Political news consumption (PNC) can both inform and divide, but whether it promotes political participation through ideological polarization remains unclear. This study examines how PNC affects institutional and non-institutional political participation across 24 European countries, using Round 11 of the European Social Survey and country-level mediation models. Results show PNC positively affects institutional participation in 13 countries and non-institutional participation in three. PNC has a positive direct effect on ideological polarization in eight countries and a negative effect in two. Ideological polarization more consistently predicts participation, with positive effects on institutional participation in 17 countries and non-institutional participation in 21. Positive indirect effects of PNC via polarization are observed in only five countries for institutional and six for non-institutional participation. The United Kingdom shows negative indirect effects for both, suggesting polarization may discourage participation in some contexts. Overall, PNC's effects on participation are highly country-dependent.
This study uses the ongoing Russian-Ukrainian war to clarify how social trust changes among young people during conflict by distinguishing between two primary pathways - ideological and experiential. The former captures changes in the level of trust arising from war-induced shifts in individuals' beliefs and normative orientations, as assessed through ideological mobilisation. The latter reflects wartime influences on social trust stemming from deteriorations in personal safety and mental health, conceptualized as experiential harm. The analysis is based on structural equation modelling, using data collected from 1,224 respondents aged 18-35 through an online survey conducted in 2024. The findings show that experiential harm is negatively associated with trust not only directly but also indirectly, primarily through reduced confidence in state institutions. Ideological mobilisation provides an indirect buffer against these negative consequences; however, this buffer is insufficient to fully offset them at the current stage of the conflict.
This paper examines context-sensitive annotation tasks performed by OpenAI's o3 reasoning model using content creator profiles on YouTube. It explores the inherently ambiguous and socially and culturally embedded task of annotating race. Analysing 500 annotations generated by ChatGPT, we first examine performance metrics and benchmark results against a human-annotated dataset. We further conduct a thematic analysis of the justifications provided by the model, as users increasingly rely on them making them important for understanding how the model frames social practices. Analyzing justifications also exposes inconsistencies, biases, and classification errors that remain invisible in aggregate performance metrics alone. Our findings show that despite efficiency and scalability, ChatGPT's limited cultural understanding and lack of critical reflexivity constrain its performance in complex annotation tasks. We argue that the annotation of sensitive social characteristics requires reflexive scientific practices and potentially hybrid annotation strategies to mitigate bias and preserve contextual integrity in academic research.
This article examines the increasing ideological orientation of Russian higher education, focusing on the mandatory course "Foundations of Russian Statehood." Although the Constitution formally prohibits a state ideology, the nationwide introduction of this course for first-year students in September 2023 signals an attempt to promote patriotism and a state-endorsed worldview. Using frame analysis, the study analyzes three textbooks recommended by the Ministry of Education and Science. The findings show that: (1) the course displays features of an ideologized curriculum; (2) the textbooks construct a worldview through reinterpretations of history and ideas of Russia's cultural uniqueness; (3) Russia is framed in opposition to the West; (4) democracy, civil rights, and political freedoms are depicted largely negatively; (5) the materials promote skepticism toward European democracy through concept desemantization and substitution; and (6) the emerging narrative emphasizes the past while offering limited future perspectives.
Information and Communication Technology (ICT) enhance flexibility but blurs work-life boundaries-a phenomenon termed the "autonomy paradox." Using the European Social Survey Round 10, we investigate how communication patterns, job demands, and resources shape employee perceptions of ICT, which we categorise as positive, negative, or paradoxical. We ask whether positive attitudes reflect genuinely supportive working conditions ormask strain. Our findings reveal that control over daily work is the only predictor of an exclusively positive perception. Phone communication with superiors, messaging with colleagues, and feeling part of a strong team predict a paradoxical perception. However, even these factors can increase the likelihood of viewing ICT as helpful when control over daily work remains high. Job demands alone do not account for paradoxical outcomes. The results suggest that the ICT paradox is not inherent to technology itself but emerges from the relational and workplace contexts.
