Society

Global human rights are in decline according to the findings of a recent study by researchers at the University of Rhode Island's Center for Nonviolence and Peace Studies.... Read more

The U.S. Supreme Court is currently reviewing a case to determine whether President Donald Trump's global tariffs are legal.... Read more

Across the world, democracies are grappling with a widening gap between citizens and those who govern. Australia is no exception.... Read more

People who lean politically to the right are more likely to fall for conspiracy theories than those on the left—but not for other types of false or misleading information. And regardless of ideology, we tend to accept political claims that align with our own beliefs. This is shown in a... Read more

Societal and behavioral shifts, including growing recognition of children displaying harmful sexual behaviors and links to extremism, violence and financial scams are driving child sexual exploitation and abuse online, according to a new report.... Read more

Online discussions are often dominated by a small group of active users, while the majority remain silent. This imbalance can distort perceptions of public opinion and fuel polarization.... Read more

It shouldn't come as a surprise that the Oxford Dictionary has named "rage bait" its Word of the Year. The quantity of live-streamed drama in 2025 has made it clear that outrage is now fueling much online content.... Read more

Gen Z views the world as a scary place, according to new research presented at the 2025 Society for Risk Analysis Conference.... Read more

A multi-institution research team has conducted a multi-year study to better understand how extended and repeated stays in solitary confinement impact prisoners both physically and psychologically.... Read more

The COVID-19 pandemic prompted a nationwide conversation in the U.S. about how much people trust scientists and trained medical professionals. But for some communities, distrust has been the norm.... Read more

Researchers have developed a method to detect the destruction of buildings using freely available satellite radar imagery. Daniel Racek and colleagues' algorithm analyzes publicly available Sentinel-1 synthetic aperture radar images from the European Space Agency to identify destroyed buildings in conflict zones. The study is published in the journal PNAS... Read more

As the U.S. government turns its attention to drug cartels in Mexico, new research from the University of California, Davis, suggests that violent competition among criminal organizations increases the risks migrants face at the northern border.... Read more

Threats relating to technology, disinformation, economic security and foreign interference are overshadowing traditional security concerns in Australians' minds, according to data released by the Australian National University National Security College.... Read more

Most Americans imagine human trafficking as a violent kidnapping or a "stranger danger" crime—someone abducted from a parking lot or trapped in a shipping container brought in from another country.... Read more

About 70% of Americans voted in person in the 2024 presidential election, their ballots counted by machines called Precinct Count Optical Scanners (PCOS). Researchers at Towson University have systematically analyzed thousands of ways that PCOS machines could have process or security vulnerabilities—with the goal of helping local officials identify and... Read more

In early 2025, in an effort to facilitate its deportation goals, the Trump administration entered into hundreds of agreements with local police departments to essentially deputize them to act as federal immigration agents.... Read more

There is no such thing as a society where everyone is equal. That is the key message of new research that challenges the romantic ideal of a perfectly egalitarian human society.... Read more

Professor Neil Thurman and Sina Thäsler-Kordonouri from the Department of Media and Communication (IfKW) at LMU have published comprehensive findings on the perception and professional use of artificial intelligence by journalists.... Read more

A study recently published in Organization Science reveals that U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) charges against Paul Manafort in 2018 triggered a significant increase in compliance with the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), demonstrating how targeting high-profile figures can deter misconduct across an industry.... Read more

A short interaction with a chatbot can meaningfully shift a voter's opinion about a presidential candidate or proposed policy in either direction, new Cornell University research finds.... Read more

While much has been written about the race to modernize industry and agriculture in fascist Italy, the history of animal husbandry during this period has largely been overlooked by scholars. The "Battle of Zootechnics"—the Italian project to centralize and modernize animal husbandry practices and thereby maximize the yield of animal... Read more

In 2024, the global art market hit an estimated $57.5 billion (€49.5 billion) in sales, according to the Art Basel and UBS Art Market Report 2025, underscoring art's significance as an asset class. Art is traditionally associated with noble motivations and heritage. However, the art market, with its high value... Read more

While it is widely assumed that civil wars reinforce the existing political divisions, a recent sociological study sheds light on how these divisions actually can be reinvented during social conflict. The study, "Fabricating Communists: The Imagined Third That Reinvented the National Fault Line in Mid-Twentieth-Century Colombia's Civil War," by Laura... Read more

The right to trial by jury dates back to at least the 12th century. The government's proposals to limit it in England and Wales, many argue, run counter to the UK's core democratic principles. And as others have pointed out, scrapping jury trials for some crimes is unlikely to solve... Read more

How can people with diametrically opposed views suddenly stand shoulder to shoulder in protest? Researchers from Copenhagen, Oslo and Mainz have investigated this question. The starting point is the COVID protests, which were driven by three unifying strategies.... Read more

