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SocArXiv papers

• Identity Spillovers: How the Politics of Immigration Shapes Class and Religious Self-Identification
  Social identities like class and religion are typically treated as stable antecedents of political preferences. This article shows that the causal arrow can also run in reverse: when exposed to narratives that pit immigrants against a discrete native social group, individuals can 'update' their identities to match their preferences over immigration. We theorise that anti-immigration individuals may claim membership of groups portrayed as threatened by immigrants as a form of instrumental belief justification: adopting this identity allows them to ground out-group aversion in concern for in-group interests. We test this framework with two original survey experiments: one on class identity in Britain and one on Christian identity in Italy. When primed with narratives framing immigration as a threat to the British working class or to the role of Christianity in Italian culture, respondents with anti-immigration preferences become more likely to claim working-class and Christian identities. In the British case, we also find evidence that pro-immigration individuals dis-identify from the working class when exposed to the treatment. These identity updates are driven by respondents who lack 'objective' markers of group membership (i.e., middle-class Britons and non-church-going Italians). They are also not reflected in changes in support for policies benefiting these groups, underscoring the instrumental nature of individuals' responses to these narratives. Overall, the findings speak to the literature on cleavage realignment, suggesting that when political actors strategically link immigration to 'old' dimensions of political conflict, traditional categories of politics such as class and religion acquire new meanings in people's minds.
• Is the association between food insecurity and depression mediated by diet?
  Background. Food insecurity is associated with depression. Food insecurity involves distinctive patterns of dietary intake, and recent evidence suggests that dietary intake affects mood. Thus, an important pathway from food insecurity to depression may be via dietary changes. Methods. We studied two observational datasets (one from the UK, and NHANES 2017-8 from the USA) with measurements of food insecurity and affective state, plus dietary data from 24-hr food recalls. We examined variables concerning dietary composition and intake timing, as well as affective state, by food-insecurity status. Results. In both datasets, people experiencing food insecurity had significantly worse affective states. They showed dietary differences, notably more meal skipping, less regular timing of the first meal, and lower dietary diversity. A set of dietary variables (meal irregularity, night eating, dietary diversity, fruit and vegetable intake, and protein intake) partially mediated the association between food insecurity and affective state, accounting for 23% and 6% of the total association. Discussion. Dietary intake represents one pathway via which food insecurity can negatively affect mental health. Our findings suggest that while dietary intake plays a role in the association between food insecurity and poorer mood outcomes, it does not predominate.
• Tripartite Perception of Race Theory (TPRT): A Framework for Understanding Interracial Interaction
  The Tripartite Perception of Race Theory (TPRT) advances a new theoretical framework for explaining how racial perception structures interracial interaction. Rather than treating anxiety, threat, or prejudice as primary explanatory endpoints, TPRT conceptualizes racial perception itself as the foundational mechanism organizing communicative experience prior to interaction. The theory specifies three analytically distinct but interrelated perceptual dimensions--racial distinctness, racial inequality, and racial incompatibility--through which racial hierarchy and difference are anticipated, interpreted, and negotiated. Racial distinctness concerns perceived cultural and normative divergence; racial inequality captures perceived hierarchical asymmetry and status differentiation; and racial incompatibility reflects beliefs about the feasibility of constructive cross-racial engagement. By formalizing these dimensions through a set of propositions, TPRT articulates how perceptual orientations shape communicative expectations, participation, and avoidance, particularly in contexts marked by historical and structural inequality. The framework reorients race and communication scholarship from outcome-centered models of anxiety and threat toward a perception-centered account that links macro-level racial structures to micro-level interactional processes. Although developed within the domain of interracial communication, TPRT offers a generalizable analytic structure for examining how perceptions of social difference condition interaction across diverse intergroup contexts. In doing so, the theory provides an empirically falsifiable and conceptually integrative foundation for understanding how race is anticipated, enacted, and reproduced in everyday communicative life.
• The Synthetic Turn A Genealogy of Digital Methods from Platform Critique to Generative Inquiry
  This study traces the "Synthetic Turn" in digital methods--the transformation of generative AI from object of study to primary research instrument. Analyzing the complete archive of 474 projects from the Digital Methods Initiative (2007-2026), I document a fourteen-fold increase in AI/ML method adoption: from 4.9% of projects during algorithmic critique (2007-2015), to 33.5% during platform auditing (2016-2021), to 70.1% in the current period (2022-2026). The timing complicates popular narratives: 41.4% of projects in 2022 engaged substantively with AI/ML before ChatGPT's public release. I formalize four "synthetic protocols"--Performative Probing, Contrastive Generation, Recursive Amplification, and Symptomatic Reading--each tracing clear lineage to established practices. Yet two-thirds of Synthetic Turn projects employ AI/ML methods while only 4.8% position AI as their primary methodological lineage: adaptation, not displacement. Synthetic protocols offer pathways to critical AI research that do not depend on corporate cooperation, technical infrastructure, or privileged access.
• Memes About AI as Sociotechnical Narratives: Vernacular Criticism and the Imaginary Institution of Society
  This article examines how internet memes contribute to the sociotechnical imaginaries surrounding artificial intelligence (AI). Drawing on Castoriadis's distinction between instituted and instituting imaginaries, we understand memes as narratives that symbolically construct AI in everyday culture. In the first section, we review research on sociotechnical imaginaries of AI across textual and visual domains, and show that memes that speak about AI have received comparatively little scholarly attention. We then introduce the notion of sociotechnical narratives to frame these imaginaries as contested and provisional rather than coherent or hegemonic. In the second section, we conceptualize memes as narratives that intervene in the symbolic institution of social reality, showing that they can reinforce dominant meanings through repetition and normalization, but also subvert or reframe them. The third section presents a mixed-methods empirical study of 560 memes collected from Imgflip.com (2016-2025). After building the corpus through manual filtering, we coded memes by topic and conducted a fine-grained qualitative analysis of four main categories: AI takeover, generative AI, art, and AI social impact. Our findings show that most memes reiterate rather than subvert dominant representations of AI. Humor tends to flatten disagreement rather than intensify it, producing what we describe as dormant agonism.
• Artificial intelligence and access to justice at the 'shop front': the potential and limitations of meeting legal need through technology
  In Australia, governments fund Community Legal Centres (CLCs) as part of the legal assistance sector (LAS) to meet the 'legal needs' of people experiencing disadvantage who cannot afford private legal services. Persistent unmet demand for CLCs is well-documented. To increase access to justice, the sector has been a long-time adopter of once-revolutionary innovations, like video conferencing. As artificial intelligence (AI) is increasingly used in private legal practice to increase productivity and profits, some parts of the LAS are also exploring AI use cases. This article asks: What do we know about CLC clients and how services are currently delivered to meet their needs? What must we consider about client capabilities to ensure AI technologies are appropriate in the context of CLC service delivery? The research includes a review of policy documents, peer-reviewed research and grey literature, and secondary analysis of empirical data on how client capabilities contribute to the legal needs of CLC clients. We show in the article that the three-dimensional nature of legal need, a client's capability and ability to self-assist, structural inequalities and current CLC service delivery models are vital considerations when developing AI tools to increase access to justice.
