Search Results (675)

The classical Chinese poem The Ballad of Mulan and Riyoko Ikeda’s iconic shōjo manga series The Rose of Versailles are two important East Asian cultural texts that are compared in this article to examine feminist resistance and gender negotiation. The protagonists of both stories are women who work in very patriarchal environments while also opposing, subverting, and eventually overcoming traditional gender norms. This paper argues that both texts enact what could be called a “dialectics of compliance and resistance”—that is, a simultaneous negotiation between conformity to institutional norms for survival and resistance through exposing and challenging those same norms in which heroines must adopt masculine codes to survive institutional structures, but in doing so reveal those structures as arbitrary and historically contingent—through the analytical lenses of feminist literary criticism, queer theory, postcolonial gender studies, and Judith Butler’s theory of gender performativity. The article explores the mechanics of cross-dressing as a political act, the ideological ambivalence ingrained in narrative closure, the construction of female heroism, and the divergent yet convergent ways in which each text positions itself relative to its own socio-political moment. They do this by drawing on close textual reading and cultural-historical contextualisation. In the end, the paper argues that The Ballad of Mulan and The Rose of Versailles share a feminist imaginary that resonates strongly with current discourses on gender, identity, and resistance, even though they come from different cultural and generic traditions and are separated by more than fourteen centuries. Full article

Critical thinking is a stated priority of higher education reform in China, yet its enactment in everyday teaching remains uneven. This study investigated how lecturers of ideological and political theory courses (IPTCs) understand and value critical thinking, and how they report teaching it. To our knowledge, few studies have modelled lecturers’ conceptions, attitudes, reported practices and contextual constraints jointly within these courses. An explanatory sequential mixed-methods design was employed. A validated questionnaire was completed by 362 IPTC lecturers across 20 universities in Anhui Province, and semi-structured interviews were subsequently conducted with 34 lecturers. The survey data were analysed using descriptive and inferential statistics, including multiple and moderated regression, whereas the interview data were examined thematically. Although lecturers endorsed critical thinking strongly as a general educational aim, they rated its place within IPTCs considerably lower, and they conceptualised it predominantly in terms of logic and reasoning. Reported classroom enactment fell below the scale midpoint. Conceptions did not predict practice; attitudes predicted it only weakly (standardised β = 0.13), and contextual constraints did not moderate the attitude–practice relationship. The regression models accounted for almost none of the variance in reported practice. These findings indicate a broad belief–practice gap that is shaped by structural conditions rather than by individual beliefs. The single-province, self-report design constrains wider generalisation. The findings direct reform attention towards assessment design and sustained, practice-based professional learning, since belief change alone appears unlikely to alter classroom practice. Full article

Over the last century, two highly influential organizations have impacted politics and resistance in the Arab world: the Ba’ath Party and the Muslim Brotherhood. The Muslim Brotherhood advanced the political dimension of Islam in the sense of a single community (Umma) that revolves around religion. This basic distinction has caused decades of ideological disputes and even, on some occasions, military confrontation. In this study, the media’s construction of the public image of the Muslim Brotherhood is analyzed. Two large outlets, the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) and Al Arabiya, are contrasted. Using a qualitative approach, news stories from 2023 to 2025 are examined to determine how strategic narratives can influence the population’s perception of these groups. The study results reveal a considerable gap in reporting between the two. Al Arabiya presents the Muslim Brotherhood as a collapsed, radical terrorist group manipulating religion to gain power, while the BBC’s reporting is more neutral and subtler, demonstrating how media organizations manipulate certain terms and themes to shape narratives. Full article

The Spanish democratic transition inaugurated in 1977 an uninterrupted electoral cycle in which the campaign poster became the foremost propagandistic medium and the most immediate expression of the political culture of each moment. No longitudinal analysis has yet covered the full arc from the first democratic elections of 15 June 1977 to the general elections of 23 July 2023, nor has the transition from ideological propaganda to personalised political marketing and multiplatform communication been systematically examined across all sixteen electoral contests. This study analyses campaign posters from the Spanish general elections available in the Dipòsit Digital de Documents of the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB) through a mixed-methods longitudinal design that is explicitly framed as a qualitative historical–comparative interpretation supported by descriptive quantitative evidence, combining critical visual discourse analysis, semiotic image analysis, quantitative content analysis, and the historical–comparative method, applied to a representative corpus of posters from the main political parties in each contest. The findings reveal three major evolutionary stages characterised by shifts in partisan identity construction, leadership personalisation, and the progressive integration of poster imagery into multiplatform communication ecosystems. These results indicate that electoral poster design both reflects and actively shapes transformations in Spanish political culture, and that the poster retains significant strategic and symbolic relevance within contemporary digital campaign environments. Full article