Higher education is under stress. The highest-profile threat has been the Trump administration's efforts to cut funding to several universities, including Harvard, Columbia and Northwestern.... Read more

A fake photo of an explosion near the Pentagon once rattled the stock market. A tearful video of a frightened young "Ukrainian conscript" went viral: until exposed as staged. We may be approaching a "synthetic media tipping point", where AI-generated images and videos are becoming so realistic that traditional markers... Read more

Efforts to "decouple" U.S. supply chains from China are only taking hold in industries where American firms can shift production to allied or politically aligned countries, according to new research by scholars at the University of Michigan, Princeton University and the University at Buffalo.... Read more

Every person suspected of a crime has a right to an attorney, yet the cost for that attorney—even a public defender—can differ from state to state.... Read more

Schadenfreude seems to permeate American politics these days as viral clips and memes of politicians making real or AI-generated gaffes and off-color remarks are gleefully shared by ideological foes.... Read more

Americans who grow up in historically violent states may move to a safer state, but they remain far more likely to die violently, according to new research co-authored at the University of California, Berkeley.... Read more

In ancient Athens, the agora was a public forum where citizens could gather to deliberate, disagree and decide together. It was governed by deep-rooted social principles that ensured lively, inclusive, healthy debate.... Read more

American democracy is straining under countless pressures, many of them rooted in structural problems that go back to the nation's founding. Chief among them is the "pick one" plurality voting system—also called winner-take-all—used to elect nearly all of the 520,000 government officials in the United States.... Read more

A record number of Colorado children died in 2024 as a result of domestic violence, despite a statewide reduction in overall homicide.... Read more

There are several predictable cycles in Australian public opinion, and one of them is the moral panic surrounding immigration.... Read more

When parliamentarians disclose their additional income from lobbying work, they gain more trust from the electorate. This was shown by researchers at the University of Basel in a survey conducted in seven European countries. Even members of parliament who receive very large financial contributions from their vested interests benefit from... Read more

New pan-European research has shown that the spread of conspiracy theories across the continent is driven by a continuous feedback loop between media reporting, political rhetoric, protest movements and social media algorithms—not any single cause.... Read more

Victims who participate in proceedings at the International Criminal Court are unlikely to be fully representative of the communities harmed by the crimes that have been charged, a new study warns.... Read more

New York's mayor-elect, Zohran Mamdani, campaigned on a promise to raise the city's income tax on its richest residents from 3.9% to 5.9%. Combined with the state income tax, which is 10.9% for the top bracket, the increase would cement the city's position as having the highest taxes on top... Read more

Arts-based approaches effectively capture the complex and layered experiences of displaced young people, a new study from the University of Eastern Finland shows. The research is published in the Journal of Community & Applied Social Psychology.... Read more

Women commit far fewer sexual offenses than men, and their risk of reoffending after returning to the community is also much lower.... Read more

The first Bible to feature a map of the Holy Land was published 500 years ago in 1525. The map was initially printed the wrong way round—showing the Mediterranean to the East—but its inclusion set a precedent which continues to shape our understanding of state borders today, a new Cambridge... Read more

As global attention turns to rumors that FIFA may award a new "Peace Prize" to US President Donald Trump later next month, new research has argued that public debates about politics and sport need far more nuance than the familiar narratives of "sportswashing" allow.... Read more

Widely circulated claims of out-of-control mass immigration in Australia are false and misleading and stem from the incorrect reporting of tourism and travel data that has nothing to do with migration, according to a major new report from The Australian National University (ANU).... Read more

As Donald Trump's White House places huge pressure on Ukraine to sign a peace deal, a team of experts has published a new study examining what they describe as a worldwide shift toward "authoritarian peacemaking"—a model of conflict resolution shaped not by international institutions or liberal democracies, but by authoritarian... Read more

A new tool shows it is possible to turn down the partisan rancor in an X feed—without removing political posts and without the direct cooperation of the platform.... Read more

European Union countries are progressing toward the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), but not at the same pace.... Read more

Inclusive representation is fundamental to equitable and effective environmental governance, particularly in addressing the interconnected crises of climate change, biodiversity loss, and land degradation, the three focus areas of the well-known Rio Conventions.... Read more

Around the world, political institutions are under threat and democracy hangs in the balance. Deepening political divisions, political apathy and the rise of opportunistic populist leaders have all contributed to widespread democratic backsliding and a rise in authoritarianism.... Read more

The Labor Party's landslide victory at the polls in 2025 was shaped by several factors, including a clear advantage on policy issues, the relative popularity of Anthony Albanese and strong support from younger voters and women, according to a major study of Australian political attitudes and behavior.... Read more