Category: Academic Reportage

Source: The Conversation – USA (3) – By Jeremy David Engels, Liberal Arts Endowed Professor of Communication, Penn State

The late Vietnamese Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh often emphasized the interconnectedness of everything in this world. He explained how meditation can change our perceptions about the things we encounter in our daily lives by revealing this interdependence.

Take the example of an apple: Before meditation, an apple is just a piece of fruit. During meditation, the meditator sees how deeply the apple is interconnected with the world – the apple would not exist without the rain, the sunshine, the soil and the farmer who planted the seed. These are just a few of the causes and conditions that allow the apple to exist.

The apple is because of all these other things. An apple is not just a piece of fruit. The apple is also part rain, part sunlight, part soil, part farmer.

After meditation, an apple goes back to being an apple again. The meditator continues to call it an “apple,” but they understand its true nature. Hanh calls this sense of connection “interbeing.”

The apple insight applies to any object: a mountain, a river, a tree, a person.

In my research, I explore how the insights gained by practicing meditation can change how we live our daily lives. Inspired by Hanh, in my forthcoming book “On Mindful Democracy: A Declaration of Interdependence to Mend a Fractured World,” I explore what happens when we make “interbeing” – or interdependence – the foundation of democracy.

The essence of interbeing

In his book “The Other Shore,” Hanh recounts how he coined the term “interbeing” during a retreat in California in the 1980s, while guiding a mindfulness meditation on the nature of a chair.

He asked his students to look at the chair and notice the trees, sunshine, rain and clouds in it. He then wondered aloud if there was a word in English or French that could capture the reality that a chair is made up of things other than a chair: “I asked if the word ‘togetherness’ would do. Somebody said that it sounded strange, so I suggested the word ‘interbeing.’”

Hanh explains that interbeing means “this is because that is.” No rain means no tree, and no tree means no apple and no chair.

According to Hanh, this knowledge can help us to live a happier life because it reveals the miracle of existence.

Consider all the causes and conditions that had to happen exactly as they did for an apple to exist. Had there been a drought that killed the tree when it was young, or a late spring freeze that stunted the apple flower, or had a person chopped the tree down to make space for a housing development, this particular apple would not exist. The apple is a small miracle composed of many other small miracles.

From what I noticed staying at the Plum Village monastery Hanh established in southern France, people who practice mindfulness meditation in Hanh’s tradition are able to see miracles everywhere, because they recognize interbeing in daily life. Even commonplace activities can become special.

When drinking tea at Plum Village, for example, meditators are encouraged to “drink your cloud,” because the water in the tea was once a cloud that was once a river that will one day again fall from the sky as raindrops nourishing the apple trees.

A person is not (just) a person

The knowledge gained in meditation applies to people, too.

We as human beings are also interbeing. We are not separate from the world or each other. We are mutually interdependent. None of us would exist without rain, sunshine, food, a planet Earth – and the efforts of other people, including parents, neighbors, teachers, scientists, farmers and doctors.

A person is more than a single, solitary individual. We contain multitudes.

Seen from this perspective, being a human is miraculous. Think of how the stars had to align so that each of us could be here today. Had the Earth been a little farther from the Sun, or one of our ancestors slipped and fallen down a cliff before their children were conceived, we wouldn’t be here at all.

“People usually consider walking on water or in thin air a miracle. But I think the real miracle is to walk on earth,” Hanh wrote in his book “The Miracle of Mindfulness.” Each breath, each step, becomes a miracle in this practice of meditation.

Mindful democracy

Many of Hanh’s writings and talks were focused on drawing out the civic and ethical implications of interbeing. He believed that a better, more just world is possible if people are committed to cultivating an awareness of “the interconnectedness of all things.”

Everything is interdependent, so it’s not enough to focus on individual well-being while ignoring the well-being of others or the world.

“With the insight of interbeing – that we are inherently interconnected with all other beings – we know that when other people suffer less, we suffer less. And when we suffer less, other people suffer less,” Hanh observed.

As I explain in my new book, “On Mindful Democracy,” to foreground interbeing changes democracy.

It’s common today to talk about democracy as a partisan conflict and to interpret events through the lens of which party will win.

