Affective polarization, local contexts and public opinion in America.

Affective polarization has become a defining feature of twenty-first-century US politics, but we do not know how it relates to citizens' policy opinions. Answering this question has fundamental implications not only for understanding the political consequences of polarization, but also for understanding how citizens form preferences. Under most political circumstances, this is a difficult question to answer, but the novel coronavirus pandemic allows us to understand how partisan animus contributes to opinion formation. Using a two-wave panel that spans the outbreak of COVID-19, we find a strong association between citizens' levels of partisan animosity and their attitudes about the pandemic, as well as the actions they take in response to it. This relationship, however, is more muted in areas with severe outbreaks of the disease. Our results make clear that narrowing of issue divides requires not only policy discourse but also addressing affective partisan hostility.

Using social media to promote academic research: Identifying the benefits of twitter for sharing academic work.

To disseminate research, scholars once relied on university media services or journal press releases, but today any academic can turn to Twitter to share their published work with a broader audience. The possibility that scholars can push their research out, rather than hope that it is pulled in, holds the potential for scholars to draw wide attention to their research. In this manuscript, we examine whether there are systematic differences in the types of scholars who most benefit from this push model. Specifically, we investigate the extent to which there are gender differences in the dissemination of research via Twitter. We carry out our analyses by tracking tweet patterns for articles published in six journals across two fields (political science and communication), and we pair this Twitter data with demographic and educational data about the authors of the published articles, as well as article citation rates. We find considerable evidence that, overall, article citations are positively correlated with tweets about the article, and we find little evidence to suggest that author gender affects the transmission of research in this new media.

The Political Consequences of Latino Prejudice against Blacks.

A good deal of scholarship examines the effects of prejudice against blacks on public opinion and vote choice in the United States. Despite producing valuable insights, this research largely ignores the attitudes of Latinos-a critical omission, since Latinos constitute a rapidly growing share of the population. Using two nationally representative survey data sets, we find that the level of racial prejudice is comparable for Latinos and non-Hispanic whites. Equally comparable are associations between prejudice and political preferences: policy opinion and support for Obama in the 2008 presidential election. Our findings suggest that despite demographic changes, efforts to enact policies intended to assist blacks and elect black candidates will continue to be undermined by prejudice. That said, Latinos are more likely than non-Hispanic whites to support policies intended to assist blacks, because Latinos are more Democratic than non-Hispanic whites, more egalitarian, and less committed to the value of limited government.