Society

In mid-2023, around the time Elon Musk rebranded Twitter as X but before he discontinued free academic access to the platform's data, my colleagues and I looked for signs of social bot accounts posting content generated by artificial intelligence. Social bots are AI software that produce content and interact with... Read more

Researchers in the School of Psychology at the University of Kent have found that sharing conspiracy theories on their dating profiles can seriously damage first impressions and reduce romantic interest, but this reaction depends on the political views of the person viewing the profile. In particular, the study, which involved... Read more

A three-pronged research project seeks to empower communities, policymakers, and law enforcement agencies by improving access to and understanding of police use-of-force rules.... Read more

A new national study finds a concerning surge in teen "sexting," which frequently exposes them to serious risks, including sextortion, coercion and privacy violations. Sexting involves sending or receiving sexually suggestive images or video, while sextortion is the threat to share explicit or intimate images without consent to pressure someone... Read more

Conversations about Philippine jail congestion often begin and end with statistics: thousands of case backlogs, cells built for 50 crammed with 200 bodies, and facilities straining at 300% to 400% beyond capacity. Yet these numbers barely capture the everyday human cost of overcrowding.... Read more

Living near other lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) people makes LGB people significantly more likely to vote, according to new research published in The Journal of Politics. When the share of LGB residents in a neighborhood increases by just one percentage point, LGB residents become 1.56 percentage points more likely... Read more

New research from The University of Manchester has shown that debates and resistance about wearing face masks go back a lot further than the COVID-19 pandemic. Dr. Meng Zhang, a Wellcome Trust Research Fellow at the University's Centre for the History of Science, Technology and Medicine, found that barbers went... Read more

Few countries talk about "ghettos" the way Denmark does. For more than a decade, the term has shaped national debates about migration, integration and who truly belongs.... Read more

When it comes to national politics, Americans are fiercely divided across a range of issues, including gun control, election security and vaccines. It's not new for Republicans and Democrats to be at odds over issues, but things have reached a point where even the idea of compromising appears to be... Read more

A century ago, the section of U.S. federal law governing public health and welfare was relatively small and loosely connected to the rest of the legal system. Today, it is one of the largest and most interconnected parts of the United States Code.... Read more

Scroll through social media long enough and a pattern emerges. Pause on a post questioning climate change or taking a hard line on a political issue, and the platform is quick to respond—serving up more of the same viewpoints, delivered with growing confidence and certainty.... Read more

A psychological assessment test often used to evaluate psychopathy in Canadian criminal cases is unreliable and prone to unconscious bias on the part of expert witnesses, according to research from the University of Toronto Mississauga.... Read more

Just four months ago, Timor-Leste formally became a member of the Association of Southeast Asian States (ASEAN). This week, the tiny country took an unprecedented step: its judicial authorities appointed a prosecutor to examine the Myanmar military's responsibility for war crimes and crimes against humanity. It's believed to be the... Read more

Researchers, including Professor of Management and Organization Reuben Hurst at the University of Maryland's Robert H. Smith School of Business, have produced VRscores, an unprecedented public database for understanding the partisan lean of different employers in the United States.... Read more

People who sign consent forms feel more trapped—not more empowered—than those who give consent verbally, according to new research by Vanessa Bohns, the Braunstein Family Professor in the ILR School, and co-author Roseanna Sommers of the University of Michigan Law School.... Read more

Around the world, millions of families have suffered forcible separation, through war, trafficking, natural disasters, or socioeconomic crises. In China, family separation is a particularly large-scale and far-reaching problem. Following the enactment of the country's One Child Policy in 1979, many children were abandoned or trafficked and then adopted either... Read more

Informing people about political deepfakes through text-based information and interactive games both improve people's ability to spot AI-generated video and audio that falsely depict politicians, according to a study my colleagues and I conducted.... Read more

Journalism in the United States is in crisis: Local newspapers are shuttering at an alarming rate, large cities that were once served by multiple daily local newspapers now barely sustain one or two major outlets, and the government has made concentrated attacks against public media. A new report from the... Read more

Would you create an interactive "digital twin" of yourself that can communicate with loved ones after your death?... Read more

A new briefing paper produced by the London Social Media Observatory (LSMO) at Royal Holloway and Westminster Foundation for Democracy (WFD) details emerging risks to democratic participation on TikTok. The LSMO and WFD brought together 45 policymakers, academics, civil society representatives and strategic advisors at a roundtable discussion to explore... Read more

The introduction of mandatory photo ID in the 2024 general election may not have provided the security boost promised by the government, new research suggests. Polling clerks operating during the UK's first mandatory voter ID election made mistakes in 36% of cases when tested with real ID documents, according to... Read more

Divisions within the US population on social and political issues have increased by 64% since 1988, with almost all this coming after 2008, according to a study tracking polarization from the end of the Reagan era to the dawn of Trump's second term.... Read more

City council public comment periods may focus on local issues, such as housing and public services. But new research from the University of Michigan shows they also serve as powerful forums for expressing broader societal concerns, including democracy, equity and social justice. The study is published in the Journal of... Read more

International labor migration plays a vital role in supporting families across low- and middle-income countries, often providing a critical source of income for families back home. However, when mothers migrate abroad for work, young children may be left without steady parental care during important developmental stages. While this concern is... Read more

