Populists across the world are significantly more likely to believe in conspiracy theories about vaccinations, global warming and the 9/11 terrorist attacks, according to a landmark global survey shared exclusively with the Guardian. The YouGov-Cambridge Globalism Project sheds new light on a section of the world population that appears to […] Read more »
Identicide: How demographic shifts can rip a country apart
What does it look like when a country’s identity falls apart? Interior Design/shutterstock.com Monica Duffy Toft, Tufts University What happens to a country when its core national identity – its preferred image of itself in terms of race or religion – doesn’t match its demographic reality? Say a Sunni-dominated Arab […] Read more »
Fake news is bad news for democracy
Last week, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg welcomed government regulation of content on the Internet in several areas, including “election integrity.” Around the world, there are increasing concerns that “fake news” threatens democracy. Our recent research supports this view — democracy is less likely to survive in a poor informational environment. […] Read more »
Think you hate your politicians? Britons hate theirs even more.
… Americans don’t like their leaders. We just had a presidential election in 2016 in which the major party nominees were the two least-liked presidential candidates of all time. But I would argue that it could be a lot worse. Why? Take a look at what’s happening over in the […] Read more »
Americans and Germans Disagree on the State of Bilateral Relations, but Largely Align on Key International Issues
Americans and Germans have vastly different opinions of their bilateral relationship, but they tend to agree on issues such as cooperation with other European allies and support for NATO, according to the results of parallel surveys conducted in the United States by Pew Research Center and in Germany by Körber-Stiftung […] Read more »
New study of 381,000 political speeches finds that liberals use more complex language than conservatives
… As earlier findings indicate, our research shows that politicians from socially liberal parties use more complex language than politicians from socially conservative parties. We analyzed 381,609 speeches delivered by politicians from Germany, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden and the United Kingdom. These speeches include not only those of 12 prime […] Read more »