Political Science Archives - Spotlight Magazine

Local governments provide proof that polarization is not inevitable

When it comes to national politics, Americans are fiercely divided across a range of issues, including gun control, election security and vaccines. It’s not new for Republicans and Democrats to be at odds over issues, […]

New dataset reveals how US law has grown more complex over the past century

A century ago, the section of U.S. federal law governing public health and welfare was relatively small and loosely connected to the rest of the legal system. Today, it is one of the largest and […]

Social media feeds: Algorithm redesign could break echo chambers and reduce online polarization

Scroll through social media long enough and a pattern emerges. Pause on a post questioning climate change or taking a hard line on a political issue, and the platform is quick to respond—serving up more […]

Psychopathy test used in Canadian courts unreliable, prone to bias, study finds

A psychological assessment test often used to evaluate psychopathy in Canadian criminal cases is unreliable and prone to unconscious bias on the part of expert witnesses, according to research from the University of Toronto Mississauga.This […]

With international law at a ‘breaking point’, a tiny country goes after Myanmar’s junta on its own

Just four months ago, Timor-Leste formally became a member of the Association of Southeast Asian States (ASEAN). This week, the tiny country took an unprecedented step: its judicial authorities appointed a prosecutor to examine the […]

New VRscores database maps workplace politics across 530,000 US employers

Researchers, including Professor of Management and Organization Reuben Hurst at the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business, have produced VRscores, an unprecedented public database for understanding the partisan lean of different employers […]

Mindful choice or locked in? Study probes feelings about written consent

People who sign consent forms feel more trapped—not more empowered—than those who give consent verbally, according to new research by Vanessa Bohns, the Braunstein Family Professor in the ILR School, and co-author Roseanna Sommers of […]

Reuniting forcibly separated families: How a machine-learning model can help

Around the world, millions of families have suffered forcible separation, through war, trafficking, natural disasters, or socioeconomic crises. In China, family separation is a particularly large-scale and far-reaching problem. Following the enactment of the country’s […]

‘Inoculation’ helps people spot political deepfakes, study finds

Informing people about political deepfakes through text-based information and interactive games both improve people’s ability to spot AI-generated video and audio that falsely depict politicians, according to a study my colleagues and I conducted.This post […]

New report unpacks the crises facing American journalism and offers solutions

Journalism in the United States is in crisis: Local newspapers are shuttering at an alarming rate, large cities that were once served by multiple daily local newspapers now barely sustain one or two major outlets, […]