Internet has found an increasing role in the politics, during the last decade. Today, terms like digital democracy, Internet elections, Internet advertisements (propaganda, social- political Web logging in the internet has become common terms.  Internet is getting replaced for the traditional media in politics. The interactive characteristic of this media has changed it to an unrivaled instrume...

Wilhelm Kempf Towards an Integration of Quantitative and Qualitative Content Analysis in Propaganda Research 1. Reconstruction of socio-psychological context as a methodological framework Within the framework of recent studies on U.S. propaganda and psychological warfare during the Contra War in Nicaragua (Kempf, 1990), a communication model was developed according to which it is not so much th...

The recent debate started by David Healy [1] on the pages of this journal and further fueled by letters published in this issue [2–4] sparks again the decade-old debate ‘as to whether selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) can trigger suicidality in vulnerable individuals’ [1]. The article by Healy [1] is carefully and elegantly written, and avoids definite statements, however the effe...

Brazil has introduced a referendum regarding the prohibition of firearm commerce and propaganda arguments have invoked socially and personally driven issues in the promotion of voting in favor of and against firearm control, respectively. Here, we used different techniques to study the brain activity associated with a voter’s perception of the truthfulness of these arguments and their influence...

Electoral systems are uniquely distributive political institutions that shape political outcomes, yet are themselves endogenously shaped outcomes of political choices. In Poland, party system development has involved not only parties adapting to electoral institutions in each election, but also parties modifying these institutions prior to every election. We model electoral system change as dri...

For statistical as well as political reasons combined measures of electoral disproportionality and electoral thresholds are necessary in order to adequately summarize electoral institutions. With few exceptions, none of these quantities can be reliably inferred directly from the provisions of the electoral law, thus impairing “large scale” comparative studies. Through the use of sampling based ...

To minimize damage to their popularity during economic downturns, rulers in electoral autocracies can draw on propaganda advantage keep the economy off political agenda or shift blame other actors. How successful are these strategies swaying citizens’ views? While autocrats frequently resort strategies, there is surprisingly little evidence about effectiveness. address this gap, I took of recen...