• Climate adaptation and institutional continuity: Understanding lock-in dynamics in China's grassland governance
  Intensifying climate change poses growing challenges for socio-economic stability and rural livelihoods in China, particularly in ecologically sensitive regions such as the Inner Mongolian grasslands. Although climate adaptation has become a key policy priority, translating national objectives into locally effective action remains complex. A central challenge lies in the emergence of adaptation lock-ins--self-reinforcing institutional, epistemological, and policy dynamics that stabilize specific adaptation pathways while limiting alternative responses. This study applies the adaptive lock-in framework to examine how such dynamics have developed within China's grassland governance and how they shape climate vulnerability and adaptive capacity over time. Focusing on interactions among political-economic structures, centralized decision-making, and subnational implementation, the analysis explores how adaptation goals become institutionalized through formal policies, administrative procedures, and dominant knowledge frameworks. The study draws on 207 in-depth interviews with pastoralists, village cadres, and local officials in Inner Mongolia, complemented by a systematic review of climate adaptation and grassland management policy documents issued between 2002 and 2024. The findings suggest that adaptation lock-ins are closely intertwined with broader development and conservation agendas that influence infrastructure investment, risk framing, and institutional practice. While these arrangements facilitate policy coordination and implementation, they may also constrain flexibility in addressing diverse local conditions. By elucidating the mechanisms through which adaptation lock-ins form and persist, this study offers policy-relevant insights into how future climate adaptation efforts might strengthen responsiveness and resilience within existing governance frameworks, with implications extending beyond the Chinese context.
• Mapping Current and Potential Criminal and Security Issues Associated with Climate Change Mitigation Technologies
  Our transition to a low-carbon future critically depends on technologies to mitigate climate change (CCMTs). These include renewable energies, carbon capture, utilisation and sequestration (CCUS), and electric vehicles. As many of them are still evolving technologies, they will likely present novel crime and security risks. Unfortunately, knowledge about such risks is still limited and fragmentary. This scoping review aims to bridge this gap and inform policymakers to prevent such emerging risks. We found 97 relevant articles from a total of 1139 references we screened from academic and non-academic sources across disciplines. They revealed 20 distinct crime threats of six different natures: property offences, cyber-attacks, financial crime and corruption, environmental threats, human rights abuse, and national security threats. Notable examples of criminogenic situations are CCUS-related environmental threats, greenwashing, and territorial conflicts over "green projects" that require adequate future crime prevention strategies. To that end, we also found 22 (potential) countermeasures, mostly of a legal or policy nature. This comprehensive overview highlights what appears to be an under-researched aspect of sustainable development, which we believe should include ensuring safety and security throughout climate mitigation supply chains.
• Topic Hijacking in Online Health Communities
  Online health communities (OHCs) are conventionally recognized as information commons for mutual exchange among peer users with similar health concerns. Extant research reckons that engagement patterns universally conform to implicit norms guided by social exchange; that is, when a topic owner (i.e., user who initiates a topic thread) receives replies from peer users, they are said to acquire social support. This overlooks topic hijacking, a prevalent phenomenon where peer users solicit instead of providing support to topic owners. Drawing on the territoriality theory, we conceptualize that OHCs, as a form of health information commons, accommodate the emergence of personal territories when a user initiates a topic for support seeking. We posit topic hijacking as territorial infringement, and theorize a fight-flight-flex response framework for topic owners who experience topic hijacking, as well as the contingency of hijacking competitiveness on responses. Using data from 368 topics in an OHC, we develop measures of hijacking and hijacking competitiveness (competitive vs. complementary). Regression analyses attest to our research hypotheses that hijacking triggers (i) defensive responses at both the topic owner territory and community levels, including fight (marking self-presence) and flight (disengagement), and (ii) expansive response at the community level manifested by flex (subsequent hijacking of other topic owners' territories). Moreover, competitive hijacking intensifies defensive responses, while complementary hijacking fosters territorial expansion. This study advances the OHC literature by recognizing topic hijacking as territorial infringements disrupting topic owner engagement, introducing a novel fight-flight-flex framework that captures both defensive and expansive responses, and identifying hijacking competitiveness as a boundary condition discerning defensive versus expansive responses to hijacking. Our findings offer implications for platform governance by showing how different hijacking forms may disrupt or enhance community vitality.
• Tool Media, Security, and the Reconfigured Meaning of the Second Amendment
  Emerging Internet of Things (IoT) technologies are transforming everyday practices of security in ways that extend beyond communication and discourse. This article introduces tool media as a distinct conceptual category to describe media technologies that organize perception, judgment, and action through automated systems of sensing, evaluation, and response rather than primarily through symbolic representation or communicative exchange. By foregrounding operational delegation as a mediating logic, the article expands media theory beyond discourse-centered paradigms to account for technologies that structure environments and coordinate behavior through procedural systems. Focusing on IoT-based home security systems as a theoretically generative case, the article examines how tool media contribute to a reconfiguration of protection. Whereas protection has historically been associated with armed readiness and individual response---particularly within American gun culture and Second Amendment discourse---IoT security systems reorganize protection around anticipatory monitoring, infrastructural reliability, and delegated authority. This shift does not directly contest constitutional rights but subtly recalibrates the cultural conditions under which they acquire meaning. By analyzing how operational media reshape perceptions of risk, responsibility, and authority, the article demonstrates how constitutional meaning and cultural identity are reorganized through everyday technological systems. More broadly, it argues that understanding contemporary social organization and transformation requires attention to operational systems that organize perception, judgment, and action prior to and alongside symbolic communication.
• Expert-identified Crime and Security Risks of Climate Change Mitigation Technologies
  Climate change mitigation technologies (CCMTs) play a key role in decarbonisation efforts, but may also create new opportunities for crime and security risks that have remained under-explored. This study presents an expert-informed assessment of crime threats and countermeasures associated with CCMTs, involving 28 experts from government, law enforcement, industry, academia, and civil society. Through structured idea generation, thematic analysis, and forecasting surveys, the participants evaluated 35 distinct crime threats and 36 countermeasures, of which 13 threats and 18 countermeasures were uniquely identified by them. The identified risks were found to be concentrated in CCMT supply chains and resource extraction, with high-priority threats relating to environmental harms, illegal mining, and human rights abuse, alongside cyber-enabled and financial crimes. Promising countermeasures include CCMT-specific regulation, risk assessment, data sharing, physical security, and targeted education. The findings show that the green transition reshapes rather than removes crime risks, underscoring the need for proactive governance to ensure a secure and sustainable low-carbon transition.
