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January 28, 2026

Men are embracing beauty culture — many of them just refuse to call it that

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Jordan Foster, Assistant Professor, Sociology, MacEwan University

Just weeks after the premiere of popular gay hockey romance series Heated Rivalry, star Hudson Williams’ extensive skincare routine has gone viral. In a now-viral video for The Cut, the 24-year-old walks viewers through his “five-step Korean beauty routine.”

His multi-step regimen includes a close shave, a cleanse, pore-minimizing treatments, a “super-glowing” toner and serums targeted toward “rejuvenating” the young star’s face and body.

The nearly 20-minute routine, replete with self-deprecating humour and an ironic bent against vanity, has amassed some 500,000 views (and counting), almost 2,000 comments and 36,000 likes on YouTube alone.

Williams’ routine, and its public broadcast online, is emblematic of a wider shift in our highly visual and virtual culture among men. From style guides and intensive workout routines to recommendations for skin and hair, men are investing in their appearance.

But, in a curious contortion, they’ve called their work on the face and body anything (and everything) but beauty.

Understanding beauty’s cultural force

As a researcher studying the cultural force of beauty and its various presentations online, I take questions related to appearance and attractiveness seriously.

I look to taken-for-granted trends online — images and advertisements as well as viral video clips — and their reception among audiences to understand how young people engage with and respond to beauty, and the various privileges and penalties it commands.

Beauty’s cultural force has long weighed upon women, who have been invited to modify their appearances in step with challenging, often contradictory, beauty norms. But in a recent and curious shift, beauty norms and appearance pressures have intensified among men.

‘Heated Rivalry’ star Hudson Williams breaks down his skincare routine for ‘The Cut’

The rise of men’s beauty habits

Men’s bodies are increasingly visible in product advertisements and mainstream campaigns, with a surfeit of cosmetics targeted toward men.

Mundane investments in skincare and grooming are not uncommon, with young men especially doubling down on their efforts to refine the face and body through multi-step routines not unlike Williams’.

Driven at least in part by social media influencers and the rise of platformed figures who dialogue around the importance of looking good, “freshening up” and keeping sharp, men are investing in their appearance as women long have.

Alongside these investments, boys and men are enjoined to bulk up to achieve a muscled and well-defined look. Widely followed influencers and celebrities alike echo the call, endorsing a range of compound exercises to improve one’s physique and “science based” changes to boost growth.

The drive toward muscularity is demanding, with many recommendations touting the importance of rigorous diets and intensive exercise regimes.

In the name of beauty

While some recommendations are innocuous enough, men have entertained more extreme, sometimes dangerous practices to modify and refine the appearance of their face and body.

Sometimes called “looksmaxxing,” a term capturing efforts that enhance men’s appearance, practices like “mewing” and the far more dangerous exercise of “bone-smashing” are often endorsed to promote facial harmony and a stronger jawline.

The preponderance and popularity of these appearance-focused practices online have produced what medical researcher Daniel Konig and his colleagues describe as an “almost pathological obsession” with attractiveness, with significant consequences for boys and men.

Public reporting on men’s relationship to their appearance indicates that a growing number of men are suffering from body insecurity and lower esteem, manifesting in the rise of muscle dysmorphia, a body-image disorder focused on a perceived lack of physical size or strength.

In a similar vein, the United Kingdom’s Sexualization of Young People report indicates that online, boys are increasingly under pressure to “display their bodies in a hyper-masculine way showing off muscles and posturing as powerful and dominant.”

Why men resist calling it beauty

In my ongoing research with young people enrolled at the University of Toronto and MacEwan University, I am documenting a similar set of pressures.

The young people I’ve spoken with insist that while appearance weighs heavily on everyone, men are increasingly subject to the demands of a culture preoccupied with looking good.

For the boys and men I speak with, social media platforms, and the celebrities and influencers who populate them, are a particularly thorny topic. They invite an intense sense of comparison between men and their physiques and, for many, a feeling of not quite being good enough.

Still, few describe these pressures in terms related to beauty per se. As a historically feminized domain, beauty has been derided as frivolous and unimportant. But as many men are coming to find, the truth is far more complex. Beauty returns rewards to those who are thought to possess it or, perhaps, to those who are willing to pay for it.

