Tuesday 14th July      Wednesday 15th July      Thursday 16th July      Friday 17th July     

Wednesday 15th July, 11:00 - 12:30 Room: L-101

Global societal change 2
Convenor	Mr Ferruccio Biolcati Rinaldi (University of Milan )
Coordinator 1	Mr Cristiano Vezzoni (University of Trento)

Session Details

This session examines societal change using major cross-national datasets such as the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems, the East Asian Social Survey, the European Social Survey, the International Social Survey Program, and the World Values Survey. Special focus is on the 1) impact of globalization on attitudes and behaviors across countries, 2) whether there are signs of convergence, and 3) the role of cohort turnover in shaping global societal change.

Paper Details

1. Measuring online and offline participation: problems and solutions from the Australian case
Dr Jill Sheppard (The Australian National University)

The study of political participation is a dangerous exercise: definitions are contested, behaviours change in advance of measurement practices and survey questions are particularly susceptible to social desirability bias. Added to these ongoing issues is the ‘problem’ of e-participation. Early studies on politics and the internet delineated online and offline participation, internet diffusion, social media and advances in interactivity present new problems. This paper provides examples from the measurement of participation in Australia: advantages and disadvantages of longitudinal and comparative measures, recent attempts at navigating the flows between offline and online activity, and minimising endogeneity in statistical analyses.

2. Measuring political participation of women in Spain. A longitudinal analysis.
Miss Elena Badal Valero (Universitat de Valencia)
Mr Jose Manuel Pavia Miralles (Universitat de Valencia)

This work investigates medium-term trends of women political involvement and discusses methods for estimating these trends. From a database with 40000000 individual microdata, we study the gap between women and men in political knowledge and their interest in politics. Focusing on nonresponse, the purpose is to provide a longitudinal analysis for age cohorts of the evolution, differentiated by gender, of the most significant political literacy indicators, knowing quantitatively and qualitatively the relationship between women and politics in Spain. These are some key variables for comprehend opinion surveys and election polls, which are in the heart of modern democracy.

3. The Impact of Globalization on Radical Right Voting
Dr Kathrin Thomas (University of Vienna)

This paper explores the impact of globalization on radical right voting in a comparative perspective using teh KOF index and CSES data. The results indicate that economic insecurities induced by globalization are one explanation of radical right voting, but that it does not have an impact when governments compensate for its negative effects. In addition, the cultural, and also political, consequences of globalization are an important driver of radical-right support.

4. Global Risks and Perceptions of Science and Technology
Professor So Young Kim (KAIST)

This study explores how technically intensive global risks affect public perceptions of science and technology (S&T) across and within countries. Grounded in Ulrich Beck’s notion of risk society, the aggregate-level (i.e., cross-country) analysis of this study examines if general publics of countries with greater vulnerability to climate change, nuclear accidents, or cyber threats exhibit more “reflexive” attitudes towards modern S&T. At the individual-level (i.e., within-country) analysis, we utilize the public understanding of science (PUS) framework to investigate whether lay perceptions of S&T are more divergent for technically complex global issues.