https://phys.org/science-news/political-science en-us The latest news on political science A first-of-its-kind study, led by a Northeastern University researcher, examined how racial bias and political rhetoric against Asians and other underrepresented groups in the United States impacted their employment status in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. https://phys.org/news/2024-06-anti-asian-rhetoric-pandemic-negatively.html Economics & Business Political science Tue, 18 Jun 2024 12:50:47 EDT news637933844 A new study sheds light on the crucial role of allies in social movements, showing how their participation can sway public opinion on protests. By positively influencing public perceptions and encouraging participation from both advantaged and disadvantaged groups, allies can play a significant role in addressing structural inequality. This research offers valuable insights for activists and policymakers aiming to foster positive change in society. https://phys.org/news/2024-06-role-allies-advancing-social-movements.html Social Sciences Political science Mon, 17 Jun 2024 11:14:02 EDT news637841641 Climate change has many widespread and complicated effects on the well-being of people and the planet, and a new study in iScience on June 13 has now added a surprising one to the list. After analyzing the language used in seven million parliamentary speeches around the world, it shows that high temperatures lead to a significant and immediate reduction in politicians' language complexity. https://phys.org/news/2024-06-politicians-simpler-language-hot-days.html Political science Thu, 13 Jun 2024 11:00:01 EDT news637489502 Feeling ambivalent about a political issue might seem to be a recipe for indecision and even inaction. But a new study suggests, surprisingly, that ambivalence can actually lead some people—especially those with polarized views—to be more supportive of extreme actions, such as violence. https://phys.org/news/2024-06-ambivalence-polarized-views-political-violence.html Social Sciences Political science Wed, 12 Jun 2024 14:00:02 EDT news637401961 A research article published June 10 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences highlights the importance of careful application of high-tech forensic science to avoid wrongful convictions. https://phys.org/news/2024-06-wire-forensic-unreliable-court.html Mathematics Political science Mon, 10 Jun 2024 15:00:01 EDT news637227541 Efforts to tackle false information through fact-checking or media literacy initiatives increase the public's skepticism toward "fake news." However, they also breed distrust in genuine, fact-based news sources, shows a University of Zurich-led study using online survey experiments in the US, Poland and Hong Kong. https://phys.org/news/2024-06-interventions-misinformation-skepticism-reliable-sources.html Social Sciences Political science Mon, 10 Jun 2024 11:51:04 EDT news637239062 Companies and digital platforms contribute to financially sustaining misinformation outlets via advertising. Despite attempts to reduce misinformation, ads from well-known firms and organizations continue to appear on misinformation websites, thereby financing such outlets. The supply of falsehoods is expected to rise with artificial intelligence making it easier to create large volumes of misinformation to earn ad revenue. https://phys.org/news/2024-06-advertisers-inadvertently-funding-misinformation.html Economics & Business Political science Fri, 07 Jun 2024 12:11:03 EDT news636981062 Giving a regular cash payment to the entire world population has the potential to increase global gross domestic product (GDP) by 130%, according to a new analysis published June 7 in the journal Cell Reports Sustainability. Researchers suggest that charging carbon emitters with an emission tax could help fund such basic income programs while reducing environmental degradation. https://phys.org/news/2024-06-basic-income-global-gdp-carbon.html Economics & Business Political science Fri, 07 Jun 2024 11:00:01 EDT news636968041 The controversy about biased policing seems to draw endless fuel from race-based differences in public perception. Simply put, the vast majority of white citizens in the United States believe the police are doing a good job, including on issues of racial equality, while a similar percentage of Black citizens hold the opposite opinion. https://phys.org/news/2024-06-nypd-gave-officers-iphones-policing.html Political science Thu, 06 Jun 2024 11:05:04 EDT news636890701 The formation of relationships within violent US Islamist extremist groups is highly driven by mutual contacts and the tendency for people to bond with others similar to themselves, according to new