Parties, Patronage and COVID-19 Vaccination Distribution in Indonesia

During the COVID-19 pandemic, as Indonesia mobilized to deliver vaccines to the population, an unexpected phenomenon occurred: political parties became directly involved in the vaccine delivery effort. In this article, we draw on online reports and interviews to demonstrate that these campaigns acted as an extension of the patronage politics that dominate the country's political arena. The involvement of political parties had little effect on the national vaccination effort, as parties delivered a relatively small number of vaccines and often targeted areas that already had high coverage. Instead, parties and politicians used these events to strengthen links with constituents and supporters. We identify three main pathways that allowed political parties to access the vaccines: lobbying by members of the national legislature's health commission;through local governments;and by direct executive government access to the national Ministry of Health. This "hijacking" of a national policy for clientelistic purposes provides insight into the presence of intra-party coordination of patronage goods but also demonstrates the personalization and fragmentation of patronage distribution highlighted in the existing literature. We conclude by discussing the implications of our findings for the quality of public healthcare and other services in Indonesia.

THE USE OF METAPHOR IN DEFINING THE PANDEMIC PHENOMENON

Although pandemics are perceived as scientific and technical problems, their multi-layered political implications trigger an ideologyladen debate. In this paper, we argue that in the face of the upheavals caused by Covid-19, a considerable part of the political and media systems has used narratives rooted in neo-nationalist and neo-liberal ideologies. On the one hand, neo-nationalism is visible through the portrayal of stereotypical « others » in mainstream media. On the other hand, the health emergency has tested and will continue to test institutions and their ability to find and implement solutions that minimise harm without restricting individual freedoms. Those entrusted with the institutional and political responsibility to inform the public once again communicated on the event using the primal rhetorical figures. First in China, then in Italy and Europe, and finally throughout the world, politicians, journalists, doctors, economists and opinion leaders have defined the health emergency as "war". The metaphor of war has been used and abused from the beginning, and the first and most vocal disseminators of the term « war » and its associated concepts have been politicians. This paper proposes an extension of the concept of Orientalism as a possible key to understanding the construction of stereotypical representations of Covid-19 as the 'enemy' and the pandemic as 'war' during the lockdown. Furthermore, it is argued that political positions and conflicts over pandemic measures are not random and nor do they depend on the idiosyncrasy of individuals. Rather, they represent certain material interests and socio-cultural and ideological backgrounds.

Schadenfreude, politics, and social media. Malicious joy towards politicians during the pandemic

This work investigates Schadenfreude, the malicious joy for the misfortunes of others. This under-investigated emotion expresses a refusal to empathize with the misfortunes of others, to the point of enjoying them. Recent classification models identify three types of Schadenfreude: for Aversion, if the pleasure is due to pure antipathy towards the victim;for Injustice, if you think that the misfortune suffered by the Victims punishes them for wrongs caused in the past;and for Image, when the misfortune of others makes those who feel Schadenfreude have a better consideration of themselves or of someone or something in which they believe. The Covid-19 pandemic unleashed in 2020 is a misfortune that has aroused malicious joy in some people. The research presented here analyses 1940 expressions of Schadenfreude collected on Facebook and Twitter in 26 Italian newspapers, referred to two political leaders, an Italian and a British one, when they contracted Covid: Nicola Zingaretti, one of the leaders of the government coalition in Italy, and Boris Johnson, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. The research distinguishes cases of Schadenfreude for Aversion and Injustice towards them and singles out thirteen ways of expressing them: insults, derisions, irony, curses, negative wishes, expressions of pleasure, displeasure for a misfortune not serious enough, refusal to empathize, clarification of the wrong perpetrated or of the causes of aversion;and also, appeals to the divine, and direct references to justice and one's aversion. The distribution of the expressions in the two types makes it possible to distinguish different motivations and levels of intensity of the Schadenfreude felt towards the two victims, differentiating the functions both of the emotion itself and of its manifestation. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved)

The politicized pandemic: Ideological polarization and the behavioral response to COVID-19.