From the perspective of interbeing, we are interdependent, so we all win, or we all lose, together. To practice meditation is to see that underneath our partisan disagreements, we are interconnected. I therefore define mindful democracy as the practice of caring for each other and for the miraculous life we share.

Concretely, this means building welcoming, vibrant communities where people can meditate on interbeing together. It means learning to disagree – and still work together to reduce suffering – without turning each other into enemies.

Life is a shared project, and all of us benefit when we cooperate to ensure that there is less suffering, and more joy, in the world.

Jeremy David Engels does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Meditating on the connectedness of life could help reunite a divided country – here’s how ‘interbeing’ works – https://theconversation.com/meditating-on-the-connectedness-of-life-could-help-reunite-a-divided-country-heres-how-interbeing-works-269919

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Giovanni Luca Cascio Rizzo, Assistant Professor of Marketing, University of Southern California

When people use hand gestures that visually represent what they’re saying, listeners see them as more clear, competent and persuasive. That’s the key finding from my new research published in the Journal of Marketing Research, where I analyzed thousands of TED Talks and ran controlled experiments to examine how gestures shape communication.

Talking with your hands

Whether you’re giving a presentation, pitching an idea or leading a meeting, you probably spend most of your prep time thinking about what you’ll say. But what about the ways you’ll move your hands?

I grew up in Italy, where gesturing is practically a second language. Now that I live in the United States, I’ve become acutely aware of how cultures differ in how, and how much, people move their hands when they talk. Still, across contexts and cultures, one thing is constant: People do talk with their hands.

As someone who studies communication, I’d noticed how some speakers seemed instantly clearer when they gestured. This made me wonder: Do gestures actually make communicators more effective?

The short answer is yes, but only when the gestures visually represent the idea you’re talking about. Researchers call these movements “illustrators.” For example:

• When talking about distance, you might spread your hands apart while saying something is “farther away.”
• When explaining how two concepts relate, you might bring your hands together while saying “these ideas fit together.”
• When describing how the market demand “is going up and down,” you could visually depict a wave shape with your hands.

To study gestures at scale, my team and I analyzed 200,000 video segments from more than 2,000 TED Talks using AI tools that can detect and classify hand gestures frame by frame. We paired this with controlled experiments in which our study participants evaluated entrepreneurs pitching a product.

The same pattern of results appeared in both settings. In the AI-analyzed TED Talk data, illustrative gestures predicted higher audience evaluations, reflected in more than 33 million online “likes” of the videos. And in our experiments, 1,600 participants rated speakers who used illustrative gestures as more clear, competent and persuasive.

How hands can help get your point across

What I found is that these gestures give listeners a visual shortcut to your meaning. They make abstract ideas feel more concrete, helping listeners build a mental picture of what you’re saying. This makes the message feel easier to process – a phenomenon psychologists call “processing fluency.” And we found that when ideas feel easier to grasp, people tend to see the speaker as more competent and persuasive.

But not all gestures help. Movements that don’t match the message – like random waving, fidgeting or pointing to things in the space – offer no such benefit. In some cases, they can even distract.

A practical takeaway: Focus on clarity over choreography. Think about where your hands naturally illustrate what you’re saying – emphasizing size, direction or emotion – and let them move with purpose.

What’s next

Your hands aren’t just accessories to your words. They can be a powerful tool to make your ideas resonate.

I’m now investigating whether people can learn to gesture better – almost like developing a nonverbal vocabulary. Early pilot tests are promising: Even a 5-minute training session helps people become clearer and more effective through the use of appropriate hand gestures.

While my research examined how individual gestures work together with spoken language, the next step is to understand what makes a communicator effective with their voice and, ultimately, across all the channels they use to communicate – how gestures combine with voice, facial expressions and body movement. I’m now exploring AI tools that track all these channels at once so I can identify the patterns, not just the isolated gestures, that make speakers more effective communicators.

Giovanni Luca Cascio Rizzo does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. People who talk with their hands seem more clear and persuasive – new research – https://theconversation.com/people-who-talk-with-their-hands-seem-more-clear-and-persuasive-new-research-270352

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Chris Impey, University Distinguished Professor of Astronomy, University of Arizona

If you look across space with a telescope, you’ll see countless galaxies, most of which host large central black holes, billions of stars and their attendant planets. The universe teems with huge, spectacular objects, and it might seem like these massive objects should hold most of the universe’s matter.

