; stories surreal and fabulous; taking us from the deep South to modern Japan, New York's underground scene to the farthest reaches of outer space.

The third edition of The Dynamics of Political Communication continues its comprehensive coverage of communication and politics, focusing on problematic issues that bear on the functioning of democracy in an age of partisanship, social media, and political leadership that questions media's legitimacy. The book covers the intersections between politics and communication, calling on related social science disciplines as well as normative political philosophy. This new edition is thoroughly updated and includes a survey of the contemporary political communication environment, unpacking fake news, presidential communication, hostile media bias, concerns about the waning of democracy, partisan polarization, political advertising and marketing, the relationship between social media and the news media, and the 2020 election, all the while drawing on leading new scholarship in these areas. It's ideally suited for upper-level undergraduate and graduate political communication courses in communication, journalism, and political science programs. This edition again features online resources with links to examples of political communication in action, such as videos, news articles, tweets, and press releases. For instructors, an instructor's manual, lecture slides, and test questions are also provided. Access the support material at www.routledge.com/9780367279417

Political Action Committees (PACs) are a prominent and contentious feature of modern American election campaigns. As organizations that channel money toward political candidates and causes, their influence in recent decades has been widely noted and often decried. Yet, there has been no comprehensive history compiled of their origins, development, and impact over time. In The Rise of Political Action Committees, Emily J. Charnock addresses this gap, telling a story with much deeper roots than contemporary commentators might expect. Documenting the first wave of PAC formation from the early 1940s to the mid-1960s, when major interest groups began creating them, she shows how PACs were envisaged from the outset as much more than a means of winning elections, but as tools for effecting ideological change in the two main parties. In doing so, Charnock not only locates the rise of PACs within the larger story of interest group electioneering - which went from something rare and controversial at the beginning of the 20th Century to ubiquitous today - but also within the narrative of political polarization. Throughout, she offers a full picture of PACs as far more than financial vehicles, showing how they were electoral innovators who pioneered strategies and tactics that came to pervade modern US campaigns and reshape American politics. A broad-ranging political history of an understudied American campaign phenomenon, this book contextualizes the power and purpose of PACs, while revealing their transformative role within the American party system - helping to foster the partisan polarization we see today.

In Rock | Water | Life, Lesley Green examines the interwoven realities of inequality, racism, colonialism, and environmental destruction in South Africa, calling for environmental research and governance to transition to an ecopolitical approach that could address South Africa's history of racial oppression and environmental exploitation.

Green analyses conflicting accounts of nature in environmental sciences that claim neutrality amid ongoing struggles for land restitution and environmental justice.

Offering in-depth studies of environmental conflict in contemporary South Africa, Green addresses the history of contested water access in Cape Town; struggles over natural gas fracking in the Karoo; debates about decolonising science; the potential for a politics of soil in the call for land restitution; urban baboon management, and the consequences of sending sewage to urban oceans.

Online platforms have widened the availability for citizen engagement and opportunities for politicians to interact with their constituents. The increasing use of these technologies has transformed methods of governmental communication in online and offline environments. (R)evolutionizing Political Communications through Social Media offers crucial perspectives on the utilization of online social networks in political discourse and how these alterations have affected previous modes of correspondence. Highlighting key issues through theoretical foundations and pertinent case studies, this book is a pivotal reference source for researchers, professionals, upper-level students, and consultants interested in influence of emerging technologies in the political arena.

In this revised and updated paperback edition, award-winning journalist John Sweeney goes behind the headlines to investigate what really happened to Alexei Navalny in the freezing Polar Wolf penal colony in a remote part of Siberia in February 2024.

This is a warts-and-all portrayal of the highly charismatic but controversial Russian opposition leader who at one time flirted with the far right.

Murder in the Gulag lifts the lid on the reality of life in Russia today and asks what Navalny's death means for the future of Putin, Russia and the West.

When Scotland voted no to independence, it was hailed as a victory for the unique Better Together alliance, a triumph of cross-party collaboration, a coup for Westminster.But the unionist relief proved to be premature.Despite bitter referendum defeat, the Scottish National Party went on to conjure stunning general election success, almost eviscerating their rivals with an overwhelming surge of public support.In this compelling insider account, Joe Pike goes behind the battle lines to uncover the secrets of the much-maligned No campaign, dubbed 'Project Fear'. Drawing on exclusive interviews with over sixty sources at the heart of the action, he reveals the tears, the tantrums and the tactical failings that saw a double-digit poll lead reduced to a nail-biting finale, with victory eventually coming at a catastrophic cost to the Labour Party.Now, as the future of the union looks as uncertain as ever, this new, updated edition explores the striking parallels between the Scottish and EU referendums, and asks: where now for Scotland in the wake of a political landslide?

