Category: The Conversation – UK

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Erhan Kilincarslan, Reader in Accounting and Finance, University of Huddersfield

UK inflation may be easing, but many households still find their weekly shop getting more expensive. One key reason is something not captured in headline prices: shrinkflation, where manufacturers reduce pack sizes without reducing the price.

Shrinkflation has become more common thanks to the steep increase in the cost of living in recent years. A 2025 YouGov survey found that 80% of UK adults are “very” or “fairly” concerned about shrinkflation – up from 75% in 2023. But the same survey found that fewer consumers are changing habits to avoid it.

At the same time, grocery inflation was 5.1% in the year to November 2025, with staples such as chocolate shrinking or rising sharply in unit cost.

Shrinkflation is more than an annoying ruse by businesses. It’s a hidden redistribution of value from consumers to companies, and one that disproportionately affects lower-income households.

Shrinkflation is increasingly used as a strategy to pass rising production costs on to consumers in a way that is less noticeable than a direct price increase. This concept is well recognised in economics, although still poorly understood by much of the public.

How everyday products are shrinking

Evidence of shrinkflation in the UK is widespread. A 2024 analysis found that, by weight over the past decade, packets of digestive biscuits shrank by 28%, crisps by 17%, butter packs by 20% and breakfast cereals by 10% or more. Some brands have been bolder and have even reduced the number of advertised items in a pack.

These changes are rarely advertised. In some cases, consumers only notice when pack sizes look slightly smaller or when they run out of a product sooner than expected.

Individual examples continue to attract public frustration. Shrinkflation increases pressure on households even as inflation slows.

But inflation statistics don’t fully capture the real squeeze. The Office for National Statistics (ONS) adjusts inflation indices to account for changes in product size or quality by using quality-adjustment methods and scanner data to estimate changes in unit prices. These techniques struggle to capture frequent and subtle product resizing, however.

What’s more, these adjustments are technical – and consumers don’t experience inflation as economists measure it. In fact, the ONS has previously noted the complexity of tracking changing product sizes.

---

Read more:
The way UK inflation is worked out is changing – and it will matter for everyone

---

Even if headline inflation falls, shrinkflation means the effective price per gram, millilitre or portion may continue rising. This helps explain why many households feel worse off despite improving macroeconomic indicators such as a slowdown in inflation.

From a business perspective, shrinkflation is rational. Raw material prices, energy costs, transport, packaging and wages have all risen over recent years. Raising sticker prices risks losing customers, especially in a highly price-sensitive grocery market where discount and budget supermarkets feature heavily.

Shrinkflation is also subtler than increasing the sale price: consumers react more negatively to overt price rises than to slightly smaller products. Food business analysts note that companies increasingly rely on stealth reductions or ingredient changes to protect margins.

But this strategy carries risks. Brand-loyal shoppers may feel misled if they discover reductions after the fact. Research from the US suggests that shrinkflation can weaken long-term customer loyalty, pushing people towards own-brand alternatives.

Shrinkflation hurts some groups of consumers more than others:

1. lower-income consumers face the biggest relative cost, as they spend more of their budget on essentials

2. families may need to buy key items more frequently if the weight or number of products per pack fall

3. consumers with disabilities or limited mobility, who rely on consistent product weights for meal planning, may find sudden changes especially disruptive.

There is also a broader social effect: shrinkflation undermines trust in brands and retailers, erodes transparency and reinforces the perception that cost-of-living pressures are being unevenly shared.

So should regulators intervene? Unlike some countries, the UK does not require companies to label pack-size reductions explicitly. Unit pricing exists (such as prices displayed per 100g or per litre) but this is inconsistently applied and often difficult to see on shelf labels.

Consumer organisations have repeatedly called for clearer rules. A more rigorous and standardised unit-pricing framework would help shoppers understand value more easily. And given the scale of shrinkflation, there is a case for requiring clearer disclosure when pack sizes change.

Eating into purchasing power

For example, France requires retailers to display unit prices clearly and to inform consumers when a product’s size has been reduced without a corresponding price cut.

But public awareness is growing. Media investigations have found shrinkflation to be rife in the UK and put pressure on companies to justify the changes.

Shrinking products are not merely an annoyance. They are part of a broader shift in how companies respond to cost pressures – and how households experience inflation.

While UK grocery inflation remains high and many consumers have done things like trade down – from beef to pork, for example – shrinkflation erodes purchasing power without public debate or transparency.

Recognising shrinkflation as a meaningful economic trend, not just a marketing choice, is essential for understanding how inflation is experienced by households, especially when official measures suggest price pressures are easing. Policymakers, retailers and regulators should consider how to make pricing clearer and consumer choice more genuine.

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

– ref. Shrinkflation: smaller products hurt some households more than others – and can be bad for business – https://theconversation.com/shrinkflation-smaller-products-hurt-some-households-more-than-others-and-can-be-bad-for-business-272573

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Timothy Neal Coulson, Professor of Zoology and Joint Head of Department of Biology, University of Oxford

The woolly rhino, Coelodonta antiquitatis, would have been an impressive sight to the ancient people who painted images of them on cave walls and carved figurines of them out of bone, antler, ivory and wood.

The sadly now extinct rhino lived on the steppes and tundra of Europe and Asia, living alongside people for thousands of years. And a new study of woolly rhino DNA, extracted from the stomach of a wolf challenges a long held belief about species at risk of extinction.

The species, which evolved in the middle of the Pleistocene era, approximately half a million years ago, weighed up to three tonnes. It was similar in size to the two largest rhino species alive today, the white rhino of southern and eastern Africa and the one-horned rhino of India.

The woolly rhino was well adapted to live in ice age conditions. It had a thick layer of fat below the skin, a warm, woolly fleece and small ears and tail to minimise heat loss. It also had a shoulder hump to store fat, to help it survive through periods of food scarcity, and a horn that, in exceptional cases, could grow to 1.6 metres in length.

