Author: TheConversation

By Danielle K. Kilgo, Assistant Professor, Indiana University The new decade is just days old, but in one respect it is already shaping up like the last one: with mass protests around the world. Rallies for democracy overseas and anti-war demonstrations in the U.S. come on the back of a year that saw people take to the streets over issues including human rights abuse, corruption and climate change. Yet, despite the popularity of movements like the global climate strike and the massive women’s marches around the globe, most people don’t actually attend these events. The general public’s opinions about...

By Nadia Naffi, Assistant Professor, Educational Technology, Holds the Chair in Educational Leadership in the Sustainable Transformation of Pedagogical Practices in Digital Contexts, Université Laval More than a decade ago, Internet analyst and new media scholar Clay Shirky said: “The only real way to end spam is to shut down e-mail communication.” Will shutting down the Internet be the only way to end deepfake propaganda in 2020? Today, anyone can create their own fake news and also break it. Online propaganda is more misleading and manipulative than ever. Deepfakes, a specific form of disinformation that uses machine-learning algorithms to...

By Adrian Bardon, Professor of Philosophy, Wake Forest University Something is rotten in the state of American political life. The U.S. (among other nations) is increasingly characterized by highly polarized, informationally insulated ideological communities occupying their own factual universes. Within the conservative political blogosphere, global warming is either a hoax or so uncertain as to be unworthy of response. Within other geographic or online communities, vaccines, fluoridated water and genetically modified foods are known to be dangerous. Right-wing media outlets paint a detailed picture of how Donald Trump is the victim of a fabricated conspiracy. None of that is...

By Rogelio Sáenz, Professor of Demography, The University of Texas at San Antonio; and Dudley L. Poston, Jr., Professor of Sociology, Texas A&M University Demographers project that whites will become a minority in the U.S. in around 2045, dropping below 50% of the population. That is a quarter-century from now – still a long way away, right? Not if you focus on children. White children right now are on the eve of becoming a numerical minority. The U.S. Census Bureau projects that, by the middle of 2020, nonwhites will account for the majority of the nation’s 74 million children....

By Emily Schwartz Greco, Philanthropy + Nonprofits Editor, The Conversation The more than US$400 billion Americans donate annually to charitable causes of all kinds, such as houses of worship, universities and efforts to cure cancer, add up to around 2% of the economy. The Indiana University Lilly Family School of Philanthropy, the only school of its kind, brings together scholars of sociology, history, economics, religious studies and other disciplines to explore what drives all this giving. In an interview, which has been edited for length and clarity, Lilly School Dean Amir Pasic, explains why he believes public debate over...

By Andrew Joseph Pegoda, Lecturer in Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies; Religious Studies; and First Year Writing, University of Houston At least 40% to 90% of American voters stay home during elections, evidence that low voter turnout for both national and local elections is a serious problem throughout the United States. With the 2020 presidential election approaching, directives for people to “get out and vote” will be firing up again. Some people might be indifferent or simply not care, but many who forgo voting have legitimate reasons. Over the past decade, through my extensive research on civil rights and...