Selling beauty to the masses

Men represent a growing and lucrative ground on which to sell products and services designed to optimize their appearance.

This previously untapped market segment is ripe for commercial exploitation, with an increasing number of men making spending on beauty products and services.

In 2024, market researcher Mintel reported that more than half of men use facial skincare products, with members of Gen Z accounting for the greatest share of growth in skincare products — especially “high-end” and “clean” products.

It’s estimated that the global market for men’s beauty products, including skincare and grooming, will exceed US$5 billion by 2027, adding to the industry’s already striking US$450 billion evaluation.

Men’s interest in more costly and intensive beauty treatments is also on the rise. The American Academy of Plastic Surgeons reports that a growing number of men are pursuing body augmentation and cosmetic surgery, as well as non-invasive procedures like dermal filler injections and facial neurotoxins like Botox.

Under both knife and needle, beauty’s cultural force is sure to be felt.

Jordan Foster receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

– ref. Men are embracing beauty culture — many of them just refuse to call it that – https://theconversation.com/men-are-embracing-beauty-culture-many-of-them-just-refuse-to-call-it-that-274181

January 28, 2026

How Canada and Sweden are redefining northern security and co-operation

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Christophe Premat, Professor, Canadian and Cultural Studies, Stockholm University

For many years, co-operation between Canada and Sweden was often viewed through a narrow lens — defence procurement. Discussions about fighter aircraft, technical specifications and military benefits tended to dominate attention.

Yet focusing only on defence equipment obscures a deeper shift now under way. What began as a technical defence relationship has gradually evolved into broader strategic convergence rooted in shared geopolitical interests, mutual economic benefits and a common understanding of the North.

As a researcher in Canadian studies, I am particularly interested in Swedish–Canadian relations as both countries seek to to strengthen the resilience of their political and economic systems.

This evolution in the relationship hasn’t happened overnight. It’s developed incrementally through political dialogue, institutional trust and shared security concerns.

It also comes after Canada signed a contract in January 2023 to acquire 88 Lockheed Martin F-35A Lightning II fighters from the United States and has committed funds for 16 of them.

The Canadian government is reconsidering the remaining portion of the planned purchase amid ongoing tensions with the U.S., but American officials have warned that cancelling the deal could require changes in bilateral air defence co-operation and lead the U.S. to assume a greater operational role.

But at the same time, Ottawa is examining a Swedish offer of 72 Saab Gripen jets and six GlobalEye aircraft.

Political alignment

Recent developments suggest that Canada–Sweden co-operation is no longer best understood as a transactional arrangement. Instead, it reflects a sustained effort by two northern democracies to strengthen long-term co-ordination in an increasingly unstable global environment.

The foundations of Canada–Sweden defence co-operation lie in longstanding exchanges on military aviation, joint exercises and technological collaboration. Although fighter aircraft discussions, including on the Gripens, are a visible part of this relationship, collaboration has increasingly extended beyond procurement.

Joint training in Arctic and cold-weather operations and interoperability in air operations and command-and-control systems now play a growing role in the Euro-Atlantic and northern European security landscape.

Sweden’s accession to NATO in 2024 has reinforced these dynamics, creating new opportunities for co-ordination between Canada and Sweden within the organization’s planning, exercises and capability development.

Canada’s lack of a Swedish aircraft purchase hasn’t curtailed defence co-operation, but redirected it toward political alignment on shared threats, Arctic and Baltic security and the institutional frameworks required among allies in northern environments.

High-level engagement

In 2023, Canada and Sweden marked 80 years of diplomatic relations. This anniversary highlighted the depth and continuity of the bilateral relationship and served as a reminder that present day co-operation builds on decades of political trust.

High-level political contacts in recent years have further elevated the relationship.

Interactions among ministers responsible for foreign affairs, defence, industry and energy have framed co-operation around defence-related industries, technological sovereignty, innovation ecosystems and Arctic governance. This points to a maturing partnership in which security, industry and research policy are increasingly connected.

What stands out is that discussions have focused less on single contracts and more on long-term reliability, institutional compatibility and shared priorities.

