2017 may well be remembered as the year of alternative facts and fake news. Truth took a hit, and experts seemed to lose the public’s trust. Scientists felt under siege as the Trump administration purged information from government websites, appointed inexperienced or...

As the year comes to an end, we rounded up some of our favorite graphs and maps from archival articles The Conversation published in 2017.

1. Invisible inequality

America may be getting richer, but who’s reaping the reward? The economic gap in the U.S. has widened over the past few decades....

Over the course of 2017, people in the U.S. and around the world became increasingly concerned about how their digital data are transmitted, stored and analyzed. As news broke that every Yahoo email account had been compromised, as well as the financial information of nearly every adult in the...

President Donald Trump did not waste any time pushing strict immigration policies in 2017, as promised during his campaign. What resulted was dozens of legal challenges, pushback from local leaders, nationwide protests and often widespread confusion. This is a...

The year 2017 marked the 10th anniversary of the iPhone. Five years ago, for the first time, over 50 percent of Americans owned a smartphone. Today, it’s 77 percent.

The benefits of smartphones are manifest: They serve as radio, TV and camera; cookbook, newspaper...

Since December 2014, a recession turned national emergency has left millions of Venezuelans impoverished, hungry and desperate. An estimated 54 percent of Venezuelan children are now malnourished.

As an editor on the Americas desk, this year I’ve asked numerous Venezuelan scholars to help readers understand the many...

Since December 2014, a recession turned national emergency has left millions of Venezuelans impoverished, hungry and desperate. An estimated 54 percent of Venezuelan children are now malnourished.

As an editor on the Americas desk, this year I’ve asked numerous Venezuelan scholars to help readers understand the many...

Cardinal Bernard Law died on Wednesday, Dec. 20, in Rome. Law was Archbishop of Boston, a position of prestige in the Roman Catholic Church in the United States. He had wide political connections, including with the Bush family. He publicly denounced Catholic politicians who supported...

In the midst of contemporary science’s stunning discoveries and innovations – for example, 2017 alone brought the editing of a human embryo’s genes, the location of an eighth...

The 60 percent of Americans who believe that the GOP tax package will mostly help the wealthiest among us are right, according to an analysis by the Tax Policy Center.

But will widespread disapproval translate into political costs or electoral losses for Republicans? Will Americans decide they are finally fed up with over half a century of soaring...