In a representative sample of the U.S. population during the first summer of the COVID-19 pandemic, we investigate how prosociality and ideology interact in their relationship with health-protecting behavior and trust in the government to handle the crisis. We find that an experimental measure of prosociality based on standard economic games positively relates to protective behavior. Conservatives are less compliant with COVID-19-related behavioral restrictions than liberals and evaluate the government's handling of the crisis significantly more positively. We show that prosociality does not mediate the impact of political ideology. This finding means that conservatives are less compliant with protective health guidelines - independent of differences in prosociality between both ideological camps. Behavioral differences between liberals and conservatives are roughly only one-fourth of the size of their differences in judging the government's crisis management. This result suggests that Americans were more polarized in their political views than in their acceptance of public health advice.

From strategy to veracity: the behaviour of Spanish political leaders at the beginning of the vaccination against COVID-19

Twitter has become the Internet social network of choice for most political leaders and its use was sig-nificant during the hardest months of COVID-19. This paper analyzes the effects that the speeches of the main political leaders in Spain have had on the management of the communication of COVID-19, in order to verify how their speech has influenced transparency and the increase in disinformation in this moment. Likewise, these data will allow us to observe which communication techniques have been used by the most representative figures linked to the management of the pandemic. Based on a triple approach methodolo-gical basis, a quantitative, qualitative and discursive content analysis will be carried out, analyzing the data with the SPSS tool, version 25. The results obtained show how institutional sources have propagated opinionated content on Twitter. more than informative. We also verify that the saturation of messages in the network has given rise to a greater use of fallacy mechanisms by the institutional subjects analyzed and, therefore, it has been possible to determine that the way in which communication has been managed about COVID-19 has contributed to the increase in misinformation. Hand in hand with the new emerging narra-tives, social technology and artificial intelligence to know the citizen opinion of the transparency portals.

Aesthetics and leadership

In the current author's opinion, Democrats in the U. S. failed to provide an aesthetic that was as appealing to their own supporters and which manifested what they stood for, as did the anti-Brexit pro-European "remainers" in the UK. Both decried the aesthetic of simplicity and both failed to manifest an alternative aesthetic that was as attractive to their own supports as that of their opponents was to their own teams. The big challenge for those opponents is to create a compelling aesthetic that takes in complexity (instead of rejecting it in over-simplistic one liners or slogans fitting Twitter word limits, as Trump and Johnson have done). The author's proposal is that clarity rather than simplicity will be a potential avenue in this regard (Ramirez, 2008). Let us hope that in times affected by rising inequality among and within countries, climate change imperatives, ageing and still growing populations, increases in armed capabilities, and massive debt issued to avert the worse effects of COVID-19, new leaders will manage to muster an aesthetic of clarity that is as convincing and riveting as that of simplicity has been in the last few years. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved)

Public Choice Theory: An Explanation of the Pandemic Policy Responses

Public choice theory suggests that the pandemic policy responses were in fact the result of politicians' and bureaucrats' ambition to pursue their own interest. The main target of politicians during the Covid-19 pandemic was the one that politicians typically aim at, i.e., to maximize votes. Lockdowns, mass vaccination, and vaccine passports are largely explained by the vote maximizing premise. Bureaucrats such as scientists who work for the government but who do not appear as candidates in the elections also engaged in utility maximizing during the Covid-19 pandemic by pursuing their own goals which include, among others, increased popularity and willingness to establish their reputation. A budget maximizing analysis is used to illustrate how an ever-increasing budget satisfies nearly all groups involved in the pandemic, i.e., politicians, bureaucrats, and voters. Findings from polls and election results verify the public choice analysis. © 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.

I politici e l'immigrazione su Facebook: come si (de)legittima il discorso migratorio durante l'emergenza sanitaria

In this article we analyse how the immigration issue is narrated during the Covid-19 outbreak by several Italian political actors. We select Facebook as the main digital arena of political communication in the Italian public sphere. Quantitative analysis and Critical Discourse Analysis have been applied to politicians' posts aiming at identifying the linguistic strategies that contribute to instrumentalizing the emergency and aim to reinforce the politicization of the issue. Findings suggest that the main discursive strategies used by politicians do not only include migrants as a danger for the spread of the virus, but the migratory narration is systematically organized on negative campaigning blaming political opponents. The contribution helps to reveal how the anti-migration discourse is reproduced during the Covid-19 outbreak and how the politicization of the migration serves as a context for the normalization of migrant's exclusion.