These include security in the High North, collective defence within NATO and closer industrial and technological ties among advanced democracies with similar economic systems.

State visit

This broader relationship took on new political weight during the Swedish state visit to Canada in November 2025.

King Carl XVI Gustaf and Queen Silvia led the visit and were accompanied by senior Swedish cabinet ministers, including Ebba Busch, deputy prime minister and industry minister, and Defence Minister Pål Jonson.

The three-day visit combined ceremonial diplomacy with strategic and economic dialogue. Several Swedish companies participated in business and innovation events.

During the visit, Canada and Sweden formalized a strategic partnership framework covering security and defence co-operation, Arctic affairs, trade, innovation and the green and digital transitions.

The visit, which included meetings in Ottawa and engagements with research and technology experts, underscored that bilateral relations were no longer limited to defence but were expanding into long-term political co-ordination.

The Rodinia metaphor

Busch has on several occasions used an unusual metaphor to describe relations between Canada and the Nordic region: Rodinia, the ancient super-continent that once linked what are now parts of North America and northern Europe.

Although geological in origin, the reference serves a political purpose. It frames present co-operation as a reconnection rather than something new. It situates Canada–Nordic relations within a longer narrative shaped by comparable northern environments, natural resources and innovation systems influenced by climate and geography.

Such historical imagery helps place industrial and strategic co-operation within a broader sense of continuity. In this perspective, partnership does not depend on a single defence decision but on structural similarities and long-term shared interests across the North Atlantic and Arctic regions.

Changing economic and security landscape

Canadian leaders are increasingly emphasizing co-operation with like-minded middle and advanced economies, as Prime Minister Mark Carney did in his recent widely acclaimed speech in Davos.

These economies include Nordic countries in areas like clean energy, critical minerals, digital innovation and security. The argument is that countries with compatible institutions, technological capacity and a commitment to rules-based international co-operation can enhance their influence by acting together.

Seen in this light, Canada and the Nordic states are not peripheral powers but form part of a northern cluster with expertise that is highly relevant to global challenges.

Energy transition in cold climates, Arctic infrastructure, resilience in sparsely populated regions and defence in harsh environments are areas where their experience carries weight.

Northern resilience in an unstable world

Taken together, these developments point to a redefinition of Canada–Sweden relations. Defence co-operation is still important, but it’s being increasingly embedded in a wider framework that includes industrial collaboration, Arctic research, academic exchange and political co-ordination.

This reflects a broader shift in how strategic partnerships are built. Trust, institutional compatibility and shared outlooks now matter as much as contractual outcomes.

What started as talks about fighter jets has become a broader discussion about northern resilience and how democracies on the edges of great power competition can improve their security and prosperity by working together instead of relying on others.

Canada and Sweden are not simply discussing equipment. They are shaping a model of partnership based on long-term alignment, one that could prove more enduring than any single procurement decision.

Christophe Premat is director of the Centre for Canadian Studies and a professor of Francophone cultural studies at Stockholm University. He acknowledges having taken part in events organized by the Embassy of Canada in Sweden at which representatives of the Swedish Armed Forces were present. He received funding from the Nordic and Baltic Cooperation through the Nordplus educational grant for the years 2020–2022. With the support of this grant, he created an introductory online course in Canadian Studies (https://doi.org/10.17045/sthlmuni.15329100.v1) which is given each summer. He has recently participated in interviews commenting on the political situation in Canada.

– ref. How Canada and Sweden are redefining northern security and co-operation – https://theconversation.com/how-canada-and-sweden-are-redefining-northern-security-and-co-operation-274296

January 28, 2026

US abandons Syria’s Kurds, risking regional turmoil and an IS resurgence

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Kamran Matin, Associate Professor of International Relations, University of Sussex

Kurdish fighters of the all-female Women Protection Units (YPJ) stand in formation. Kurdishstruggle / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA

Many Kurdish people will be feeling betrayed by the US after the Syrian army, backed by the US and armed by Turkey, launched an offensive against the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in early January. The SDF has long been hailed as the west’s most effective partner against the Islamic State (IS) terrorist organisation.