• Policy on Digital Asset
  The transactions involving most of the digital assets do not require financial intermediaries and cannot be regulated. Further, the volatility of digital asset and risk exposure affects the growth of financial market. Hence, the regulatory authorities also regularly monitor and incorporate the necessary transformation and transmission of the respective monetary policies. The impact of Digital Asset, either Private or Public, on the money flow is to be examined. Considering the above, this paper intends to examine the on monetary policy implications for digital assets in general and CBDCs in particular.
• Who Leads the Trade? Responsibility, Algorithmic Influence, and Regret in Financial Human-Algorithm Collaboration
  As financial decision-making increasingly shifts toward algorithmic co-pilot models, the psychological dynamics of human-algorithm collaboration remain insufficiently understood. This study examines defensive attribution mechanisms in financial trading, focusing on how individuals assign responsibility and experience regret under varying outcomes. A custom-built trading simulator was used (N = 88; 1,320 incentivized trials), and behavior was analyzed using linear mixed-effects models. The results reveal a robust self-serving bias expressed through two distinct processes. Responsibility attribution was high for gains but declined sharply after losses, while perceived algorithm influence increased following failures, indicating retrospective inflation of the algorithm's role. Regret exhibited a structural asymmetry: loss-related regret was strongly dispositional, whereas gain-related regret was situational. These patterns suggest that negative outcomes activate stable self-evaluative tendencies, while positive outcomes elicit more context-dependent responses. Crucially, restoring decision autonomy significantly reduced emotional distress after losses. Participants who chose to ignore the algorithm experienced lower regret, indicating that agency serves as a psychological buffer that protects self-image more effectively than compliance with external advice. The findings imply that financial interfaces should avoid full automation and instead prioritize meaningful user engagement to preserve psychological ownership of decisions.
• The Rise and Fall of Brazil's Soy Moratorium
  For the last two decades, a widely adopted commitment by soybean traders to avoid sourcing from farms in the Brazilian Amazon with recent deforestation has contributed to reducing deforestation across the biome. Recently, legal and political challenges to this commitment have led to its likely demise. We review the evolution of the Amazon Soy Moratorium (ASM) policy context and present estimates of the area of forest at risk with the end of the policy. Ending the ASM will lead to increased deforestation in the Amazon and could discourage the adoption of policies against deforestation by other private sector actors more broadly.
• "I am a 21st Century Schizoid Man"The Social Role Construction of "Mentally Ill Patient" and Other Contested Identities among Transgender Individuals in China
  Transgender and gender diverse (TGD) individuals in China navigate a distinctive socio-cultural stress ecosystem shaped by collectivist values and conservative public discourse. While minority stress theory is well-established, the specific processes of identity negotiation under Chinese familial, institutional, and societal pressures remain underexplored. This qualitative study conducted in-depth, semi-structured interviews with ten TGD individuals in China. Data was analyzed using grounded theory, progressing through open, axial, and selective coding, informed by social role theory and labeling theory. Analysis revealed four dynamically interconnected social roles: the "Mentally Ill Patient" (characterized by pathologization and internalized stigma), the "Marginal Person" (experiencing systemic and familial exclusion), the "Pretender" (employing concealment as a survival strategy), and the "Helper" (fostering community mutual aid and resilience). These roles are not static but fluid, illustrating how external labeling and role expectations are internalized, negotiated, or resisted. Mental health challenges among TGD individuals in China must be understood as a dynamic process of negotiating identity and stigma within a collectivist structural context. The findings extend minority stress theory beyond Western paradigms, highlighting the urgent need for affirming, community-informed support systems that move beyond pathologization to empower resilience and agency. This manuscript is currently under review at Sex Roles (Springer Nature).
• The Missing Metric: Mapping the Exogenous Social Connectome as a Biomarker for Longevity
  In the era of the Quantified Self, continuous self-measurement has become routine, enabling individuals to track genetic data, metabolism, sleep, and circadian rhythms with unprecedented precision. Yet the structure and quality of people's social connections, the Exogenous Social Connectome, remain largely ignored, despite decades of evidence showing that social integration predicts mortality as reliably as smoking, and often more strongly than hypertension or obesity. Social health is still assessed primarily through surveys and self-report rather than objective measurement. To fill this gap, we introduce the Social Connectivity Value (SCV), a composite digital biomarker that quantifies how social network structure biologically influences mental health, physiological regulation, and longevity. SCV builds on sociometric mapping, network topology, evolutionary weighting of relationships, and complex-systems dynamics to capture how social structure affects stress biology, immune function, and aging. Within this framework, social structure is treated not as passive exposure but as a modifiable biological system that can be measured, tracked, and deliberately designed. Despite extensive evidence linking social ties to health, existing approaches fail to specify which structural features matter, which configurations are fragile, and where change has leverage. SCV provides this framework through a standardized protocol for mapping social connections over time, from first dates to lifelong partnerships. In a Social Geroscience framework, SCV metrics operate alongside and shape established longevity biomarkers such as heart rate variability, sleep quality, and metabolic control. By making social structure visible and quantifiable, SCV enables the deliberate design of personal social networks that reshape dating trajectories, pair-bonding outcomes, and long-term healthspan.
• The challenge of causal complexity in sustainability science
  Understanding causal relations for sustainability scientists means studying phenomena that involve complex causality, e.g. multiple and heterogeneous relations and entities, context-sensitivity, and multi-scalar phenomena. To cope with this, sustainability scientists have borrowed concepts from neighboring disciplines, used causal expressions that have confusing meaning, or abstained from using causal language altogether. We argue for using causal language as it is useful for prediction, manipulation, explanatory understanding and responsibility attribution. However, traditional views on causality have limitations dealing with causal complexity. We spell out the challenge of formulating useful concepts. We argue that it is important to recognize the role of everyday causal cognition and its limitations, to distinguish the different ways in which sustainability scholars talk about complexity and to clarify the causal meaning of complexity concepts, like non-linearity, adaptive capacity, and feedback. Finally, we propose the concept of causal configuration to make explicit the causal meaning of complexity-related concepts.
• Culture sets us apart: Cultural evolution as a solution to the challenges of social relationships
  Humans are a social species, relying on a complex network of long-term relationships and cooperation to tackle ecological problems such as obtaining resources, safety and procreation. This rich sociality is as demanding as it is rewarding; while affiliation and status are intrinsically valuable, securing these benefits requires significant cognitive effort, material investment, compromise, and vigilance. Common views of cultural evolution and innovations often frame social interactions either as a vehicle to transmit knowledge across generations, or as a cooperation problem to be solved. I propose that culture evolves to directly address the challenges and costs inherent in social relationships. Cultural innovations help facilitate social interactions by making them more predictable and regular, and promoting independence and flexibility. Predictability can be achieved through centralized social events and experiences, such as rituals and stories, and through institutions and norms. Independence is promoted by technologies that enable individuals to carry out tasks on their own, and by substituting some of the benefits associated with social relationships. In all cases cultural innovations success can be evaluated by the way they meet the needs and offset the costs of social interactions. This view can explain the adaptive interactions between cultural innovations and social relationships.
