Data misreporting during the COVID19 crisis: The role of political institutions.
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ABSTRACT:
SUBMITTER: Adam A
PROVIDER: S-EPMC8820020 | biostudies-literature |
REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature
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Project description:Abstract Measures to cope with the COVID‐19 pandemic have put a sudden halt to street protests and other forms of citizen involvement in Europe. At the same time, the pandemic has increased the need for solidarity, motivating citizens to become involved on behalf of people at risk and the vulnerable more generally. This research note empirically examines the tension between the demobilisation and activation potential of the COVID‐19 crisis. Drawing on original survey data from seven Western European countries, we examine the extent, forms, and drivers of citizens’ engagement. Our findings show the remarkable persistence of pre‐existing political and civic engagement patterns. Concurrently, we show that threat perceptions triggered by the multifaceted COVID‐19 crisis have mobilized Europeans in the early phase of the pandemic. Similarly, the role of extreme ideological orientations in explaining (regular) political engagement indicates that the current situation may create its specific mobilisation potentials.
| S-EPMC8242449 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Traditionally, political scientists define political institutions deductively. This approach may prevent from discovery of existing institutions beyond the definitions. Here, a principal component analysis was used for an inductive extraction of dimensions in Polity IV data on the political institutions of all nations in the world the last two centuries. Three dimensions of institutions were revealed: core institutions of democracy, oligarchy, and despotism. We show that, historically and on a world scale, the dominance of the core institutions of despotism has first been replaced by a dominance of the core institutions of oligarchy, which in turn is now being followed by an increasing dominance by the core institutions of democracy. Nations do not take steps from despotic, to oligarchic and then to democratic institutions, however. Rather, nations hosting the core democracy institutions have succeeded in historically avoiding both the core institutions of despotism and those of oligarchy. On the other hand, some nations have not been influenced by any of these dimensions, while new institutional combinations are increasingly influencing others. We show that the extracted institutional dimensions do not correspond to the Polity scores for autocracy, "anocracy" and democracy, suggesting that changes in regime types occur at one level, while institutional dynamics work on another. Political regime types in that sense seem "canalized", i.e., underlying institutional architectures can and do vary, but to a considerable extent independently of regime types and their transitions. The inductive approach adds to the deductive regime type studies in that it produces results in line with modern studies of cultural evolution and memetic institutionalism in which institutions are the units of observation, not the nations that acts as host for them.
| S-EPMC3463615 | biostudies-literature
Project description:With much unknown about the new coronavirus, the scientific consensus is that human hosts are crucial to its spread and reproduction-the more people behave like regular socializing beings they are, the more likely it is that the virus will propagate. Hence, many nations worldwide have mandated physical-distancing measures. In the current preregistered research, we focus on examining two factors that may help explain differences in adherence to COVID-19 preventive behaviors and policy support across different countries-political orientation and analytic thinking. We positioned our research within the dual-process framework of human reasoning and investigated the role of cognitive reflection, open-minded thinking, and political ideology in determining COVID-19 responsible behavior (physical distancing and maintaining hygiene) and support for restrictive COVID-19 policies on a sample of 12,490 participants from 17 countries. We have not been able to detect substantial relationships of political orientation with preventive behaviors and policy support, and overall found no reliable evidence of politicization, nor polarization regarding the issue. The results of structural equation modeling showed that the inclination towards COVID-19 preventive measures and their endorsement were defined primarily by the tendency of open-minded thinking. Specifically, open-minded thinking was shown to be a predictor of all three criteria-avoiding physical contact, maintaining physical hygiene, and supporting COVID-19 restrictive mitigation policies. Cognitive reflection was predictive of lesser adherence to stricter hygiene and only very weakly predictive of lesser policy support. Furthermore, there was no evidence of these effects varying across political contexts. The mediation analysis suggested a partial mediation effect of COVID-19 conspiracy beliefs on the relationships of open-mindedness and cognitive reflection with physical distancing (but not adherence to stricter hygiene) and COVID-19 policy support, albeit very small and significant primarily due to sample size. There was also no evidence of these effects varying across political contexts. Finally, we have not been able to find strong evidence of political orientation modifying the relationship between analytical thinking and COVID-19 behaviors and policy support, although we explored the pattern of these effects in the US and Canadian samples for exploratory purposes and comparison with other similar studies.
