#788 Alexander Bor: Online Political Hostility; and the Moralization and Political Effects of COVID
RECORDED ON JANUARY 6th 2023.
Dr. Alexander Bor is a postdoc at the CEU Democracy Institute’s Research Group on De- and Re-Democratization and a Visiting Professor at CEU Vienna. He received an MA in Political Science at the CEU in 2012, and a PhD in Political Science at Aarhus University in 2018, where he also worked as a postdoc until 2022. His research focuses on how the human mind navigates social and political challenges like political polarization, online political hostility, the COVID-19 pandemic, or selecting and evaluating political leaders. His work integrates insights from political behavior, social and evolutionary psychology, and public health.
In this episode, we talk about online political hostility, and the COVID-19 pandemic. We start by talking about the sharing of fake news on social media, partisan polarization, and the psychology of online political hostility. We then get into the COVID-19 pandemic, and go through topics like motivating the public with health advice; compliance with fear; communicating hope; individual factors that predicted acceptance of the vaccines; how governments should have communicated about the vaccines; how the pandemic got moralized; prejudice against the unvaccinated; and broader social and political effects on institutions and social solidarity.
Time Links:
Intro
The sharing of fake news on social media
Partisan polarization
The psychology of online political hostility
Motivating the public with health advice during the COVID-19 pandemic
Compliance with fear
Communicating hope
Individual factors that predicted public acceptance of COVID-19 vaccines
How governments should have communicated about the vaccines
How did the pandemic get moralized?
Prejudice against the unvaccinated
Effects on institutions and social solidarity
Follow Dr. Bor’s work!
Follow Dr. Bor’s work:
University page:
Website: https://bit.ly/3x2Iu4y
ResearchGate profile: https://bit.ly/3ATvvmQ
Twitter handle: @boralexander1