The Policy Blame Game: How Polarization Distorts Democratic Accountability across the Local, State, and Federal Level

Democratic accountability relies on voters to punish their representatives for policies they dislike. Yet, a separation-of-powers system can make it hard to know who is to blame, and partisan biases further distort voters' evaluations. During the COVID-19 pandemic, precautionary policies were put into place sometimes by governors, sometimes by mayors, and sometimes by no one at all, allowing us to identify when voters hold out-party versus in-party politicians responsible for policies. With a survey spanning 48 states, we test our theory that attitudes toward policies and parties intersect to determine when selective attribution takes place. We find that as individuals increasingly oppose a policy, they are more likely to blame whichever level of government is led by the out-party. This is most pronounced among partisans with strong in-party biases. We provide important insight into the mechanisms that drive selective attribution and the conditions under which democratic accountability is at risk.

The Persistence of Ethnopopulist Support: The Case of Rodrigo Duterte's Philippines

The past few years have seen an emergence of populist leaders around the world, who have not only accrued but also maintained support despite rampant criticism, governance failures, and the ongoing COVID pandemic. The Philippines' Rodrigo Duterte is the best illustration of this trend, with approval ratings rarely dipping below 80 percent. What explains his high levels of robust public support? We argue that Duterte is an ethnopopulist who uses ethnic appeals in combination with insider vs. outsider rhetoric to garner and maintain public support. Moreover, we argue that ethnic affiliation is a main driver of support for Duterte, and more important than alternative factors such as age, education, gender, or urban vs. rural divides. We provide evidence of Duterte's marriage of ethnic and populist appeals, then evaluate whether ethnicity predicts support for Duterte, using 15 rounds of nationally representative public opinion data. Identifying with a non-Tagalog ethnicity (like Duterte) leads to an 8 percent increase in approval for Duterte, significantly larger than any other explanatory factor. Among Duterte supporters, a non-Tagalog ethnicity is associated with 19 percent increase in strong versus mild support. Ethnicity is the only positive and significant result, suggesting that it strongly explains why Duterte's support remains robust. Alternative explanations, such as social desirability bias and alternative policy considerations, do not explain our results.

Democracy and belief in conspiracy theories in New Zealand

The COVID-19 pandemic supercharged the spread of fake news, misinformation, and conspiracy theories worldwide. Using a national probability sample of adults from the New Zealand Attitudes and Values Study during 2020 (17–99 years old;M = 48.59, SD = 13.86;63% women, 37% men;N = 41,487), we examined the associations between agreement with general conspiracy beliefs and political indicators of intention to vote and satisfaction with government, alongside political factors including trust in politicians, political efficacy, identity centrality, and political ideology. Left-wing political ideology, trust in politicians, and political efficacy accounted for most of the explained variance in satisfaction with the government. General conspiracy belief was also a unique contributor to lower satisfaction with the government. We also found a curvilinear relationship between political ideology with heightened belief in conspiracies at both ideological extremes and the centre. Findings are discussed in terms of the consequences of conspiracy belief on democratic engagement. [ FROM AUTHOR] Copyright of Australian Journal of Political Science is the property of Routledge and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full . (Copyright applies to all s.)

Perception of the leaders of the United States, the United Kingdom, and Spain in television conferences about Covid-19

The discourses of the political leaders about the Covid-19 pandemic have become central to many television networks. Many citizens follow these press conferences, as they can be affected by the government’s measures against the virus. Due to its importance, analyzing how these individuals perceive their political leaders in these television appearances is relevant to determining their influence. Therefore, this study aims to analyze the perception of the ex-President of the United States (Donald Trump), the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (Boris Johnson), and the President of the Government of Spain (Pedro Sánchez) in television conferences devoted to battling against the Covid-19 pandemic. Af-ter watching two videos of each leader, a gender-balanced sample of 360 citizens of these three countries (the United States, the United Kingdom, and Spain) evaluated the politicians’ attractiveness, credibility, and persuasiveness as well as the influence of these factors on the public’s attitude toward them and voting intention using an online survey. The results showed that the Spanish President, Pedro Sánchez, was considered the most attractive, credible, and persuasive leader with the most favorable attitude toward him and the highest voting intention, followed by the Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, and the American politician, Donald Trump. Therefore, the most physically and vocally attractive leader with the highest credibility and persuasiveness achieved the most favorable attitude and the highest voting intention. The most influential variables of the structural model analyzed in this study were persuasiveness and credibility, which mainly affected the attitude toward the politician and, to a lesser extent, voting intention. © 2022, El Profesional de la Informacion. All rights reserved.

