• Election Manipulation Threatens Democracy, but There Are New tools to Combat Disinformation

    The spread of false narratives about the election through social media poses a serious threat to American democracy. The Observatory on Social Media at Indiana University has a collection of tools and studies that aid in the fight against election manipulation and disinformation.

  • Emmanuel Macron's Plans to Protect French Values Anger Muslims

    Upcoming legislation crafted to “protect” the Republic and French values promises to be deeply divisive, with French Muslims fearing it will unfairly single them out. Some also see political calculus behind the effort.

  • Muslims, Atheists More Likely to Face Religious Discrimination in U.S.

    Muslims and atheists in the United States are more likely than those of Christian faiths to experience religious discrimination, according to new research. In the study, which focused on public schools because they are government-run, community-facing institutions, the researchers tested responses to an individual’s expression of religious belief. In addition to finding greater bias against religious minorities, the researchers also saw that ardent expressions of faith, regardless of religious tradition, were more prone to discrimination.

  • Age Restrictions for Handguns Make Little Difference in Homicides in U.S.

    In the United States, individual state laws barring 18- to 20-year-olds from buying or possessing a handgun make little difference in the rate of homicides involving a gun by people in that age group, a new study has found.

  • Macron to Outline France's Controversial Anti-Separatism Bill

    Five years after the Paris terrorist strikes and a week after a brutal knife attack in the French capital, French President Emmanuel Macron sketches the broad outlines Friday of upcoming legislation targeting groups considered hostile to the French Republic and its values — with radical Islam, including its political dimension, at the forefront.

  • Election Violence in November? Here’s What the Research Says

    As the U.S. presidential election draws near, many have expressed concern that violent clashes will follow the 3 November election. Some envision President Donald Trump’s supporters using misinformation to mobilize vigilante militias to clash with leftist protesters. Others envision that groups on the left will refuse to accept the results and mobilize, leading to violence and deaths across the country. What does the research say about the likelihood of election-related violence in November? The answer: The United States is not likely to experience post-election violence because, thankfully, the conditions which allow violence to erupt in other countries do not exist in the United States.

  • U.S. Democratic Indicators Plummet Amid Racial Justice Protests, Pandemic: Watchdog report

    The health of democracy in the United States has reached its lowest point since Bright Line Watch, an academic watchdog group of political scientists, began tracking its performance in 2017. Latest Bright Line Watch analysis finds erosion “across the board” on measures of democratic principles and how well the U.S. is abiding by them.

  • EU Takes Action against Fake News

    A special committee of the European Parliament is set to detect and combat foreign cyberattacks. The EU has confirmed that targeted disinformation campaigns are on the rise — partly relating to the coronavirus pandemic.

  • DOJ: 3 Cities Could Lose Federal Funding for Allowing Violence

    The U.S. Department of Justice said Monday that three U.S. cities have “permitted violence and destruction of property” to persist and threatened to cut federal funding if they don’t take measures to restore law and order. According to a news release, New York City, Portland, Oregon, and Seattle, Washington, risk the loss of funding. Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio and Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan responded to the DOJ statement. “This is thoroughly political and unconstitutional. The president is playing cheap political games with the congressionally directed funds,” the three said in a joint statement.

  • The Pandemic Has Revealed the Cracks in U.S. Manufacturing: Here’s How to Fix Them

    The COVID-19 pandemic has revealed glaring deficiencies in the U.S. manufacturing sector’s ability to provide necessary products – especially amidst a crisis. Globalization is at the heart of the problem. With heavy reliance on global supply chains and foreign producers, the pandemic has interrupted shipping of parts and materials to nearly 75% of U.S. companies. Decades of “offshoring” domestic manufacturing to other countries have led the U.S. to the current crisis. It has seriously damaged the nation’s industrial base, increased income inequality and caused stagnation in U.S. living standards. How the U.S. responds will determine the long-term health and prosperity of the nation.

  • How to Change an Election

    A 3 August report from the Transition Integrity Project, a bipartisan group of political, government, and academic experts that ran election crisis-planning exercises to game out what might happen between now and Inauguration Day, predicts “lawsuits, divergent media narratives, attempts to stop the counting of ballots, and protests drawing people from both sides.” With both sides wary of tampering, Daniel Carpenter, a Harvard government professor, tries to game the game on what tactics could follow a close result.

  • French Headscarf Ban Adversely Affects Muslim Girls

    New research has shown that the French ban prohibiting Muslim girls from wearing headscarves in public schools has had a detrimental effect on both the girls’ ability to complete their secondary education and their trajectories in the labor market. “In response to rising immigration flows and the fear of Islamic radicalization, several Western countries have enacted policies to restrict religious expression and emphasize secularism and Western values,” the co-authors write. “Despite intense public debate, there is little systematic evidence on how such policies influence the behavior of the religious minorities they target,” said one researcher.

  • Rise in Gun Purchases after Mass Shootings Tied to Fear of Firearm Regulations

    Surges in firearm acquisition after mass shootings is a well-documented phenomenon, but analytic research into the causes of this behavior — be it driven by a desire for self-protection, or a fear that access to firearms will be curtailed — is sparse. A new is applying a data science methodology to create a model of the “firearms ecosystem” to identify how decisions to buy guns are affected by individual, social network, and state-level factors.

  • Why Americans Are Buying More Guns Than Ever

    Americans have been on a record gun-buying spree in recent months. Gun sales typically have seasonal cycles, with more guns being sold in winter months, and increase in presidential election years and after high-profile mass shootings. However, the 2020 pandemic spurred a record-setting surge in demand for firearms. Gun sales first spiked in March, when lockdown orders began in the U.S. The figures jumped again in June following nationwide protests over the killing of George Floyd. Our research examines American gun culture and offers insights into the complex relationship between Americans and guns. We believe there are three general reasons why people are purchasing firearms now.

  • Gunshot Injuries in California Drop, but Percentage of Firearm Death Goes Up

    Gun-violence research experts say that despite a significant drop in firearm injuries in recent years in California, there has been a substantial increase in the state’s overall death rate among those wounded by firearms. “We found that the number of nonfatal firearm injuries in California decreased over an 11-year period, primarily due to a drop in firearm assaults,” said Sarabeth Spitzer, lead author and a UC Davis research intern at the time of the study. “However, the lethality of those and other firearm injuries did not go down. In fact, it went up.”