Publics

At first glance, images circulating online showing former President Donald Trump surrounded by groups of Black people smiling and laughing seem nothing out of the ordinary, but a look closer is telling.Odd lighting and too-perfect details provide clues to the fact they were all generated using artificial intelligence. The photos, which have not been linked to the Trump campaign, emerged as Trump seeks to win over Black voters who polls show remain loyal to President Joe Biden.The fabricated images, highlighted in a recent…

Credit: Unsplash/CC0 Public Domain Police body-worn cameras (BWCs) are the most important tool to provide an accurate and honest assessment of encounters between law enforcement and civilians, according to a new study co-written by a University of Massachusetts Amherst public policy researcher. The findings provide further evidence that BWCs are an…

People who lean left politically reported an increase in trust in scientists during the COVID-19 pandemic, while those who lean right politically reported much lower levels of trust in scientists. This polarization around scientific issues—from COVID-19 to climate change to evolution—is at its peak since surveys started tracking this question over 50 years ago. …

It’s possible that a jury for the Google case could allow the government to tap into the growing mainstream animosity toward the biggest tech companies. The Justice Department's newest suit against Alphabet Inc.'s Google includes a surprising request: a jury trial. Federal antitrust lawyers typically opt to present their cases directly to a federal judge. But in its second suit against Google, the Justice Department asks that everyday people determine whether the company's advertising technology business violates…

There are messy celebrity break-ups, and then there’s Johnny Depp and Amber Heard. The two have had a years-long legal battle, and things got especially heated when they met in a Virginia courthouse over their defamation case. And with cameras in the courtroom, the court of public opinion also took sides on the complicated situation. Singer Phoebe Bridgers seemingly defended Heard recently, weighing in on the public consumption of the Depp trial. In the weeks where Johnny Depp and Amber Heard were facing off in court, it…

A recently released study coauthored by a Syracuse University researcher reveals how beliefs and political affiliations shape the public's understanding about racial inequalities. The paper, "Historical information and beliefs about racial inequality," was released…

Credit: Cambridge University Press Lauren Prather's new book "Monitors and Meddlers: How Foreign Actors Influence Local Trust in Elections" has been a long time in the making—a full decade, in fact. …

A Data Analysis of the Public’s Adherence to Travel Restrictions During the First Year of the SARS-COV2 Pandemic.Photo by null xtract: https://www.pexels.com/photo/person-looking-out-the-window-3047470/The first year of the SARS-COV2 pandemic, from March 2020 to the end of February 2021, was characterised by on-again/off-again periods of lockdowns and travel restrictions across most of the world, as countries tried to curb the transmission of SARS-COV2 and to manage the disease burden on their overloaded healthcare…

The Curiosity rover spotted these Martian clouds on March 19, 2021.Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSSThe landscape of Mars is rocky and barren, but the planet’s skies sometimes hold clues to its past in the form of clouds. NASA’s new Cloudspotting on Mars project is a science initiative that lets the public be a part of some new research as the agency studies what happened to Mars’ atmosphere, now much thinner than it once was.Cloudspotting on Mars enlists citizen scientists with the goal of allowing everyday citizens to help…