This study examines the challenges facing intercultural competence education in higher education during times of intense conflict. Most of the intercultural competence programs in higher education are based on Western liberal multicultural logic that strives to build trust between groups in conflict to promote peacemaking. The common conception of trust is described as a developmental cognitive–emotional effort that is anchored in a reflective and multi-perspective calculation of events and procedures that require a willingness to give up parts of positions and standpoints. The process is supposed to be mediated by a professional and unbiased facilitator who creates a “dialogic space” based on self-reflection and perspective-taking of the “other”. Previous findings suggest that these programs were relatively efficient before the 7 October war broke out in Israel. Thus, a joint Palestinian and Jewish program that was conducted at a teacher training college after 7 October challenged these findings. Examining the discursive practices used by the participants during the meetings revealed that the basic liberal multicultural assumptions of the intercultural competence model were rejected by students from both groups. The students interpreted the model as a way to contextualize the term peace in a specific ideological–political context. Understanding peace as a concept with a layered meaning contradicts the intercultural competence model’s perception of it as a universal–humanistic–independent position. Thus, the findings further problematize the universal perception of intercultural competence models in order to adjust them to teacher trainees working outside the West during difficult times. Full article

Many politicians heavily leverage social media platforms to further their interests and professional goals. TikTok, the widely popular social network established in 2016, has amassed a vast user following, especially among the younger demographic known as Generation Z. This study conceptualizes it as part of a platformized political communication environment that enables direct-to-audience communication beyond traditional journalistic gatekeeping. The current study aims to analyze high-visibility TikTok content produced by active Israeli politicians by scrutinizing the best-performing videos created by politicians representing diverse political ideologies. High-visibility content refers to videos that generated relatively high engagement, exposure, and platform presence, and therefore had greater potential to influence or impact audiences compared with less visible posts. The goal is to characterize and understand the content patterns and visibility dynamics of these successful TikTok videos posted by politicians. The findings suggest that the popularity of TikTok videos posted by politicians is associated with gender, age, and political affiliation. Men, older individuals, and those with right-wing affiliations tend to create content that garners the highest levels of popularity. Moreover, a considerable proportion of the sampled high-visibility videos do not engage directly with political subject matters. This suggests that, among best-performing political TikTok posts, visibility and engagement may sometimes outweigh explicit political or ideological discourse. This implies that politicians feel compelled to participate on the platform, even when their most visible content does not specifically revolve around promoting political messages. Consequently, the findings lend cautious support to the view that platform logic shapes political visibility and communication practices, even in politicians’ use of TikTok. In doing so, this study contributes to understanding how commercial social media platforms such as TikTok shape political visibility, engagement, and direct-to-audience communication. Full article

Türkiye’s Early Republican Era (1923–1946) was a period marked by profound ideological shifts, during which social values and national identity were reshaped. During this time, monuments and statues was utilized by Republican intellectuals as a ‘strategic tool for diffusion’ to instill the ideology of the Republic among the public. The monuments and statues of this period were designed to reflect revolutionary changes, forge a national identity, and emphasize the new values of the Republic. Questions such as: How did the figures in the monuments and statues of this period convey new Republican values like modernization, secularism, and nationalism to the public? What aspects of society did Republican elites aim to transform, and how did they represent this transformation through monuments and statues? What role did monuments play in the construction of national identity? remain to be answered. This study aims to shed light on the political and social context of the era by analyzing certain monuments produced during Türkiye’s Single-Party Era, thereby seeking to understand how Republican ideology was reflected in art and the role/impact of art in the construction of national identity. To this end, three monuments and one painting—considered to best reflect the era and to best convey the ideology of the Republic—have been selected as examples. While these monuments are subjected to in-depth analysis to decipher the explicit and implicit ideological messages they contain, the examples’ dimensions of meaning are also examined within the context of Althusser’s Ideology and the Ideological State Apparatuses and Sennett’s concepts of nakedness and the political/sovereign body. Full article