| S-EPMC8341110 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Data management is essential in a flow cytometry (FCM) shared resource laboratory (SRL) for the integrity of collected data and its long-term preservation, as described in the Cytometry publication from 2016, ISAC Flow Cytometry Shared Resource Laboratory (SRL) Best Practices (Barsky et al.: Cytometry Part A 89A(2016): 1017-1030). The SARS-CoV-2 pandemic introduced an array of challenges in the operation of SRLs. The subsequent laboratory shutdowns and access restrictions brought to the forefront well-established practices that withstood the impact of a sudden change in operations and illuminated areas that need improvement. The most significant challenges from a data management perspective were data access for remote analysis and workstation management. Notably, lessons learned from this challenge emphasize the importance of safeguarding collected data from loss in various emergencies such as fire or natural disasters where the physical hardware storing data could be directly affected. Here, we describe two data management systems that have been successful during the current emergency created by the pandemic, specifically remote access and automated data transfer. We will discuss other situations that could arise and lead to data loss or challenges in interpreting data. © 2020 International Society for Advancement of Cytometry.
| S-EPMC7753671 | biostudies-literature
Project description:This paper studies the Greek sovereign debt crisis in the aftermath of the 2007-8 global financial crisis looking for barriers to, and engines of, growth. The vehicle is a calibrated medium-scale micro-founded macroeconomic model. Departing from 2008, our simulations show that the adopted economic adjustment program (the fiscal austerity mix combined with the fiscal and monetary assistance provided by the EU, ECB and IMF), jointly with the observed deterioration in institutional quality (the degree of protection of property rights) can explain most (around 22% of GDP) of the cumulative loss in GDP in the data (around 26% of GDP) between 2008 and 2016. In particular, the economic adjustment program can explain a fall of around 12%, while the deterioration in property rights accounts for another 10%. Counterfactual simulations, on the other hand, show that this loss could have been around 9% only, if the country had followed a different fiscal policy mix; if the degree of product marker liberalization was closer to that in the core euro zone countries; and, above all, if institutional quality in Greece had simply remained at its pre-crisis level. On the other hand, in the absence of the official fiscal bailouts, the depression would be much deeper, while, the accommodative role played by the quantitative policies of the ECB has been vital to the Greek economy. These results can be useful in the face of the ongoing covid-19 crisis. Supplementary Information The online version contains supplementary material available at (10.1007/s11079-020-09613-3)
| S-EPMC8005671 | biostudies-literature
Project description:In times of crisis, communication by leaders is essential for mobilizing an effective public response. During the COVID-19 pandemic, compliance with public health guidelines has been critical for the prevention of infections and deaths. We assembled a corpus of over 1500 pandemic-related speeches, containing over 4 million words, delivered by all 50 US state governors during the initial months of the COVID-19 pandemic. We analyzed the semantic, grammatical and linguistic-complexity properties of these speeches, and examined their relationships to COVID-19 case rates over space and time. We found that as COVID-19 cases rose, governors used stricter language to issue guidance, employed greater negation to defend their actions and highlight prevailing uncertainty, and used more extreme descriptive adjectives. As cases surged to their highest levels, governors used shorter words with fewer syllables. Investigating and understanding such characteristic responses to stress is important for improving effective public communication during major health crises.