Abrasions on horns have led biologists to suspect that the rhino used its front horn (the species had two horns, like most species of rhino alive today) to sweep aside snow so it could access the grass and shrubs on which it fed.

At their peak, woolly rhinos could be found from the Iberian peninsula in the west to northeastern Siberia in the east. If it was cold, and there was grass to eat, they seemed to do well. But by around 14,000 years ago, they were gone.

Woolly rhinos were a victim of a changing climate, which made their habitat steadily vanish. The mammoth steppes they lived on were replaced by first a shrubbier habitat and eventually forest. They were also occasionally hunted by people, and that didn’t help them. A lack of good habitat, with a helping hand from the most efficient predator to have ever evolved, signed their death knell.

When a species experiences a long period of decline before eventually disappearing, scientists expect to detect signs its impending doom in its genome. As populations shrink, genetic diversity is lost from a population and inbreeding increases. This means that the last animals to be born are likely to have parents who were closely related.

As a species heads towards extinction, animals in the final few cohorts typically become ever more inbred. Because the woolly rhino’s extinction was thought to be a long, drawn-out affair, scientists assumed that individuals living 15,000 years ago would start to show genetic signatures of inbreeding. The findings of a recent paper from a team by led by Solveig Guðjónsdóttir are consequently quite a surprise.

The woolly rhino sample came from the frozen remains of an ice age wolf discovered in permafrost near the village of Tumat in north-eastern Siberia. When the ancient wolf was autopsied, the researchers identified a small fragment of preserved tissue in its stomach.

The team Guðjónsdóttir led skilfully sequenced the remains of a 14,400-year woolly rhino found in the stomach of the wolf pup. Both the wolf and rhino died just a few centuries before the woolly giant disappeared.

A healthy adult woolly rhino would have been too big for a pack of wolves to take down and kill, so it seems probable that the remains were either scavenged, or from a baby. Regardless of the source of the meal, analysis of the genome revealed that the woolly rhino was not inbred.

The genetic diversity of an individual can also be used to estimate the population size of breeding individuals using a statistical method called Pairwise Sequentially Markovian Coalescent modelling (PSMC). PSMC models compare differences between genome sequences on the two strands of DNA each individual has, one from each parent.

The model uses this information to estimate the distribution of times since each bit of the sequence shared a common ancestor. The greater the difference between the two strands of DNA, the greater the genetic difference between the parents, and the larger the population size would have been.

As part of the study, the researchers analysed two older woolly rhino genomes that had already been published and compared them to the new specimen. Their analysis showed that although the population of woolly rhinos had declined since its peak, it was still sufficiently large to maintain genetic diversity.

Guðjónsdóttir’s paper is important for two reasons. First, it is a wonderful demonstration of how DNA retrieved from the most unlikely of sources can tells us about population declines from millennia ago.

Second, it shows we might need a little bit more research into how population declines of long extinct animals might influence the statistics that geneticists frequently use, and we might need to revisit our current understanding. The woolly rhinos range certainly contracted as the world warmed, and its population size shrank, but it might not have died out as genetically impoverished relic.

Maybe the woolly rhino held onto its genomic diversity for much longer than we think it should have. So, we should keep checking the stomach contents of long-dead predators found in the permafrost, however unpleasant that task might sound.

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

– ref. DNA from wolf pup’s last meal reveals new facts about woolly rhino’s extinction – https://theconversation.com/dna-from-wolf-pups-last-meal-reveals-new-facts-about-woolly-rhinos-extinction-273278

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Heba Ghazal, Senior Lecturer, Pharmacy, Kingston University

Urology departments in England and Wales have reported seeing an increase in the number of 16- to 24-year-olds being admitted for bladder inflammation associated with ketamine use.

This appears to coincide with an increase in ketamine use – with the number of adults and teens entering treatment for ketamine abuse last year jumping substantially compared to even just a few years previously.

Ketamine abuse can have many affects on the bladder, causing frequent urination, night-time urination, sudden urges, leakage, inflammation, pain in the bladder or lower back and blood in the urine. These symptoms can be severe, make daily life very difficult and may even be permanent in some cases.

Ketamine was first approved in 1970 for human use as an anaesthetic. More recently, studies have suggested that ketamine used at low doses may have antidepressant effects.

But a growing number of people are now using ketamine recreationally. It acts as a dissociative drug, causing users to feel detached from themselves and their surroundings. It can produce hallucinogenic, stimulant and pain-relieving effects, which last one to two hours.

Users typically snort or smoke powdered ketamine, or inject liquid ketamine or mix it into drinks in order to experience the drug’s effects. Snorting usually produces stronger effects and more noticeable symptoms than swallowing it.

Ketamine users can develop tolerance to the drug quickly, needing higher doses to get the same effects. This is probably due to the body and brain adapting to become more efficient at breaking down the drug. Frequent users often need to take twice the amount of occasional users to get the same effect.

Bladder damage

Frequent, high-dose ketamine use can cause serious damage to the bladder, urinary tract and kidneys. In severe cases, the bladder may need to be removed.

The first recorded cases of ketamine affecting the bladder were reported in Canada in 2007, where nine people who used ketamine recreationally had severe bladder problems and blood in their urine. Later, a bigger study in Hong Kong found the same issues in 59 people who had used ketamine for more than three months.

Ketamine, as with any other drug, is metabolised in the body where it’s broken down and excreted in urine.

When ketamine is broken down, it turns into chemicals that can seriously harm the bladder. When these by-products stay in contact with the urinary tract for a long time, they irritate and damage the tissue.

The bladder is damaged first, because it holds urine the longest. Later, the ureters (tubes connecting the kidney to the bladder) and the kidneys can also be affected.