Led by Ahmed al-Sharaa, the Syrian president who was formerly an al-Qaeda commander, the army initially targeted two Kurdish neighbourhoods in the city of Aleppo. Government forces then captured the SDF-held provinces of Deir ez-Zor and Raqqa further east before advancing on the Kurdish-majority regions of Hasakah and Kobani in the north-east corner of the country.

The Syrian army and the SDF are currently observing a fragile 15-day ceasefire, brokered by the US. But according to the UN, at least 134,000 Kurds have already been displaced. And many Kurdish civilians fear a repeat of the 2025 sectarian mass killings and widespread abuse against Syria’s Alevi and Druze communities.

Kobani, a city famous as the site of heroic Kurdish resistance against IS in 2014, is under siege with its water and electricity supplies cut off. And Elham Ahmad, a senior Kurdish official, claims the Syrian army has already executed hundreds of captured Kurdish fighters and civilians. She has characterised the actions of the state as a “war of extermination” against the Kurds.

Abandoning Kurdish allies

The geopolitical fulcrum of this upheaval is US regional strategy. Shortly after becoming Nato’s first secretary general in 1952, Lord Hastings Ismay said the organisation’s purpose was “to keep the Soviet Union out, the Americans in and the Germans down”. In a similar vein, the US strategy in Syria arguably seeks to keep America afar, Iran out and Israel and Turkey apart.

In line with the Trump administration’s 2025 national security strategy, Washington has sought to block Iranian influence in the Middle East. Keen to shift the burden for overseeing the region’s security away from the US, it has also looked to withdraw US forces from Syria after al-Sharaa’s Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) coalition of Turkey-backed Islamist groups toppled longtime dictator Bashar al-Assad in December 2024.

A strong HTS-led Sunni Muslim state that is hostile to Iran and its Shia proxies in Iraq and Lebanon, under Turkish tutelage and supported by the Gulf states, was deemed the best option. Yet diverging Israeli and Turkish priorities have complicated this approach.

Israel viewed al-Sharaa’s al-Qaeda past and the inclusion of foreign jihadist fighters in the Syrian military as grave security threats. This helps explain why, immediately after Assad’s fall, Israel destroyed much of Syria’s strategic military infrastructure to prevent it from falling into Islamist hands.

Turkey, meanwhile, has long regarded the autonomy of Syrian Kurds (effective since 2012) as a threat, given the decades-long struggle of its own large Kurdish population for political and cultural rights. Washington sought to square these competing interests through a two-pronged approach.

First, it pushed Syria and Israel towards negotiating a security-economic deal, addressing Israeli concerns in return for sanctions relief and reconstruction aid for Syria. Seeking state consolidation, al-Sharaa accepted the de facto demilitarisation of Syria’s southern regions. He also signalled Syria’s readiness to join the Abraham accords, a series of agreements to normalise relations between Israel and Middle Eastern countries.

Second, the US pressured the Kurds to integrate their military and administrative institutions into the new Syrian state to address Turkish concerns. This led to an agreement between the SDF and Damascus in March 2025, with precise details left to be worked out by joint special working committees.

However, implementation soon stalled over Kurdish demands for local autonomy and integrating the SDF into the national army as a bloc to preserve its organisational coherence, akin to the Kurdish Peshmerga forces in Iraq. Spurred by Ankara, Damascus rejected Kurdish demands, producing a deadlock.

During US-mediated talks in Paris in early January 2026, the security-economic deal between Israel and Syria was agreed and will soon be finalised. At the same meeting, a Syrian government proposal for a limited operation to recapture SDF-held territory reportedly met no objections. And almost immediately thereafter, the Syrian army launched its offensive.

Another blowback in the making?

US policy in west Asia has repeatedly generated blowback – from support for the anti-Soviet Afghan jihad of the 1980s to the 2003 invasion of Iraq and the chaotic 2022 withdrawal from Afghanistan. Abandoning the Kurds in favour of an anti-Iranian government in Syria risks repeating this pattern.

Domestically, it could embolden al-Sharaa to forcibly subordinate Druze, Alawite, Assyrian and other minority groups. This would reproduce a centralised state sustained by repression, like Saddam Hussein’s Ba’athist Iraq, and risks renewed civil war.