This study examines whether viewers’ relative affinity toward Spain’s two leading late-night hosts—Pablo Motos (El Hormiguero) and David Broncano (La Revuelta)—varies systematically by ideology. Using an anonymous non-probability online survey fielded in Segiuptember 2024 among adults in the primary analytic frame (N = 806), we construct two parallel six-item affinity indices: IM for Motos and IB for Broncano. Our primary outcome is the respondent-level Affective Gap (BA = IB − IM), where positive values indicate greater relative affinity toward Broncano. In the adult analytic frame, IM averages 2.517 and IB 2.710 on a 1–5 scale, yielding a mean BA of 0.192 (95% CI [0.094, 0.289]). BA is clearly positive among left-leaning respondents and lower, often negative, among right-leaning respondents. In OLS models with HC3 standard errors, ideology remains a strong negative predictor of BA after adjustment for age, gender, education, and socioeconomic status, and the association is robust to bootstrap intervals and sensitivity checks. Open-ended responses are used descriptively to contextualize the quantitative gradient. The study contributes to research on selective exposure, affective sorting, and media-personality evaluation by showing that, within this non-probability analytic sample, relative evaluations of two prominent Spanish late-night hosts are strongly associated with respondents’ ideological self-placement. Full article

To date, many studies on the Nazi Special Courts have focused on the individuals involved in passing judgement or in the prosecution process in general, as well as on their political significance. For our study, we undertake a re-evaluation and computational ‘upcycling’ of an archive catalogue from the 1970s containing around 10,000 legal cases from the Munich Special Court (1933–1945). Although this was not an entirely new phenomenon–they were originally introduced by the Weimar Republic–, the Special Courts were unique in that they brought together general criminal law and ‘crimes’ in the form of non-conformity with National Socialist ideology under a single jurisdiction. Full article

This article examines how anti-Zionist sentiment and antisemitism relate among self-identified American Christians, drawing on an original 2024 survey of roughly 2000 respondents. The survey included multiple antisemitic tropes and Israel-related statements measuring severe anti-Israel and anti-Zionist sentiment. Using generalized ordered logistic regression, we find a strong and escalating association between anti-Zionist sentiment and antisemitic trope endorsement across multiple levels of antisemitic intensity. Respondents who express stronger opposition to Israel are significantly more likely to affirm classical antisemitic stereotypes involving Jewish power, dual loyalty, or financial control. Supersessionist beliefs are likewise associated with greater antisemitic sentiment, with the relationship becoming especially pronounced at higher levels of antisemitism. In contrast, the traditional deicide belief does not emerge as a statistically significant correlate once broader theological and political attitudes are taken into account. Younger Christians, urban residents, and Southerners exhibit higher antisemitism, while education, age, and female gender are associated with lower levels. Taken together, the findings show that anti-Zionism and antisemitism are often empirically intertwined within contemporary American Christianity, particularly at more extreme levels. Because the data are cross-sectional, the results should be interpreted as associations rather than causal effects. Full article

This study examines how Indonesian university students negotiate the meanings of extremism and tolerance across digital and campus environments. Using phenomenology, the research examines the lived experiences of 35 students from Yogyakarta, Jakarta, Semarang, Surabaya, and Bandung to understand how digital platforms, everyday interactions, and symbolic practices mediate their religious identity work. The analysis applies Castells’ concept of communication power and Bourdieu’s notions of habitus and symbolic power to explore how digital platforms shape ideological narratives and emotional framing. Key Findings reveal that extremism is experienced not merely as ideological deviation but as a communicative rupture—manifested through coercive discourse, exclusionary framing, and digitally amplified moral authority—while tolerance emerges as a socially cultivated practice embedded in relational norms, affective positioning, and strategic self-presentation in mediated environments. Social media functions simultaneously as a site of exposure, contestation, and subtle resistance, enabling students to reframe, soften, or oppose dominant narratives through micro-activism and selective curation. This study offers a novel contribution by integrating data-driven phenomenological insights with a theory-driven account of mediated power, demonstrating how symbolic power circulates through digital infrastructures and shapes the cultural politics of religious pluralism among youth in contemporary Indonesia. Full article

