https://phys.org/science-news/political-science en-us The latest news on political science Despite a similar statutory tax rate for multinational corporations (MNCs) across many countries, the effective tax rate that MNCs actually pay differs greatly—as low as 1% of gross income in Luxembourg and as high as 67% in Norway. That's one conclusion of a study published in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Javier Garcia-Bernardo of Utrecht University, the Netherlands, Petr Janský of Charles University, Czechia, and Thomas Tørsløv of Danmarks Nationalbank, Denmark. https://phys.org/news/2023-11-reveals-real-tax-paid-multinational.html Economics & Business Political science Wed, 29 Nov 2023 14:00:01 EST news620476111 A new analysis suggests that a person with higher cognitive ability may have been more likely to vote "Remain" in the 2016 Brexit referendum, and that a spouse's cognitive skills may also be linked to Brexit voting decisions. Chris Dawson and Paul Baker of the University of Bath, U.K., present these findings in the open-access journal PLOS ONE on November 22, 2023. https://phys.org/news/2023-11-higher-cognitive-ability-linked-chance.html Social Sciences Political science Wed, 22 Nov 2023 14:00:01 EST news619867735 Using generic terms in politics may be exacerbating political division, a new study suggests. Statements such as "Democrats want to have tougher gun laws" and "Republicans want to ban abortion," can heighten perceived differences between the two political parties, the study says. https://phys.org/news/2023-11-generic-statements-widen-political-parties.html Social Sciences Political science Thu, 16 Nov 2023 09:54:03 EST news619350841 People in many parts of the United States possess few chances for the robust community engagement that underpins healthy democracies, according to a new report that for the first time maps civic opportunity across the country. https://phys.org/news/2023-11-unequal-civic-opportunity.html Social Sciences Political science Mon, 13 Nov 2023 11:00:02 EST news619090219 A new study examining the effects of the U.S. Supreme Court ruling on Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization on June 24, 2022, which overturned Roe v. Wade's constitutional protection of abortion rights, finds that the American public's support for abortion increased after the decision. https://phys.org/news/2023-11-supreme-court-restricted-abortion-rights.html Political science Thu, 09 Nov 2023 16:40:43 EST news618770439 A trio of data scientists, two with Graz University, in Germany, the other with the University of Southern California, Los Angeles, has found that Wikipedia gives more attention to events that happen in richer countries than those in poorer countries. In their study, reported in the open-access journal PLOS ONE, Thorsten Ruprechter, Denis Helic and Keith Burghardt analyzed thousands of articles posted on the free online encyclopedia, looking at the amount of coverage on events in different parts of the world. https://phys.org/news/2023-11-wikipedia-pays-attention-events-richer.html Social Sciences Political science Thu, 09 Nov 2023 10:10:02 EST news618746433 Misinformation is a key global threat, but Democrats and Republicans disagree about how to address the problem. In particular, Democrats and Republicans diverge sharply on removing misinformation from social media. https://phys.org/news/2023-11-democrats-republicans-sharply-attitudes-misinformation.html Social Sciences Political science Mon, 06 Nov 2023 12:19:25 EST news618495563 In June 2022, the U.S. Supreme Court overruled Roe v. Wade, effectively ending 50 years of federal protections to abortion care. As of October 2023, 26 states have since enacted laws to ban or restrict abortion access, with 14 states completely banning the procedure. https://phys.org/news/2023-11-abortion-linked-children-foster.html Social Sciences Political science Mon, 06 Nov 2023 11:00:01 EST news618485853 Climate change is impeding the human rights of a large group of people living in the Pacific, a new report in Nature Climate Change reveals. https://phys.org/news/2023-11-climate-induced-loss-impeding-human-rights.html Social Sciences Political science Thu, 02 Nov 2023 12:31:03 EDT news618147061 University researchers from the UK, Germany and South Africa warn of a threat to scientific knowledge and the future of research in a paper titled "Platform-controlled social media APIs threaten Open Science" published in Nature Human Behaviour. The paper outlines the implications of changes to social media application programming interfaces (APIs). https://phys.org/news/2023-11-restrictions-application-interfaces-social-media.html Social Sciences Political science Thu, 02 Nov 2023 12:00:01 EDT news618137873 In a polarized