Regionally, it destabilises neighbouring Iraq. Nouri al-Maliki, an influential politician who has been nominated for prime minister by dominant Shia factions in the Iraqi parliament following the October 2025 elections, has described al-Sharaa’s Syria as being governed by terrorists.

Indeed, alarmed by the handover of camps holding former IS fighters from the SDF to Damascus, the Iraqi government asked Washington to relocate thousands of IS detainees to Iraq. The US has accepted this request, despite having admitted Syria into the global anti-IS coalition only two months earlier.

Maliki is also closely aligned with Iran. Meanwhile, Iran-backed Shia militia groups in Iraq are concerned about the deployment of Syrian government forces on border crossings previously held by the SDF. Any US attack on Iran, as Donald Trump has threatened recently, could thus draw in Iraq.

Internationally, the danger of abandoning the Kurds is the return of IS terrorism to cities in the west. Reports suggest many IS detainees escaped from detention camps as SDF forces guarding them came under attack. And videos released by the SDF show what it claimed were IS members being broken out of a prison by armed “Damascus factions”.

Washington must honour its own conditions: support for Syria’s transitional government must be contingent on the creation of a genuinely democratic, plural and inclusive political order that constitutionally enshrines and protects minority rights – including those of the Kurds.

Kamran Matin is affiliated with Kurdish Peace Institute.

– ref. US abandons Syria’s Kurds, risking regional turmoil and an IS resurgence – https://theconversation.com/us-abandons-syrias-kurds-risking-regional-turmoil-and-an-is-resurgence-274169

January 28, 2026

Industry season four exposes the Faustian bargain of modern work culture

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Peter Watt, Lecturer in Organisation, Work and Technology, Lancaster University

When Industry first aired in 2020 it seemed, ostensibly, to be a drama about a recent cohort of ambitious young graduates entering the cut-throat world of investment banking. But as the opening season unfolded and its central characters were established, it became clear that although the trading floor of the fictional-but-all-so-familiar Pierpoint and Co. was its setting, this was not just a show about finance.

In 2021, I had the opportunity to speak to the show’s co-writers and creators, Mickey Down and Konrad Kay. In this conversation, Down described the show as “a universal take on workplace culture”, which, he explained, was why they gave it such a generic title.

For the first time, a television drama was treating contemporary corporate cultures and graduate work with an unprecedented seriousness, sensibility and insight. It managed to capture, in heightened form, pressures that are recognisable far beyond the world of the trading floor and the corporate boardroom.

Indeed, Industry is about work, and how central work has come to all facets of our lives. As it heads into its fourth season and beyond the trading floor, the show is set to expose the all consuming nature of work more than ever before.

Industry was, and remains, a show about how work has become more than a mere site of economic activity. For some people, work is the main arena in which a person’s self-worth is awarded or withdrawn. In this, ambition is sharpened into pathological obsession and the employment contract contains a Faustian logic where total submission to work will be answered with “more” – more money, more power, more life.

In its fourth season, Industry continues to capture the tragic underbelly of modern professional life. The tone is set in the opening episode by Harper Stern, the series’ most vivid engine of ruthless ambition.

Early on she announces: “The story of our lives – giving everything to something that kills you.” If the previous seasons are anything to go by, this line works as a verdict not only on her, but on the entire grammar of contemporary professional life.

With Pierpoint collapsing in the finale of season three, the pathology of work that Industry has shed a light on is definitively revealed as a universal issue – the trading floor was simply its first and most visible stage. As the workplace drama grows outward beyond the office, the conditions of competition, appraisal, self-preservation and self-assertion are set to be revealed as something even more totalising.

In episode one, Harper is introduced on her 30th birthday as heading her own fund. By episode two, she has already alienated her investors. And, by episode three, she is starting again – back alongside her old Pierpoint mentor, Eric Tao, pitching a new venture to investors.

Harper may be an extreme case, but she shows, in concentrated form, what a constantly changing and increasingly insecure job market: the imperative of perpetual reinvention and self-assertion to gain and maintain employment. These characters and real world workers do all of this in the pursuit of a future that is always promised and never quite possessed.