We investigated the association between farm animal welfare (FAW) concern and self-classified meat consumption behavior and consumers’ socio-demographic, animal-contact-related, and ideological background factors. Covariate analyses and a machine-learning algorithm, Random Forest, were used to analyze complex, non-linear relationships between the data from 2116 Dutch households. FAW concern often turns out to be moderate to strong but is not simply associated with reduced meat consumption. Political orientation showed the strongest association with FAW concern and diet. Left-wing orientation is positively associated with FAW concern and less frequent or no meat consumption. Christian affiliation does the opposite, while non-Christian religious affiliation is weakly associated with vegetarian or vegan diets. Men more likely report an omnivorous diet and less FAW concern, while women report a vegetarian or vegan diet and higher concern. Voting left or center, Christian affiliation, and higher education are linked to a flexitarian diet. Lower education is associated with an omnivorous diet. In both rural and urban regions, income and household composition have little to no associations with both dietary self-classification and FAW concern. Respondents with regular animal contact show relatively strong FAW concern but no association with self-identified diet. Our results suggest that reducing or abstaining from meat is most strongly associated with ideological orientations. FAW concern alone is not expressed in diet. Full article

Political identity permeates people’s everyday experiences and begins to develop early in adolescence. Understanding which variables may influence this development, and in what direction, can provide valuable insight into underlying differences between political groups in the face of increasing polarization. To that end, this study aimed to investigate the political differences between those with each of the identity styles and elucidate the differential roles of parental and news media influences on attitudes concerning welfare and traditional gender roles in those with each identity style. University students (N = 395) answered questions about their identity style as well as their own and their parents’ political identities and media consumption. Those with a normative style were found to hold more conservative political attitudes than those with an informational style, and parental and media influence were predictive of one’s own political identity only among those with the normative style. Political attitudes of those with the diffuse-avoidant style differed from the normative but not informational style, and their political identity was only predicted by media influence. These differences demonstrate the usefulness of considering identity and developmental factors when researching intergroup political phenomena. Full article

Past research suggests that people may exhibit directional motivated reasoning whereby they are less skeptical of information that supports their political views. Recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions have elicited significant backlash, with some citing the fact that the decision overturned a longstanding legal precedent. Stare Decisis describes a core principle of the American legal system that courts are expected to adhere to past decisions, or precedent, when ruling on a case, unless there is an extraordinary reason(s) not to. To what extent, and by what process, does the public consider precedent in their reactions to such Court rulings? We investigate perceptions of precedent and the extent to which they are conditioned by the context of two real-world cases that broke with precedent: Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization (2022) and the Chevron doctrine in Loper Bright Enterprises et al. v. Raimondo, Secretary of Commerce, et al. (2024). We find that ideological attitudes and attitudes toward precedent influence Americans’ attitudes toward upholding precedent, though their influence depends on the specific case being evaluated. Full article

The rise of the non-religious, especially the young “nones”, will increasingly affect the way US culture views war, but with what result? The key to approaching this question is not only what the nones are advocating, but establishing what mixture of prominent topical ideas history has handed them. To get at the nature of this mixture by beginning with a general question: what is the most desirable mental attitude among free states with which to attend to the preparation for war? If the nones were to respond to this question, what ideas from other sources and, for the young nones, from older generations do they have to work with? What intellectual historical trends have come down to them? Classical thinking on war and justice continues to recede, so what has been proposed that would take its place? Lethality has been injected more recently into the milieu the young nones are entering. However, lethality is more an attempt to resolve tensions among contradictory agendas. A second, older possibility is a total war mindset, subsuming the state’s entire resources to warring. A third, likewise older option, is prosecuting wars of ideology that seek to crush antagonistic ideas and the political systems that hold them. The author argues the nones will not necessarily choose any of these, but will enable cultural receptivity to each of these three constructs. Alternatively, what about the contributions of classical philosophy to this question? This bypassed fourth avenue, with its emphasis on what constitutes a healthy polis, may provide a richer basis for leading militaries and cultures. The goal here, which the rise of the nones unintentionally imperils, is to secure the State and the soul of the warfighter by constituting or restoring the classical sense of the military’s reason to exist: not as a temporary inherent evil merely to serve state interests, but as a permanent dimension of society in service to the common good, as classically understood. Full article