Over time, the bladder can shrink and become stiff, causing strong urinary symptoms. The ureters can become narrow and bent, sometimes described as looking like a “walking stick.” This can lead to backed-up urine in the kidneys (hydronephrosis).

Ketamine also increases oxidative stress, which damages cells and causes bladder cells to die. This breaks the protective bladder lining, making it leaky and overly sensitive.

All these changes can make the bladder overactive, extremely sensitive and painful, often causing severe urges to urinate and incontinence.

Bladder damage from ketamine use happens in stages.

In the first stage, the bladder becomes inflamed. This can often be reversed by stopping ketamine and taking certain medication – such as anti-inflammatory drugs, pain relievers or prescription drugs that reduce bladder urgency and help the bladder lining heal.

In the second stage, the bladder can shrink or become stiff. In this stage, treatment is similar to stage one, but a bladder wash may also be required. This is where a catheter is used to put liquid medication directly into the bladder. The drug coats the bladder’s inner lining, helping to restore its protective layer and reduce inflammation.

Botulinum toxin injections may also be used to relax the bladder and reduce pain and urgency. Stopping ketamine remains essential to prevent further damage.

In the final stage, permanent damage occurs to the bladder and kidneys. Over time, if the kidneys are affected, it can lead to kidney failure. Dialysis (a treatment where waste products and excess fluid are filtered from the blood) or even surgery may be required to repair kidney function and the urinary system.

Although ketamine has been a class B drug since 2014, it’s unfortunately affordable and accessible – costing as little as £3 per gram in some parts of the UK. Raising awareness about the risks of ketamine use is essential to prevent these serious health problems.

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

– ref. Ketamine is giving more young people bladder problems – an expert explains – https://theconversation.com/ketamine-is-giving-more-young-people-bladder-problems-an-expert-explains-272921

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Leonie Fleischmann, Senior Lecturer in International Politics, City St George’s, University of London

Progress towards achieving Donald Trump’s 20-point peace plan for Gaza is stalling. Israeli strikes across the territory on January 9 killed 13 Palestinians, with new raids days later claiming three more lives. The situation has now reached a critical juncture, with both Israel and Hamas reportedly preparing for a resumption in fighting.

The first phase of the US-brokered ceasefire, which came into effect in October, has mostly been completed. Israel’s military has withdrawn to the eastern half of the Gaza Strip, as required by the agreement. And dozens of Israeli hostages, living and dead, have been exchanged with hundreds of Palestinian prisoners.

However, some elements still need to be finalised. This includes the return of the remaining Israeli hostage, Ran Gvili, whose remains are still unaccounted for. And while humanitarian aid has been allowed into Gaza, the southern Rafah border crossing has yet to be opened fully.

This is restricting the flow of goods at a time when the inhabitants of Gaza face an acute humanitarian crisis. Harsh weather conditions, limited shelter, severe food shortages and continued military actions continue to exacerbate the situation. The UN said on January 12 that at least 1.1 million people in Gaza still urgently need assistance.

Advancement towards a permanent end to the war and the reconstruction of Gaza is thus urgent. However, later phases of the peace plan will need to address thorny issues such as Gaza’s post-war governance, Palestinian calls for a state and Israel’s demand that Hamas disarms. The potential for the negotiations to derail are high.

Trump is reportedly set to announce the Gaza “peace board”, which will be formed of global leaders to administer his post-war plan for the territory. Nickolay Mladenov, a Bulgarian diplomat and former UN envoy to the Middle East, has been named as the board’s director general.

But any progress towards realising Trump’s vision for Gaza, and permanently ending Israeli military action, hinges on the issue of the disarmament of Hamas.

The Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has conditioned any progress in the peace plan on the demilitarisation of the Gaza Strip. This requires Hamas to relinquish all of its arms and hand over its governance of Gaza. These are non-negotiable demands from Israel for maintaining the ceasefire.

Hamas has said it will dissolve its existing government in Gaza once a committee of Palestinian technocrats takes over the territory. This committee will be headed by Ali Shaath, who previously served as the Palestinian Authority’s deputy transportation minister in the West Bank, and also includes Gaza chamber of commerce chairman Ayad Abu Ramadan.

But Hamas has so far publicly rejected giving up its arms. Some reports suggest that Hamas is ready to discuss “freezing or storing” its arsenal, while others have reported that Hamas would be willing to decommission its short- and long-range missiles. However, the group is not willing to give up its small arms and light weapons.

This is because Hamas believes it has a right to armed resistance as long as Israel is occupying Palestinian territory, with complete disarmament representing what the New York Times calls an “existential unravelling”. Unless resolved, the issue of disarmament will most likely lead to a resumption in fighting in the near future.

Plans for renewed hostilities

According to an unnamed Israeli official interviewed by the Wall Street Journal, if Hamas “doesn’t willingly give up its weapons, Israel would force it to do so”. Trump, following a meeting with Netanyahu at his Mar-a-Lago resort in December, has also said “there will be hell to pay” if Hamas does not agree to disarm.

But contrary to these directives, reports suggest that Hamas is focusing on rebuilding the infrastructure that was destroyed in Gaza during the past two years of war. This includes rebuilding its military capabilities and maze of tunnels, as well as replenishing its cash reserves through revenues generated by taxing goods and services coming into Gaza.

In early January, the Israel National News media network reported that Israeli intelligence has identified three main channels through which Hamas is attempting to rebuild its military capabilities. The first channel is the local production of weaponry, second is cooperation with the Iranian “axis of resistance” to leverage aid channels for military purposes, and third is using drones from Egypt to transfer weapons.

Further evidence of this is limited. However, Hamas was quick to reassert its power in Gaza after the ceasefire. And the New York Times reported in December that more than half of the group’s underground tunnel network is still intact and at least 20,000 Hamas fighters remain. This highlights the potential capacity for the group to reengage in fighting.