• Credit Risk Management Practices and Financial Performance of Registered Deposit-Taking Saccos in The Coastal Region, Kenya.
  This study examined the effect of credit risk management practices on the financial performance of registered Deposit-Taking SACCOs in the Coastal Region of Kenya. The objectives of the study were to determine the effects of credit appraisal methods, credit risk identification, credit risk mitigation practices, and credit risk monitoring on SACCO financial performance. The study focused on SACCOs operating in the Coastal Region, including those headquartered elsewhere but with branches in the region. The theoretical framework was guided by Asymmetric Information Theory, Transaction Costs Theory, the 5 C's Model for Client Assessment, and Credit Liquidity Theory. A non-experimental correlational research design was adopted, targeting 30 participants from 10 SACCOs using a census sampling approach. Primary data were collected through structured questionnaires, with validity and reliability ensured through expert review and a pilot study. Data were analyzed using SPSS, and inferential statistics were performed using a multiple linear regression model. The findings revealed that credit risk identification (r < 0.001, b= 0.312) and credit risk mitigation practices (r < 0.001, b = 0.511) had a statistically significant positive effect on financial performance, while client appraisal methods (r = 0.084, b = 0.142) and credit risk monitoring (r = 0.221, b = 0.119) were not statistically significant. Based on these results, the study recommends that SACCOs strengthen credit risk identification and mitigation strategies, adopt effective client appraisal methods, and enhance monitoring practices to the extent feasible. The study contributes valuable insights for SACCO managers, policymakers, investors, and researchers seeking to improve financial performance through effective credit risk management.
• Remote working in the post-pandemic era: A comparison of the attitudes and experiences of employees with and without disabilities
  This exploratory study compares the remote work experiences of employees with and without disabilities in New Zealand, revealing key differences in preferences and barriers. While both groups perceive remote work as beneficial to workplace culture, employees with disabilities report a more pronounced impact alongside distinct challenges. The study emphasizes the need for inclusive remote work policies to ensure equitable opportunities for all.
• Panel Study of Russian Public Opinion and Attitudes (PROPA) Wave 5
  This report presents findings from the fifth wave of the PROPA online survey, conducted between 10 and 27 October 2025 among Russian citizens aged 18 and older (N = 2,676). The survey examines economic perceptions, political attitudes, views on the war in Ukraine, experiences with crime, social networks, and media consumption. Key findings * Economic perceptions remain stable but pessimistic. Across waves, respondents' self-assessments of their personal economic situation show little change, and average satisfaction remains low. Concern about rising prices remains consistently high across social groups. * Attitudes toward the war in Ukraine remain polarized, and support coexists with negotiation preferences.Nearly half of respondents express support for the war, while a comparable share favors initiating peace negotiations. Notably, a substantial minority of those who declare support for the war also support starting negotiations. * Personal exposure to the war is widespread and politically consequential. Many respondents report personal connections to the war through participation or losses among close contacts. Such exposure is strongly associated with both support for continued military action and expectations about the war's duration. * Fraud is the most common crime reported, trust in law enforcement remains moderate. Most respondents report no direct experience of crime in recent years. Among those who have, fraud is the most common form of crime. However, reporting varies by age, gender, region. Willingness to seek police assistance depends strongly on prior experience with law enforcement. * Media consumption continues to shift toward Telegram amid declining trust in news. Reliance on several traditional and online news sources has declined, while Telegram has continued to grow as a key source of political information. Across platforms, respondents report declining trust in news and political information. Taken together, the results of Wave 5 portray a society characterized by persistent economic anxiety, polarized war-related attitudes, evolving information habits, and complex patterns of vulnerability and social interaction.
• Digital Constitutionalism in Brazil: A Decade of Democratic Crisis and Technology-Driven Governance Dilemma (2013-2023)
  Brazil's rapid digital transition promised broader civic participation but instead deepened polarization, disinformation, and democratic erosion. This article examines how these dynamics produced a distinctive model of digital regulation, shaped not by legislatures or bureaucracies but by judicial activism. Interpreted through the framework of digital constitutionalism, Brazil's regulatory trajectory reveals an attempt to reassert rights, trust, and institutional balance in the face of platform power and algorithmic manipulation. By analyzing the Marco Civil da Internet, the General Law on the Protection of Personal Data (LGPD), the failed "Fake News Bill" (PL 2630), the "AI Bill," the interventions of the Superior Electoral Court, and ongoing debates on AI legislation, the article shows how crisis-driven governance reshaped the country's digital governance. The analysis is based on a five-pillar framework that is used to explain the Brazilian digital regulatory model. This model indicates that Brazil has developed its own traits of "digital constitutionalism" provided that the country's regulations are reliant on a strong judicial activism that not only guarantees rights, but help to preserve democratic values, and maintain national sovereignty in the face of Big Techs. However, this experience illustrates both the risks of judicial overreach and the potential of constitutional principles to guide democratic resilience in the digital age. The article contributes to comparative debates by positioning Brazil as a Global South test case for rights-based digital governance.
• Anger and Gender
  Anger is provoked by frustrated expectations and triggers a punishment response. When expectations reflect social identities, punishment may vary accordingly. We design an online experiment on an Italian sample (N=597 trustor-dictators) where subjects play a trust game followed by an allocation game with punishment options, a sequence designed to elicit genuine emotional reactions upon learning whether their counterpart defected. We elicit beliefs under incentive compatibility and measure emotional responses using the PANAS scale. We apply the belief-dependent model of anger by Battigalli et al. (2019b) to derive our predictions. In our data, defection triggers a strongly negative emotional reaction, with anger being the dominant response. Anger correlates with elicited beliefs about trustworthiness among subjects who best respond to their expectations, and anger in turn predicts punishment. Female trustors hold higher trustworthiness expectations toward female trustees than toward male ones, while no analogous pattern emerges for male trustors. Defection by a female trustee triggers a stronger anger response in female trustors, in line with the larger expectation gap. Punishment follows a cross-gender pattern, consistent with in-group bias. Overall, our results suggest that gender bias in punitive behavior emerges both from expectation-driven frustration and from residual preference-based differences.
• Measuring Online Media Ideology with Large Language Models and "Multi-Cue Classification"
  Measuring media ideology is essential for researching media bias, media effects, and various important topics in political science, communication, and other social sciences. However, given journalistic norms of objectivity and the complexity of ideology, measuring media ideology accurately is uniquely challenging. Large language models (LLMs) have become valuable tools in this endeavor. Based on media communication theories, I argue that media ideology is expressed via different cues -- the topic, argument, framing, criticism, and sources of the media content -- and that LLMs often miss these. Standard methods of LLM classification also offer little control, flexibility, and data granularity to researchers. Drawing on insights about computational and quantitative measurement methodologies, I introduce the "Multi-Cue Classification" (MQ-Class) approach. With MQ-Class, an LLM classifies the different ideological cues separately and researchers then apply pre-specified weights and thresholds to combine them into one label per text. I compare standard LLM and MQ-Class methods using two example tasks -- classifying the economic and cultural ideologies of a novel sample of online media articles. Across multiple tests, MQ-Class is more accurate and puts researchers "back in the driver's seat." I conclude by discussing how MQ-Class could be implemented for other classification tasks and data.
