Media storms – dramatic outbursts of attention to a story – are key components of media dynamics and the attention landscape. Despite their importance, systematic empirical research on these phenomena has been limited by the constraints of manual content analysis. While various studies offer different descriptions and findings, we still lack a comprehensive understanding of storm types, and how varied dynamics correspond to diverging media effects and contextual impacts. This paper proposes a data-driven typology of media storm based on their structures, addressing this gap. Building upon media storm data previously identified in two decades of U.S. news coverage, we use a semi-supervised method to identify the news articles relating to each instance and apply time-series clustering to categorize them into three distinct types: Dominant Plateaus, Explosive Outbursts, and Slow Boils. We then validate this typology and examine its theoretical implications through three key perspectives drawn from previous research on media storms: issue-attention dynamics, media production environments, and elite actor engagement. We claim that this data-driven typology forms a robust foundation for future research exploring media storms’ varied effects on public discourse and agenda-setting and perhaps even predicting their dynamics.

Western societies are divided over whether public expressions of Islam should be permitted in urban spaces. Some argue such displays prompt withdrawal among Muslim immigrants and undermine their sense of belonging, yet rigorous empirical testing remains limited. Given this empirical gap, this study provides a causal test of the effect of in situ exposure to embedded Islamic symbols on Muslim immigrants’ place-based integration. We conceptualize place integration as a proximal, cue-driven person–environment process, reflected in approach-oriented behavior and attitudinal–perceptual attachment to place. We then evaluate the effect of public Islam using naturalistic field experiments and original surveys with Muslim immigrants in Paris and London. Using a purpose-built augmented reality mobile app, our experiments tracked participants’ movement along identical urban routes, randomly assigning exposure to either Islamic symbols (treatment) or non-religious cues (control) (NParis = 151, NLondon = 147). GPS-based behavioral data comprising walking pace, acceleration and brief remaining near the location, show that exposure to Islamic symbols increased approach-oriented behavior (dParis = 0.51, dLondon = 0.63, P < 0.05), accompanied by a parallel increase in self-reported place attachment. Corroborating survey evidence (NParis = 403, NLondon = 400) further indicates that everyday visibility of Islamic symbols in one’s neighborhood is positively associated with place attachment. The patterns hold in both Paris and London, despite their contrasting approaches to religious visibility, indicating that the effect extends beyond a single policy context. These findings have implications for the governance of religious diversity in urban public spaces in the context of immigration.

This paper invites the readers to rethink regulatory governance by examining how trust-based and rule-based governance interact. To do this, it uses analytical narratives of three fictional polities: “Trustland”, “Regland”, and “Concordia”. Each polity represents a stylized model of governance: Trustland is anchored in trust-based governance, Regland in rule-based governance, and Concordia evolves as an attempt for a synergy of both. The analysis reveals the deep logics, political tensions, and institutional trade-offs involved in governing through trust and through rules. It traces how different conceptions and priorities around trust and rules compete in each of the three fictional countries. Trustland is not Utopia, Regland is not Dystopia, and Concordia may be better understood as a “Protopia” – a space of gradual, contested improvement. Four modes of governance compete in each polity to capture alternative configurations of institutional alignment, interaction, and conflicts. Rather than advocating a normative ideal, the paper positions each polity as a field of ongoing political struggle over legitimacy claims, institutional boundary-drawing, and authority. These imaginative narratives offer a framework for rethinking how governance legitimacy is articulated, organized, and contested in contemporary regulatory systems. In so doing, it provides an innovative way of thinking and rethinking the academic field and practice of regulatory governance.

This article identifies a striking affinity between Machiavelli and the natural philosophy of Nicole Oresme (c. 1320–1382). I situate both thinkers within a common ‘dirt-affirming’ philosophical tradition that challenges a robust doxa privileging harmony, coherence and stability. The central claim is that Oresme’s reflections on incommensurability, variability, and novelty provide a conceptual setting for Machiavelli’s political cosmos – one structured not by perfect order but by disruption and irregularity. I trace further convergences: both imagine a body politic inhabited by fluctuant humors; both take seriously the influence of celestial motion on human behavior while rejecting astral determinism; and – perhaps most radically – both sustain unpredictability and dissonance not as monstruous marks of irrationality but as necessary conditions of free will. Although direct influence cannot be demonstrated, Machiavelli likely encountered Oresme’s name and ideas, for example through Pico della Mirandola or other Italian scholars familiar with Oresme’s mathematical and astronomic studies. By tracing these resonances, the article complicates the prevailing view of Machiavelli as a distinctly modern thinker and argues that medieval natural philosophy provided conceptual resources for his vindication of antagonism and political liberty.