Leading English-language news outlets often misuse the term "hard-right" to describe far-right political movements, potentially softening their extremist image and boosting their electoral appeal, according to a new study published in the journal European Political Science. The research, conducted by Dr. Georgios Samaras from King's College London's School for Government,... Read more

A report published today by the Williams Institute at UCLA School of Law shows that 53% of transgender youth between the ages of 13 and 17 in the U.S.—approximately 382,800 young people—live in 29 states with laws or policies that restrict their access to gender-affirming care, sports, bathrooms and facilities... Read more

On February 4, the New START Treaty, the last remaining nuclear arms control agreement between the United States and Russia, is set to expire. Signed in 2010, the agreement caps deployed strategic nuclear forces at 1,550 warheads and 700 delivery systems. It also establishes one of the most extensive verification... Read more

Firearm purchasing patterns can shift in response to specific events, including presidential elections, according to Rutgers Health researchers.... Read more

It's common to wonder as tax season ramps up: Are taxes too high? According to a new study by University of Cincinnati economics professor David Brasington, the answer is no, at least when it comes to Ohio's city service taxes. These taxes go toward local services such as funds for... Read more

As controversy over Australia's new hate laws continues, last weekend's so-called March for Australia rallies were the latest in a string of events that have raised the temperature of public debate.... Read more

Legal efforts to tackle excessive personal information collection by social media giants could transcend international boundaries if nations moved away from a focus on assessing competition using the value of data, a new study says.... Read more

A new analysis of 471 U.S. counties has found that, for everyday travel, people from counties with particularly strong political leanings—whether liberal or conservative—are more likely to visit like-minded destinations. Zhengyi Liang and Jaeho Cho of the University of California, Davis, U.S., present these findings in the open-access journal PLOS... Read more

Engineering can create weapons systems or systems for defense and well-being. But can engineering create peace? In a Perspective, Guru Madhavan and colleagues propose an expansive mode of engineering practice that seeks to reduce conflict. The work is published in PNAS Nexus.... Read more

Estimates of unlicensed online gambling in the Nordic countries vary widely and are often based on non-transparent data sources. This is shown by a new scoping review published in PLOS ONE. Led by researchers from, among others, Karolinska Institutet, the study reviews 32 reports and finds that figures describing the... Read more

When people encounter racism or discrimination, they don't all respond in the same way. Some calmly challenge the remark, some file a complaint, others confront the offender aggressively—and many say nothing at all.... Read more

There's been much published about the Cambridge-Somerville Youth Study, which looked at the impact of intervention on delinquency in young Massachusetts boys. The groundbreaking research followed up with study participants for decades after the fact and found that the interventions they received as youths did not help them later in... Read more

Generative deep learning models are artificial intelligence (AI) systems that can create texts, images, audio files, and videos for specific purposes, following instructions provided by human users. Over the past few years, the content generated by these models has become increasingly realistic and is often difficult to distinguish from real... Read more

Academic freedom is often described as a cornerstone of democratic society. Politicians regularly claim to defend it, universities invoke it in mission statements and most members of the public say they support it in principle.... Read more

Artificial intelligence is rapidly changing our society and economy. A new study shows that the majority of people believe that artificial intelligence is displacing more human labor than it is creating new opportunities. Scientists at the University of Vienna and Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München (LMU) demonstrated a causal link: the stronger this... Read more

The House of Lords has voted to back a ban on social media for under-16s, putting pressure on the government ahead of its own upcoming consultation on the matter.... Read more

Career pressure—not ideology—causes military officers to protect or overthrow dictators. New research from the Department of Political Science shows that ambition and anxiety can transform "ordinary men" into the regime's ruthless henchmen—or into those who bury the regime.... Read more

Information that we select for ourselves, such as things we click online, has a stronger impact than passively acquired information on our perception of truth and falsehood.... Read more

From a social sciences perspective, people with radical, extremist, or fundamentalist attitudes are similar in some respects: In most cases, they are younger and less educated men who feel that they are not taken seriously enough. This is one of the key findings of a research team led by professor... Read more

Africa confronts escalating internal migration and displacement crises fueled by intensifying climate hazards—particularly prolonged droughts—and persistent armed conflicts, which compound vulnerabilities across the continent.... Read more

Oskari Lahtinen, Senior Researcher at the INVEST Research Flagship Center at the University of Turku in Finland, has developed validated tools for studying "woke" attitudes on both the political left and the political right.... Read more

YouTube is a key tool in recruiting far-right activists to the largest British fascist group Patriotic Alternative (PA), according to new research.... Read more

When an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent shot and killed Renee Nicole Good in south Minneapolis on Jan. 7, 2026, what happened next looked familiar, at least on the surface. Within hours, cellphone footage spread online and eyewitness accounts contradicted official statements, while video analysts slowed the clip down frame... Read more

In a week filled with news about President Donald Trump's aggressive moves to take control of Greenland, the world got a window into his thinking about the concept of "peace."... Read more

The language used to describe conflicts naturally reflects assumptions about how different forms of violence emerge and develop.... Read more

As the US administration led by Donald Trump has continued to reassert its interest in owning Greenland, Europe has become more and more concerned about the security situation in the Arctic.... Read more