• A Century of Immigration Rhetoric in the UK Parliament
  Migration is a defining phenomenon of our time, around which heightened political rhetoric creates the impression of unprecedented political conflict. In the UK, this perception coincides with major political developments, such as the Brexit referendum and the rise of anti-immigration politics in recent decades. We apply quantitative text analysis techniques to the Hansard collection of spoken contributions in the House of Commons to examine how political elites have discussed immigration over the past century. We find that the Labour Party has consistently expressed more positive sentiment towards immigration compared to the Conservative party since the early 1960s, and that these positions further diverged in the early 1980s. The last 15 years have seen more negative rhetoric across all major parties, with immigration discussed among Conservative and Reform UK MPs in the most negative terms since 1923. We discuss possible future research avenues, supported by suggestive findings on the increasing moralization of the immigration debate and growing negativity towards asylum.
• The Impact of Corporate Social Responsibility on Customer Loyalty in Sri Lankan Supermarkets
  Purpose - With worldwide consideration towards in succeeding business sustainability, the necessity of prioritizing the concept of CSR was emerged. Since the phenomenon of CSR captures broader scope organizations frequently strive to gain more understandability of this concept while providing benefits of CSR to their stakeholders. The purpose of this paper is to examine how Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) awareness and perceived CSR value affect customer loyalty of two dominant supermarket players in a high-density urban commercial hub in Sri Lanka. Social exchange theory is implemented as the theoretical framework of this study. Design/methodology/approach - Adopting an explanatory research design, cross-sectional data from 108 respondents were collected in 2019 using multi-stage non-probability sampling method incorporating purposive sampling followed by quota sampling. Responses were gathered using a self-administered survey questionnaire. To test the formulated hypotheses based on independent and dependent variables, multiple linear regression analysis was performed with the aid of SPSS 25.0 version. Findings - The findings reveal that the level of CSR awareness has a positive, yet modest and significant impact on supermarket customer loyalty. Whereas, perceived value of CSR indicates a positive, stronger and significant effect on customer loyalty in the supermarket sector. Consequently, perceived value of CSR exerts a stronger positive influence on supermarket customer loyalty rather than CSR awareness. Implications - This study contributes to the literature by deconstructing the CSR-loyalty nexus. Consequently, the conclusions made from the results will be helpful to managers and employees in modern retail stores to determine the effectiveness of currently implemented CSR projects towards customers and what components should be prioritized in their CSR efforts to make customers loyal. Further it will provide useful insights to the managers in supermarkets in developing effective CSR strategy as enhancing customer loyalty. Keywords: Corporate social responsibility (CSR), CSR awareness, Customer loyalty, Perceived value, Supermarkets
• Credibility as a Fuzzy Concept in Refugee Law: A Systematic Literature Review
  Assessment of a claimant's credibility is decisive for the outcome in most asylum cases. Yet, there is no binding international rules on how such procedures should be undertaken, nor consensus on how the concept should be understood. This has resulted in a sprawling scholarly literature, reflecting equally diverging practical implementations across jurisdictions. This article seeks out greater conceptual clarity through a systematic literature review of 117 academic journal articles covering a broad span of academic disciplines. In doing so, we approach credibility as a "fuzzy concept," characterised by vague definitional boundaries, and highly context dependent. On this basis, we firstly develop a guiding taxonomy to unpack this fuzziness. Second, our analysis reveals a fundamental conceptual fragmentation between those who focus on credibility as a feature of the claimant's testimony, and those approaching credibility as a more personal trait. We show how this rift can be seen to form along three dominating clusters, each pointing to reliance on different indicators. Finally, we draw together insights from across disciplines showing how continued reliance on specific indicators is not only scientifically and legally flawed, but also casts doubt on whether national asylum systems are capable of producing fair and coherent outcomes.
• Paranormal Tourism and Belief in Ghosts and Hauntings in Atchison - The Most Haunted Town in Kansas
  Paranormal tourism is one way Americans confront questions of the afterlife and history. As a key source of revenue in some communities, paranormal tourism's success often requires reformation of community identities and paranormal mythologies. Atchison, Kansas provides an example of this phenomenon by basing much of its economic development on paranormal tourism. Drawing on five years of experiences leading paranormal investigations at the Sallie House, Atchison's primary haunted attraction, we argue that community folklore contributes greatly to paranormal belief and engagement with such attractions. Synthesizing participant observation and survey responses, we examined changes in beliefs based on visitor's time in the Sallie House. Changes in perceptions of paranormal phenomena bordered on significance with participants more likely to believe in ghosts after the investigation, while prior understandings of the paranormal were stronger drivers of belief and engagement. Atchison's success as a paranormal tourism destination is tied to their identity as a popular location to experience paranormal phenomena at several intensities and costs, thus allowing people of all levels of interest and budgets to participate. The Sallie House represents a microcosm of Atchison's paranormal tourist environment with options for engagement at multiple levels, all drawing upon a rich, and ever-growing folklore.
• Voters' Preferences for Parties' Moral Rhetoric
  Moral rhetoric in party messages reflect parties' attempts to represent voters' moral values. This paper conceptualizes moral rhetoric as a form of moral representation and explores the demand side of such moral representation. Do voters want parties to use moral rhetoric? Based on insights about the link between morality and politics, I argue that moral rhetoric is preferred by a broad set of voters, including copartisans and non-copartisans. Specifically, moral rhetoric is likely to be favored by not only supporters of the party, but also non-supporters with strong moral convictions about politics. Using original surveys in six countries and additional studies in the UK, I find evidence in support of my argument that moral representation is wanted by voters beyond the party base. Unlike extant work, the paper points to the unifying potential of morality in politics. It also opens up a way to empirically study moral representation in politics.
• Ballots, Bullets, and Trees: Election Timing and Violence Against Environmentalists
  When is environmental activism most dangerous? We argue that elections create windows of strategic restraint driven by international reputational concerns. Environmental defenders threaten agricultural rents, making them targets for violence by landowners, firms, and criminal networks operating with political protection. However, elections concentrate foreign media attention. Political elites respond by temporarily withdrawing protection from violent actors, particularly in countries dependent on agricultural exports to demanding markets like the European Union. Analyzing global patterns of environmental defender killings, we demonstrate that violence systematically decreases during election periods, with effects concentrated in countries with high agricultural export dependence. We also show that this pattern is strongest for regular, scheduled elections, and that international media attention spikes during elections. Our findings reveal how international economic integration creates cyclical rather than sustained protection for vulnerable activists, which highlights both the power and limits of transnational accountability mechanisms.