How do people form opinions in high-stakes situations, prevalent in times of conflict and crisis? We propose that personal values play a crucial role in shaping opinions and provide empirical evidence and novel insights about the process involved. We expected values to predict opinions regarding negotiations with armed groups to free hostages. Five Israeli samples (N = 7,248; four preregistered, one longitudinal) participated during the Hamas–Israel war, as hostage deal negotiations dominated public discourse. Universalism values predicted deal support, while power and tradition values predicted opposition. Values predicted opinions independently of demographics and empathy, with universalism significant even beyond political ideology. Opinion certainty was higher when values fit the opinion (e.g., high universalism coupled with support) than when they did not. A longitudinal design supported values’ role in several ways. First, values measured before the first deal predicted opinions a year later. Second, low value coherence predicted change in opinion over time. Third, values predicted shifts in opinion over time. Finally, the fit between values and opinion predicted opinion stability through increased certainty. Although limited to a single sociopolitical context and lacking Palestinian perspectives, findings offer strong evidence that personal values may shape moral judgment under uncertainty and help individuals navigate evolving, emotionally charged dilemmas. The study offers new contributions by assessing values in relation to high-stakes (not hypothetical) dilemmas, tracking opinion change over a moving target (an evolving hostage deal), and demonstrating how value–opinion fit predicts opinion certainty and consequentially long-term stability. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved)

On 7 October 2023, Hamas invaded Israel and took 251 hostages into Gaza, resulting in a drawn-out war and a hostage crisis that involved complex life-and-death related dilemmas. Using longitudinal data collected from a representative sample of Israeli Jews across two years (Total N = 902), we examined cognitive and emotional bases for how people formed opinions about the hostage crisis. Participants rated the importance of releasing hostages, how connected they felt to the hostages’ families and their opinions about three concrete Hostage Deals (HDs). Almost all participants expressed that releasing hostages (88.6%) was highly important, a significant minority felt very connected to hostages’ families across waves (34.9–40.4%) and most participants supported the HDs, with increased support over time (56.8–72.0%). Attitudes towards releasing hostages predicted HD support a year later and beyond. Political orientation predicted attitudes towards releasing hostages and HD opinions across time. Feeling connected to hostages’ families predicted HD support independently of politics-related variables. Although definitive causal conclusions cannot be made, findings suggest people may rely simultaneously on both cognitive and emotional processes when forming opinions about decisions involving complex tradeoffs with life-and-death implications.

Negative emotions are held to be at the very core of the emotional appeal of populist radical right parties (PRRP). Building on emerging studies that paint a more nuanced picture, I argue that appeals to positive emotions are frequent, deliberate and intricately linked to appeals to negative emotions (especially anger) in the election campaigns of PRRPs. This argument builds on two kinds of evidence from an integrated mixed-methods design: First, a holistic analysis of campaign communications (manifestos, Facebook posts, press releases, posters and video ads) issued in campaigns in Austria (2017), Germany (2017) and Italy (2018). Second, in-depth semi-structured interviews with top-level campaigners from the FPÖ (Austria) and the AfD (Germany). PRRPs frequently and deliberately add positive emotions to negative ones in order to de-radicalize their image and make inroads into mainstream electorates. The article draws out the conceptual, methodological and substantive implications of mixing emotional appeals. In terms of the latter, without de-radicalization in policies, the PRRP emotional cocktail is better characterized as an attempt to further radicalize voters. That mainstream parties fail to see the relevance of positive emotions to the appeal of PRRPs poses a serious obstacle to them finding an effective strategy to fight back.

The parliament’s role during government formation, survival, and termination is expressed through the votes of investiture, confidence, and no confidence, which collectively shape the confidence relations between legislatures and executives. Despite their centrality in parliamentary democracies, the conceptualisation of these relations, the institutional rules governing each vote, and the interplay between them remain underexplored. This chapter develops a novel framework for analysing the confidence relations and argues that their design helps shape the comprehensive balance of power between legislatures and executives. Using original data from 22 parliamentary democracies, the chapter codes the institutional rules of the confidence votes and examines their interconnectedness. The findings reveal systematic patterns of institutional variation, particularly in the majority requirements, suggesting that confidence votes can be strategically designed to balance executive stability and responsibility. Moreover, the broader procedural rules governing these votes frequently diverge, highlighting the complexity of the confidence relations.

Candidate selection is the process by which parties decide, before a general election, who their candidates will be. This intraparty decision has important implications for political representation. Candidate selection methods vary in their types of selectorates, candidacy requirements, level of centralization and selection system. This variance, in turn, influences both levels and types of representation. Moreover, political parties face the challenge of balancing their representee aspirations with their wish to fulfil other democratic goals, such as enhancing participation, competition and responsiveness. Addressing this challenge entails making necessary tradeoffs: Parties that want to ensure minimal representation of defined social groups – to follow legal requirements, to respond to intraparty demands and for ideological and electoral reasons – use representation correction mechanisms and thus intervene and limit the complete freedom to select and be selected.

To defeat demagogues like Donald Trump, citizens must vote to defend democracy, otherwise it will not be there to defend them. Taking off from Max Weber's 'Vocation Lectures,' David Ricci's Defending Democracy therefore explores the idea of 'citizenship as a vocation,' which is a commitment to defending democracy by supporting leaders who will govern according to the Declaration of Independence's self-evident truths rather than animosity and polarizations. He examines the condition of democracy in states where it is endangered and where modern technology – television, internet, smart phones, social media, etc. – provides so much information and disinformation that we sometimes lack the common sense to reject candidates who have no business in politics. Arguing for the practice of good citizenship, Ricci observes that as citizens we have become the rulers of modern societies, in which case we have to fulfill our democratic responsibilities if society is to prosper.