But the Big Bang theory predicts that about 5% of the universe’s contents should be atoms made of protons, neutrons and electrons. Most of those atoms cannot be found in stars and galaxies – a discrepancy that has puzzled astronomers.

If not in visible stars and galaxies, the most likely hiding place for the matter is in the dark space between galaxies. While space is often referred to as a vacuum, it isn’t completely empty. Individual particles and atoms are dispersed throughout the space between stars and galaxies, forming a dark, filamentary network called the “cosmic web.”

Throughout my career as an astronomer, I’ve studied this cosmic web, and I know how difficult it is to account for the matter spread throughout space.

In a study published in June 2025, a team of scientists used a unique radio technique to complete the census of normal matter in the universe.

The census of normal matter

The most obvious place to look for normal matter is in the form of stars. Gravity gathers stars together into galaxies, and astronomers can count galaxies throughout the observable universe.

The census comes to several hundred billion galaxies, each made of several hundred billion stars. The numbers are uncertain because many stars lurk outside of galaxies. That’s an estimated 10²³ stars in the universe, or hundreds of times more than the number of sand grains on all of Earth’s beaches. There are an estimated 10⁸² atoms in the universe.

However, this prodigious number falls far short of accounting for all the matter predicted by the Big Bang. Careful accounting indicates that stars contain only 0.5% of the matter in the universe. Ten times more atoms are presumably floating freely in space. Just 0.03% of the matter is elements other than hydrogen and helium, including carbon and all the building blocks of life.

Looking between galaxies

The intergalactic medium – the space between galaxies – is near-total vacuum, with a density of one atom per cubic meter, or one atom every 35 cubic feet. That’s less than a billionth of a billionth of the density of air on Earth. Even at this very low density, this diffuse medium adds up to a lot of matter, given the enormous, 92-billion-light-year diameter of the universe.

The intergalactic medium is very hot, with a temperature of millions of degrees. That makes it difficult to observe except with X-ray telescopes, since very hot gas radiates out through the universe at very short X-ray wavelengths. X-ray telescopes have limited sensitivity because they are smaller than most optical telescopes.

Deploying a new tool

Astronomers recently used a new tool to solve this missing matter problem. Fast radio bursts are intense blasts of radio waves that can put out as much energy in a millisecond as the Sun puts out in three days. First discovered in 2007, scientists found that the bursts are caused by compact stellar remnants in distant galaxies. Their energy peters out as the bursts travel through space, and by the time that energy reaches the Earth, it is a thousand times weaker than a mobile phone signal would be if emitted on the Moon, then detected on Earth.

Research from early 2025 suggests the source of the bursts is the highly magnetic region around an ultra-compact neutron star. Neutron stars are incredibly dense remnants of massive stars that have collapsed under their own gravity after a supernova explosion. The particular type of neutron star that emits radio bursts is called a magnetar, with a magnetic field a thousand trillion times stronger than the Earth’s.

Even though astronomers don’t fully understand fast radio bursts, they can use them to probe the spaces between galaxies. As the bursts travel through space, interactions with electrons in the hot intergalactic gas preferentially slow down longer wavelengths. The radio signal is spread out, analogous to the way a prism turns sunlight into a rainbow. Astronomers use the amount of spreading to calculate how much gas the burst has passed through on its way to Earth.

Puzzle solved

In the new study, published in June 2025, a team of astronomers from Caltech and the Harvard Center for Astrophysics studied 69 fast radio bursts using an array of 110 radio telescopes in California. The team found that 76% of the universe’s normal matter lies in the space between galaxies, with another 15% in galaxy halos – the area surrounding the visible stars in a galaxy – and the remaining 9% in stars and cold gas within galaxies.

The complete accounting of normal matter in the universe provides a strong affirmation of the Big Bang theory. The theory predicts the abundance of normal matter formed in the first few minutes of the universe, so by recovering the predicted 5%, the theory passes a critical test.

Several thousand fast radio bursts have already been observed, and an upcoming array of radio telescopes will likely increase the discovery rate to 10,000 per year. Such a large sample will let fast radio bursts become powerful tools for cosmology. Cosmology is the study of the size, shape and evolution of the universe. Radio bursts could go beyond counting atoms to mapping the three-dimensional structure of the cosmic web.