• The Fossil-AI Nexus: Petrostate Capitalism, Computing Power, and the Production of Powered Land
  The so-called AI boom is part of an infrastructure-led industrial strategy, converting speculative computing demand into bankable fossil generation, transmission expansion, and water- and land-intensive industrial sites. This article bridges digital infrastructure studies and the new state capitalism literature by theorizing compute as a socially produced resource whose availability depends on territorial governance. I argue that the buildout is being assembled through a fossil-AI nexus, a fossil-finance-platform coalition that produces powered land: an emergent asset form whose value derives from positionality in a constrained energy system that secures deliverable 'firm' power through revenue guarantees, deliverability rights, and cost-allocation arrangements. Drawing on a review of major gas-to-data centre co-location projects and a comparative analysis of PJM and ERCOT, I identify three recurring de-risking channels that convert uncertain load forecasts into durable, carbon-intensive infrastructure: revenue certainty, delivery certainty, and cost shifting. I show how 'reliability,' alongside security and competitiveness framings, compresses timelines, translates engineering criteria into bankability, and narrows public contestation. I also show how opacity, or 'blackboxing,' stabilizes powered land by restricting access to contractual and cost-allocation terms, while relocating politics to transparency disputes and siting conflicts over where data centres go and who pays for the buildout.
• Experiences of sexual harassment and interpersonal violence among passengers of taxi and rideshare services: Findings from a pilot study in Victoria, Australia
  This paper reports on pilot data from online surveys among 97 passengers of taxi and rideshare services in Victoria, Australia about their experiences of sexual harassment and interpersonal violence. Survey findings reveal that 58% of the sample had experienced harassment or interpersonal violence in either a taxi or rideshare service; 47% reported that they had at least one harmful experience in a taxi and 30% in a rideshare service. The most common behaviours reportedly experienced were a driver or other passenger staring or leering, unwanted attempts to flirt, unwanted comments about their physical appearance, offensive sexual comments, unwanted attempts to establish a romantic or sexual relationship, offensive or degrading comments about gender, and unwanted sexual requests. Overall, women were more likely than men to report harmful experiences. Engagement in reporting mechanisms was low, but participant's likelihood of reporting to taxi and rideshare companies and to the police in future remained high. This is the first study of its kind in Australia and provides important insights into the nature and impacts of these experiences. The authors call for further research to better understand safety and interpersonal violence in the taxi and rideshare industry at the national and international level.
• Feelings and alcohol consumption
  Consumption choices depend on the feelings experienced in the period preceding a consumer's decisions. Using a large sample of Italian consumers collected by ISTAT (the Italian National Statistics Institute) as part of the multi-purpose survey "Indagine multiscopo sulle famiglie: Aspetti della vita quotidiana" (n = 114,052), we find that positive feelings are associated with wine and beer consumption, while negative feelings relate to spirits consumption. Older consumers drink more following a period of positive feelings, whereas younger consumers drink less. Our two-level modelling strategy confirms the mediating role of personal characteristics in explaining the relation between feelings and alcohol consumption.
• Designing Ethical Wearable Accommodations Across Sensory, Attention, and Mental Health Domains
  Neurodivergent individuals--particularly autistic adults--face pervasive exclusion across educational, workplace, and community settings due to environments designed for neurotypical sensory and cognitive processing. This conceptual paper advances a comprehensive framework for designing AI-enabled, multi-sensory ethical wearable accommodations that address sensory overload, attentional dysregulation, and mental health vulnerability in real time. Grounded in the Sensory Sensitivity Mental Health Distractibility S2MHD theoretical model and informed by a previously implemented multi-sensory wearable architecture [2][5][39], the framework integrates just-in-time adaptive interventions (JITAI), participatory design, and neurorights principles to ensure autonomy, consent, and data minimization. This paper presents three design archetypes--predictive crisis prevention, contextual environmental filtering, and personalized fatigue modeling--each illustrated through prospective use-case scenarios spanning lecture halls, corporate office environments, and social spaces. The paper articulates eight core ethical design principles and provides implementation guidelines. By reframing wearable accommodations as enablement infrastructure rather than deficit-oriented assistive technology, this work offers a blueprint for transforming systemic exclusion into inclusive opportunity.
• Resilience as Hierarchical Precision Flexibility: A Predictive Processing Account of Adaptive Regulation
  Resilience is commonly defined as the capacity to adapt in the face of adversity, yet its underlying mechanism remains conceptually diffuse across trait, process, and outcome models. This paper proposes that resilience is best understood as hierarchical precision flexibility--the capacity of a predictive system to dynamically recalibrate confidence in prediction errors across embodied, affective, and meaning-related levels of inference. Drawing on predictive processing and the Free Energy Principle, we argue that resilience does not consist in reduced stress reactivity, but in context-sensitive modulation of precision within hierarchical inference. Defensive rigidity and adaptive flexibility are reframed as alternative configurations of precision dynamics rather than distinct psychological capacities. Dysregulation arises when prediction errors are weighted inflexibly, whereas resilience emerges from coordinated recalibration across hierarchical levels. This account integrates developmental, neurobiological, and computational perspectives within a unified explanatory framework. By specifying resilience as a property of precision dynamics, it shifts the construct from descriptive classification toward formal mechanistic explanation and yields empirically testable predictions for computational psychiatry and clinical intervention research.
• Motivation Without Slope: ADHD, Demand Avoidance, and the Moralisation of Misfit
  Modern work and support systems often assume that effort translates into action in a steady and predictable way through routine, reinforcement, and private self-management, embedding this expectation in institutional infrastructure. For many people with ADHD, this expectation does not hold. Traction can be discontinuous and highly context-dependent, and sustained functioning is often achieved through compensatory pathways such as urgency and acute pressure rather than stable routines. While these strategies can enable short-term performance, they can also be costly when chronic stress becomes the main route to action. When institutions treat their motivational expectations as universal, differences in regulation are frequently moralised as laziness, unreliability, or defiance, and people are praised for crisis performance but blamed for later collapse. Drawing on disability studies, this paper frames these dynamics as institutional misfit rather than individual pathology. It introduces "assumed motivational gradient" as a descriptive metaphor for institutional design bias and outlines implications for disability-informed practice.