country, how much does the media influence people's political views? A new study co-authored by MIT scholars finds the answer depends on people's media preferences—and, crucially, how these preferences are measured. https://phys.org/news/2023-11-online-news-political-views-mouse.html Social Sciences Political science Thu, 02 Nov 2023 09:16:04 EDT news618135361 By analyzing the frequency of certain words within mainstream news media from any country, a machine learning algorithm can produce a quantitative "peace index" that captures the level of peace within that country, according to a study published in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Larry Liebovitch and Peter T. Coleman of Columbia University, US, and colleagues. https://phys.org/news/2023-11-peace-speech-media-characterizes-country.html Political science Wed, 01 Nov 2023 14:00:01 EDT news618056429 During the 2020–2021 season of the National Basketball Association (NBA), which took place during Donald Trump's failed bid at re-election, immigrant players for teams in regions with stronger far-right political sentiments were more likely to make game errors—highlighting the possible detrimental effects of such views on immigrant workplace performance. https://phys.org/news/2023-11-game-immigrant-nba-players-context.html Economics & Business Political science Wed, 01 Nov 2023 14:00:01 EDT news618056442 More than a tenth of the world's billionaires have held or sought political office, according to a new study published in Perspectives on Politics. https://phys.org/news/2023-10-tenth-world-billionaires-held-sought.html Political science Mon, 30 Oct 2023 13:24:56 EDT news617891094 In a new article in Scientific Reports, a team of scholars from the University of Utah and The University of Texas at Austin found that drier than normal periods during growing seasons in Central America were associated with emigration to the United States in recent years. https://phys.org/news/2023-10-unusually-dry-seasons-central-america.html Social Sciences Political science Mon, 30 Oct 2023 11:26:56 EDT news617884011 Most people will agree that over the past several years, American political leaders have been saying—and sharing on social media—unusual things that politicians would never have said a decade or two ago. At times, their words can seem out of character for what a leader should typically say and can even appear antidemocratic in nature. https://phys.org/news/2023-10-political-rhetoric-views-democratic-principles.html Political science Wed, 25 Oct 2023 15:57:04 EDT news617468222 A new study explores themes in Twitter discussions of deepfake videos related to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, highlighting the potential for real videos to be mistaken for deepfakes and for deepfakes to fuel conspiracy theories. John Twomey of University College Cork, Ireland, and colleagues present these findings in the open-access journal PLOS ONE on October 25, 2023. https://phys.org/news/2023-10-deepfake-videos-russian-invasion-ukraine.html Social Sciences Political science Wed, 25 Oct 2023 14:00:01 EDT news617447558 A new EPFL developed tool, Quotebank, has helped researchers provide the first large-scale data-driven evidence of a drastic shift towards a more negative political tone beginning at the start of Donald Trump's primary campaign in June 2015. https://phys.org/news/2023-10-tool-shift-negative-political-tone.html Political science Thu, 19 Oct 2023 12:47:04 EDT news616938421 New research by Valentina Bosetti (Department of Economics) and Italo Colantone (Department of Social and Political Sciences) suggests that Western policymakers wanting to make progress on climate action should address the distributional consequences of international trade. https://phys.org/news/2023-10-green-vote-import-competition-people.html Economics & Business Political science Wed, 18 Oct 2023 10:16:04 EDT news616842961 New research published by a team at the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania finds that experiencing days in which the temperature exceeds previous highs for that time of year affects people's perception of weather trends. https://phys.org/news/2023-10-experiencing-record-breaking-days-affects-perception.html Social Sciences Political science Wed, 11 Oct 2023 12:48:03 EDT news616247281 Whether or not people choose to attend a climate protest partly depends on its expected size. When they expect a larger protest, they are less likely to take part—as Universität Hamburg's Cluster of Excellence for climate research (CLICCS) shows in a publication in the journal Nature Climate Change. https://phys.org/news/2023-10-climate-protests-size.html Social Sciences Political science Tue, 10 Oct 2023 11:37:16 EDT news616156633 The absence of sexually