Pie chart of the universe

Scientists may now have the complete picture of where normal matter is distributed, but most of the universe is still made up of stuff they don’t fully understand.

The most abundant ingredients in the universe are dark matter and dark energy, both of which are poorly understood. Dark energy is causing the accelerating expansion of the universe, and dark matter is the invisible glue that holds galaxies and the universe together.

Dark matter is probably a previously unstudied type of fundamental particle that is not part of the standard model of particle physics. Physicists haven’t been able to detect this novel particle yet, but we know it exists because, according to general relativity, mass bends light, and far more gravitational lensing is seen than can be explained by visible matter. With gravitational lensing, a cluster of galaxies bends and magnifies light in a way that’s analogous to an optical lens. Dark matter outweighs conventional matter by more than a factor of five.

One mystery may be solved, but a larger mystery remains. While dark matter is still enigmatic, we now know a lot about the normal atoms making up us as humans, and the world around us.

Chris Impey has received funding from NASA, NSF, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, and the Templeton Foundation.

– ref. Most normal matter in the universe isn’t found in planets, stars or galaxies – an astronomer explains where it’s distributed – https://theconversation.com/most-normal-matter-in-the-universe-isnt-found-in-planets-stars-or-galaxies-an-astronomer-explains-where-its-distributed-269313

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Eric Gilbertson, Associate Teaching Professor of Mechanical Engineering, Seattle University

In the middle of a chilly October night in 2025, my two friends and I suited up at the Cottonwood Creek trailhead and started a trek into the Sangre de Cristo mountains of Colorado. It was a little below freezing as we got moving at 1:30 a.m., and the Moon illuminated the snowy mountaintops above us.

Our packs were a bit heavier than normal because we were hauling highly accurate surveying equipment to the summits of two peaks, each over 14,000 feet (4,267.2 meters). The peaks, Crestone and East Crestone, were close enough in height, with a short enough saddle in between, that only the taller of the two would count as a true 14er and the other as a sub-peak.

Crestone had traditionally been thought to be taller and sees hundreds of ascents each year. East Crestone, traditionally believed to be shorter, sees only a fraction as many ascents. Colorado has 58 mountain peaks over 14,000 feet that peakbaggers consider 14ers. For locals and visitors alike, bagging a 14er is a sport, and some people post reports about having climbed all 58.

I wanted to measure which was taller, since I suspected previous measurements people had trusted for years might be erroneous.

I teach mountain surveying, and I climb and research mountains around the world for fun. I’m trying to climb the highest mountain in every country on Earth. I have so far climbed 147 of 196, including tough, high-altitude technical ones such as K2 without supplemental oxygen in Pakistan and Pobeda in Kyrgyzstan.

Through my experience climbing, I discovered that not all countries in the world have been surveyed accurately enough to know the country’s true high point. The high point is geographically significant, as it’s the highest natural point or peak in the country, state or province. Often, high points are a source of national or state pride. I taught myself surveying to determine and verify these high points on my own.

Discovering high points around the world

I’ve so far discovered new high points in seven countries: Colombia – Pico Simón Bolívar; Saudi Arabia – Jabal Ferwa; Uzbekistan – Alpomish; Togo – Mount Atilakoutse; Gambia – Sare Firasu Hill; Guinea Bissau – Mount Ronde; and Botswana – Monalanong Hill.

I’ve surveyed over 60 peaks in the U.S. and Canada. In 2025 I discovered a new state high point in Michigan, Mount Curwood, at 1,979.3 feet (603.3 meters), and a new provincial high point of Nova Scotia, Western Barren, at 1,743.2 feet (531.3 meters).

I’ve determined the 100 highest peaks in Washington state, where I live and work, and studied how climate change is affecting the elevations of ice-capped peaks. My research showed that, while historically the contiguous U.S. had five ice-capped peaks, only two remain – Liberty Cap and Colfax, both in Washington state. Mount Rainier used to have as its highest point an ice dome named Columbia Crest on the western rim of the summit crater. But since 1998, Columbia Crest has melted more than 20 feet (6 meters) and is no longer the highest point on the mountain. The highest point is now a rock 436 feet (133 meters) to the south, on the southwest edge of the summit crater.

