More Like this

1. The Case for Voter-Centered Audits of Search Engines During Political Elections

   https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1145/3351095.3372835  

   Mustafaraj, Eni; Lurie, Emma; Devine, Claire (January 2020, The 3rd ACM Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency (FAT* 2020))

   Search engines, by ranking a few links ahead of million others based on opaque rules, open themselves up to criticism of bias. Previous research has focused on measuring political bias of search engine algorithms to detect possible search engine manipulation effects on voters or unbalanced ideological representation in search results. Insofar that these concerns are related to the principle of fairness, this notion of fairness can be seen as explicitly oriented toward election candidates or political processes and only implicitly oriented toward the public at large. Thus, we ask the following research question: how should an auditing framework that is explicitly centered on the principle of ensuring and maximizing fairness for the public (i.e., voters) operate? To answer this question, we qualitatively explore four datasets about elections and politics in the United States: 1) a survey of eligible U.S. voters about their information needs ahead of the 2018 U.S. elections, 2) a dataset of biased political phrases used in a large-scale Google audit ahead of the 2018 U.S. election, 3) Google’s “related searches” phrases for two groups of political candidates in the 2018 U.S. election (one group is composed entirely of women), and 4) autocomplete suggestions and result pages for a set of searches on the day of a statewide election in the U.S. state of Virginia in 2019. We find that voters have much broader information needs than the search engine audit literature has accounted for in the past, and that relying on political science theories of voter modeling provides a good starting point for informing the design of voter-centered audits. 

   more » « less
2. Three Essays on Promoting Trust through Public Policies and its Consequences for Political Attitudes

   Gorti, Ganesh (November 2024, Proquest)

   Political trust is essential for effective policy implementation, yet declining levels of trust create a vicious cycle where diminished public confidence undermines policy responsiveness, leading to further erosion of trust. This dissertation explores how specific public policies can foster political trust and examines how trust itself influences the relationship between governance structures and political attitudes, particularly concerning support for climate policies. In Chapter 2, I examine the impact of self-targeting public policies, where citizens can choose to opt into benefits, on political trust. My empirical analysis reveals that self-targeting enhances confidence in local government compared to pre-targeting approaches, which do not yield significant results. The findings suggest that policy design, particularly the targeting mechanism, plays a critical role in shaping political attitudes. Chapter 3 argues that bottom-up policies that are participatory in nature, like the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA), can help mitigate the negative effect of inequalities on political trust. Using a quasi-experimental framework, I find strong evidence in support of this argument, reinforcing the importance of inclusive policy design in enhancing democratic processes. The final chapter shifts focus to governance structures, exploring how exposure to non-state climate actions influences climate policy support in less polarized contexts. My results indicate that while exposure does not directly affect policy support, citizens with higher political trust are less likely to hold governments accountable for climate inaction. This underscores the critical need to understand the nuanced role of political trust as a mediator for climate policy support. 

   more » « less
3. Rebel Territorial Control, Governance, and Political Accountability in Civil War: Evidence from the Communist Insurgency in the Philippines

   https://doi.org/10.7916/D86H60VJ  

   Rubin, Michael A. (May 2018, Academic commons)

   Under what conditions do rebel organizations control territory during civil war? How do civilians influence the distribution of territorial control? Why do rebels invest in governance, and why do they target civilians with violence, in some locations but not others? This dissertation advances a political accountability theory to explain how civilians influence the distribution of territorial control and governance during civil war. Existing research explaining variation in rebel territorial control and behavior have emphasized structural and organizational factors, identity politics, economic conditions, and geography. However, the classic insurgency literature and recent counterinsurgency doctrine emphasize the importance of securing civilian support and protecting the population to achieving military objectives in civil war. If true, civilians retain at least some power over rebel personnel. The accountability theory of rebel conduct provides a unified framework linking inter-related conflict processes associated with rebel groups’ territorial control, governance, and strategic use of violence during civil war. It argues that community collective action capacity, the ease with which communities facilitate collective action to pursue common interests, influences the distribution territorial control and belligerent conduct during civil war. The empirical strategy draws upon complementary quantitative and qualitative methods to test the accountability against plausible alternatives using village-level data from the communist insurgency in the Philippines. The results provide robust support for the accountability theory over plausible alternatives, and yield policy implications for peace-building and economic development in conflict-affected states. 

   more » « less
4. What We Know and Don't Know About Eligible and Registered Voters in the United States: Population, Age, and Race in Census Surveys and L2 Voter Roll Data

   https://doi.org/10.1111/ssqu.70080  

   Fowler, Christopher_S; Southern, Billy (September 2025, Social Science Quarterly)

   ABSTRACT Accurate information on who is eligible to vote—and who is registered—is essential to voting rights enforcement, election reporting, and scholarship on political participation. Yet, the data used to measure eligibility and registration vary in important ways based on how the data were collected and for what purpose. This article compares three federal data sources on citizenship and voter registration, alongside state voter roll data aggregated by a private vendor (L2). We assess their strengths and limitations, helping researchers make informed choices. We review existing research on how individual preferences, policies, and politics shape registration rates across geography and demographic groups. We also explain why some uncertainty in counts of eligible and registered voters is unavoidable. Our side‐by‐side comparison reveals striking inconsistencies. The American Community Survey overstates the citizen voting‐age population. The Current Population Survey and L2 voter file counts of registered voters show a very weak correlation across states. Counts for small geographic areas vary widely. Because we are largely unable to disentangle the source of differences we observe, we recommend using multiple data sources. We also call for more attention to how voter rolls are maintained at the local level—key to reducing uncertainty. 

   more » « less
5. Urban Commoner Households: (In)equality and Daily Life at Aventura

   Nissen, Zachary A (April 2023, Society for American Archaeology 88th Annual Meeting)

   Cities are locations of diverse human interaction where persons from different families and social affiliations can gather, exchange goods, and participate in community events. However, the management of these diverse interactions and activities requires social and political systems that do not value the contribution of all residents equally, resulting in inequities. In this paper, I present excavation data collected from two urban commoner households at Aventura to assess the nature of inequality at the site. Illustrated through the horizontal excavation of two commoner households, this paper examines what life at Aventura was like for the city’s lower-status residents. Through a discussion of domestic architecture, ritual practices, and refuse deposits, I argue that while some households at Aventura experienced inequality, they remained active and integrated members of the broader community. I conclude by reflecting on the role that this integration of low-status households played in the city’s longevity and the maintenance of its robust and diverse population. 

   more » « less