- Docente: Salvatore Vassallo
- Credits: 6
- SSD: SPS/04
- Language: Italian
- Teaching Mode: Traditional lectures
- Campus: Bologna
- Corso: Second cycle degree programme (LM) in Information, Cultures and Media Organisation (cod. 5698)
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from Feb 11, 2025 to Mar 13, 2025
Learning outcomes
This course introduces students to the methods used and the main hypotheses advanced in the social sciences to analyze the formation and change of opinions on issues of public concern, political attitudes, and voting choices. The course will cover both general hypotheses developed on a comparative basis and analyses of the socio-demographic characteristics and public opinion attitudes underlying the results of electoral contests held in democratic countries. At the end of the course, the student will be able to: - interpret and discuss the results of scientific analyses of public opinion attitudes and voting behavior; - examine the dividing lines (cleavages) along which the political attitudes of citizens in democratic countries are polarized.
Course contents
The first part of the course presents in a discursive manner the main hypotheses and analyses elaborated in the field of socio-political studies concerning the cleavages or divisive issues along which national public opinions are led to take a position (statism/liberalism, globalism/nationalism, climate change, immigration, civil rights). As well as the factors influencing the formation of such opinions and voting choices, including: the 'ascribed' characteristics of voters (gender, age, education, family), their place in the social structure (defined by class, religious, territorial affiliations), their long-term political predispositions (location on the left-right axis, party identifications, values), their assessment of the objects of competition (incumbent government, parties, leaders). To show how and to what extent these factors influence opinions and voting, the results of studies concerning the 2022 Italian elections and the 2024 US presidential elections will be examined.
The second part of the course introduces the basic categories and methodological canons of empirical research with coded data (so-called quantitative analysis) concerning social and political phenomena: definition of the questions, the hypotheses and the concepts specifying them, the indicators for detecting the properties being analysed; modalities of conducting sample surveys (polls), with particular attention to the formulation of questionnaires, the sampling plan and administration techniques; how to present survey results and analysis using the main statistical techniques (monovariate, bivariate, multivariate analysis); how to quantitatively analyse textual data taken from social networks with particular attention to the communication of leaders and the reactions of their followers using artificial intelligence and machine learning techniques.
In the third part, participants will be asked to choose a topic from those addressed in the first part, to find scientific literature dealing with it with empirical data and to present the questions, hypotheses and results of the analyses in a professional manner. The verbal presentation, carried out with the aid of PowerPoint cards, and the related classroom discussion may form the basis for the final paper.
This course has as its natural extension the 'Public opinion analysis Laboratory' in which the hypotheses and methods learnt are applied through techniques and software for analysing survey data and textual data from social networks.
Readings/Bibliography
Harold D. Clarke, David Sanders, Marianne C. Stewart, and Paul Whiteley (2004). Political Choice in Britain, Oxford University Press, pp. 2-35.
Liesbet Hooghe e Gary Marks. 2018. «Cleavage theory meets Europe’s crises: Lipset, Rokkan, and the transnational cleavage». Journal of European Public Policy 25 (1): 109–35.
Ronald Inglehart, Changing values among western publics from 1970 to 2006. West european politics 31, fasc. 1–2 (2008): 130–46.
Ronald Inglehart, Pippa Norris, Trump and the Populist Authoritarian Parties: The Silent Revolution in Reverse. Perspectives on Politics. 2017;15(2):443-454.
Vassallo, Salvatore, and Marco Valbruzzi. 2018. “I partiti della Grande Recessione contro i partiti della Grande Depressione. Un nuovo cleavage o un’altra bolla?” Stato e Mercato: 87–116.
Roccato M. (2023). Teorie e tecniche dell’inchiesta e del sondaggio. Il Mulino (capp 1-2, 4-8, 11, 13).
ITANES (2023). Svolta a destra? Cosa ci dice il voto del 2022. Il Mulino.
Vassallo S. e Verzichelli L. (a cura di) (2023). Il bipolarismo asimmetrico. L'Italia al voto dopo il decennio populista. Il Mulino.
Teaching methods
The course consists of fifteen working sessions in which students will be invited to actively participate. Approximately ten of these sessions will consist of classic lectures. In the remaining five sessions, students will be required to present and discuss, in turn, some of the reference texts and set out the hypotheses around which they intend to elaborate the final paper. All classes will be held in presence.
Assessment methods
Each student is required to write an essay on one of the topics covered in the course, basing their analysis on the relevant academic literature. The paper should start from a topic relevant to the analysis of public opinion covered in the compulsory reference texts and explore it in depth in one or more cases through the academic literature, using the empirical methods covered in the course. By way of example, the assignment could cover: the link between attitudes towards European integration and ideological orientation (left-right positioning) and voting behaviour in Poland; the 'gender gap' in US presidential elections; class voting in the Brexit referendum. The chapters of the volume "Turn to the Right?" are a model to be taken as a reference for structuring the paper, but the paper cannot deal with the Italian case.
The topic must be agreed in advance with the lecturer, proposing a title, an introduction of 1000-1500 characters and a minimum bibliography (including at least two articles from journals or academic volumes). The dissertation must NOT contain in-text citations that exceed 10% of the total text and must NOT contain screenshots (copy and paste) of tables or graphs taken from other documents. Anyone wishing to 'quote' a table or graph must reproduce it in the file.
Further instructions can be found in a file available in the course materials uploaded to Virtual. The assignment must be written using the "typographical" format of this file.
Students found guilty of plagiarism - i.e. taking parts of the work from other documents of any kind without properly citing them - will not be allowed to sit the examination (written or oral) and will only be allowed to sit it again from the second examination following the one from which they were excluded.
The final grade will be based on an oral interview in which the paper will be discussed and which may also cover other course content. The syllabus, reference texts and tests are identical for attending and non-attending students.
Teaching tools
Video projector, cloud sharing of course materials, sharing of some of the video-recorded lectures.
Office hours
See the website of Salvatore Vassallo
SDGs



This teaching activity contributes to the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals of the UN 2030 Agenda.