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• Exploring the possible expressions of social dominance in an online context: Discourse analysis below the video contents of the representatives of Finn’s Party

  104-127

  Márton Markovics

  Views:

  149

  In the course of the study, discourse analysis was used to examine the comments posted under the videos of three representatives of the Finns Party with the largest YouTube following. The aim of the research was to identify discoursive manifestations of social dominance in the comment field. In addition, we also aimed to validate a word list of socially dominant terms. To this end, we have identified four linguistic categories that could form the basis of socially dominant communication, based on the literature of social dominance. The words with the highest number of elements in each category were presented in a word cloud. After collecting the most frequent terms, three external groups were identified against which social dominance orientation may be relevant. These suggest that the European Union, immigrants and the domestic left may constitute the out-group category in the eyes of populist supporters. Finally, the hierarchical terms were not validated as they occured in a negligible number of items in the sample. The successfully validated categories were plotted on a cross-tabulation, from which we created four different types of Finns Party supporters based on the out-group they named and the dominant common words and phrases in the comment categories. The presence of authoritarian, political out-group category points to the spread of political polarization in Finland. Since social identity underlies both social dominance orientation and political polarization, it may be relevant to examine both together in future research. Nonetheless, social dominance was not expressed in the way that was initially assumed and commentators perceived “real Finns” as the sufferers of a socially dominant situation. The background to this phenomenon is presumably the populist political rhetoric of the Finns’ Party, which tries to portray Finns as people left behind in disadvantaged social positions.

• Majority Decision Making

  81-100

  Levente Nagy

  Views:

  207

  Modern democracies, based on pluralism, recognize and affirm diversity, permit peaceful
  coexistence of different interests, values and convictions, and advocate a form of political
  moderation. For democracy to function and to be successful two of the most challenging
  questions must be raised and answered: Who have the right for collective decision-making?
  What principle should be used for these people to be elected? With the development of modern
  democracies it has become more and more accepted the idea that democracy should rest upon
  the principle of majority rule, coupled with individual and minority rights. Majority rule thus
  refers to the quantitative aspect of democracy, while individual and minority rights express
  the qualitative or constitutional aspect of it. A detailed analysis of democratic decision-making
  processes shows that not all decisions made by legislature – whose members are elected by the
  majority of the people – are effective and good decisions, and points at the fact that most of the
  democratic decisions are not made by the majority but by minority groups, who quite often take
  the initiative and can seriously influence the majority. This paper focuses on these issues.