| S-EPMC8748550 | biostudies-literature
Project description:BackgroundTo investigate the burden of mortality due to ischemic heart disease (IHD) attributable to low levels of physical activity in the Brazilian population (aged ≥ 25 years) before, during and after economic and political crises (2007-2017).MethodsThis study was focused on IHD as a cause of death. The International Statistical Classification of Diseases (10th revision) codes related to IHD have been mapped. The data used for the physical activity estimates of the present study refer to surveys with random sampling carried out in the Brazilian territory that considers all domains of physical activity. The contribution of physical activity for mortality due to IHD was estimated using a comparative risk assessment approach. In addition, we verified the association between mortality due to IHD attributable to low levels of physical activity according to the Socio-demographic Index of the Brazilian states.ResultsFor males it was estimated that in 2007 and 2017 there were, respectively, 9,585 and 11,821 deaths due to IHD as a result low physical activity. For females there were 8,689 deaths in 2007 and 10,779 deaths in 2017 due to IHD attributable to low physical activity. From 2007 to 2017, there was 12.0% (for males) and 16.0% (for females) of reduction in age-adjusted mortality rate due to IHD attributable to low physical activity. This reduction was not observed in the Northern and Northeastern regions of Brazil for the male population. Brazilian states with better socioeconomic conditions showed greater reductions in age-adjusted mortality rate due to IHD attributable to low physical activity (male: ρ = -0.74; female: ρ = -0.54).ConclusionThe fiscal austerity policies implemented and the lower investment in social programs in the period of economic and political crisis highlighted the social inequalities between Brazilian geographic regions for the burden of mortality due to IHD attributable to low levels of physical activity.
| S-EPMC7568855 | biostudies-literature
Project description:The rise of digital media has increased the opportunities for individuals to self-select political content online. This development has stimulated empirical research on how people select political information, especially when political beliefs are at stake. In the present paper, we tested a series of theory-derived assumptions about antecedents and consequences of selective exposure to confirmative political information and opinions in the digital arena. We conducted an online survey with German Internet users (N = 897, April 2016) and assessed political attitudes, media use and general beliefs in the context of the so-called "migration crisis". 28% of the participants in our sample reported exposure to a confirmative information environment. They are more likely to hear or read about political opinions on migration and political asylum that are similar to their own compared to cross-cutting content. We found no evidence for the assumption that the technological affordances of the Internet foster this form of selective political exposure. Instead, our analyses indicate that conservatism is a positive predictor of selecting confirmative information environments when it comes to migration and political asylum. We also gathered evidence that this relation is mediated by perceived threat and that selective political exposure is linked to truly false consensus beliefs. Our findings inform supply- and demand-side explanations of selective political exposure online. We discuss the relevance for psychological theories about the motivational underpinnings of selective exposure.
| S-EPMC8568288 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Societal instability and crises can cause rapid, large-scale movements. These movements are poorly understood and difficult to measure but strongly impact health. Data on these movements are important for planning response efforts. We retrospectively analyzed movement patterns surrounding a 2010 humanitarian crisis caused by internal political conflict in Côte d'Ivoire using two different methods.We used two remote measures, nighttime lights satellite imagery and anonymized mobile phone call detail records, to assess average population sizes as well as dynamic population changes. These data sources detect movements across different spatial and temporal scales.The two data sources showed strong agreement in average measures of population sizes. Because the spatiotemporal resolution of the data sources differed, we were able to obtain measurements on long- and short-term dynamic elements of populations at different points throughout the crisis.Using complementary, remote data sources to measure movement shows promise for future use in humanitarian crises. We conclude with challenges of remotely measuring movement and provide suggestions for future research and methodological developments.
| S-EPMC4357797 | biostudies-other
Project description:In 2008, as the financial crisis unfolded in the United States, the banking industry elevated its lobbying and campaign spending activities. By the end of 2008, and during 2009, the biggest political spenders, on average, received the largest bailout packages. Is that relationship causal? In this paper, I examine the effect of political connections on the allocation of funds from the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) to the US financial services industry during the 2008-2009 financial crisis. I find that TARP recipients that lobbied the government, donated to political campaigns, or whose top executives had direct connections to politics received better bailout deals. I estimate regression discontinuity design and instrumental variable models to uncover how election outcomes for politicians in close races affected the distribution of bailout funds for connected firms. The results do not imply that some banks were deliberately favored over others, just that favored banks benefited because of their proximity to the right people in power. If being politically connected matters in general, in times of crisis it matters even more.Supplementary informationThe online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s11127-020-00871-w.
| S-EPMC7865106 | biostudies-literature