research. https://phys.org/news/2024-06-islamist-extremist-groups-driven-mutual.html Social Sciences Political science Wed, 05 Jun 2024 14:00:01 EDT news636796441 The competition for online attention in today's news environment is fierce. High-quality news from credible sources must compete for attention with misinformation and a rapidly increasing amount of partisan content. https://phys.org/news/2024-06-simple-headlines-online-news-readers.html Economics & Business Political science Wed, 05 Jun 2024 14:00:01 EDT news636795601 When Twitter banned more than 70,000 traffickers of false information from its platform in the wake of the violence at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, the impact went beyond the silencing of those users. https://phys.org/news/2024-06-false-traffickers-online-discourse.html Social Sciences Political science Wed, 05 Jun 2024 11:43:03 EDT news636806581 An international research team led by the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) has uncovered in a recent research project that people's beliefs in science and religion are primarily shaped by the words of others, rather than their personal experiences. The study could help enhance public understanding of people's belief formation in important scientific issues, such as climate change and vaccination. https://phys.org/news/2024-06-words-firsthand-scientific-religious-belief.html Social Sciences Political science Tue, 04 Jun 2024 13:13:10 EDT news636725588 Black drivers in Chicago are significantly more likely than white drivers to be stopped by police regardless of where the drivers live or are going, according to a new study led by a Cornell city planning expert that maps the racial composition of roads by using mobile phone GPS data. The study confirms a racial bias in traffic stops that the researchers say is replacing stop and frisk as a new tactic for discrimination. https://phys.org/news/2024-06-racial-bias-traffic-chicago-police.html Social Sciences Political science Tue, 04 Jun 2024 10:51:04 EDT news636717062 An international team of political scientists, data scientists, economists and environmental scientists has found, via study of satellite data, that approximately 1.18 billion people across the globe are energy-poor—viewed from space, they show no evidence of using electricity. In their study, reported in Joule, the researchers mapped artificial light on the ground as viewed by satellites at night for 3,000 nights. https://phys.org/news/2024-05-satellite-billion-people-energy-poor.html Economics & Business Political science Fri, 31 May 2024 09:49:57 EDT news636367792 New simulations provide mathematical support for the theory that the spread of political ideas across international borders may have a big impact on election outcomes, and that small actions boosting a minority idea can gradually lead to global-scale political change. Jose Segovia-Martin and Óscar Rivero present these findings in the open-access journal PLOS ONE on May 29. https://phys.org/news/2024-05-simulations-ideas-international-borders-powerful.html Social Sciences Political science Wed, 29 May 2024 14:00:01 EDT news636194461 The YouTube comments sections of politically neutral news outlets might be more conducive to cooperative, cross-partisan conversation than their liberal and conservative counterparts, according to a study published May 29, 2024 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Seung Woo Chae and Sung Hyun Lee from Indiana University. https://phys.org/news/2024-05-youtube-comments-section-political-echo.html Political science Wed, 29 May 2024 14:00:01 EDT news636194401 Post-war peace processes are a dangerous period for women. Many are forced to live close to men who committed serious abuse during the war or are expected to testify in various types of truth commissions, which can be both retraumatizing and stigmatizing. These are the findings of a new study by peace researchers at Uppsala University, published in the journal PLOS ONE. https://phys.org/news/2024-05-women-vulnerable-war-peace.html Social Sciences Political science Wed, 29 May 2024 14:00:01 EDT news636193321 Spend any time scrolling through social media or news sites and it feels like America is a nation in constant argument. Off-hand remarks often spark fierce screaming matches. Partisanship is up, Gallup tells us, while trust in institutions is down. https://phys.org/news/2024-05-political-debates-antagonistic.html Social Sciences Political science Wed, 29 May 2024 11:58:04 EDT news636202681 Some of human history's greatest atrocities—genocide, slavery, ethnic cleanings—are rooted in our ability to dehumanize people from other social, political, or cultural