Society

A novel study from the Center for Britain and Europe (CBE) highlights a significant shift in the political landscape of Europe, revealing that populist radical right (PRR) politics is moving from the fringes to the heart of mainstream political discourse.... Read more

The heated 2024 U.S. presidential election is frequently characterized as a choice between democracy and dictatorship, or democracy and autocracy, especially with the publication of Project 2025, the extreme, far-right playbook supposedly written for a Donald Trump or other Republican administration.... Read more

The Family Research Council is a conservative advocacy group with a "biblical worldview." While it has a church ministries department that works with churches from several evangelical Christian denominations that share its perspectives, it does not represent a single denomination. Although its activities are primarily focused on policy, advocacy, government... Read more

Should Americans be bracing for bloodshed if Donald Trump loses the 2024 presidential election?... Read more

An interdisciplinary team of researchers led by the University of Massachusetts Amherst have published work in the journal Science calling into question the conclusions of a widely reported study—published in Science in 2023—finding the social platform's algorithms successfully filtered out untrustworthy news surrounding the 2020 election and were not major... Read more

Technology is often seen as a threat to democracy, with the surge in AI capabilities the latest big concern.... Read more

Supporters of both major U.S. political parties tend to claim their presidential candidate is the "real" Christian or the "better" Christian or just the "true" Christian.... Read more

Before beginning its war of aggression against Ukraine in 2022, Russia had already conducted an aerial bombardment of Georgia in 2008 and invaded Crimea as well as the Donbas region in 2014. This has left politicians and researchers puzzling over the question: Would it have been possible to prevent the... Read more

A new report reveals the challenges mothers face trying to maintain a relationship with their children while in prison, and recommends additional support.... Read more

The US House of Representatives is more likely to vote on climate action when it is linked with certain other environmental issues, according to a study published September 25, 2024 in the open-access journal PLOS Climate by Kayla Morton of the University of Washington, Seattle and colleagues.... Read more

Given that 77 percent of people in Canada and 57 percent of people in the United Kingdom watch a sports team regularly—compared to the 60 percent of people who turn out to vote in Canada and the U.K.—it's clear sports have an important and persistent influence on people's lives.... Read more

Parents with any kind of disability are much more likely to have some type of interaction with the child welfare system than other parents. This means they are more likely than other parents to be reported for child abuse and neglect and more likely to have abuse or neglect substantiated... Read more

Governments, regulators and global financial institutions are overlooking major opportunities to unlock the estimated US$9.2 trillion worth of financing needed each year to fund the net zero transition, new research suggests.... Read more

A new study led by Dr. Renana Keydar, Dr. Vera Shikhelman and Prof. Tomer Broude from the Faculty of Law at Hebrew University highlights a significant evolution in the UN's approach to human rights, indicating a growing emphasis on disability rights and business-related human rights, while discussions about war and... Read more

Ellsworth Avenue in Silver Spring, Md., sizzles on a summer evening: Residents stroll along its tree-lined sidewalks under the neon glow of upscale chain restaurants, retailers and a Whole Foods Market. Beyond the din of downtown is a different kind of sizzle: the intoxicating aroma of sliced meat frying in... Read more

Following Barack Obama's reelection as U.S. president in 2012, the mental health of college-educated Black men improved significantly, while those who didn't attend college reported worse mental health, according to new research from Rice University sociologists.... Read more

What do immigration, inheritance taxation and cannabis legalization have in common? Not much, actually. Yet if we know somebody's stance on one of these issues, we can make a good guess about their view on the others.... Read more

Following Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine, many companies with operations in Russia withdrew from or severely curtailed their Russian operations. For example, Dell and McDonald's ceased all operations in Russia after the invasion.... Read more

It's not something the police force wants to see, but it still occurs: racist and misogynist behavior in police work. Dr. Linda Louis is a human rights law specialist and has studied how technology could help police officers behave correctly according to applicable legal norms.... Read more

Philadelphia experienced a surge in shootings and homicides during the COVID-19 years that disproportionately affected young Black and Latino men in economically disadvantaged neighborhoods with drug markets.... Read more

Election Day is less than 50 days away, but the voting has already started.... Read more

New research into the use of the drug poppers (alkyl nitrites) has highlighted inconsistencies in proposed changes to drug policy in the UK and how exemptions to the law impact on minority groups.... Read more

Criminal suspects, defendants and offenders face many choices that affect their liberty, in situations ranging from searches of their property or data to interrogations and plea deals. Judicial doctrine considers these choices to be valid when they are made "voluntarily"– i.e., when the individual consents or agrees to a pat... Read more

A new study finds "litigant shopping," or choosing plaintiffs with specific demographic attributes, can be used to shape public opinion about the U.S. Supreme Court—but it can also backfire. The paper, "You Better Shop Around: Litigant Characteristics and Supreme Court Support," is published in the Journal of Politics.... Read more

Election polls often tighten up remarkably as the election date draws near. "Leave" (the European Union) won the UK election of May 2016 with a majority of 51.9%, but earlier the polls weren't nearly as tight—in January 2011 "Remain" was up by about 20 percentage points. In the 2020 presidential... Read more