• Hispanic/Latino Student Community Cultural Wealth, Social Networks, and Career Development at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater: A Report by the Networks and Cultural Assets Project (NCA)
  This report presents findings from a pilot mixed-methods study conducted by the Networks and Cultural Assets Project (NCA) examining Hispanic/Latino students' community cultural wealth (CCW), social support networks, campus engagement, and career development at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater. Drawing on survey data (n = 129) and interviews (n = 20), the study applies Yosso's (2005) Community Cultural Wealth framework alongside social network analysis to document the strengths students bring to college and the ways these assets relate to career attitudes and service use. Findings indicate that participants demonstrate high levels of Aspirational, Navigational, Familial, and Resistant capital, with family-centered networks playing a central role in sustaining hope, coping, and community commitment. Students report a moderate sense of belonging and relatively strong work volition. The report also shows that students' engagement with formal career services varies by year in school, sense of belonging, network characteristics, and career values. Cluster analyses reveal meaningful within-group differences in both career orientations and forms of cultural wealth, underscoring the heterogeneity of Hispanic/Latino students' experiences. The report concludes with asset-based recommendations for faculty, advisors, and student services professionals to strengthen institutional practices, better connect campus resources to students' existing networks and values, and support equitable college-to-career pathways.
• Using Multiple Generator Random Interpreters (MGRIs) for Studying Undergraduate Student Support Networks
  This research brief introduces the Multiple Generator Random Interpreter (MGRI) as an innovative approach to collecting egocentric social network data in higher education research. Contrasting MGRI with Traditional Name Generator and Interpreter (TNGI) methods that cap the number of listed contacts, the brief explains how MGRI allows respondents to list all relevant network members and then randomly samples a subset for follow-up questions, reducing respondent burden while improving representativeness. Drawing on comparative evidence from two studies of Latine college students, one using TNGI and the other using MGRI, the analysis demonstrates that MGRI captures larger and less kin-centered networks, yields lower network density estimates, and better reflects the diversity of students' academic and career support ties. The findings suggest that MGRI provides a more accurate portrait of undergraduate support networks and enables researchers to examine multiple types of relational contexts within a single survey. The brief concludes with practical guidance and open-access resources for implementing MGRI in online survey platforms.
• Forming Science Identity in Personal Networks: A Quantitative Study of Social Support for Latine STEM Students
  This research brief examines how Latine STEM students' personal networks and Community Cultural Wealth relate to the formation of STEM identity and sense of belonging. Drawing on survey data from 408 Latine juniors majoring in STEM across seven Hispanic Serving and emerging Hispanic Serving Institutions in the University of Texas System, the study integrates egocentric social network analysis with validated measures of STEM identity and belonging. Students listed an average of five key discussion partners, most of whom were Latine, and networks were centered on friends, family members, and fellow college students. Correlational analyses show that stronger ties are associated with multiple forms of support, while family members are especially linked to material aid, aspirational support, and community role modeling. Regression results indicate that greater tie strength and access to community role models are positively associated with STEM identity, whereas denser, more close-knit networks are negatively associated with STEM identity. Network size, tie strength, and having alters who help navigate college life are positively related to students' sense of belonging. Together, the findings highlight the importance of relational context and culturally grounded assets in shaping Latine students' persistence and identity development in STEM.
• Struggle for Recognition: A Case Study of Balochistan, Pakistan
  This paper examines the specifics of the Baloch insurgency in Pakistan from the perspective of the intersection of theories of recognition, justice, and the transition from realist to constructivist paradigms. The Baloch insurgency in Pakistan has always been explained through security and economic-aid policies by the Pakistan government. However, by exploring the intersection of structural, cultural, and psychological forms of exclusion, it is claimed that the conflict is fueled by these intersections of identity. This paper combines the theories of misrecognition and maldistribution from the work of Nancy Fraser in 2003 and the moral injury construct of Axel Honneth from 1995 and asserts that structural policies of the Pakistan government are denying the Baloch people recognition as complete citizens with recognized identity. The proposed study makes use of a qualitative research approach in which descriptive and explanatory content analysis has been used to examine the socio-political reality of Balochistan. The study is limited by the fact that the research has no prime field accessibility due to the constraints imposed by security considerations, which may pose challenges of bias arising from state or secondary histories. To address the implication, triangulation is used in the study by referencing official statistics and other international human rights reports to provide a balanced view. The study has been conducted by using a purposive sample of secondary sources ranging from peer-reviewed academic literature to policy reports related to the 18th Amendment and CPEC projects, along with human rights statistics obtained from the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP). The sources were considered as per their respective relevance to the twin paradigms of "struggle for recognition" and "maldistribution." The period of investigation has been from accession in 1948 to modern development schemes. This paper derives its findings from a content analysis of already existing literature from 1948-2024 on the Baloch insurgency in Pakistan and includes the history of violence between the Baloch leaders and the central government of Pakistan and the "moral injuries" that are spurred by the exploitative use of Baloch Gas and Minerals by the Pakistani government. Through this change in focus, or paradigm shift, from simply addressing resource struggles to addressing struggles for dignity, this study shows that issues of economic and political justice are being used as primary wounds of invisibility and disrespect. Therefore, this study concludes that in order to pursue a justice-oriented path for eternal peace, there must be an understanding of the connected concepts of respect and recognition. Keywords: Conflict, Grievances, Misrecognition, Misrepresentation, Recognition and Redistribution.
• Student Collaboration Through AI Storytelling: An Exploratory Study
  This exploratory study examines how integrating artificial intelligence (AI) into active-learning strategies can enhance student engagement and support critical thinking and problem-solving in higher education. Using an action research design, first-year college students participated in an AI-supported storytelling activity. Analysis of student comments, classroom photographs, and instructor reflections revealed two central themes: motivation tied to formal assessment and the instructor's supportive role. Findings suggest that AI storytelling can foster collaboration and creativity, but its effectiveness depends on assessment alignment, student agency, and institutional support. The study underscores the importance of AI literacy and intentional instructional design when incorporating AI into undergraduate learning environments.
• Spatial Wealth Inequality in the United States: Theory and Evidence
  Despite extensive research on spatial inequality, the geography of wealth remains understudied. We develop a theoretical framework explaining why wealth's spatial distribution differs from income's and how local advantages create self-reinforcing dynamics. Using novel data tracking household net worth across 722 U.S. commuting zones from 1960-2020, we establish five stylized facts. Wealth is 60-70% more spatially concentrated than income, with patterns distinct from income and housing values. Post-1980 increases in between-place inequality reflect places changing positions rather than divergence. Within places, bottom 50\ wealth shares declined nationwide. These patterns reveal feedback mechanisms compounding spatial advantages, highlighting welfare disparities exceeding income-focused research.
• How Exile Escalates Revolution
  Although scholars initially hypothesized that exile reduces domestic conflict, recent research finds that forcing political challengers abroad correlates with subsequent political instability. However, the mechanisms linking exile and contentious politics remain unexplored. This paper investigates how exile exacerbates domestic contention with original data on exile participation in revolutions, and argues that under certain conditions exile bestows benefits on challengers relative to being based domestically. First, we show that revolutionary challenges are more likely to occur in countries with former leaders in exile, and that revolutionary challenges led by exiles are longer and more violent than those led by domestically based actors. Additional analyses reveal important linking mechanisms; exile's escalating effects are strongest when exiles are geographically proximate, maintain a sustained presence abroad, provide direct leadership, secure international support, or establish governments-in-exile. Finally, exile is most escalating for revolutions that would otherwise be relatively peaceful. Our study highlights an important but neglected feature of revolutionary contention and advances a broader research agenda on exile and contentious politics.