The third edition of The Dynamics of Political Communication continues its comprehensive coverage of communication and politics, focusing on problematic issues that bear on the functioning of democracy in an age of partisanship, social media, and political leadership that questions media's legitimacy. The book covers the intersections between politics and communication, calling on related social science disciplines as well as normative political philosophy. This new edition is thoroughly updated and includes a survey of the contemporary political communication environment, unpacking fake news, presidential communication, hostile media bias, concerns about the waning of democracy, partisan polarization, political advertising and marketing, the relationship between social media and the news media, and the 2020 election, all the while drawing on leading new scholarship in these areas. It's ideally suited for upper-level undergraduate and graduate political communication courses in communication, journalism, and political science programs. This edition again features online resources with links to examples of political communication in action, such as videos, news articles, tweets, and press releases. For instructors, an instructor's manual, lecture slides, and test questions are also provided. Access the support material at www.routledge.com/9780367279417

"Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm," wrote RalphWaldo Emerson in 1841. While this statement may read like an innocuoustruism today, the claim would have been controversial in the antebellumUnited States when enthusiasm was a hotly contested term associated withreligious fanaticism and poetic inspiration, revolutionary politics and imaginativeexcess. In analysing the language of enthusiasm in philosophy, religion,politics, and literature, John Mac Kilgore uncovers a tradition of enthusiasmlinked to a politics of emancipation. The dissenting voices chronicledhere fought against what they viewed as tyranny while using their writings toforge international or antinationalistic political affiliations. Pushing his analysis across national boundaries, Kilgore contends thatAmerican enthusiastic literature, unlike the era's concurrent sentimentalcounterpart, stressed democratic resistance over domestic reform as it navigatedthe global political sphere. By analysing a range of canonical Americanauthors-including William Apess, Phillis Wheatley, Harriet Beecher Stowe,and Walt Whitman-Kilgore places their works in context with the causes,wars, and revolutions that directly or indirectly engendered them. In doingso, he makes a unique and compelling case for enthusiasm's centrality in theshaping of American literary history.

The genocide in Myanmar has drawn global attention as Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi appears to be presiding over human rights violations, forced migrations and extra-judicial killings on an enormous scale. This unique study draws on thousands of hours of interviews and testimony from the Rohingya themselves to assess and outline the full scale of the disaster. Casting new light on Rohingya identity, history and culture, this will be an essential contribution to the study of the Rohingya people and to the study of the early stages of genocide. This book adds convincingly to the body of evidence that the government of Myanmar has enabled a genocide in Rakhine State and the surrounding areas.

Though they work largely out of the eye of the public, political consultants - "image merchants" and "kingmakers" to candidates - play a crucial role in shaping campaigns. They persuaded Barry Goldwater to run for president, groomed former actor Ronald Reagan for the California governorship, helped derail Bill Clinton's health care initiative, and carried out the swiftboating of John Kerry. As Dennis Johnson argues in this history of political consulting in the United States, they are essential to modern campaigning, often making positive contributions to democratic discourse, and yet they have also polarized the electorate with their biting messages. During the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, political campaigns were run by local political parties, volunteers, and friends of candidates; but as party loyalties among voters began to weaken, and political parties declined as sources of manpower and strategy, professional consultants swept in to carry the day. Political consulting emerged as a profession in the 1930s with writers Leone Baxter and Clem Whitaker, the husband and wife team who built their business, in part, with a successful campaign to destroy Upton Sinclair's 1934 bid for governor of California. With roots in advertising and public relations, political consulting has since developed into a highly professionalized business worth hundreds of millions of dollars. In fact, some of the top campaign consulting outfits have more recently come full circle and merged to create new public relations firms, serving not just candidates but also shaping public advocacy campaigns for businesses and nonprofits. Johnson, an academic who has also worked on campaigns alongside the likes of James Carville and pollster Peter D. Hart, suffuses his history with the stories of the colorful characters who have come to define the profession of consulting, from its beginning to its present. This will be the most complete and sweeping story of the profession to date. As such it tells not just the making of a political business but the very contours of modern American politics.

