Society

With three mass shooting within a week leaving 24 Californians dead, public policy makers are searching for answers.... Read more

A research study led by J. Tom Mueller, Ph.D., research assistant professor in the Department of Geography and Environmental Sustainability, College of Atmospheric and Geographic Sciences at the University of Oklahoma, was published in the first issue of a new journal in the Nature series.... Read more

"As people age, they become more conservative" is a well worn political aphorism. It is cited frequently in discussions and research about generational politics. It's been deployed in various ways in the popular discourse—a way of talking about the limits of progressive politics and the power of folk wisdom.... Read more

Autocrats and dictators quickly acquire new arms technologies from abroad and often use them against their own citizens. Now a study of multiple nations during the period 1820–2010 shows that the spread of military technologies inhibits democratic reform. This raises serious questions regarding the future.... Read more

Female circumcision is so harmful that it is quite clear that society would be better off without this kind of practice, but so far progress has been slow.... Read more

A machine-learning analysis has revealed patterns in online hate speech that suggest complex—and sometimes counterintuitive—links between real-world events and different types of hate speech. Yonatan Lupu of George Washington University in Washington, D.C., and colleagues present these findings in the open-access journal PLOS ONE on January 25.... Read more

Immigration is one of the most controversial social and political issues in American life. Yet little attention is given to the aftermath of U.S. immigration policies or the immigrant Americans who are deported back to their country of origin. What is the resulting impact on mental and physical health disparities,... Read more

In the early pandemic, conspiracy theories that were shared the most on Twitter highlighted malicious purposes and secretive actions of supposed bad actors behind the crisis, according to an analysis of nearly 400,000 posts.... Read more

As millennial and post-millennial voters become the largest group of voters around the world, Flinders University experts warn that the 'grandfather effect' has seen people from previous generations retain or elected to officeat an advanced age.... Read more

A study published in the American Journal of Political Science shows that civic education interventions can work to increase support for democracy, and doing so in the social media context can reach many more people, with potentially much greater overall impact, than was previously the case.... Read more

Mandatory voting laws are known to increase voter turnout, but how significant are their effects?... Read more

What most sparks a region's desire to seek independence from their country—income or identity?... Read more

As police departments and activists look for strategies to reduce excessive use of force by police, new research from the University of Michigan shows limited data, lack of transparency and irregular implementation of reforms make it difficult to determine which approaches are effective.... Read more

Researchers working on the FACE-Africa project have co-developed country-specific information and tools with Gambian food system stakeholders to evaluate possible strategies for adapting to climate change and ensuring sufficient healthy food for The Gambia. Their recommendations and key findings are now available in a new IIASA policy brief.... Read more

The start of a new year these days signals the launch of Veganuary, a campaign which encourages people to give up animal products for the month of January.... Read more

A new report, co-authored by a University of York academic, has warned that children living in the North of England are among the most vulnerable to rising living costs.... Read more

Leaders in the U.S. are getting older. For example, politicians in the House of Representatives are 20 years older than the average voter, and the country's 80-year-old President may stand for re-election. According to research from the University of Gothenburg, there is a risk that younger voters will become disinterested... Read more

In a first-of-its-kind study, researchers from Northern Arizona University examined the core beliefs of the Chinese government, aiming to uncover opportunities to slow climate change by leveraging Beijing's political will for sustainability and conservation gains.... Read more

A new study from Rice University political scientist Rick Wilson and Texas A&M economist Catherine Eckel has examined the topic of trustworthiness. The article, titled "Attributions of Trust and Trustworthiness," will appear in an upcoming edition of Political Behavior.... Read more

The Liberal Party's recently published review of the 2022 federal election defeat does not mince words: the party has a problem with women.... Read more

Kenya's last execution of a prisoner was in 1987. But the country still hosts a death row population of nearly 600. Almost all were sentenced to death for murder or robbery with violence. New sentences are handed down every year.... Read more

New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announced on Jan. 19, 2023, that she will soon resign from office. "I know what this job takes. And I know that I no longer have enough in the tank to do it justice," Ardern said.... Read more

Historic redlining and other racist policies have led to present-day racial and economic segregation and disinvestment in many cities across the United States. Research has shown how neighborhood characteristics and resources are associated with health disparities such as preterm birth and asthma, but most of these studies are limited in... Read more

A team of researchers affiliated with a range of institutions in the U.S. and one in Kenya has conducted an analysis of the impact of a massive digital ad campaign run prior to the U.S. presidential election between Joe Biden and Donald Trump to learn more about how effective it... Read more

People's first instinct when engaging with conspiracy believers is often to try and debunk their ideas with factual and authoritative information.... Read more

China's National Bureau of Statistics has confirmed what researchers such as myself have long suspected—that 2022 was the year China's population turned down, the first time that has happened since the great famine brought on by Chinese leader Mao Zedong in 1959-1961.... Read more