related injuries cannot be used in court to infer that rape victims are "making it up," a new study reveals. https://phys.org/news/2023-10-lack-sexually-injuries-rape-victim.html Social Sciences Political science Fri, 06 Oct 2023 14:03:03 EDT news615819781 Allowing eyewitnesses to dynamically explore digital faces using a new interactive procedure can significantly improve identification accuracy compared to the video lineup and photo array procedures used by police worldwide, a new study reveals. https://phys.org/news/2023-10-usual-interactive-lineup-boosts-eyewitness.html Social Sciences Political science Mon, 02 Oct 2023 15:00:02 EDT news615468264 A pair of civil rights researchers with the University of California has found evidence suggesting that ceasing one practice that violated citizen rights in Chicago may have led to the initiation of another. In their paper published in the journal Science Advances, David Hausman and Dorothy Kronick describe how they analyzed traffic and pedestrian stops in Chicago following new rules that made it much more difficult for police officers to conduct stop-and-frisk searches in the city. https://phys.org/news/2023-10-stop-and-frisk-chicago-minority-traffic.html Social Sciences Political science Mon, 02 Oct 2023 09:50:01 EDT news615458512 As much of the U.S. broils under record-setting temperatures, battles wildfires and is rocked by fierce storms, a new study suggests that the science learning standards for many public schools are not preparing young people to understand and respond to problems such as climate change that will dramatically impact their lives and those of millions of people around the globe. https://phys.org/news/2023-09-state-politics-industry-planetary-health.html Education Political science Wed, 27 Sep 2023 17:07:05 EDT news615053222 An ecological theory may help to explain why segregation is so widespread and persistent in US cities, according to a paper published today in Buildings and Cities. The new way of framing segregation's endurance may provide a useful tool to study and address systemic racism, and could ultimately reveal novel ways of breaking the cycle. https://phys.org/news/2023-09-ecological-theory-segregation-persists.html Social Sciences Political science Tue, 26 Sep 2023 11:59:47 EDT news614948291 An international study, published in Nature Human Behaviour, analyzed millions of tweets by members of Congress over the last decade. Its findings showed both Republican and Democratic politicians were increasingly sharing their beliefs and opinions as well as evidence-based information. But among Republicans, their expression of honestly-held beliefs and opinions was strongly linked to less trustworthy information sources. https://phys.org/news/2023-09-links-misinformation-republican-politicians-perception.html Social Sciences Political science Mon, 25 Sep 2023 11:00:01 EDT news614854151 A study titled "Factors Assessing Science's Self-Presentation model and their effect on conservatives' and liberals' support for funding science" published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) identifies five factors that Annenberg Public Policy Center (APPC) researchers say reflect public assessments of science and are associated with public support for increasing funding of science and support for federal funding of basic research. These factors are whether science and scientists are perceived to be credible and prudent, and whether their work is perceived to be untainted by bias, self-correcting, and beneficial. https://phys.org/news/2023-09-factors-well-being-science-funding.html Economics & Business Political science Mon, 25 Sep 2023 10:43:46 EDT news614857422 A team of behavioral scientists using big data and a simulation-based model to analyze social media "tweets" around the 2020 presidential election found that the spread of voter fraud conspiracy theories on Twitter (now called X) was boosted by a negativity bias. Led by Mason Youngblood, Ph.D., a post-doctoral fellow in the Institute for Advanced Computational Science at Stony Brook University, the findings are published in Humanities and Social Sciences Communications. https://phys.org/news/2023-09-negative-retweets-voter-fraud-conspiracy.html Social Sciences Political science Fri, 22 Sep 2023 14:30:05 EDT news614611802 Not through courts and not through prisons. The only way to reduce violence in Mexico is to cut off recruitment. Increasing incapacitation instead leads to both more homicides and cartel members, researcher Rafael Prieto-Curiel from the Complexity Science Hub and colleagues show in a study published in Science. https://phys.org/news/2023-09-curbing-violence-mexico-disrupting-cartel.html Social Sciences Political science Thu, 21 Sep 2023 14:00:01 EDT news614508312