How to survey mountain high points

Surveying mountains is challenging due to the altitude, long approaches, difficult weather conditions and technical climbing. To get accurate surveying equipment to the summits requires ingenuity and specialized gear. Equipment needs to be as light as possible and adaptable to tricky terrain. For these reasons, very few mountains have been surveyed to the level of accuracy I can attain.

Historically, measurements have generally been made from a distance with theodolites. These are mechanical devices that can measure an angle up to a mountain summit very accurately. The distance to the mountain can be measured by other means, and trigonometry can be used with the distance and angle to calculate the summit elevation. But if the measurement is taken too far away, the error in elevation can be high. Theodolites are heavy and not easy to carry close to a peak.

I sometimes carry a 30-pound (13.61 kg) theodolite to a summit, but if the mountain is technical, this is challenging and requires complicated rope systems to haul it up. More often I bring an Abney level, which is a lighter mechanical device that also measures angles. I bring this to a summit to measure relative angles between nearby points to identify which is the highest point on the mountain.

I then use a highly accurate, survey-grade GPS to measure the absolute elevation of the highest point. The GPS requires an hour or more to get an accurate measurement, so it wouldn’t make sense timewise to measure many nearby points with this device. I’ve found time is usually limited when surveying a summit, due to incoming storms or approaching darkness when descents need to be made in daylight for safety. This is why I first identify the highest point with an Abney level or theodolite.

Many satellites overhead send data down that is collected by the GPS device and used to calculate the device’s position. To save weight, I use a device that then sends measurements over Bluetooth to my phone instead of requiring a dedicated computer.

A GPS receiver generally needs to be mounted on a vertical rod that touches the exact summit. I measure the GPS height, subtract the rod height, and that gives the summit height. To keep the rod perfectly vertical I use a tripod, and this also requires innovation.

Sometimes a summit is so sharp that regular tripod legs aren’t long enough to touch the ground. In this case, I strap on hiking poles to extend the legs. Another solution is to use a tripod with flexible legs, and I mold the legs to conform to the shape of a sharp boulder. This is what I used to measure the high point of Uzbekistan.

Another tool I use is LiDAR, which stands for light detection and ranging. This works by an airplane flying over a mountain and bouncing light signals off the summit. By using the plane’s location and the time it takes the signal to bounce back, the mountain’s elevation can be calculated.

Colorado 14ers

All measurements can have errors. I traveled to Colorado because I suspected LiDAR measurements of Crestone Peak, considered a 14er, might be erroneous. LiDAR measurements have been taken for nearly all mountains in Colorado, and these measurements are generally the most accurate available for mountain elevations.

LiDAR measurements hit the ground every few feet of horizontal spacing and can miss the top of sharp summits, leading to an underestimate of summit height. They can also hit things such as bushes, leading to an overestimate of summit height.

LiDAR data showed Crestone Peak and East Crestone within a few feet of the same height. But, interestingly, it showed a 3-4 foot (0.9-1.2 meter) spike on the top of Crestone. I climbed Crestone in 2020 while doing the Rocky Mountain Slam, a challenge to climb all the Colorado 14ers, Wyoming 13ers and Montana 12ers in two months, and knew the summit was pretty flat. I speculated that spike could have easily been a person, which meant the LiDAR elevation of Crestone might be too high.

East Crestone has a sharp boulder on the summit, which LiDAR could easily miss because of the horizontal gaps between measurements. So that elevation was possibly too short. In Colorado a point needs 300 feet (91.44 meters) of prominence to count as a separate peak. Other states have different rules, like in Washington where 400 feet (121.92 meters) is required. Prominence is a measure of how high a peak sticks up above a saddle connecting it to a taller peak. The saddle between Crestone and East Crestone is short enough that only the taller of them is a true peak and the other is a sub-peak.

On East Crestone I first set up a tall tripod, but the wind blew it down, nearly over a cliff. I switched it out with a shorter one, which was more stable.

I then scrambled over to Crestone Peak and mounted another identical GPS device. That summit was on the edge of a cliff, and I needed to extend one tripod leg with a hiking pole so it could touch the ground.

