Rasmus T Pedersen

Congenial messages from politicians reduce affective polarization among citizens | European Journal of Political Research | Cambridge Core Congenial messages from politicians reduce affective polarization among citizens

🆕 Do Respectful Politicians Make Less Polarized Citizens? 🤝

@rtpedersen.bsky.social @julianchr.bsky.social & Niels Bjørn Grund Petersen use survey data to test whether politicians’ positive rhetoric 🗣️ ✅ can reduce #polarization in the same way negative rhetoric 🗣️ ❎ increases it

📖

Banner for the European Journal of Political Research, available on Cambridge Core, the platform of Cambridge University Press. The banner is in blue with white and lighter blue text.

#OpenAccess from @ejprjournal.bsky.social -

Congenial messages from politicians reduce affective polarization among citizens - https://cup.org/46JRPk3

- @rtpedersen.bsky.social, Julian Christensen & Niels Bjørn Grund Petersen

#FirstView

Countering online abuse of politicians through information about consequences and norms - Niels Bjørn Grund Petersen, Rasmus Tue Pedersen, Mads Thau, 2025 In recent years, a growing body of research has documented how both local and national politicians experience insults, sexism, and even threats on social media ...

People are more likely to act against online abuse of politicians if you tell them that such comments 1) hurt individual politicians, (2) violate social norms, and (3) undermine democracy.
New article in R&P by Niels Bjørn Grund Petersen, Mads Thau and Myself:

journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

Online Abuse of Politicians: Experimental Evidence on Politicians’ Own Perceptions - Political Behavior Criticism from dissatisfied citizens is an inevitable part of being an elected politician in a democracy. However, when negative feedback from citizens turns into outright abuse, this can have pernici...

Check out @rtpedersen.bsky.social, Petersen, and Thau’s open access paper, “Online Abuse of Politicians: Experimental Evidence on Politicians’ Own Perceptions.” link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Update: We submitted the comment to the Journal of Population Economics, and today we got a desk reject with this motivation. However, we do not know their conclusion about the main results and why the paper was not retracted. Clearly, they do not hold. 1/4

Former commander of Pituffik Susan Meyers must have known that she would be fired for this.

But apparently she found there are bigger considerations at stake than keeping her command.

Question is if we'll see more of this sort in coming months?

Berlingske has obtained her leaked email

#Defence

Well, our paper is part of a growing collection of great zombie papers on my computer 😊 (and definitely also my fault/responsibilty 😁)

Congrats, Eunji! Looking forward to reading it

BJPolS abstract discussing the impact of sexism and harassment on political candidates in the 2021 Danish local elections. The study evaluates candidates' perceptions and the corresponding risk of victimization, with findings suggesting stronger repercussions for women candidates, preferences for double job size, and implications for advised oversights in politics.

NEW -

The Gendered Cost of Politics - cup.org/42favop

- Frederik Klaaborg Kjøller & @leneholmp.bsky.social

"the conjoint experiment reveals that women candidates state stronger preferences for equal working environments in politics than men..."

#OpenAccess

Yes

Personality Traits and Cognitive Ability in Political Selection Abstract. A vast scholarship questions whether voters are sufficiently informed to act in their best interest at the polling booth, which may also have imp

🧵 Who enters politics? Are politicians different from the general population? In our @jeeanews.bsky.social paper (M. Jokela, @jannetukiainen.bsky.social, Å. von Schoultz), we study Finnish politicians’ cognitive and personality traits using military conscription test data. 📊

Kilder til DR: Trumps folk 'bestak' hjemløse og socialt udsatte med hotelmiddag for at lege Trump-støtter Flere kilder genkender flere af deltagerne ved Trump-frokosten i Nuuk som hjemløse og socialt udsatte borgere.

Denmarks Radio reports that many of the Greenlanders who participated in Donald Trump Jr.’s PR stunt are homeless people, who got “bribed” with a nice dinner in return for being a part of it

New article in @jepsjournal.bsky.social. We show (to our own surprise) that exposure to online abuse of politicians does not decrease citizens’ prospective political participation. If anything, it may in some cases mobilize citizens politically!
www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

The Long Journey to Homebrew Legalization | AHA Homebrewing legalization took effect on February 1, 1979, but the fight to make beer at home didn’t stop there.

Next time you enjoy a craft beer, remember to thank President Carter. In 1978 he legalized homebrewing of beer in the US, paving the way for the craft beer revolution
www.homebrewersassociation.org/news/long-jo...

Here's the image of a cat in outer space! The feline is floating in a galaxy filled with stars, wearing an astronaut suit.

I'm pretty sure that ChatGPT isn't sentient, but I still can't help think that after a day of helping me debugging code, it somehow appreciates the tasks given by my youngest kid more

Thanks for putting together this starter pack! I'd like to be added 😀

Thanks for putting together this starter pack! I'd like to be added 😀

Bluesky academics, lets get to know each other! Quote this & tell me: 1) a project you are working on & 2) an odd idea/theory you aren’t working on but keep thinking about

1) Online abuse of politicians
2) Political discontent and populism is, to a large extent, driven by “good-old-days-bias”

My and @johannarickne.bsky.social 's paper on the ”Class Ceiling in Politics” is now out in the APSR with open access! We describe the key findings below. 1/9

Women are more averse to abusive comments than men (and people are generally more averse to sexist comments when the comments were directed at women in politics). These results are, we think, important to understand how abuse of politicians may further marginalize women in politics. (4/4)

Perceptions of abuse varied significantly depending on political ideology. Left-leaning citizens were more likely to view insults, sexism, and threats as abusive. Finally, gender plays an important role... (3/n)

We found no partisan bias in how people respond to criticism and the different types of abuse. However, this does not mean that politics is inconsequential... (2/n)

Abstract Online abuse is becoming an increasingly pressing issue for democratic societies. Citizens play an important role in curtailing abuse as they often moderate online content through counter speech and by reporting abusive messages. However, we know little about when citizens actually perceive negative comments directed at politicians as being abusive, and the factors shaping these perceptions are also understudied. In this study, we therefore investigate how citizens perceive criticism, insults, threats and sexist remarks directed at politicians on social media. Based on a survey experiment with 2,000 Danish citizens, we show that citizens’ assessments of the abusiveness of such remarks are not only affected by the content of the messages, but also by political ideology, political trust and gender. Surprisingly, partisanship does not seem to substantively affect perceptions of abuse. Our study provides novel insights into what exactly citizens consider to be abusive behaviour on

What do ordinary people think about online abuse of politicians? In a new paper, we show how citizens perceive criticism, insults, threats and sexist remarks directed at politicians on social media (open access link: ejpr.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...). Surprisingly... (1/n)

Not a bad idea, but is almost completely flat across the entire measure

Non-correlation of the day. Among Danish voters, willingness to run for political office is correlated with the usual suspects: political interest (duh!), gender and age - But not with political trust. Don't even know if I expected pos or neg, but no correlation somehow seems odd.
Polisky

Hi @profmusgrave.bsky.social, could you add me to the Polisky list. Thanks!

Today also: nothing makes the intentional murder and kidnapping of children and unarmed civilians legitimate or understandable.

Yeahh, I don't know, I think research on nostalgia used to be better (No, seriously, this is really interesting work!)