Society

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

"Exploitative" online money gaming in India is harming people's financial and mental health and causing deep social problems, a new study shows.... Read more

Ph.D. candidate Layla van Wieringen examined how extremist beliefs are passed on within households. In her dissertation "Rotten Trees, Bad Apples? Understanding the Intergenerational Transmission of Extremism," she reveals a reality that media and politics rarely address.... Read more

Following Russia's invasion of Ukraine, the European Union (EU) strengthened controls in the timber sector to prevent sanctioned raw materials from entering the market from Russia and Belarus. Yet recent studies reveal that a significant amount of this timber still reaches the EU—often through intermediary countries.... Read more

In 2018, 25-year-old Canadian Alex Minassian carried out a deadly rampage that left 10 people dead and injured 16 others. Shortly before carrying out the attack, he posted a message on social media that drew widespread attention: "The Incel rebellion has begun."... Read more

Tuesday is the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women and the beginning of 16 days of activism against gender-based violence. It's a global call to action by the United Nations to prevent and eliminate all forms of violence against women and girls.... Read more

US legislation making strangulation a serious criminal offense has been linked to reduced intimate partner homicide rates, with 14% fewer women killed and 27% fewer male victims in the 18-49 age group.... Read more

A new study from the SNF Agora Institute at Johns Hopkins University and Public Agenda finds that Americans are deeply concerned about the state of U.S. democracy and that growing divisions within the Republican Party deepen partisan divides over how the Constitution should guide presidential authority and the balance of... Read more

When the center of protests against immigration enforcement switched recently to Charlotte, North Carolina, so did the frogs.... Read more

Climate activism takes many forms, but one of the most visible is so-called disruptive protests. These protests are characterized by interruptions to everyday life or specific cultural events. Examples of disruptive protests include blocking construction works, throwing paint at a painting or interrupting a sporting event. These types of actions... Read more

As the Trump administration carries out what many observers say are illegal military strikes against vessels in the Caribbean allegedly smuggling drugs, six Democratic members of Congress issued a video on Nov. 18, 2025, telling the military "You can refuse illegal orders" and "You must refuse illegal orders."... Read more

Islamophobia in Western Europe is driven far more by anti-immigrant nativism and authoritarian attitudes than by religious belief, new research from Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU) shows.... Read more

Politics can be a stressful discussion topic, but when the holiday season arrives, political chatter is difficult to avoid, especially in a world that feels polarized and divided. A Baylor College of Medicine psychiatrist explains how to discuss politics in a calm manner among family, friends and colleagues.... Read more

Political systems become polarized when internal unity within groups strengthens and the divide between them deepens. As polarization intensifies, societal tensions can grow, making it difficult to find compromises. The intensity of polarization has been measured in research, but until now its structural roots in social media have remained obscure.... Read more

WeChat is best known as China's all-purpose "super-app." It is used for everything from messaging and mobile payments to shopping and government services.... Read more

Personality and zip code can help explain differences in political ideology, according to a new study from Northwestern University, which is the first to show the relationship between a person's personality traits and political preference varies, depending on where one lives.... Read more

A study on the legal history of printing press regulation in early modern England yields insights relevant to contemporary debates on the regulation of emerging technologies like AI and virtual reality, a McGill researcher says.... Read more

When you share your favorite Spotify playlist with your friends, you aren't just sending musical vibes; you may be revealing something about your political attitudes.... Read more

While many global road maps exist, few include detailed surface information or keep pace with rapid infrastructure change. The new HeiGIT dataset closes this gap by combining 3–4 meter resolution PlanetScope imagery (2020–2024) with deep-learning models to analyze 9.2 million kilometers of major transport routes connecting cities and rural regions.... Read more

A pandemic, a war, an energy crisis, the climate catastrophe—for many people, present-day life feels like an endless stress test. What seemed certain yesterday has now become fragile—including jobs, plans for the future, and trust in politics and the media. In this uncertain atmosphere, people increasingly seek orientation and look... Read more

Words are powerful tools. Violent extremists know this well, often choosing their phrasing extremely carefully to build loyalty among their followers. When wielded just so, they can do enormous harm.... Read more

Few workers face more scrutiny than professional athletes. Every movement is measured, every outcome quantified, and every performance evaluated against objective standards. So when UC Berkeley Haas researcher Tim Sels wondered how America's deepening political polarization was affecting workers' performance, he turned to one of the most comprehensive data sets... Read more

Cities are often seen as hotspots of violence, with the assumption that larger cities are inherently more violent than smaller ones. This "universal law" of urban scaling has long shaped scientific thinking. But new research led by Complexity Science Hub (CSH) researcher Rafael Prieto-Curiel challenges this assumption. Published in Nature... Read more