I logged data for over two hours with both devices simultaneously. This ensured both were receiving the same satellite signals – so any atmospheric distortion would be the same – and that enough data was logged so I could get elevations accurate to the nearest inch. This gave me a lot of time to admire the views and take pictures, but I also needed to check on the equipment every 5-10 minutes to ensure it was working properly.

After packing up, hiking down and flying home to Seattle, I spent a few weeks poring over the data. The results showed East Crestone is 0.3 feet (0.09 meters) taller than Crestone, with more than 99.9% confidence that East Crestone is taller.

This means Colorado has a new 14er: East Crestone. Crestone is, in fact, a sub-peak. Discussions are ongoing about whether this means the 14ers list that peakbaggers climb should retain Crestone and add East Crestone to be 59 peaks, or whether East Crestone should replace Crestone so the list stays at 58 peaks.

I’m planning to continue my work surveying mountains in Colorado and around the world to determine accurate summit elevations. My next plan is surveying several country high points in Africa this winter. The Benin country high point is still not known, and I hope to solve that mystery next.

Read more of our stories about Colorado.

Eric Gilbertson receives funding from The American Alpine Club.

– ref. Measuring Colorado’s mountains one hike at a time – https://theconversation.com/measuring-colorados-mountains-one-hike-at-a-time-269343

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Graeme Mack, Visiting Assistant Professor of History, University of Richmond

The Declaration of Independence’s 250th anniversary in 2026 is certain to be a time of national reflection.

Americans tend to look to the Constitution to assess whether the nation is living up to its founding principles when navigating major social and political issues.

But it is the declaration, signed on July 4, 1776, that declares the nation’s credo, that “all men are created equal.”

Throughout history, Americans have turned to the declaration for guidance about what the nation should stand for.

As a historian of the United States and the coordinator for the University of Richmond’s Forging a New Nation initiative, which commemorates the Declaration of Independence’s 250th anniversary, I have been thinking a lot about this phenomenon.

Particularly during times of social and political upheaval, Americans have sought out the Declaration of Independence when they wanted to remedy contemporary problems and create new visions for the country’s future. Many of the nation’s greatest leaders have praised and memorialized its rhetoric and ideas in the promotion of their own.

Inalienable rights?

During the turbulent 1850s, the divisive issue of slavery permeated every facet of American life and challenged basic precepts of American freedom.

In his 1852 speech “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?” Frederick Douglass, the formerly enslaved abolitionist, used the declaration to set a standard for American society. As a Black American, Douglass insisted he was “not included within the pale” who enjoyed the “inalienable rights” articulated in the declaration.

Nonetheless, the “great principles of the Declaration” gave Douglass hope and cause for optimism. He predicted that the “glorious hour” would soon arrive when all Americans would be defined “by equal birth.”

Conceived in liberty

In its 1857 Dred Scott v. Sanford decision, the Supreme Court denied Black Americans the rights of citizenship.

Abraham Lincoln denounced the decision and countered by defining a more capacious view of American freedom based on the declaration.

Lincoln told one audience that Thomas Jefferson and the signers of the declaration “set up a standard maxim for free society,” which they “intended to include all men” and to be “constantly looked to, constantly labored for.”

Their goal, Lincoln said, was “augmenting the happiness and value of life to all people of all colors everywhere.”

As civil war ravaged the country and claimed thousands of American lives, Lincoln again drew on the declaration to articulate a vision for the country as president.

In his 1863 Gettysburg Address, commemorating the dead on that Pennsylvania battlefield, Lincoln described the United States as a “nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.”

The nation, he said, was undergoing a “new birth of freedom” as it waged war on slavery and defended its government against domestic rebellion.

Self-evident truth

Seventy years later, the declaration provided inspiration for President Franklin D. Roosevelt as he steered the nation through a crippling economic depression and the run-up to a world war. Roosevelt advocated for building America’s first social safety net by drawing on the declaration.

Reflecting Roosevelt’s aims, the 1936 Democratic Party platform illustrated this rhetorical strategy, borrowing from the declaration at its very beginning: “We hold this truth to be self evident – that government in a modern civilization has certain inescapable obligations to its citizens.”

During his 1944 State of the Union Address, Roosevelt said the nation was built on the rights embedded in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. But, he argued, “true individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence.”

