Partisanship and feelings about racial groups are increasingly linked among whites in the United States. Does this pattern extend to other Americans? To answer this question, we begin by examining trends in what has been termed “affective differentiation”—a measure of racial affect that is, in our case, the difference in ratings between one’s own group and white Americans—and partisanship to demonstrate first that affective differentiation has increased. Further, this measure of racial affect has a growing relationship with partisanship among Black and Latine Americans such that Democratic identification is associated with higher levels of affective differentiation. Next, using panel data from the two most recent presidential elections we find that the direction of influence flows from partisanship to affective differentiation. Higher levels of attachment to the Democratic Party are associated with greater affective differentiation in which respondents rate their own group more favorably than whites. In recent elections, there has been a stark polarization among political parties regarding the utilization of explicit racial rhetoric. Members of the electorate have taken notice, leading partisans to update their racial attitudes.

Human interactions in the online world comprise a combination of positive and negative exchanges. These diverse interactions can be captured using signed network representations, where edges take positive or negative weights to indicate the sentiment of the interaction between individuals. Signed networks offer valuable insights into online political polarization by capturing antagonistic interactions and ideological divides on social media platforms. This study analyzes polarization on Menéame, a Spanish social media platform that facilitates engagement with news stories through comments and voting. Using a dual-method approach—Signed Hamiltonian Eigenvector Embedding for Proximity for signed networks and Correspondence Analysis for unsigned networks—we investigate how including negative ties enhances the understanding of structural polarization levels across different conversation topics on the platform. While the unsigned Menéame network effectively delineates ideological communities, only by incorporating negative ties can we identify ideologically extreme users who engage in antagonistic behaviors: without them, the most extreme users remain indistinguishable from their less confrontational ideological peers.

Can observing opposing partisans engage in dialogue depolarize Americans at scale? Partisan animosity poses a challenge to democracy in the United States. Direct intergroup contact interventions have shown promise in reducing partisan polarization, but are costly, time-consuming, and sensitive to subtle changes in implementation. Vicarious intergroup contact—observing co-partisans engage with outparty members—offers a possible solution to the drawbacks of direct contact, and could potentially depolarize Americans quickly and at scale. We test this proposition using a pre-registered, placebo-controlled trial with a nationally representative sample of Americans. Using both attitudinal and behavioral measures, we find that a 50-minute documentary showing an intergroup contact workshop reduces polarization and increases interest but not investment in depolarization activities. While we find no evidence that the film mitigates anti-democratic attitudes, it does increase optimism about the survival of democratic institutions. Our findings suggest that vicarious intergroup contact delivered via mass media can be an effective, inexpensive, and scalable way to promote depolarization among Americans.

The digitalization of the mining industry requires wireless connectivity for real-time status indications, remote-controlled mining operations, and autonomous driving vehicles in tunnels. This paper presents a wideband radio propagation measurement system and provides radio channel measurement results for data at 5G frequency range 1 and frequency range 2 bands recorded in Sandvik’s test mine in Tampere, Finland. The measured signal attenuation due to the blocking of the tunnel by a scoop and a large loader vehicle is found to be in the range of 10 dB at 3.5 GHz. The radio signal level attenuates significantly when the other end of the link moves into a side tunnel from the main tunnel. The measured signal attenuation rates in tunnel crossroads at 3.5 GHz were 10 and 15 dB/m. The root mean square delay spreads in the two crossroads were 3–10 ns, corresponding to coherence bandwidths of 300 and 100 MHz, respectively. The signal reflections from the tunnel walls were studied at a 26.5 GHz frequency by steering the transmission antenna azimuthally. The FR2 measurement results at 6 m inside the side tunnel indicate strong reflections from the side walls, evident from the path length amplitude results.

Argumentation is often conceived as a rational response to disagreement, even when it does not resolve differences of opinion. Arguing in the face of disagreement has, however, distinctive epistemic effects. Sometimes argumentation achieves convergence of opinion or at least the mutual recognition that a more thorough inquiry is required. But facing disagreement, participants of argumentative exchanges quite often remain steadfast in their initial views or even radicalize them. Can we make sense of these latter situations? To account for their occurrence, it is common to point out that people’s ability to argue is flawed, that an “argumentative culture” is lacking, and that emotional and other non-rational factors often interfere in confrontative situations. But these suggestions do not amount to a thorough satisfactory explanation. In this paper, I provide the outline of a purely epistemic account of these peculiar effects of argumentation in the face of disagreement. I argue that probabilistic models of degrees of confidence (or “credences”) can shed light on the conditions that give rise to several of these effects. This could provide some guidance on how to avoid them.

Affective polarization is often blamed on the rise of partisan news. However, self-reported measures of news consumption suffer serious flaws. We often have limited ability to characterize partisan media audiences outside of the United States. I use a behavioural data set of 728 respondents whose online behaviour was tracked over four weeks during the 2019 Canadian federal election. These data were paired to a survey for a subset of respondents. I find that audiences for partisan media are small, and web traffic is driven by an even smaller share of the population. There are few major partisan differences in news media use, and partisan news exposure is higher among highly attentive, sophisticated news consumers, rather than those with strong political commitments.