Expecting Hamas to refuse full disarmament, Israel has now reportedly drawn up plans to launch a renewed intensive military operation in Gaza in the spring. The focus of this operation would be on Gaza City, which remains largely under the control of Hamas.

Unless both sides engage in some pragmatism, or significant pressure is imposed on them to show restraint, the resumption of fighting seems inevitable. It will once again be the 2 million inhabitants of the Gaza Strip, who have already faced unimaginable loss and destruction and are struggling through a harsh winter, that will suffer.

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

– ref. Amid a rocky truce, Israel and Hamas prepare to resume fighting – https://theconversation.com/amid-a-rocky-truce-israel-and-hamas-prepare-to-resume-fighting-273268

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Richard K.F. Unsworth, Associate Professor in Marine Biology, Swansea University

The wellbeing benefits of nature are often linked to forests or habitats that support diverse pollinators. Spending time in green spaces reduces stress and anxiety, for example.

By contrast, the benefits of the ocean are more commonly associated with fishing, exciting creatures such as whales and dolphins, or adventure watersports, rather than as a living system that directly supports human wellbeing. Yet growing scientific evidence shows that marine biodiversity is fundamental to the health of people, animals and the planet.

The “one health” concept (a term now widely used by the World Health Organization) captures this connection by recognising that human health, animal health and environmental health are inseparable. Our new paper in the journal BioScience applies this idea to seagrass meadows for the first time. We argue that healthy coastal ecosystems such as seagrass meadows are not optional extras, but essential infrastructure for resilient societies.

Coastal seas host some of the most biologically rich ecosystems on Earth. Kelp forests, oyster reefs, saltmarshes and seagrass meadows form the foundation of complex food webs that support fisheries, regulate water quality and protect shorelines. These habitats influence everything from food security and livelihoods to exposure to pollution and disease.

---

Read more:
From fish to clean water, the ocean matters and here’s how to quantify the benefits

---

Take seagrass meadows as one example. These underwater flowering plants stabilise sediments, reduce wave energy and filter nutrients from coastal waters. The benefits ultimately reduce coastal flooding and make the environment cleaner. They also support young fish and invertebrates that later populate offshore fisheries.

Seagrass and water quality exist in a delicate balance. When the quality becomes too poor the seagrass becomes less abundant, and it’s then less able to act as a filter. This further exacerbates the water quality problems with implications for fish and other wildife.

Similar patterns are seen when kelp forests collapse or shellfish reefs are lost. This is why we need better recognition for the important roles these habitats play.

Marine biodiversity also helps regulate the Earth’s climate. Coastal habitats such as seagrass capture and store carbon and can reduce the negative effects of storms and flooding.

While saving these ecosystems can’t replace the need to cut greenhouse gas emissions, their loss can accelerate climate impacts at local and regional scales increasing risks to coastal communities.

Despite their importance, many marine ecosystems have been severely degraded. Pollution, overfishing, coastal development and warming seas have reduced biodiversity along coastlines around the globe.

These losses are rarely visible to the public as they’re hard to see. This is because these losses occur underwater and gradually. Yet their consequences are increasingly felt through declining fisheries, poorer water quality and greater vulnerability to extreme weather. These factors all ultimately affect our health and wellbeing.

Our new paper argues that restoring marine biodiversity requires a shift in how success is measured. Conservation and restoration efforts are often judged by the amount of hectares of habitat planting planted or short-term project outcomes. While these metrics are easy to calculate, they can obscure the real goal: the recovery of ecological function and long-term resilience.

A collaborative approach

This is where the one health perspective becomes particularly valuable. By linking environmental condition to human and animal health, it encourages collaboration across disciplines that rarely interact. Coastal management, public health, fisheries policy and climate adaptation are often treated separately yet they all depend on the same underlying ecosystems.

Examples from around the world show that biodiversity can do miraculous things, such as seagrass meadows trapping pathogens, reducing harmful bacteria in coastal waters that kills corals and contaminates seafood. That’s nature directly buffering human and animal health.

We also know that when habitat is degraded and lost, it displaces associated wildife. This can lead to greater interactions between wild and farmed animals. In the case of seagrass loss, typically we know that geese become displaced to farmland to graze. This has the potential to increase interactions with farmed animals and could enhance spread of diseases such as bird flu.

Recovery of our ocean habitats and the wildlife, plants and microbes that live there is possible. Where water quality improves and physical disturbance is reduced, marine habitats can rebound, bringing measurable benefits for biodiversity fisheries and coastal protection.

Importantly, the benefits then extend to people – cleaner water, a more affable environment and better, more abundant food. However restoration of these habitats alone cannot compensate for ongoing damage. Protecting what remains is consistently more effective and less costly than rebuilding ecosystems after they collapse.

Marine biodiversity may feel distant from everyday life but it quietly supports many of the systems that societies depend on. Recognising oceans and coasts as part of our shared health system rather than as separate from it could transform how we manage and value the marine environment. In a changing climate, this shift may prove essential not only for nature but for our own resilience.

---

Don’t have time to read about climate change as much as you’d like?

Get a weekly roundup in your inbox instead. Every Wednesday, The Conversation’s environment editor writes Imagine, a short email that goes a little deeper into just one climate issue. Join the 47,000+ readers who’ve subscribed so far.

---

The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Seagrass meadows could be good for your health – yet they’re disappearing fast – https://theconversation.com/seagrass-meadows-could-be-good-for-your-health-yet-theyre-disappearing-fast-273120

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Joe Sheldon, Postgraduate Researcher, Department of Sociology, Social Policy, and Criminology, University of Liverpool

Heated Rivalry, the HBO TV adaptation of the second book in Rachel Reid’s Game Changers series, rounded out 2025 as a surprise, word-of-mouth success. It captures the relationship between Shane (Hudson Williams) and Ilya (Connor Storrie), two professional male hockey players, over the course of almost a decade. Along the way the pair negotiate their feelings for each other against the backdrop of internal conflict, homophobia and a manufactured public-facing rivalry.