According to a new analysis, the total number of people employed full-time by the U.S. federal government remained largely unchanged by the end of the Trump administration, but with significant variation in growth, downsizing, and turnover between agencies. Brian Libgober of Northwestern University and Mark Richardson of Georgetown University present... Read more

Nominating and electing more female politicians can help to diffuse polarization and reduce levels of hostility and distrust across party lines, a study shows.... Read more

Inflation, followed by poverty and social inequality are the most pressing issues worrying people around the world right now. Canada has not been immune from the rising cost of living and is still fighting an inflation rate above the two percent target preferred by the Bank of Canada.... Read more

Hate crimes in the United States have increased in frequency in recent years. The rise of antisemitism, white supremacy and religious extremism has prompted the federal government and many states to pass several pieces of legislation targeted at crimes motivated by hate.... Read more

New research from the UC Davis Violence Prevention Research Program finds racial and ethnic differences in how extreme risk protection orders (ERPOs) are perceived and used in California. The study, published in Preventive Medicine, found Black Californians perceived ERPOs as less appropriate and were less willing to ask a judge... Read more

Successful start-up ecosystems are characterized by good transport and telecommunications infrastructure, a high population density, a high proportion of foreign citizens, and numerous qualified employees. IfM Bonn researchers found this and published results in their study, "Start-up activity at the district level and in independent cities: What characterizes successful start-up... Read more

The Quattrone Center for the Fair Administration of Justice at the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School has released a new report finding that Harris County, Texas's targeted misdemeanor bail reforms are improving public safety and keeping low-level cases out of jail.... Read more

In the 1990s, changes in violent crime rates, social and political unrest directed at law enforcement, and technological innovations set the stage for major changes in administering criminal justice. Several innovative approaches to policing were tested, seeking to take tougher, smarter, more focused approaches to gun violence, gang crime, open... Read more

A 'network state' is ideologically aligned but geographically decentralized. The people are spread around the world in clusters of varying size, but their hearts are in one place.... Read more

A new study suggests that when deciding whether to believe in a conspiracy theory or not, the brain weighs up information from our own direct experience, what the media tells us, the expected cost or reward to us in believing the theory, and our prior views. The study is published... Read more

Debates about using masculine or gender-neutral words to describe leadership positions, jobs and awards affect nearly all domains of society from business to politics and media. Recently, local politicians have considered changing titles such as "alderman" or "councilman" to their gender-neutral counterparts (e.g., "council member"). While some dismiss calls for... Read more

At last, there's action on climate change. The United States recently passed its largest climate bill ever. And Australia is set to usher a 43% emissions target into law this week, although the Greens will try to amend the bill so the climate impacts of new gas and coal projects... Read more

Citizens sometimes just have to live with political decisions they dislike or think are unfair. But if their preferred party leaders communicate that the decisions have been made properly, the feeling of unfairness can diminish according to research from the University of Gothenburg.... Read more

A radical decentralisation of politics and decision-making in Iran is needed to allow Kurdish communities to benefit from natural resources, experts have argued.... Read more

Policy risk negatively affects acquisition completion, but the strength of the effect is dependent on home-host country relations, according to new research published in Global Strategy Journal. The relationship between policy risk and cross-border acquisition completion is negative and strong under conflictive relations, weaker under cooperative relations, and weakest under... Read more

Shouldn't common provisions for procurement within the EU lead to increased central control and better coordination? Yes, but the guidelines introduced during the COVID-19 crisis were at the same time so flexible that they can also result in increased corruption and reduced legitimacy. This is shown by Brigitte Pircher, associate... Read more

Among Germans, 46% have a good opinion of Israel and 34% have a poor opinion. In contrast, many Israelis have a decidedly positive image of Germany, with 63% saying their view of the country is favorable, and only 19% saying it is poor.... Read more

Lauren Prather's new book "Monitors and Meddlers: How Foreign Actors Influence Local Trust in Elections" has been a long time in the making—a full decade, in fact.... Read more

Chief executives of major companies who donate mostly to the Republican Party were more likely to lay off staff to avoid a loss during the pandemic, new research shows.... Read more

YouTube was more likely to recommend videos about election fraud to users who were already skeptical about the legitimacy of the 2020 U.S. presidential election, shows a new study examining the impact of the site's algorithms.... Read more

Don Fullerton is the Gutgsell Professor of Finance at the Gies College of Business at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and a senior scholar at the Institute of Government and Public Affairs. Fullerton, an expert in energy and environmental policy, spoke with News Bureau business and law editor Phil Ciciora... Read more

John Rawls, one of the 20th century's most notable political philosophers, proposed a theory of distributive justice known as "justice as fairness." According to his theory, once a society successfully guarantees equal basic rights and liberties for everybody, the next step should be to properly regulate any ensuing social and... Read more

Leaders of teacher groups who were thought of as humble helped improve professionalism and collaboration among team members, new research has shown.... Read more

Empathizing with your political opponents increases your chances of changing their minds.... Read more