Different questions with the same answers? Collective identities with respect to attitudes to Covid19, Ukraine, and Russia in the CR and their relation to populism

0579405 - PSÚ 2024 RIV CZ eng A - Abstract
Klicperová-Baker, Martina - Jelínek, Martin - Květon, Petr
Different questions with the same answers? Collective identities with respect to attitudes to Covid19, Ukraine, and Russia in the CR and their relation to populism.
Praha, 7.9.2023. s. 1-64.
[European Consortium for Political Research (ECPR) General Conference 2023. Prague, 04.09.2023-08.09.2023]
Method of presentation: Přednáška
Event organizer: IPS FSV UK
URL events: https://ecpr.eu/Events/214 
R&D Projects: GA MŠMT(CZ) LX22NPO5101
Grant - others:AV ČR(CZ) StrategieAV21/24
Program: StrategieAV
Institutional support: RVO:68081740
Keywords : identity * COVID-19 * Ukraine * Russia * disinformation * collective identity
OECD category: Psychology (including human - machine relations)

The major crises the Czech society had to face in the recent history were generally first met with a great degree of national unity and benevolent resilience but as the stressful time progressed, fragmentation of attitudes of the people became more apparent. The causes of fragmentation were multiple, ranging from exhaustion of resources to foreign interference. Populism and vulnerability to it was certainly one of the important factors. This study attempts to find who is more or less susceptible to populist seductions in the current Czech society. The approach uses the concept of group, psycho-political identities. The study uses the dataset of the Prague Longitudinal Research which was launched during the first COVID-19 wave. This panel study is nationally representative with respect to the major demographic criteria and involves cca 800 to 1100 respondents in each of 10 waves realized so far. In the first step, responses to 12 items regarding COVID-19 mis/information & hoaxes along with 18 items relevant to the Russian-Ukrainian conflict were factor analyzed. The FA produced four factors: a single COVID-19 factor (Covid Hoaxes Belief) and three Ukraine-Russia factors (Pro-Russian Politics, Self-centered Economy, and Most Russians Guilty factor). The Covid Hoaxes Belief factor correlated positively (.47) with the Pro-Russian Politics factor. Factor loadings of all four factors were used in Latent Profile Analysis and produced five distinct collective identities which differed by their attitudes to COVID and the Russian invasion of Ukraine. These five types of collective identities were: No Strong Opinion – characterizing as many as 48% of respondents, Pro-Ukrainian Democrats (22%), Anti-Russian Democrats (7%), Pro-Russian Post-communists (15%), and Generally Disinformed (9%). These psycho-political identities demonstrated very good validity when correlated with other relevant items in the survey. Importantly, they also showed a significant relationship to indicators of populism. Both democratic identities manifested high immunity to populism, both Pro-Russian Post-communism and the Generally Disinformed types manifested very high susceptibility to populism.

Permanent Link: https://hdl.handle.net/11104/0348232