Heated Rivalry’s unexpected success has helped it to become discussed in mainstream media, including US talk shows and sports podcasts, and has earned it a much-anticipated release in the UK (via Sky and Now TV).

Heated Rivalry is not the first gay male love story to see critical success on TV in recent years. Though other successes (including the Netflix Originals Heartstopper and Young Royals) have been less explicit and tended to be aimed at younger audiences. What is particularly unique about Heated Rivalry’s story, however, is its setting within the popular but hyper-masculine space of a men’s professional sporting league.

My PhD research focuses on the experience of football fandom in the face of oppressive and difficult conditions. The project is a passion of mine, and I adore the chance I get to speak with supporters from all backgrounds. However, despite loving football (soccer) to my bones, I – like many other queer sports fans – often feel that the experiences of sports fandom can be unrepresentative of my own community.

---

No one’s 20s and 30s look the same. You might be saving for a mortgage or just struggling to pay rent. You could be swiping dating apps, or trying to understand childcare. No matter your current challenges, our Quarter Life series has articles to share in the group chat, or just to remind you that you’re not alone.

Read more from Quarter Life:

• Let ‘performative males’ be – gender has always been a performance and our need for authenticity is bad for us

• Lavender marriages: What queer unions and relationships can teach us about love and safety

• Love in the age of WhatsApp – a philosopher explains how technology reduces the power of a relationship

---

Despite much stronger LGBTQ+ representation across women’s sports, male professional leagues still frequently remain dogged by homophobia, both in the stands and the changing rooms. As a result, in the imaginaries of fans – the way that fans interpret their role and experiences in the complex social, economic and cultural life of sport – queer fans can so frequently feel “othered” (actively treated as alien to a social group).

Social imaginaries are a shared (sometimes unconscious) set of beliefs, values and symbols that help a community to understand itself in the world. They often form the basis of laws or institutions. Critical research, including my own, uses imaginaries of how people understand their place in the modern economy to analyse people navigating the complexities of modern economic life.

These imaginaries are important – they help researchers make sense of how fans understand who sport is for and why they may feel this way. The manner in which people see their own place in their world tells us just as much as an analysis of the systems of capital, social relations and prejudice they are experiencing.

Gay and bisexual players in these leagues certainly exist. German footballer Thomas Hitzlsperger, for example, made his sexuality public following his retirement. Moreover, in 2020, an anonymous gay Premier League player penned a public letter explaining his hesitancy to share his sexuality, describing his day-to-day existence as an “absolute nightmare”.

These experiences, and the lack of subsequent representation within professional male sporting spaces, can frequently lead to fans feeling excluded from this arena of social life. The lack of openly gay players may be both caused and exacerbated by the prejudice experienced by supporters, with one 2018 study of football supporters finding that 63% of LGBTQ+ fans experienced homophobia and transphobia at games.

The cultural success of Heated Rivalry helps demonstrate it is not that people from LGBTQ+ communities are naturally averse to wanting to participate in these spaces. There is something incredibly important about a story so confident in its masculinity, so assured of its legitimacy as a sports romance story, taking off in the way that this adaptation has.

Hudson Williams, one of Heated Rivalry’s lead actors, has revealed that he has been contacted by closeted male professional players from different sports following the show’s release. The significance of such an impact is not to be understated. Emboldening LGBTQ+ professionals to feel represented will be good for male sports, players and fans.

Already renewed for a second season, which will cover Reid’s follow-up book, The Long Game, Heated Rivalry demonstrates that the imaginaries of queer fans in male sports can be changed.

Leagues and clubs have an imperative to ensure that the work of real cultural change is undertaken to begin this process, learning from the success of the show.

---

Looking for something good? Cut through the noise with a carefully curated selection of the latest releases, live events and exhibitions, straight to your inbox every fortnight, on Fridays. Sign up here.

---

This article features references to books that have been included for editorial reasons, and may contain links to bookshop.org. If you click on one of the links and go on to buy something from bookshop.org The Conversation UK may earn a commission.

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

– ref. Heated Rivalry matters in a sporting culture that still sidelines queer men – https://theconversation.com/heated-rivalry-matters-in-a-sporting-culture-that-still-sidelines-queer-men-273143

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Dhanapal Govindarajulu, Postgraduate Researcher, Climate Adaptation, University of Manchester

For many years, I lived in the Indian city of Chennai where the summer temperatures can reach up to 44°C. With a population of 4.5 million, this coastal city is humid and hot.

Its suburbs are home to 600 Hindu temples and there’s a wildlife reserve called Guindy national park in the heart of the city. Trees line some of the streets but green parks are few and far between – as is the shade.

As urbanisation accelerates across India and the rest of the developing world, urban forests become more vital. These clusters of trees in parks, gardens, public spaces and along roads and rivers in urban areas have multiple benefits – from cooling the surrounding air to providing homes for wildlife and creating space for people to enjoy nature. Yet they are often overlooked by city developers.

My research shows that, in Chennai, there are 26 square miles of tree and other vegetation cover, mainly accounted for by formal green spaces such as Guindy wildlife reserve. On the outskirts of this city, an area of nine square miles of unused land is ideally suited to creating more urban forest. Similarly, there is more potential space for urban forests in other fast urbanising Indian cities like Coimbatore and Tiruchirapalli.

Global urban planning guidelines recommend having at least 30% tree cover in urban areas. The World Health Organization suggests that cities should allow for nine square metres of urban tree cover per person. Most Indian cities don’t meet this requirement.