This study examines how individual social capital relates to the well-being of divorced men and women, emphasizing gender differences. Divorcees consistently report lower well-being than other marital groups, and although social capital can function as a coping resource, it is both gendered and disrupted by divorce. Social capital is multifaceted, encompassing network resources, socioeconomic diversity, interpersonal trust, and potential relational strain. Using 2017 International Social Survey Programme data from 16 European countries, we estimate stratified multilevel regression models for divorced men and women and compare coefficients using z-tests. Results show that divorced women's life satisfaction is particularly affected by limited access to socioeconomically diverse networks, which men are more likely to retain. Although women's kin-centered networks provide support, they may also generate strain that undermines well-being. In contrast, an active social life, including frequent interactions with friends, is more strongly associated with life satisfaction among divorced women than men.
This study examines the impact of globalization on divorce rates using panel data from 120 countries between 1970 and 2017. Drawing on Ulrich Beck's risk society framework, it explores how globalization promotes individual autonomy and adaptive life choices while amplifying social and emotional uncertainties, destabilizing traditional family structures. Using a one-way fixed-effects model with country-clustered standard errors, supplemented by robustness checks, the analysis considers economic, social, and political dimensions of globalization. The results show that social globalization has the strongest association with rising divorce rates, as cultural diffusion enhances individual autonomy, gender equality, and freedom of choice. Economic globalization also contributes by altering labor structures and household interdependence, while political globalization-through expanded personal rights-reinforces these effects more modestly. Globalization's impact is greater in developed and Western societies, where greater financial independence and individualistic values facilitate marital dissolution. The implications, limitations, and future research directions are also discussed.
This paper analyses how transnational networks can be agents for policy change in the field of migrants' rights by demonstrating how networks can cooperate to strategically use the wider institutional environment to push norm-violating States, and organisations, towards implementing policy changes. We show the conditions under which the hosting of a global mega-sports event - Qatar's 2022 FIFA World Cup- can trigger transnational organising by a diverse array of actors. We argue that the network that emerged constituted a transnational policy network whose actions ultimately contributed to pushing Qatar towards labour reforms. Our analysis draws on network approaches, strategic action field theory, and process tracing methods to examine the breadth of actors and the intensity of the network's actions to push for policy changes to be achieved within a specific time span (2010-2022). We conclude that such 'networks of networks' could be used to push for policy changes for migrants' rights in other country contexts.
This study examines how immigrants' religious beliefs translate into religious participation in a global context using World Values Survey data from 55 countries. Understanding this relationship is important for two reasons. First, although religious beliefs shape attitudes toward participation, the Theory of Planned Behavior suggests that immigrants face individual and contextual barriers that produce varying levels of belief-participation consistency. Second, Cognitive Dissonance Theory predicts that immigrants with strong beliefs but limited participation, due to external constraints, may experience cognitive dissonance that negatively affects subjective well-being. The findings show that while personal resources matter, only select characteristics are significant, whereas institutional context, particularly host-country social, economic, and political conditions, plays a dominant role in shaping how immigrants act on their beliefs. Subgroup analyses reveal that belief-participation consistency is most constrained among Muslim women and in restrictive political and civic environments, underscoring how gender, religion, and regime context intersect to shape religious expression. Furthermore, the positive association between participation and subjective well-being is strongest for immigrants with strong beliefs who regularly engage in religious activities, highlighting the importance of belief-participation consistency. By contrast, this consistency has weaker or even negative effects on the subjective well-being of native-born individuals, pointing to between-group differences.
This study examines preferences regarding the length and division of paid parental leave in Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia between 2012 and 2022 employing data obtained from the International Social Survey Programme "Family and Changing Gender Roles" IV and V modules. Previous research has highlighted the role of institutional factors such as family policies and prevailing gender roles in terms of shaping attitudes towards paid parental leave. Building upon these frameworks, this study explores cross-country and temporal variations via the multinomial logistic regression approach. The findings reveal significant differences in terms of preferences concerning the length of the leave period and its division across countries and over time. Shorter leave durations have replaced longer leave periods as the preferred option. Moreover, support for the more gender-equal division of leave has increased across all three countries, with Poland evincing the highest level of egalitarian attitudes and Slovakia the lowest. These results are in line with the policy changes introduced in the considered countries over the studied period and provide valuable insights for the design of family policies and their societal acceptance.
