Author: TheConversation

By H. Colleen Sinclair, Associate Professor of Social Psychology, Mississippi State University The problem of misinformation isn’t going away. Internet platforms like Facebook and Twitter have taken some steps to curb its spread and say they are working on doing more. But no method yet introduced has been completely successful at removing all misleading content from social media. The best defense, then, is self-defense. Misleading or outright false information – broadly called “misinformation” – can come from websites pretending to be news outlets, political propaganda or “pseudo-profound” reports that seem meaningful but are not. Disinformation is a type of...

By Denise A. Herd, Professor of Public Health, University of California, Berkeley It has now past one year since George Floyd’s murder by a Minneapolis police officer set off the largest protests in U.S. history and a national reckoning with racism. Beyond the protests, every police killing – indeed, every violent act by police toward civilians – can have painful and widespread consequences. Each year, U.S. police kill about 1,000 people, which equals approximately 8% of all homicides for adult men. This risk is greater for Black men, who are about 2.5 times more likely to be killed by...

By Kristina M. Lee, Ph.D. Candidate in Rhetoric, Colorado State University “In God We Trust” became the national motto 65 years ago this month. But over the past few years a string of bills and city ordinances has sought to expand its usage and presence. City vehicles in Chesapeake, Virginia, will soon be getting religion. At a meeting on July 13, 2021, city councilors unanimously voted in favor of a proposal that would see the official motto of the U.S., “In God We Trust,” emblazoned on every city-owned car and truck, at an estimated cost to taxpayers of US$87,000....

By David Miguel Gray, Assistant Professor of Philosophy, Affiliate, Institute for Intelligent Systems, University of Memphis U.S. Rep.resentative Jim Banks of Indiana sent a letter to fellow Republicans on June 24, 2021, stating: “As Republicans, we reject the racial essentialism that critical race theory teaches … that our institutions are racist and need to be destroyed from the ground up.” Kimberlé Crenshaw, a law professor and central figure in the development of critical race theory, said in a recent interview that critical race theory “just says, let’s pay attention to what has happened in this country, and how what...

By Jonathan E. Robins, Associate Professor of Global History, Michigan Technological University Palm oil is everywhere today: in food, soap, lipstick, even newspaper ink. It is been called the world’s most hated crop because of its association with deforestation in Southeast Asia. But despite boycott campaigns, the world uses more palm oil than any other vegetable oil at over 73 million tons in 2020. That is because palm oil is cheap. The plant that makes it, the African oil palm, can produce up to 10 times more oil per hectare than soybeans. But as my new book Oil Palm:...

By Terry Shoemaker, Lecturer, School of Historical, Philosophical and Religious Studies, Arizona State University Since the 1970s, White American evangelicals, a large subsection of Protestants who hold to a literal reading of the Bible, have often managed to get specific privileges through their political engagement primarily through supporting the Republican Party. In the 1980s, President Ronald Reagan symbolically consolidated the alliance by bringing religious freedom and morality into public conversations that questioned the separation of church and state. In 2003, President George W. Bush signed the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act into law. In October 2020, President Donald Trump appointed...