The Conversation

Misinformation on social media: Can technology save us?

Written by Filippo Menczer, Professor of Computer Science and Informatics; Director of the Center for Complex Networks and Systems Research, Indiana University, Bloomington

Sharing election hashtags: Dots are Twitter accounts; lines show retweeting; larger dots are retweeted more. Red dots are likely bots; blue ones are likely humans.Clayton Davis, CC BY-ND

If you get your news from social media, as most Americans do, you are exposed to a daily dose of hoaxes, rumors, conspiracy theories and misleading news. When...

Dear Mr. Trump: Climate policy puts lives in your hands

Written by Travis N. Rieder, Research Scholar at the Berman Institute of Bioethics, Johns Hopkins University

Drought, which affects food production, will become more common as the Earth heats up, which can cause deaths and destabilize societies. cafodphotolibrary/flickr, CC BY-NC

President-elect Donald Trump has been unclear so far on how many of his campaign pledges he actually intends to see through. Hopeful Democrats and moderates have clung to this...

Why so many people regain weight after dieting

Written by Kenneth McLeod, Entrepreneur in Residence & Director - Clinical Science and Engineering Research Laboratory, Binghamton University, State University of New York

Metabolism can change after weight loss. Women measuring waist image via www.shutterstock.com.

Anyone who has tried to lose weight and keep it off knows how difficult the task can be. It seems like it should be simple: Just exercise to burn more calories and reduce your calorie intake. But many studies have shown that this simple strategy...

100 years of the 'gender gap' in American politics

Written by Anya Jabour, Regents Professor of History, The University of Montana

Men and women did not vote the same way in 2016.

In fact, the Donald Trump versus Hillary Clinton contest yielded the largest gender gap – the difference between women’s and men’s voting behavior – in U.S. history. Clinton won women by 12 points and lost men by the same amount – a 24-point gap. The gap is growing....

Here's how undocumented students are able to enroll at American universities

Written by Tanya Golash-Boza, Professor, University of California, Merced

President-elect Donald Trump has vowed to deport millions of undocumented people, beginning on his first day in office. In response, students and faculty from 100 campuses around the United States have launched a campaign to demand that their universities become “sanctuaries” for undocumented students.

About 30,000 undocumented students...

You should talk about politics this Thanksgiving – here's why, and how

Written by Stacy Branham, Lecturer of Information Systems, University of Maryland, Baltimore County

Seek to truly connect with each other at Thanksgiving.Group feast via shutterstock.com

After one of the most divisive presidential elections in American history, many of us may be anxious about dinner-table dialogue with family and friends this Thanksgiving. There is no denying that the way we communicate about politics has fundamentally changed...

Have reports of Black Friday's death been greatly exaggerated?

Written by Jay L. Zagorsky, Economist and Research Scientist, The Ohio State University

Black Friday is hyped as one of the biggest in-store shopping days of the year, with stores trumpeting giant sales and even bigger advertising campaigns.

Some pundits claim that Black Friday is dying and is no longer relevant. However, the National Retail Federation issued a strong denunciation of these articles and declared that Black Friday is...

Why we have globalization to thank for Thanksgiving

Written by Farok J. Contractor, Distinguished Professor of Management & Global Business, Rutgers University

As Americans sit down to their Thanksgiving Day feasts, some may recall the story of the “Pilgrim Fathers” who founded one of the first English settlements in North America in 1620, at what is today the town of Plymouth, Massachusetts.

The history we know is one of English settlers seeking religious freedom in a New World but instead fi...

The seeds of the alt-right, America's emergent right-wing populist movement

Written by George Michael, Professor of Criminal Justice, Westfield State University

Clockwise, from left: White nationalist William Pence, domestic terrorist Timothy McVeigh, white nationalist Richard Spencer, British journalist Milo Yiannopoulos, professor Kevin MacDonald, and Breitbart News founder Andrew Breitbart.Nick Lehr/The Conversation, CC BY-NC-SA

In recent months, far-right activists – which some have labeled the...

What's the history of sanctuary spaces and why do they matter?

Written by Elizabeth Allen, Associate Professor of English, University of California, Irvine

In the wake of the election of Donald Trump as president, faculty, students and alumni across the country are pressuring their administrations to declare “sanctuary campuses” for undocumented students, workers and their families.

Trump has said he would repeal the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program (DACA). Under the program,...