All created equal

Amid the political and social upheaval of the 1960s, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. drew directly and self-consciously on the declaration.

In his 1963 “I Have a Dream” speech, King defined an America that “guaranteed unalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” to its citizens.

Though the nation had “defaulted on this promissory note insofar as its citizens of color are concerned,” King said, the declaration still offered him hope: “I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal.”

In 2025, Americans saw the deployment of U.S. troops in major cities, as well as mass immigrant deportations. These changes have upended communities and challenged basic norms of civil society. They have also challenged Americans’ understanding of themselves as a nation of immigrants.

With the declaration’s anniversary coming up at a time when so much about contemporary society and politics are being contested, Americans may well return once again to this founding document to define themselves as a people and a nation.

Graeme Mack does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Declaration of Independence’s promises ring out today as loudly as they did for Lincoln, FDR and through 249 years of US history – https://theconversation.com/declaration-of-independences-promises-ring-out-today-as-loudly-as-they-did-for-lincoln-fdr-and-through-249-years-of-us-history-269355

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Stuart Soroka, Professor, Communications and Political Science, University of California, Los Angeles

Accounts of Zohran Mamdani’s campaign for New York City mayor have highlighted both his online presence and his ground game.

Mamdani won the general election with 50.4% of the vote, a larger share than was predicted by most polls, and his get-out-the-vote campaign has received some of the credit. Mamdani claims that his campaign had over 100,000 volunteers knocking on doors across New York City.

This focus on on-the-ground mobilization stands out given the increasing attention devoted to online campaigning over the past 15 years.

Particularly during that time period, online platforms have been a major focus of political campaigns and campaign research. Targeted advertising and new media strategies are increasingly viewed as central to campaign success. So is coverage of the campaign by legacy and social media more generally.

Moreover, solid empirical evidence of the effectiveness of door-to-door canvassing is limited. Recent work finds very few effects of in-person canvassing, except in very specific circumstances. One recent paper suggests that door-to-door canvassing by the candidate can make a difference to election outcomes. But in a race in New York City, it is not likely that Mamdani himself was able to reach enough voters to make a difference.

How much did Mamdani’s ground game contribute to his victory? As a political communication scholar, I know that assessing the impact of different methods used by political campaigns is difficult – in part because political campaigns include multiple lines of communication.

‘Hybrid’ campaigns

No campaign exists in isolation — nearly every candidate’s campaign occurs alongside opposing candidates’ campaigns. The effects of one campaign are often masked by the countering effects of the other.

The size of a campaign on one platform also tends to be correlated with the size of that candidate’s campaign on other platforms. When television advertising increases alongside social media advertising and door-to-door canvassing, identifying the effects of any single platform can be difficult.

Clever research designs are in some instances able to identify effects. These generally find that the impact of not just door-knocking but also ads and online advertising can be relatively limited.

In the modern technological environment, the impact of any single aspect of a campaign may be especially difficult to assess. Campaigning increasingly occurs in what researchers have called a “hybrid media” environment. Campaigns are waged in person, on the news and across multiple social media.

Each of these platforms comes with different advantages and disadvantages. Each also prioritizes different kinds of information.

Plainly stating your policy platform may work for coverage of a campaign stop on the evening news. But if you want that policy to go viral on TikTok, then you may need to add a dance – or an influencer.

Find volunteers online, send them knocking

Candidates have increasingly recognized the need to tailor messages for different communication platforms, such as television ads, Facebook posts and TikToks, building hybrid campaigns that attempt to spread a message across multiple, different spaces.

This interactivity across platforms has been especially evident in postelection assessments of the Mamdani campaign. His social media campaign was adept at producing the kinds of content that attract attention online. That campaign also appears to have been able to convert online engagement into real-world activism, including door-to-door canvassing.

There have been growing concerns among academics and campaign organizers about “slacktivism” — activism that amounts to one or two clicks online but nothing more. One worry is that a quick online endorsement may in some instances give people a sense that they have done their share and limit more active forms of engagement. The Mamdani campaign appears to have overcome this problem, at least in part.

But 100,000 people knocking on doors probably does not happen without the success of an online campaign. Finding and mobilizing campaigners was one important focus of Mamdani’s engagement online, after all.