What is Remembered in Pandemic: A Commentary on the Mediated Memories of Piety in COVID-19.

The paper explores how the experiences of the present pandemic are shaped by the memories of popular religious piety during past pandemics and epidemics. Taking insights from the works of Astrid Erll and Reinhart Koselleck, the process 'remembering-imagining system' within the context of the pandemic is discussed by tracing the reemergence of pandemic deities and narratives of piety in India. Using digitally documented and disseminated narratives on piety emerging during COVID-19, an attempt is made to understand how these narratives shape the experiences, responses, and collective memory of the pandemic. Through a discussion of the shift in the imagination of political leadership and the moral responsibilities of the community, an attempt is made to highlight the mode in which the narratives on piety shape the contours of a time that is otherwise unimaginable. The mediated memories of popular religious piety make it possible to remember similar crisis times and to imagine and reinstate the social order that is threatened by this sudden unimaginable crisis. The paper thus argues that within the context of India, popular religious piety, though often overlooked, becomes a significant part of making sense and shaping the experiences of the pandemic time.

When Politicians Meet Experts: Disinformation on Twitter About Covid-19 Vaccination

The Covid-19 vaccination has meant a huge challenge for crisis communication. After months of lockdowns, mass vaccination was a silver lining moment, but it was under threat from disinformation boosted by misinformation on social media. This research explores how opinion leaders among political leaders and health experts used Twitter to create and manage messages about the vaccination process. Specifically, we show the issues (issue frame) and strategies (game frame) applied by these actors. This study employs a corpus on the words “Covid-19” and “vaccines” used on Twitter by the heads of government and 10 recognized health experts (two for each country) in the US, the UK, France, Portugal, and Spain. We also analyze the accounts of fact-checking projects on those countries (@PolitiFact, @FullFact, @decodeurs, @JornalPoligrafo, and @maldita). The sample allows the comparison of countries with different political cultures that participated differently in the production of vaccines. The data were captured from the beginning of the vaccination drive (December 14th, 2020) until most of the population above 60 were vaccinated (May 14th, 2021). A manual content analysis was performed on the tweets (n = 2,607). The results illustrate that the politicians mostly disagreed with experts regarding issues and strategies. This finding can foster distrust in the elites and, therefore, threatens the long-term success of a public health campaign. Our study contributes to discussions on the role of networks for social cohesion, arguing that the public conversation on Twitter about the vaccination has revealed high levels of controversy.

Politycy i eksperci – Polska i USA w obliczu pandemii COVID-19

During pandemic COVID-19, politicians responsible for developing strategies to combat the virus play a significant role and make key decisions in this regard. An important role is also played by national experts who advise and provide scientific knowledge to governments to ensure the highest possible level of security for the whole society. The analysis of Polish and American politicians and experts gives a comparison in terms of actions, opinions and positions taken. In both countries, important national expert institutions participated in the fight against the pandemic, and government advisory teams for the COVID-19 pandemic were established. There were numerous problems with both health systems and a lack of consistency between the recommendations of experts and politicians, which resulted in a loss of public confidence. This difficult situation in which all countries in the world find themselves may be a good lesson for future threats.

Trust, Governance, and the Covid-19 Pandemic: an Explainer using Longitudinal Data from the United Kingdom.

Crises like the Covid-19 pandemic place an added premium on the social contract underpinning principal-agent relations in representative democracies, which relies, at a fundamental level, on conditional trust judgements by those without power in those with decision-making authority to act in their better interests. Existing studies of political trust during the pandemic suggest that it has been both a symptom of government activity as well as a cause of its success or failure. Presenting original longitudinal data collected from UK citizens at the start of the pandemic and again twenty months later, the article teases apart these dynamics and their implications. It shows, for example, that the public became less trusting and more distrusting of politicians during this unique moment, and that these trends are strongly linked to performance evaluations of the UK government as well as public compliance with mandatory and non-mandatory policies such as vaccination and mask wearing.