The Australian SKA Pathfinder (ASKAP) offers powerful new capabilities for studying the polarised and magnetised Universe at radio wavelengths. In this paper, we introduce the Polarisation Sky Survey of the Universe’s Magnetism (POSSUM), a groundbreaking survey with three primary objectives: (1) to create a comprehensive Faraday rotation measure (RM) grid of up to one million compact extragalactic sources across the southern $\sim50$% of the sky (20,630 deg$^2$); (2) to map the intrinsic polarisation and RM properties of a wide range of discrete extragalactic and Galactic objects over the same area; and (3) to contribute interferometric data with excellent surface brightness sensitivity, which can be combined with single-dish data to study the diffuse Galactic interstellar medium. Observations for the full POSSUM survey commenced in May 2023 and are expected to conclude by mid-2028. POSSUM will achieve an RM grid density of around 30–50 RMs per square degree with a median measurement uncertainty of $\sim$1 rad m$^{-2}$. The survey operates primarily over a frequency range of 800–1088 MHz, with an angular resolution of 20” and a typical RMS sensitivity in Stokes Q or U of 18 $\mu$Jy beam$^{-1}$. Additionally, the survey will be supplemented by similar observations covering 1296–1440 MHz over 38% of the sky. POSSUM will enable the discovery and detailed investigation of magnetised phenomena in a wide range of cosmic environments, including the intergalactic medium and cosmic web, galaxy clusters and groups, active galactic nuclei and radio galaxies, the Magellanic System and other nearby galaxies, galaxy halos and the circumgalactic medium, and the magnetic structure of the Milky Way across a very wide range of scales, as well as the interplay between these components. This paper reviews the current science case developed by the POSSUM Collaboration and provides an overview of POSSUM’s observations, data processing, outputs, and its complementarity with other radio and multi-wavelength surveys, including future work with the SKA.

Despite nearly two centuries of actively stylizing itself as above the partisan fray of banal politics, the US Supreme Court faces increasing scrutiny over its ideological nature, ethical lapses, and perceived disconnection from democratic accountability. This article explores potential reforms including ethics guidelines, public affairs offices, and term limits to enhance the Court’s legitimacy. It also examines trends in judicial decision making, the Court’s relationship with public opinion, and the influence of identity politics on judicial perceptions through an examination of the scholarship on the Court. The article concludes by emphasizing the need for ongoing research and methodological innovation to address these challenges and ensure the Court’s role in American democracy.

As corporations increasingly embrace ethical commitments and prioritize corporate social responsibility (CSR), commentators have begun to speak of a shift toward “moral capitalism.” This shift has revived debates about the compatibility of CSR with economic efficiency and the role of markets in promoting social change. We find the economic concern misplaced: moral capitalism efficiently responds to a growing demand for CSR from all stakeholders, including shareholders. Yet the same market mechanisms that make modern CSR profitable raise political objections worth considering. Major shareholders can now leverage their disproportionate economic power to use corporations as vehicles for forcing unilateral resolutions of societal issues, bypassing and undermining formal democratic processes. Beyond this, there is a broader risk to social cohesion: when markets become arenas for adjudicating rather than sidestepping moral and political disagreements, they reinforce exchanges among “friends” (those with shared preferences) while deepening divisions with “foes.” This may import polarization into market life, with spillover effects on society at large. Taken together, these concerns raise the question of whether moral capitalism may threaten the very democratic moral sensibility it claims to uphold.

Corporate activism—companies taking public stances on contested sociopolitical issues—has become increasingly prevalent in American life. Against such activism, this essay raises two normative complaints. First, corporate activism undermines democracy by violating political equality and distorting public deliberation. Second, corporate activism adds to the undesirable overpoliticization of everyday life. Corporations, the essay concludes, should generally avoid activism.

Growing concerns with political polarization have led to a proliferation of research on its consequences. This paper presents results of a systematic literature review and meta-analysis of 25 articles that study the effects of polarization on participation. We categorize studies depending on polarization type (affective or ideological), level (individual or system), and participation type (electoral or non-electoral), to analyze the theoretical arguments proposed by studies in each category. According to a meta-analysis of all 104 coefficients describing the focal effect, individual-level affective and ideological polarization have a positive effect on participation even after publication bias is accounted for. The same analysis finds no evidence of an effect of system-level ideological polarization on election turnout net of publication bias. We conclude with a discussion of the challenges researchers of polarization and participation face, as well as gaps in the extant literature and opportunities for further research on this topic.

This article explores the peculiarity of struggles over memory in Soviet-era planned cities in the Russian Far East. It focuses on the contested history of Permskoe, a village founded by peasant settlers from European Russia in 1860, which was later subsumed by Komsomolsk-na-Amure, an urban industrial center constructed in the Stalinist period in the 1930s. Built with the participation of Young Communist League volunteers recruited from across the Soviet Union, the city was held up as a symbol of the triumph of socialist modernization throughout the twentieth century. But following the collapse of the Soviet Union in the 1990s, the city suffered a dramatic reversal of fortunes, with a massive outflow of residents and resources leading to an economic crisis that also occasioned a crisis of identity. One manifestation of this crisis is an initiative seeking to recalculate the city’s age based on the date of Permskoe’s founding. This proposal has been denounced by many residents as an attempt to erase the city’s Soviet history and to downplay the role of communist volunteers in the city’s construction. Drawing on the debates which erupted around this periodization controversy, I argue that the collapse of the Soviet imaginary of linear progress and inability to articulate a new frontier myth resulted in “asynchronous belonging,” characterized by radical polarization around memory and irreconcilable allegiances to different moments in local history.

It is widely agreed that politicians are prone to hyperbole, proposing platforms that no one expects them to fully accomplish. We develop a theory of electoral competition focusing on politicians who differ in terms of both ideological preferences and in their capability to “get things done.” An imperfect ability to implement platforms introduces a novel role for status quo policies. We first show that the traditional left-right orientation of political competition arises only when the status quo is relatively moderate. Otherwise, an extreme status quo becomes the dominant dimension of electoral competition, providing a novel rationale for “populist” campaigns. Our second set of results address when campaign platforms can serve as effective empirical proxies for policies. We show that when there is a shock to voter preferences, the effect on platforms and policies is qualitatively the same, hence platforms are good qualitative proxies for policy implications. But when shocks are to the platform-policy linkage, platforms and policies respond in qualitatively different ways.