Do it yourself − then repeat on socials

In-person campaigning by Mamdani, on the street and in the taxi line, is almost certainly made more effective through circulation on Instagram and TikTok.

Using mass media to broadcast campaign stops is not new, of course.

The construction of campaign stops that produce good social media content is becoming more common, however. The ways in which campaigns unfold in person are increasingly intertwined with the way they unfold online.

In this way, the Mamdani campaign may have been a textbook example of a modern hybrid campaign and an illustration of the coevolution of digital and on-the-ground campaigning.

To be clear, the success of the Mamdani campaign is probably not about his online presence or his ground game, but both at the same time.

Stuart Soroka research has been funded from the National Science Foundation and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

– ref. Everything everywhere all at once: How Zohran Mamdani campaigned both online and with a ground game – https://theconversation.com/everything-everywhere-all-at-once-how-zohran-mamdani-campaigned-both-online-and-with-a-ground-game-269693

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Tiziano Piccardi, Assistant Professor of Computer Science, Johns Hopkins University

Reducing the visibility of polarizing content in social media feeds can measurably lower partisan animosity. To come up with this finding, my colleagues and I developed a method that let us alter the ranking of people’s feeds, previously something only the social media companies could do.

Reranking social media feeds to reduce exposure to posts expressing anti-democratic attitudes and partisan animosity affected people’s emotions and their views of people with opposing political views.

I’m a computer scientist who studies social computing, artificial intelligence and the web. Because only social media platforms can modify their algorithms, we developed and released an open-source web tool that allowed us to rerank the feeds of consenting participants on X, formerly Twitter, in real time.

Drawing on social science theory, we used a large language model to identify posts likely to polarize people, such as those advocating political violence or calling for the imprisonment of members of the opposing party. These posts were not removed; they were simply ranked lower, requiring users to scroll further to see them. This reduced the number of those posts users saw.

We ran this experiment for 10 days in the weeks before the 2024 U.S. presidential election. We found that reducing exposure to polarizing content measurably improved participants’ feelings toward people from the opposing party and reduced their negative emotions while scrolling their feed. Importantly, these effects were similar across political affiliations, suggesting that the intervention benefits users regardless of their political party.

Why it matters

A common misconception is that people must choose between two extremes: engagement-based algorithms or purely chronological feeds. In reality, there is a wide spectrum of intermediate approaches depending on what they are optimized to do.

Feed algorithms are typically optimized to capture your attention, and as a result, they have a significant impact on your attitudes, moods and perceptions of others. For this reason, there is an urgent need for frameworks that enable independent researchers to test new approaches under realistic conditions.

Our work offers a path forward, showing how researchers can study and prototype alternative algorithms at scale, and it demonstrates that, thanks to large language models, platforms finally have the technical means to detect polarizing content that can affect their users’ democratic attitudes.

What other research is being done in this field

Testing the impact of alternative feed algorithms on live platforms is difficult, and such studies have only recently increased in number.

For instance, a recent collaboration between academics and Meta found that changing the algorithmic feed to a chronological one was not sufficient to show an impact on polarization. A related effort, the Prosocial Ranking Challenge led by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, explores ranking alternatives across multiple platforms to promote beneficial social outcomes.

At the same time, the progress in large language model development enables richer ways to model how people think, feel and interact with others. We are seeing growing interest in giving users more control, allowing people to decide what principles should guide what they see in their feeds – for example the Alexandria library of pluralistic values and the Bonsai feed reranking system. Social media platforms, including Bluesky and X, are heading this way, as well.

What’s next

This study represents our first step toward designing algorithms that are aware of their potential social impact. Many questions remain open.

We plan to investigate the long-term effects of these interventions and test new ranking objectives to address other risks to online well-being, such as mental health and life satisfaction. Future work will explore how to balance multiple goals, such as cultural context, personal values and user control, to create online spaces that better support healthy social and civic interaction.

The Research Brief is a short take on interesting academic work.

This research was partially supported by a Hoffman-Yee grant from the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence.

– ref. Down-ranking polarizing content lowers emotional temperature on social media – new research – https://theconversation.com/down-ranking-polarizing-content-lowers-emotional-temperature-on-social-media-new-research-271071