Sarah J. Jackson: All research on politics and/or demographic differences in political opinion must have someone on the team who understands how to do an analysis around power and inequality. Otherwise the inferred conclusions keep blaming oppressed groups and their demands for the backlash of those w/ social power.

All research on politics and/or demographic differences in political opinion must have someone on the team who understands how to do an analysis around power and inequality. Otherwise the inferred conclusions keep blaming oppressed groups and their demands for the backlash of those w/ social power.

haven't read the whole thing but I'm wary of researchers who focus on "gaps" and "polarization" because they tend to encourage power-neutral analysis that misses vital context.

Here’s a piece I co-authored w/ @dkreiss.bsky.social that makes this argument around one of the core conceits of our own field, but the considerations of power, social and historical, that we argue for are equally important in any epistemological attempts to link differences in identity & politics.

Recentering power: conceptualizing counterpublics and defensive publicsacademic.oup.com Abstract. In this manuscript we consider the inconsistent ways the concept of “counterpublics” has been taken up in the field to make the claim that considerati

Oooh. Can’t wait to read this!

I'm always curious about this at FT

As is often the case it looks like the research was done by academics (at Stanford) and the reporter at FT is cliff noting the results. Always possible they’ve done a poor job of interpreting those but scholars often do too if they don’t have a framework for social power.

Fair! I think I've just hoped for a bit more power analysis in these data/figure heavy pieces from FT.

It’s always a bummer. we have so much research and data on polarization and radicalization now but if the training of the researchers didn’t encourage applying interpretive frames that recognize power, the conclusions come off every time with blame inferred in the wrong direction.

I completely agree. I'm designing my policy communication class right now and trying to make sure I weave this throughout the course.

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