groups. https://phys.org/news/2024-05-otherness-dehumanize-political-opponents.html Social Sciences Political science Wed, 29 May 2024 11:57:03 EDT news636202621 A new paper in the Quarterly Journal of Economics finds that replacing certain judicial decision-making functions with algorithms could improve outcomes for defendants by eliminating some of the systemic biases of judges. https://phys.org/news/2024-05-algorithms-judicial-decisions.html Political science Tue, 28 May 2024 00:10:06 EDT news636020881 A small team of social media analysts at Indiana University has found that a major portion of tweets spreading disinformation are sent by a surprisingly small percentage of a given userbase. https://phys.org/news/2024-05-superspreaders-responsible-large-portion-misinformation.html Social Sciences Political science Mon, 27 May 2024 12:55:19 EDT news636033313 A new study that examined voting in the 2022 United States congressional elections shows that views on abortion were central to shifting votes in the midterm elections. Despite severe inflation and grave concerns about deteriorating economic conditions, economic perceptions did not change votes. https://phys.org/news/2024-05-conventional-wisdom-americans-pocketbook-voters.html Political science Fri, 24 May 2024 13:02:03 EDT news635774521 Joe Biden was not substantially advantaged in the 2020 presidential election by COVID-related private funding, according to a new study co-authored by Daniel Thompson, UCLA assistant professor of political science. https://phys.org/news/2024-05-covid-private-funding-effect-presidential.html Political science Tue, 21 May 2024 17:07:03 EDT news635530022 Cognitive biases are among the most important factors that prevent people from changing their minds. Climate change deniers and climate activists often tend to accept only information that confirms their respective opinions on the matter. However, opinion dynamics are also influenced by a factor that the researchers call "ambiguity noise." Unlike biases, ambiguity noise is variable, depends on many random factors, and leads to inconsistent judgment. https://phys.org/news/2024-05-power-ambiguity-debate-climate.html Social Sciences Political science Mon, 13 May 2024 15:53:16 EDT news634834393 In the weeks before and after the 2020 presidential election, researchers ran a number of tests to try to understand how much Facebook and its corporate cousin, Instagram, may be contributing to the nation's political divide. https://phys.org/news/2024-05-social-media-election-effect-people.html Social Sciences Political science Mon, 13 May 2024 15:00:01 EDT news634808023 Prejudice and fear have always been at the core of intergroup hostilities. While intergroup interaction is a prerequisite for initiating peace and stability at the junction of clashing interests, values, and cultures, the risk of further escalation precisely from direct interactions cannot be ruled out. In particular, a shortage of impartial, nonpartisan personnel to properly manage an electronic contact (e-contact) session may cause the process to backfire and become destabilized. https://phys.org/news/2024-05-ai-conversational-agents-interethnic-prejudice.html Social Sciences Political science Fri, 10 May 2024 13:36:03 EDT news634566961 We all know that communication encompasses so much more than words. Facial expressions, intonations, hand gestures, and more contribute to our expressiveness. However, in social media, these intricacies are lost. https://phys.org/news/2024-05-analysis-millions-users-echo-chambers.html Social Sciences Political science Thu, 09 May 2024 13:43:46 EDT news634481022 The division between liberals and conservatives on both climate-change beliefs and related policy support is long-standing. However, the results of a newly released global experiment show that despite these differences, the two camps actually align when it comes to taking certain actions to combat climate change. https://phys.org/news/2024-05-liberals-differ-climate-beliefs-action.html Political science Thu, 09 May 2024 11:14:05 EDT news634472041 The eventual prevalence of a piece of misinformation may depend on its topic and the country in which it spreads, with notable differences between the UK, Germany, France and Italy, according to a study published May 8 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Fabiana Zollo from the Ca' Foscari University of Venice, Italy, and colleagues. This finding suggests that policies to combat misinformation and polarization may need to be context-specific in order to be effective, the authors say. https://phys.org/news/2024-05-misinformation-varies-topic-country-europe.html Social Sciences Political science Wed, 08 May 2024 14:00:02 EDT news634376941