Michael L. Young's dictionary defines the most important terms in contemporary public opinion research. About 400 words mark out the field, words needed if one wants to understand the language of polling and to claim literacy in the field. This reference is designed for professionals working in the survey research field, for pollsters and those who produce polls, and for students and scholars concerned with public opinion. Journalists, political professionals, elected officials, and federal, state, and local officials will also find this guide to practice and usage in the field extremely valuable.

A general introduction assesses the key literature dealing with polling, and a longer bibliography appears in the back of the book. The key terms are arranged alphabetically and a general index enables readers to trace subjects, themes, and ideas discussed under the various entries.

Why has China's authoritarian government under Xi Jinping retained popular support without political reforms? Drawing on Chinese social media data, in this book Titus C. Chen argues that China's digital propaganda and information control techniques--the monopolistic exercise of market authoritarianism--have empowered the Xi administration to manipulate public discourse and shape public opinion via social media. Chen argues that these techniques forge a sense of community and unite the general public under the Chinese government, thereby legitimating autocratic rule. By enhancing our understanding of China's digital ideological statecraft, the book makes a major contribution to the fields of China Studies and Political Communication.

"Manipulation of the American Voter" is a research-based examination of the theoretical and practical reasons for successful political advertising. It provides the means necessary to analyze political commercials, and by presenting the motives behind advertising strategies and tactics used in contemporary politics, the authors seek to free their readers from the inherent manipulation in political advertising. By analyzing political advertising as both a science and an art form, the authors unlock the mysteries of how millions of voters are manipulated each campaign season. This study, therefore, offers scholars and students of the electoral process the knowledge to see through the veil of political advertising and participate more fully in the political system.

Tropes of Intolerance is a Baedeker of bigotry, a short course on xenophobic racism and populist nationalism - both enduring threats to the social fabric of democratic societies. Each chapter is a self-contained commentary and a building block. In the first, the author considers the concepts of pride and prejudice and discusses patterns of discrimination and strategies of resistance. This is following by an illustrated consideration of the emblems of enmity - words, signs, symbols and other verbal and visual expressions of both chauvinism and intolerance. Linking the first two, the third chapter explores the nature of American Nativism and its contemporary expression. This is followed by an assessment of the exploitation of anxiety among particularly vulnerable sectors of society by skillful, manipulative leaders and their agents and the exacerbation of social divisions by the use of stereotyping, stigmatizing, and labeling. Chapter Five, "Trumped Up," narrows the focus to the present day, the president himself, and his exacerbation of polarizing particularism. A sixth chapter examines two of the most malignant ideologies -- resurgent anti-Semitism and the rise of Islamophobia -- bringing readers full circle. In addition to a brief Coda and a glossary of key terms related to the principal topic, there is a post-election Afterword written in late November, 2020.

Gone is the era of Edward R. Murrow and Walter Cronkite, when news programs fought to gain the trust and respect of a wide spectrum of American viewers. Today, the fastest-growing news programs and media platforms are fighting hard for increasingly narrow segments of the public and playing on old prejudices and deep-rooted fears, coloring the conversation in the blogosphere and the cable news chatter to distract from the true issues at stake. Using the same tactics once used to mobilize political parties and committed voters, they send their fans coded messages and demonize opposing groups, in the process securing valuable audience share and website traffic. Race-baiter is a term born out of this tumultuous climate, coined by the conservative media to describe a person who uses racial tensions to arouse the passion and ire of a particular demographic. Even as the election of the first black president forces us all to reevaluate how we think about race, gender, culture, and class lines, some areas of modern media are working hard to push the same old buttons of conflict and division for new purposes. In Race-Baiter, veteran journalist and media critic Eric Deggans dissects the powerful ways modern media feeds fears, prejudices, and hate, while also tracing the history of the word and its consequences, intended or otherwise.

The defeat of Apartheid and triumph of non-racial democracy in South Africa was not the work of just a few individuals. Ultimately, it came about through the actions – large and small – of many principled, courageous people from all walks of life and backgrounds.

Some of these activists achieved enduring fame and recognition and their names today loom large in the annals of the anti-apartheid struggle. Others were engaged in a range of practical, hands-on activities outside of the public eye. These were the loyal foot soldiers of the liberation Struggle, the unsung workers at the coal face who, largely behind the scenes, made a difference on the ground and helped to bring about meaningful change.

Even though Apartheid was aimed at entrenching white power and privilege, a number of whites rejected that system and instead joined their fellow South Africans in opposing it. Of these, a noteworthy proportion came from the Jewish community.

Mensches in the Trenches tells the hitherto unrecorded stories of some of these activists and the essential, if seldom publicised role that they and others like them played in bringing freedom and justice to their country.