Society

We find ourselves in the midst of a crisis of truth. Trust in public institutions of knowledge (schools, legacy media, universities and experts) is at an all-time low, and blatant liars are drawing political support around the world. It seems we collectively have ceased to care about the truth.... Read more

When, on 10 February 2025, United States President Donald Trump signed the executive order suspending the enforcement of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA), companies previously involved in overseas corruption cases collectively gained around USD 39 billion. On average, on that day, each individual company that had been subject to... Read more

While millions of people make the effort to sort their recycling, buy fewer clothes and generally make greener choices, the world's wealthiest can emit the same amount of carbon as the average person does in a year by going on holiday just once.... Read more

A study conducted during the 2024 French elections finds that information about immigrants' efforts to overcome poverty and learn French reduces negative beliefs about immigration and modestly decreases opposition to immigration among voters. The study is published in the journal PNAS Nexus.... Read more

Over half of Americans believe tech companies should take action to restrict extremely violent content on their platforms, according to Pew data, yet even trained content moderators consistently disagree in their decisions about how to classify hate speech and offensive images.... Read more

A study from a team of researchers that includes faculty from the University of California San Diego and Princeton University shows how a mix of subsidies for clean energy and taxes on pollution can significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions that cause climate change.... Read more

The gap between rich and poor has reached historic highs. According to the World Inequality Report 2026, released in recent weeks, the richest 10% of the global population now receive 53% of all income and own a staggering 75% of all wealth.... Read more

At the end of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st, write the authors of a new article from Polity, neoliberalism was "consolidated as the only legitimate form of doing politics." But in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, and with the entrenchment of far-right governments across... Read more

New research from the University of St Andrews has found that increases in women's parliamentary representation within a country are related to enhanced public trust in the national parliament.... Read more

A group of college students braved the frigid New England weather on Dec. 13, 2025, to attend a late afternoon review session at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island. Eleven of those students were struck by gunfire when a shooter entered the lecture hall. Two didn't survive.... Read more

Americans living in political "swing states" have a significantly louder voice in national trade policy—effectively making their votes worth more than others—according to a new study published in the Journal of International Economics.... Read more

If you wander through Glasgow Green, you'll encounter the Doulton fountain, a gaudy terracotta tribute to empire that features "native" and colonial figures in national dress holding out the produce of their lands to the imperial center. Like thousands of imperial monuments across Britain, the Doulton Fountain is neither widely... Read more

The Syrian civil war, which began in 2011, has been widely framed as a "climate conflict" and a mass migration and uprising triggered by a severe drought. This very well-known and media-popular narrative is now debunked in a new report by the United Nations University Institute for Water, Environment and... Read more

The Oct. 27, 2025, interview between former Fox News host Tucker Carlson and political streamer Nick Fuentes created a rare public divide inside the MAGA movement.... Read more

When federal science agencies became the focus of sweeping budget cuts earlier this year, the national debate quickly took on a familiar shape: Conservatives approved of the budget cuts while liberals opposed them.... Read more

Democratic congressmembers are significantly more likely to post on social media following a mass shooting event in the US compared to Republican congressmembers, according to a study published in PLOS Global Public Health by Dmytro Bukhanevych from New York University, United States, and colleagues.... Read more

Researchers Rachel Ruttan and Katherine DeCelles of the University of Toronto's Rotman School of Management are anything but neutral on neutrality. The next time you're tempted to play it safe on a hot-button topic, their evidence-based advice is to consider saying what you really think.... Read more

Two years after Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, families of the victims filed suit against Binance, a major cryptocurrency platform that has been plagued by scandals.... Read more

Germany has unveiled plans to introduce voluntary military service. From January 2026, all 18-year-old men will be required to complete a questionnaire asking if they are interested and willing to join the armed forces. Women will not be required to fill out this form.... Read more

The year 2025 has not been a great one for U.S.-Chinese relations. Tit-for-tat tariffs and the scramble over rare earth elements has dampened economic relations between the world's two leading economies. Meanwhile, territorial disputes between China and American allies in the Indo-Pacific region have further deepened the intensifying military rivalry.... Read more

Across the EU, immigration is one of the most divisive topics in politics today. Germany, a country once known for its "Willkommenskultur" (welcome culture), is a case in point.... Read more

Ariel Procaccia is the Alfred and Rebecca Lin Professor of Computer Science at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS). His work combines mathematics, computer science, and AI to develop fairer, more representative methods of collective decision-making.... Read more

People often see science as a world apart: cool, rational and untouched by persuasion or performance. In this view, scientists simply discover truth, and truth speaks for itself.... Read more

President Donald Trump is making full use of his pardon power. This year, Trump has issued roughly 1,800 pardons, or nearly six times the number he issued during the four years of his first term. Granted, about 1,500 of them involved individuals charged for their role in the Jan. 6,... Read more

Across the world, governments are tightening controls on speech, expanding surveillance and rolling back rights once thought to be secure.... Read more

When engaging in a political discussion, talking about what you oppose instead of what you support may make others more open to your views, according to research published by the American Psychological Association.... Read more

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