Transformative Effects of Overtourism and COVID-19-Caused Reduction of Tourism on Residents—An Investigation of the Anti-Overtourism Movement on the Island of Mallorca

The coronavirus outbreak in late 2019 and the subsequent restrictions on mobility and physical contacts caused an extreme collapse of international tourism. Shortly before the pandemic turned the world upside down, one of the most pressing issues in global tourism was a phenomenon that became known as overtourism. It describes massively the negative impacts of tourism on destinations and the frustrated residents protesting against it, with discontent reaching a dimension that could hardly be estimated at the time when Doxey’s Irritation Index was created. Especially in southern European destinations, thousands of people have taken to the streets over their dissatisfaction with the unlimited growth of tourism and its negative effects on their daily lives. Within a few years, small neighbourhood actions morphed into coordinated social movements demanding that politicians make fundamental changes to the socio-economic system. Those events demonstrate a politicizing effect of tourism that has not sufficiently been addressed hitherto in tourism research, which is mainly focused on the attitude of the visited towards tourism itself. This article offers a broader socio-political approach that focuses on tourism as one of the largest industries within a capitalist system that has massive impacts on people’s lives, rather than simply on changing attitudes towards tourism. Twelve problem-centred interviews with actors of the anti-overtourism movements in the Balearic Island of Mallorca were conducted to examine the effects of overtourism and COVID-19-caused tourism breakdown on residents’ socio-political perspectives. Building on the transformative learning theory developed by the American sociologist Jack Mezirow, the analysis of the data revealed far-reaching influences on residents’ personal development, fundamental perspectives and professional decisions.

Fake News Explosion in Portugal and Brazil the Pandemic and Journalists’ Testimonies on Disinformation

Orchestrated manipulations spread lies and can create an environment of uncertainty in society, leading to concerns from politicians, scholars, educators, and journalists, among others. In this paper we explore what the emergence of fake news (understood as false news) represents for journalists, trying to answer the following question: Does false news pose a threat to the credibility of good journalism, causing a disruption of the traditional work? To answer it, we interviewed a sample of journalists from various media organizations in Portugal and Brazil. Among the main findings, journalists are aware that fake news is a problem to be faced, as the blame for the dissemination of false news erroneously lies with the profession. They are conscious that something must be done and agree that the best way to fight against fake news is to invest in media literacy. Most of the journalists of our sample think they must be also more cautious to check sources for veracity and for political motivations. The results show that there is a resolve to reinforce the role of journalism in society.

A socialist cry for civilisational change: COVID-19 and the failure of neo-liberalism

A destroyed society has been confronted by a cruel virus. The coronavirus pandemic has laid bare the failure of the capitalist and neo-liberal regime in controlling the virus. In these times, people have shown their support for a democratic socialist state that places the health of its populace at its centre. Now, the politicians need to listen.

The Memetic Cult of Personality of Politicians During the Pandemic

Our contribution aims at conceptualising the notion of «memetic cult of personality», which originates from the memetic production surrounding political figures, especially during periods of intense media coverage, like that triggered by the Coronavirus outbreak. To do so, we focus on two case studies from the Italian political sphere: former Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte and Governor of Campania Region Vincenzo De Luca, both prominent media figures during the first lockdown. Relying on digital methods for the data collection, our empirical inquiry focuses on a corpus of static image memes, memetic videos and newspaper articles collected across different platforms. By adopting a combination of automated visual analysis and discourse analysis, we demonstrate that memetic cults show some of the traits traditionally attributed to personality cults, while displaying unique features as well. At a general level, it is maintained that memetic cults are co-constructed by users participating in the collaborative practices of memetic production and circulation. Leveraging the ambiguous logic of meme culture, we also illustrate how these cults fuel doppelganger characters and alternative narratives, in which support and mockery are blended together © 2021, Comunicazione Politica. All Rights Reserved.