Table of Content

01 January 2020, Volume 6 Issue 1

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Telecommunication ties and gender ideologies in the age of globalization: International telephone networks and gender attitudes in 47 countries

Xiaoling Shu, George Barnett, Robert Faris

2020, 6(1):  3-34.  doi:10.1177/2057150X19897450

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Scholars have posed different hypotheses on the impact of global telecommunications on value orientations. We analyze and characterize the global telecommunication network and test a series of hypotheses on the relationship between gender values and three types of telephone connections: ties with the global society, ties with Western nations, and ties within groups of nations sharing similar cultural, religious, political, or geographical traits. We use multilevel models and data on two levels, between-country telecommunications network data from TeleGeography, and individual-level data (N = 70,225) on people living in 47 countries from the World Value Survey, waves III and IV. Countries with high degrees of communication insulation, measured as a high percentage of within-group ties of all global telephone links, hold less egalitarian attitudes toward gender equality. This negative effect of group insulation depresses the egalitarian effects of younger birth cohort, college education, and higher income. Embeddedness in a localized information diffusion network and isolated from global communication is associated with less egalitarian attitude toward gender equality. But neither global ties nor ties with Western countries are linked with gender attitudes.

Students’ social origins, educational process and post-college outcomes: The case of an elite Chinese university

Sunny Xinchun Niu, Yajun Zheng, Fei Yang

2020, 6(1):  35-66.  doi:10.1177/2057150X19876875

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Scholars debate whether and how higher education and elite education experiences break or reinforce the link between social origins and status attainment in meritocratic societies. We contribute to these debates focusing on post-college outcomes of elite university students in contemporary China. Using a longitudinal survey of the 2014 freshmen cohort from an elite Chinese university and a sequential logit modeling technique, we find that meritocracy is seemingly at play between the trajectories of graduate study and employment. However, within each trajectory, students’ hukou (urban/rural registration status) and regional backgrounds significantly constrain their post-college options, partly through differential participation in high-impact educational practices. Furthermore, social origins leave marks on students’ motives for graduate study.

Three faces of the online leftists: An exploratory study based on case observations and big-data analysis

Yong Gui, Ronggui Huang, Yi Ding

2020, 6(1):  67-101.  doi:10.1177/2057150X19896537

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Left-leaning social thoughts are not a unitary and coherent theoretical system, and leftists can be divided into divergent groups. Based on inductive qualitative observations, this article proposes a theoretical typology of two dimensions of theoretical resources and position orientations to describe left-wing social thoughts communicated in online space. Empirically, we used a mixed approach, an integration of case observations and big-data analyses of Weibo tweets, to investigate three types of left-leaning social thoughts. The identified left-leaning social thoughts include state-centered leftism, populist leftism, and liberal leftism, which are consistent with the proposed theoretical typology. State-centered leftism features strong support of the state and the current regime and a negative attitude toward the West, populist leftism is characterized by unequivocal affirmation of the revolutionary legacy and support for disadvantaged grassroots, and liberal leftism harbors a grassroots position and a decided affirmation of individual rights. In addition, we used supervised machine learning and social network analysis techniques to identify online communities that harbor the afore-mentioned left-leaning social thoughts and analyzed the interaction patterns within and across communities as well as the evolutions of community structures. We found that during the study period of 2012–2014, the liberal leftists gradually declined and the corresponding communities dissolved; the interactions between populist leftists and state-centered leftists intensified, and the ideational cleavage between these two camps increased the online confrontations. This article demonstrates that the mixed method approach of integrating traditional methods with big-data analytics has enormous potential in the sub-discipline of digital sociology.

The paradox of technical governance: A public opinion survey’s political process and its results

Yaping Peng

2020, 6(1):  102-139.  doi:10.1177/2057150X19892895

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The logic of technical governance goes as follows: the knowledge of society can be obtained by the state via technology, and thus social problems are identified and solutions are found. Questions have been raised about whether technical governance would ever work. For many the answer is negative and doubtful. However, one defense remains: technical governance fails not because the idea is inherently flawed but because the technology is not good. Would technical governance succeed with better methodology and more technical rigor? In order to challenge this defense, this paper examines the operation of opinion polls—a form of technical governance supported by rigorous quantitative social research methodology—run by a sub-district government in the city ‘S’. In particular, this paper asks whether it is possible for a government-run poll to reflect manipulated public opinion, despite the strictest compliance with quantitative polling methodology. The finding of this paper gives an affirmative answer. It argues that on the surface, polls are statistical surveys, but in actuality they are a political process controlled by the government despite their compliance with all statistical requirements. The power structure of the local government determines the questionnaire items, their multiple-choice answers (the screening, compressing, and quantifying of social scenarios), and the final make-up of the public opinion index. The rigorousness of methodology does not guarantee the authenticity of ‘public opinion’ in final poll figures. More likely, the outcome is controlled by those who organize polls. Hence, quantifiable technical governance presents a contradiction: the state manufactures biased public opinions precisely when it is looking for unbiased public opinions. In the end, the government constructs an image of society that is its own reflection.

Natural disaster and political trust: A natural experiment study of the impact of the Wenchuan earthquake

Yu You, Yifan Huang, Yuyi Zhuang

2020, 6(1):  140-165.  doi:10.1177/2057150X19891880

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How do natural disasters impact political trust in contemporary China and what is the causal mechanism? Existing literature indicates that the severity of disaster, government relief effort and information dissemination are three key factors influencing people’s political trust in the context of acute natural disasters. This study uses the Wenchuan earthquake as a natural experiment and focuses specifically on the survey data collected right before and after the earthquake. It finds that primarily due to the ‘rally round the flag’ effect and extensive media coverage, public trust in government officials at all levels rose significantly after the earthquake. During the crisis, state-run media played a vital intermediate role. The more a citizen was exposed to the official media coverage, the more likely his/her political trust was to increase. However, the division of work in disaster relief among different levels of government resulted in differences in the level of increase in trust. As local-level governments are often directly responsible for the rescue and post-earthquake relief, they gained the highest increase in political trust, while state-level officials gained the least. The short-run upsurge in political trust receded as time went by. Government mobilization and media coverage are core contributing factors to the increase in political trust during the post-disaster period. Nevertheless, the key to consolidating political legitimacy lies in long-term efforts to build good and effective governance.

How do political elements affect agricultural technological change?—A case study from China

Ge Qiang

2020, 6(1):  166-194.  doi:10.1177/2057150X19898132

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As the main achievement of Tibetan modernization in the 1970s, the promotion of winter wheat enabled wheat, which had rarely been planted in Tibet, to become the second-largest crop in the region. Surprisingly, Tibetan peasants, who at first had strongly resisted winter wheat, became active participants in just two or three years. During this process, how did the state change peasants’ attitudes? How did the national government negate their resistance? Based on documents and oral history materials, this research study shows that political movement played a crucial role. First, the class struggle consisted of a crackdown on the resistance to new technologies and also promoting rural community differentiation so that mutual supervision among peasants neutralized ‘weapons of the weak’. Second, the function of political movement in remolding belief and arousing affection inspired people’s enthusiasm for growing wheat and their sense of political identity by portraying wheat as a symbol of emancipation. However, this movement also had certain side effects on production, and the whole project in the late 1970s was driven astray by blind political worship and neglect of realities.