Improving urban forests in India has been a challenge for many years due to high land prices, lack of urban planning and little public participation in tree-planting initiatives.

Policies introduced by the Indian government to “green” urban areas often
equate tree planting with cooling cities and building climate resilience. But it’s not that simple. The success of urban forests depends on factors such as rainfall, understanding interactions with local wildlife and people’s needs.

A recent study warns that in hot, dry cities with limited water availability like Chennai, trees slow the cooling process by water evaporation from leaves and instead contribute to urban heat. Urban heat comes from the reflection and absorption of sunlight by buildings and land surfaces. This is particularly high in growing smaller Indian cities with populations of 1 to 5 million.

Planting trees with the sole aim of cooling cities could negatively affect wildlife too. Not all birds, bugs and mammals depend on trees for food or shelter. A study from researchers in Bengaluru, India, shows that non-native tree species contribute little to bird richness. Meanwhile, urban grasslands and marshlands that are often misclassified as “waste land” support wildlife and help regulate flooding.

In India, cities and villages have open “common” land where people graze their cattle or harvest fuelwood from trees that grow naturally there – tree-planting initiatives in these open land areas can displace poorer communities of people who rely on open lands for grazing and fuel wood collection.

---

Read more:
Climate change is making cities hotter. Here’s how planting trees can help

---

Design with nature

Urban forests can be planned to meet the needs of people, birds and other wildlife.

In 1969, Ian McHarg, the late Scottish landscape architect and urban planner came up with the concept of “design with nature”, where development has a minimal negative effect on the environment. His idea was to preserve existing natural forests by proposing site suitability assessments. By analysing factors such as rivers and streams, soil type, slope and drainage, McHarg’s approach still helps planners to identify which areas suit development and which are best preserved for nature.

This approach has advanced with new technology. Now, geographic information systems and satellite imagery help planners integrate environmental data and identify suitable areas for planting new trees or conserving urban forests.

Using the principles of landscape ecology, urban planners can design forest patches in a way that enhances the connectivity of green spaces in a city, rather than uniformly planting trees across all open spaces. By designing these “ecological corridors”, trees along roads or canals, for example, can help link fragmented green spaces.

Planting native tree species suited to dry and drought-prone environments is also crucial, as is assessing the local community’s needs for native fruit-bearing trees that provide food.

---

Read more:
India was a tree planting laboratory for 200 years – here are the results

---

Growing urban forests

By 2030, one-third of India’s electricity demand is expected to come from cooling equipment such as air conditioning. Increasing urban forests could help reduce this need for more energy.

National-level policies could support urban forest expansion across India. In 2014, the government of India released its urban greenery guidelines and flagship urban renewal programmes such as the Smart Cities Mission have tried to increase tree cover. But guidelines often overlook critical considerations like ecological connectivity, native species and local community needs.

In 2020, the government of India launched Nagar Van Yojana (a scheme to improve tree cover in cities) with a budget of around US$94 million (£70 million). It aims to create urban forests through active participation of citizens, government agencies and private companies. But there is little evidence that urban forest cover has improved.

Urbanisation reduced tree cover in most Indian cities, and much of it was rather unplanned. But by protecting and planting more trees, citizens can live in greener, cooler cities. By shifting urban forest policy from counting trees to designing landscapes, plans that enhance climate resilience, nature conservation and social equity can be put into practice.

---

Don’t have time to read about climate change as much as you’d like?

Get a weekly roundup in your inbox instead. Every Wednesday, The Conversation’s environment editor writes Imagine, a short email that goes a little deeper into just one climate issue. Join the 47,000+ readers who’ve subscribed so far.

---

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

– ref. India shows how urban forests can help cool cities – as long as planners understand what nature and people need – https://theconversation.com/india-shows-how-urban-forests-can-help-cool-cities-as-long-as-planners-understand-what-nature-and-people-need-273061

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Kelly Fincham, Programme director, BA Global Media, Lecturer media and communications, University of Galway

When you spot false or misleading information online, or in a family group chat, how do you respond? For many people, their first impulse is to factcheck – reply with statistics, make a debunking post on social media or point people towards trustworthy sources.

Factchecking is seen as a go-to method for tackling the spread of false information. But it is notoriously difficult to correct misinformation.

Evidence shows readers trust journalists less when they debunk, rather than confirm, claims. Factchecking can also result in repeating the original lie to a whole new audience, amplifying its reach.

The work of media scholar Alice Marwick can help explain why factchecking often fails when used in isolation. Her research suggests that misinformation is not just a content problem, but an emotional and structural one.

She argues that it thrives through three mutually reinforcing pillars: the content of the message, the personal context of those sharing it, and the technological infrastructure that amplifies it.

1. The message

People find it cognitively easier to accept information than to reject it, which helps explain why misleading content spreads so readily.

Misinformation, whether in the form of a fake video or misleading headline, is problematic only when it finds a receptive audience willing to believe, endorse or share it. It does so by invoking what American sociologist Arlie Hochschild calls “deep stories”. These are emotionally resonant narratives that can explain people’s political beliefs.

The most influential misinformation or disinformation plays into existing beliefs, emotions and social identities, often reducing complex issues to familiar emotional narratives. For example, disinformation about migration might use tropes of “the dangerous outsider”, “the overwhelmed state” or “the undeserving newcomer”.

2. Personal context

When fabricated claims align with a person’s existing values, beliefs and ideologies, they can quickly harden into a kind of “knowledge”. This makes them difficult to debunk.

Marwick researched the spread of fake news during the 2016 US presidential election. One source described how her strongly conservative mother continued to share false stories about Hillary Clinton, even after she (the daughter) repeatedly debunked the claims.

The mother eventually said: “I don’t care if it’s false, I care that I hate Hillary Clinton, and I want everyone to know that!” This neatly encapsulates how sharing or posting misinformation can be an identity-signalling mechanism.