• Social Grievances and Anti-feminist Sentiments: How Loneliness and Social Marginalization Shape Anti-feminist Attitudes across Genders and Socio-economic Interdependence
  Using representative survey data from Germany, this paper investigates the association and conditionalities between perceived social grievances, namely social marginalization and loneliness, and antifeminist attitudes. We find that both grievances are positively associated with anti-feminist sentiment. Exploring effect heterogeneity, we find that the associations are slightly stronger for men, but these differences are minimal in substantive terms. However, using a three-way interaction model, we find that financial dissatisfaction can compensate for some of the negative associations between marginalization as well as loneliness with anti-feminist attitudes for men; the opposite is the case for women. Arguing from an identity threat theory perspective, the study shows how gender plays an incremental role in how the perceived personal situation exerts an influence on gender related attitudes. Therefore, our study contributes to our understanding of how perceived grievances interact with socio-demographic characteristics and how this interplay potentially increases anti-feminist attitudes.
• More than coping: The multifaceted benefits that home and wild food procurement provide to food-insecure practitioners in the Northeastern US
  Many food-insecure households in high-income countries produce some of their own food through gardening, hunting, fishing, foraging, or raising livestock--activities collectively referred to as home and wild food procurement (HWFP). This study aims to deepen understanding of the roles that diverse HWFP activities play within the broader set of strategies food-insecure households use to keep food on the table. We conducted interviews with 25 participants in two rural states in the northeastern United States, Maine and Vermont. On average, the study participants reported having engaged in 19 of a list of 41 coping behaviors, not including HWFP activities, in the last year. Overall, they described HWFP activities as socially legitimate food sources that provide multifaceted benefits beyond food. For these interviewees, HWFP can be an effective coping strategy for alleviating household food insecurity because it diversifies their food sources and allows for stockpiling non-market abundances. Yet, HWFP should not be mistaken for a coping strategy in the sense of an activity that households undertake only in response to hardship, because participants associated these activities with diverse, positive meanings such as joy, connection, and autonomy. The only negative aspects of HWFP that participants identified were challenges stemming from limited access to key resources needed for successful harvests, such as equipment, skills, and land access. We recommend policies and programs that ensure access to these prerequisites for HWFP success; people experiencing food insecurity should guide these efforts.
• Kinship networks, kinlessness and friendship at different ages. An extensive analysis of the Italian case over a 20-year period
  Kinship networks are a key informal infrastructure of support, yet demographic change is reshaping how many and which relatives people can rely on. Some people may lack kin completely or in part. Thus, we also consider friendship ties as potential compensatory sources of support. Using nationally representative surveys from 1998 and 2016, we describe age-specific configurations of close kin and friends among Italian adults. We measure the availability of close kin (partner, children, parents, siblings, grandparents, grandchildren), kinlessness, kinship size and diversity, and generational positioning. In 2016, complete kinlessness remains rare (about 1%) but is concentrated at older ages, whereas small, vertically "thinned" networks are more common. Kin availability peaks in midlife and declines at older ages. Between 1998 and 2016, the average number and diversity of kin decreased and generational profiles increasingly feature ascendants without descendants and a group of "generational solos." Friendship ties are widespread and more prevalent among those with fewer kin, but they do not fully offset emerging inequalities in kinship resources. These findings show how the changes occurred in longevity, low fertility, and partnership reconfigured informal support bases in an ageing, strong-family context.
• Dynamics of Rental Housing Affordability in the Immigrant and U.S.-born Population, 2000-2020
  Half of the United States' foreign-born population are renters, yet rental affordability is an understudied dimension of immigrant integration compared to homeownership and other housing outcomes. This is particularly important as immigrants enter an increasingly unaffordable rental market. This study presents the most comprehensive national profile of immigrant rental outcomes in the twenty-first century. By analyzing rental costs and rent burdens, while considering transitions into homeownership over time, this study directly examines the rental housing outcomes of immigrant renters. Overall, immigrants pay higher rents and have higher rent burdens compared to native-born households after controlling for location, socioeconomic, and housing characteristics. The immigrant-native gaps in rent, rent burden, and homeownership reduce over time spent in the U.S., suggesting adjustment to the housing market. New arrivals are most likely to be renters and have higher rents and rent burdens. Supplemental analyses further show the new immigrant housing disadvantage is driven in part by higher housing costs that all recent movers face. As a result, recent immigrants are doubly disadvantaged as a recent mover and as a new arrival to the country.
• When Do Autocratizing Incumbents Lose Elections?
  When do electorates remove incumbents who undermine democracy? Existing research explains why voters tolerate autocratizing leaders, but we know less about when they hold them accountable. We develop a framework of electoral accountability under autocratization to evaluate when attacks on democracy trigger electoral backlash, considering the scope of autocratization (i.e., the breadth of institutional erosion) and its visibility (i.e., the extent to which these actions are clearly legible as undemocratic to voters), while situating these features alongside preexisting institutional strength, economic performance, and political culture. Drawing on experimental evidence, an original dataset of 105 elections since 1990 in which autocratizing incumbents sought reelection, hand-coded measures of autocratization scope and visibility in recent electoral contests, and comparative analyses of Poland and Zambia, we find that visibility, but not scope, is systematically linked to incumbent defeat. Our findings have implications for the conditions under which citizens can disrupt episodes of autocratization through electoral channels.
• A NEW HOPE? Local Journalism as a Mitigation Hub for Misinformation
  The rise of far-right extremism necessitates an evaluation of the ideal means of offering robust information quality to the public, even as hostile actors engage in expansive campaigns of misinformation. This forum manuscript centers on the role of local journalism as a means of combating misinformation, considering notable case studies from Germany and the United States. We argue that in order to enhance local journalism's ability to combat misinformation requires (1) response to misinformation through in-kind platforms and (2) response to misinformation through collaboration.
• Capitalization of the World: Global Distribution of Income from Property, 2000-2020
  Global capital income inequality has declined in the 21st century, with the Gini coefficient falling from 97% to 94%. Over the same period, the share of the world population with annual capital income above $100 increased from 12% to 27%. This implies more than a doubling of the number of individuals earning positive income from interest, dividends, rents, and privately-funded pensions. Most Western nations have lost positions in the global capital income ranking, in contrast to several developing countries, particularly China and Russia. When adjusting for missing capital income in surveys using national accounts, while the levels of inequality slightly vary across adjustment methods, the results consistently confirm a decreasing inequality trend. This is also confirmed when the capitalized wealth of billionaires is included in the analysis using Forbes lists. Overall, this paper provides new global evidence on the evolution, distribution, and measurement of capital income, and highlights its implications for inequality analysis in contemporary capitalism. (Stone Center on Socio-Economic Inequality Working Paper)