During the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic expert commissions developed ethical guidelines for prioritizing assistance in the event of insufficient resources (triage). However, ethical principles may deviate from laypeople ' s moral standards. Our study aims to investigate which factors help laypeople justify for prioritizing a COVID-19 patient and which respondent characteristics - among them for the first time also values - moderate their impact on prioritizing decisions. The results of a factorial survey experiment conducted in Spain 2022 showed that the most important factors were the vaccination status and the smoking behavior of patients, contradicting ethical guidelines and revealing the need for better communication between experts and the public. Better communication also means incorporating laypeople's moral views in the process of developing ethical guidelines. Moreover, patients ' family obligations, patients ' origin, age, and social class were analyzed. Our results show that some of these factors depend on respondents' personal values (Schwartz values), vaccination context, and smoking behaviors.
This study examines the determinants of trust in physicians in 30 countries, focusing on general trust, perceived competence, and fidelity (defined as prioritizing patient welfare over profit). Using 2021 ISSP data combined with macro-level indicators such as the Human Development Index (HDI), health expenditures, and public-private funding preferences, the analysis explores how individual experiences and healthcare system characteristics shape trust. Results show that trust is strongly linked to confidence in the healthcare system and satisfaction with doctor visits, while socio-demographic factors and personal health experiences also play an important role. At the macro level, higher HDI is associated with greater trust, whereas higher out-of-pocket payments and healthcare commodification reduce it. Total health spending alone does not reliably increase trust, highlighting the importance of equity and efficiency. Overall, trust in physicians emerges as a multidimensional, context-dependent phenomenon shaped by both interpersonal and institutional factors.
Previous research shows that, like other societal factors such as poverty or inequality, labor market conditions influence homicide rates. However, among aspects of labor market conditions, vulnerable employment - a form of precarious and informal employment - remains underexplored. Using a fixed-effects model and panel cointegration regression for 126 countries from 2000 to 2021, this study examines the effect of vulnerable employment on homicide as an indicator of socioeconomic conditions and institutional capacities in labor markets, as well as its interaction with income inequality. Particularly, the present study examines not only total vulnerable employment but also disaggregates it into contributing family workers and the ratio of contributing family workers to total vulnerable employment. The results indicate that all three measures have a significant positive effect on homicide rates. Second, they also moderate the relationship between income inequality and homicide rates. This study concludes with a discussion of employment relationships and homicides in relation to social structure and institutions.
The COVID-19 pandemic introduced stressors that shaped global health behaviors. This study examined how socio-demographic factors and pandemic-related stressors influenced behaviors across 17 countries using 2021 International Social Survey Program data (N = 25,094). Multilevel analyses showed that gender and socioeconomic status (SES) were significantly associated with health behaviors, though patterns varied cross-nationally. Asian countries exhibited greater gender disparities in smoking, binge drinking, and physical activity, while European and Oceanian countries showed higher pro-health behaviors with steeper SES gradients. Economic burden was positively linked to smoking and physical activity, whereas social disconnection related negatively to smoking and drinking but positively to diet quality and exercise. Interaction effects revealed stronger links between economic strain and smoking among men, and higher binge drinking under social isolation among those with lower education. Findings highlight the need for multi-level, population-specific interventions during global health crises.
This study examines the effectiveness of "complementary measures"-specific policies designed to correct the unintended inequalities of "de/familialization" policies, which govern the choice between paid work and family care. The composite index of de/familialization complementary measures on individual-level de/familialization were investigated in 23 OECD countries employing a hierarchical generalized linear model. As complementary measures increased, defamilialization for low-income women increased. For familialization complementary measures, the most significant increase was among low-income men. De/familialization complementary measures were identified as effectively mitigating intersectional inequalities. To transition to a UC society, policies should be accompanied by a cultural shift that revitalizes the value of care. Additionally, the labor market should be central in de/familialization policy discourse.
While some comparative research suggests that countries with more individualistic values exhibit weaker filial obligation and lower reliance on family support, other work concludes that there is little difference across value systems. We shed new light on this debate leveraging data on social networks from the 2017 International Social Survey Programme in 29 countries, which span the collectivist-individualist value range. We examine links between filial obligation and reliance on family support (1) at the country level and (2) at the individual level, and the extent to which a country's level of individualism moderates these relationships. The results show that, first, filial obligation is strongly associated with reliance on family for emotional needs at the macro level, but not with instrumental needs. Second, the association between filial obligation and family support for any type of need measured at the individual level varies significantly across countries. Moreover, contrary to our expectations, the meta-regression results indicate that the association between filial obligation and family support is stronger in more individualistic countries. This research makes an important contribution toward understanding the role of cultural norms around individualism in shaping filial obligations and the extent to which social support needs are met across countries.