Homicide is a leading cause of death among people 19 and younger in the United States, and firearms are used in a large proportion of these crimes. Although the homicide rate for this population declined in the 1990s and 2000s, it has increased every year since 2013, with a large... Read more

In the build-up to his government's first budget, Prime Minister Keir Starmer has been setting expectations low. It will be "painful," he has warned, and a "difficult trade-off" will have to be made because of the economic inheritance left by the last government.... Read more

Around 1,750 prisoners in England and Wales were recently released early, the first part of the government's plan to solve the prison overcrowding crisis.... Read more

Between the July assassination attempt on Donald Trump, President Biden dropping out of the race and Kamala Harris becoming the Democratic nominee, this past summer was unlike any other period in the 2024 presidential race. But the faculty, staff, and student fellows of the Penn Program on Opinion Research and... Read more

Last month, the Taliban passed a new "vice and virtue" law, making it illegal for women to speak in public. Under the law, women can also be punished if they are heard singing or reading aloud from within their homes.... Read more

As Russian missile strikes and heavy assaults by ground troops pace deadly attacks on Ukraine, a new report by University of Virginia researchers reveals another destructive facet of Russia's invasion.... Read more

"These newly reported discoveries [of mass graves] confirm our darkest fears. The people of Ukraine and the world deserve to know how exactly those buried in the forest near Izium have died," said Amnesty International... Read more

The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky, is trying his best to shake up the dynamics of the Russia-Ukraine war. He recently undertook a major cabinet reshuffle in which he replaced no fewer than nine ministers, including his foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba. Announcing the changes, Zelensky said he wanted his government to... Read more

Professional and lay judges are not supposed to be influenced by personal values or political opinions. Despite this, the language of judgments reflects stereotypical ideas about gender and sexuality. This language means that women who have experienced sexual violence are often blamed for the assault. This is shown in a... Read more

Conservative voters have slightly larger amygdalas than progressive voters—by about the size of a sesame seed. In a replication study published September 19 in the journal iScience, researchers revisited the idea that progressive and conservative voters have identifiable differences in brain morphology, but with a 10x larger and more diverse... Read more

Significant racial and gender disparities exist in U.S. crime victim compensation programs, revealing Black and Indigenous people as well as survivors of gender-based violence face unique challenges in obtaining financial support, according to a new report from the University of Michigan.... Read more

The Australian Government wants to ban kids from social media—but will it work and is it a good idea?... Read more

A new study from NYU Tandon School of Engineering suggests that when it comes to visualizations of mass shooting data, political ideology plays a more significant role in shaping emotional responses than racial identity.... Read more

Happiness may be reshaping America's political landscape.... Read more

The burden of supporting asylum-seekers with food and housing often falls to cities, creating severe budget crunches. But Denver is piloting a new approach designed to integrate immigrants into the workforce faster.... Read more

People selectively underestimate how rich the world's richest people are, according to a study. Increasing income inequality in many countries is driven by steep gains among the top 1% of earners. In the United States, support for policies that would redistribute wealth has not increased since the 1970s, even as... Read more

A study of political speeches, social media posts from politicians, and Reddit discussions among everyday users finds a higher prevalence of abstract, moralized, and power-centric language in national versus local politics. Political dialogue and debate in the United States has largely shifted from the local to the national in recent... Read more

A study used body-worn camera footage as a source of data on police-community interactions. Nicholas Camp and colleagues analyzed transcripts from 615 police stops made in California by Oakland Police Department police officers before and after a procedural justice training, which focused on officer communication in routine traffic stops. The... Read more

An analysis of the choice of words by American presidential candidates Kamala Harris and Donald Trump in their recent debate reveals five insights into their personalities.... Read more

A new study published in Climate Policy, co-authored by Dr. Daniel Valdenegro of Oxford University's Leverhulme Center for Demographic Science, exposes the dynamics of competing narratives on climate change between political parties in the U.K. and the influence that climate protests have on them.... Read more

Many histories of Nazi Germany are accompanied by a photograph of two scientists measuring a man's facial features with a caliper. The picture is often contextualized, in these books, museums, and image archives as an illustration of the National Socialist obsession with quantifiable racial purity, particularly as it was applied... Read more

More people in the UK now access news online than on television, according to new survey data from the media regulator Ofcom. This is the first time Ofcom's annual news consumption poll has found online media use ahead of TV news.... Read more

At independence, most African states had two legislative chambers—a lower and upper chamber—in their parliament. African leaders saw that as a colonial legacy and as inefficient, so most states removed the upper chambers. Before 1990, only two states kept these bicameral parliaments: Liberia and Nigeria.... Read more

Things are not exactly going to plan for Moscow in the Arctic—an area that is a strategic military region for Russia and has significant economic potential that could help Russia in propping up its war economy. Yet, a combination of Ukrainian military capabilities, western pushback and the pressure of international... Read more

Today's young people are chronically online, and it appears that their media consumption is having an impact on their political views and likelihood to vote, according to a new study released by the UCLA Center for Scholars & Storytellers.... Read more