People share false claims to signal in-group allegiance, a phenomenon researchers describe as “identity-based motivation”. The value of sharing lies not in providing accurate information, but in serving as social currency that reinforces group identity and cohesion.

The increase in the availability of AI-generated images will escalate the spread further. We know that people are willing to share images that they know are fake, when they believe they have an “emotional truth”. Visual content carries an inherent credibility and emotional force – “a picture is worth a thousand words” – that can override scepticism.

3. Technical structures

All of the above is supported by the technical structures of social media platforms, which are engineered to reward engagement. These platforms create revenue by capturing and selling users’ attention to advertisers. The longer and more intensively people engage with content, the more valuable that engagement becomes for advertisers and platform revenue.

Metrics such as time spent, likes, shares and comments are central to this business model. Recommendation algorithms are therefore explicitly optimised to maximise user engagement. Research shows that emotionally charged content – especially content that evokes anger, fear or outrage – generates significantly more engagement than neutral or positive content.

While misinformation clearly thrives in this environment, the sharing function of messaging and social media apps enables it to spread further. In 2020, the BBC reported that a single message sent to a WhatsApp group of 20 people could ultimately reach more than 3 million people, if each member shared it with another 20 people and the process was repeated five times.

By prioritising content likely to be shared and making sharing effortless, every like, comment or forward feeds the system. The platforms themselves act as a multiplier, enabling misinformation to spread faster, farther and more persistently than it could offline.

---

Read more:
The dynamics that polarise us on social media are about to get worse

---

Factchecking fails not because it is inherently flawed, but because it is often deployed as a short-term solution to the structural problem of misinformation.

Meaningfully addressing it therefore requires a response that addresses all three of these pillars. It must involve long-term changes to incentives and accountability for tech platforms and publishers. And it requires shifts in social norms and awareness of our own motivations for sharing information.

If we continue to treat misinformation as a simple contest between truth and lies, we will keep losing. Disinformation thrives not just on falsehoods, but on the social and structural conditions that make them meaningful to share.

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

– ref. Why people believe misinformation even when they’re told the facts – https://theconversation.com/why-people-believe-misinformation-even-when-theyre-told-the-facts-271236

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Caroline Kennedy-Pipe, Professor of War Studies, Loughborough University

Donald Trump is clearly in a hurry to dominate the political narrative in his second term of office. He began 2026 with strikes in Syria against Islamic State groups, the kidnapping of Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro, threats to intervene in Iran and the declaration that the US would take control of Greenland – by hook or by crook.

Of all these the plan to add Greenland to the US either by negotiation or by force is easily the most controversial as it could lead to the break-up of the Nato alliance.

Greenland, the world’s largest island and a part of the kingdom of Denmark, has an abundance of critical minerals offering wealth and business opportunities. But the US president is also making a big deal out of the need to secure Greenland for US national security. He has repeatedly stated the danger from Russia and China, whose ships, he says, stalk the island’s waters.

Publicly, at least, Russia has no problems with Trump’s ambitions in Greenland. Vladimir Putin has declined to criticise the Trump administration’s acquisitive comments, saying that the US has long had plans to incorporate Greenland and that the island’s future has “nothing to do with us”.

Russia’s vision doesn’t rule out the possibility of economic cooperation with America in the Arctic. After Putin and Trump met in August 2025 in Alaska, Russia mooted the idea of a “Putin-Trump tunnel” across the Bering Sea, a vision to which Trump responded favourably.

The Chinese, meanwhile, are not happy about Trump’s designs on Greenland. They tend to see the Arctic as a global commons in which non-Arctic states have an equal stake. So they are unhappy at the notion of any sort of arrangement that involves US or Russian spheres of influence in the Arctic.

The US has been trying to acquire Greenland since 1867 when, fresh from buying Alaska from Russia, the secretary of state William Seward unsuccessfully raised the idea of purchasing Greenland and Iceland from Denmark. Harry Truman offered US$100 million (£74 million) for Greenland in 1946, but Denmark refused. Instead the two countries agreed a treaty in 1951 giving the US considerable latitude to deploy thousands of US troops and install the weather stations and early warning systems that characterised cold war politics.

But when the Soviet Union collapsed, heralding an end to the cold war, Greenland was relegated in importance. The US presence in Greenland went from more than 10,000 personnel on 50 bases to a single settlement at Pituffik space base (formerly Thule air base) with about 150-200 people.

But the Ukraine war, increased assertiveness from Russia and China in the region and the steady melt caused by climate change have reinvigorated US interest in the Arctic region. And in the US president’s view, Greenland is a strategic vulnerability.

Russia’s threat

Greenland sits at the western perimeter of what is called the GIUK (Greenland–Iceland–United Kingdom) gap, which is vital to Nato defence of Europe. From here, submarines from Russia’s Northern Fleet in Murmansk can traverse into the North Atlantic, threatening targets on America’s east coast. In a crisis, Russian naval forces would move into both the GIUK gap and Norwegian waters, deterring American vessels from pushing north and effectively isolating Nato allies in the region.

Many of Russia’s missile sites and nuclear air bases in the region are sited on the Kola peninsula, on the eastern edge of Scandinavia, which is also home to its Northern Fleet navy and submarines. From the Kola peninsula, the shortest direct flights route from Russia to targets on the American East Coast lies across Greenland.

Russia’s Arctic facilities have been significantly upgraded over the past decade, even as the bulk of its defence budget has been directed towards its war in Ukraine. Seasonal air bases have been coverted for all-year-round operations and extended to allow the use of even the heaviest of its nuclear bomber fleet at locations in the Far North such as Nagurskoye in Alexandra Land which is part of the Franz Josef Land and Temp on Kotelny Island in the New Siberian Islands.

At present, Russian combat aircraft and strategic bombers, such as the Mikoyan Mig-31, Sukhoi Su-35, and the Tupolev Tu-95, can operate from these bases and potentially neutralise Pituffik. The space base is at present the key US defence establishment in the region, able to detect enemy ballistic missiles as soon as they take off.

Joint Russian and Chinese air patrols now regularly operate in the region, raising concerns about the defence readiness of Alaska. Many of their weapons are what is called “stand-off”, which means they can operate out of the range of the defensive weapons arrayed against them.

If Russia (or for that matter, China) did occupy parts of Greenland, it could mean foreign stand-off weapons sitting just 1,300 miles from the US. Whoever is in the White House, this would be considered as unthinkable for US security.

US response

In June 2025, US Northern Command took over responsibility for Greenland, integrating it into homeland defence. This, said Sean Parnell, chief spokesperson for the Pentagon, would be contributing to a “more robust defense of the western hemisphere and deepening relationships with Arctic allies and partners”.

Trump has derided the exiting European defence effort in Greenland, insisting that only the US can defend the US. His perspective can only have been emboldened the success of the recent Operation Absolute Resolve, the raid which snatched Maduro from Caracas. US combined forces demonstrated effective suppression of enemy air defences, knocking out both the Chinese JY-27A radar system and the Russian S-300 and Buk-M2 air defence systems.

Whether or not Trump gets his wish to actually acquire Greenland for the US, there seems little doubt that Greenland will once again play host to a strong American presence on the island and that the Arctic in general will become a showcase for the latest military technology they have in their armouries.

Caroline Kennedy-Pipe does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Whether or not US acquires Greenland, the island will be at the centre of a massive military build-up in the Arctic – https://theconversation.com/whether-or-not-us-acquires-greenland-the-island-will-be-at-the-centre-of-a-massive-military-build-up-in-the-arctic-273301

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Qiqi Cheng, Quantitative Research Associate, School of Environment, Education and Development, University of Manchester

For years, the narrative surrounding teenagers’ use of digital technology has been one of alarm.

Time spent scrolling through TikTok or playing video games is widely seen to be driving the current crisis in youth mental health, fuelling rising rates of anxiety and depression.

But our recent study suggests that this simple story of cause and effect is not supported by the evidence.

After following more than 25,000 young people in Greater Manchester over three school years, we found little evidence that self-reported time spent on social media or frequent gaming causes mental health problems in early-to-mid adolescence. Instead, the relationship between digital technology use and teenagers’ wellbeing is far more nuanced than simple cause and effect.

While many previous studies have looked at a single snapshot in time, we used a longitudinal approach: observing the same young people over an extended period of time. We did this through the #BeeWell programme, which surveys young people annually. We tracked the same pupils across three annual waves, from year eight (when they were aged 12-13) to year nine (aged 13-14) to year ten (aged 14-15).

Another crucial point is that our analysis separated “between-person” effects from “within-person” effects. In other words, rather than just comparing the mental health of heavy users of social media or gaming to that of light users, we looked at whether a specific teenager’s mental health worsened after they started spending more time on social media (or gaming) than they usually did.

When we applied this rigorous method, the supposed link between digital technology use and later “internalising symptoms” – worry, low mood – largely vanished. For both boys and girls, an increase in time on social media or gaming frequency did not predict a later rise in symptoms.

How teens use social media

A common theory is that how we use social media matters more than how long we spend on it. Some argue that “active” use, like posting photos and chatting, is better than “passive” use, such as endless scrolling.

However, our sensitivity analyses found that even when we distinguished between these two types of online behaviour, the results remained the same. Neither active nor passive social media use was a significant driver of later mental health problems in our sample.

While we found no evidence of digital technology use causing later mental health issues, we did find some interesting differences in how boys and girls navigate their digital lives over time.

Girls who spent more time gaming in one year tended to spend less time on social media the following year. This suggests that for girls, gaming and social media may compete for the same limited free time.

Boys who reported higher levels of internalising symptoms (like low mood) in one year went on to reduce their gaming frequency the next. This suggests boys may lose interest in hobbies they previously enjoyed when their mental health declines. This is known as “anhedonia”.

The gap between headlines and research

If the evidence is so weak, why is the concern so strong? Part of the issue is a reliance on simple correlations. If you find that anxious or depressed teens use more social media, it is easy to assume the social media caused their difficulties.

But it is just as likely that the mental health problems came first, or that a third factor, such as school stress or family difficulties, is driving both. By using a large, diverse sample and controlling for factors like socio-economic background and special educational needs, our study provides a clearer view of the real-world impact (or lack thereof) of teenagers’ digital technology use.

Our findings do not mean that the digital world is without risks. Our study looked at year-on year trends, so it does not rule out the possibility of negative effects of social media or gaming in the shorter-term – such as immediately after use. Furthermore, issues like cyberbullying, sleep disruption or exposure to harmful content remain serious concerns.

However, our findings suggest that limiting the hours spent on consoles and apps or measures such as banning social media for under 16s is unlikely to have an effect on teenagers’ mental health in the long term. Policymakers should take note. Worse, such blanket bans may obscure the real risk factors by offering a simple solution to a complex problem.

Instead, it’s important to look at the broader context of a young person’s life, including the factors that may lead to both increased digital technology use and internalising symptoms. If a teenager is struggling, technology use is rarely the sole culprit. By moving away from the predominant “digital harm” narrative, we can focus on the real, complex factors that drive adolescent wellbeing.

Neil Humphrey receives funding from various bodies including The National Lottery Community Fund to conduct research on young people’s wellbeing

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

– ref. Evidence for link between digital technology use and teenage mental health problems is weak, our large study suggests – https://theconversation.com/evidence-for-link-between-digital-technology-use-and-teenage-mental-health-problems-is-weak-our-large-study-suggests-273386