Indeed, a dark irony and dramatic tension in Industry is that it so often places its characters near power – money, titles, access, invitations – only to show how little control they possess.

For instance, the two remaining characters from the first season have risen in status: Harper begins season four as head of an asset management fund and Yasmin is now tied to the peerage through her marriage to Sir Reginald Henry Ferrers de Chartley Norton Muck, the failed green-tech prince of season three.

However, they remain perpetually devoured by the same forces that shaped their self-destructive trajectories (and relationship) from the beginning. The difference now is that these forces have extended beyond the office and have spilled over into the intoxicating worlds of politics, start-ups, high-finance, aristocracy and celebrity.

The spilling over of work culure is most clear in episode two where Harper attends a birthday party hosted by Yasmin. As ever, the lines between work and play, networking and socialising, intimacy and leverage blur into a heady mix of debauchery, embarrassment and new business opportunities.

Only those who refuse to keep any part of life separate from the job are set to gain: “It starts and ends with work. And being proven fucking right”, Harper tells Eric in episode three.

Season four will likely be bigger and glossier but also the bleakest yet: more wealth, more ambition, more politics, and more reputational warfare. But, more subtly, we can expect Industry to reveal more of what has been its deepest cruelty and deepest truth from the beginning: that for so many, life no longer interrupts work – life is work.

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Peter Watt 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. Industry season four exposes the Faustian bargain of modern work culture – https://theconversation.com/industry-season-four-exposes-the-faustian-bargain-of-modern-work-culture-274328

January 28, 2026

Apple’s unrivalled commitment to excellence is fading – a designer explains why

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Christopher J. Parker, Senior Lecturer in UX Design, School of Design and Creative Arts, Loughborough University

Variations of the iPhone ‘Liquid Glass’ display. Apple

Apple introduced Liquid Glass in June 2025 in a self-declared attempt to bring “joy and delight to every user experience”. The visual design style – which is being applied to all Apple products from iPhone to watch to TV – is named for the company’s new type of screen designed to look like translucent liquid.

Standing out by design has been paramount for Apple ever since Steve Jobs co-founded the company half a century ago. He was quick to kill off every uninspired idea, declaring: “Deciding what not to do is as important as deciding what to do.”

Jobs’ leadership style could verge on the tyrannical, yet his approach was essential to Apple’s enduring success, which, more than 14 years after his death, still ranks as the world’s most valuable brand.

To Jobs, the twin importance of design aesthetics and user experience (UX) was non-negotiable – both must be perfect for the public to see the product. But the recent history of Liquid Glass – introduced under Jobs’ successor as CEO, Tim Cook – suggests Apple may now be losing that ethos.

Upon Liquid Glass’s official release last September, many customers criticised the design of Apple’s new operating system (known as OS 26). Social media was inundated with complaints about its slow or nonsensical animations, distracting colour shifts, excessive interactions, cartoonish or blurry icons, poor contrast, inconsistent highlighting, and battery-hungry effects that were too subtle to be worth the bother.

A review by the UX consultancy NN/g was equivocal at best: “At first glance, the system looks fluid and modern. But try to use it, and soon those shimmering surfaces and animated controls start to get in the way.”

Wired magazine called the new system “awful”, concluding: “People don’t enjoy forking over data and dollars in exchange for annoyance.”

An introduction to Liquid Glass. Video: Apple.

With OS 26 and Liquid Glass, Apple opted to throw away many of the interactions that its users had spent years ingraining into their motor functions. Poor usability feels unforgivable for a company built on Jobs’ mantra: “It works like magic.” Evidently, it didn’t.

Apple’s difficult 2025 culminated in the sudden departure of its vice-president of human interface design, Alan Dye, to big tech rival Meta in December.

While this was primarily seen as a coup for Meta, some speculated that Dye’s departure might have been partly due to Liquid Glass’s underwhelming reception. When the news broke, Cook stressed that Apple “prioritises design and has a strong team”.

Where did Apple go wrong?

As a senior lecturer in UX design, I have devoted much of my professional life to understanding how and why digital interactions shape the way we live and our consumer behaviour. Small interactions matter.

Central to the criticisms of Liquid Glass has been OS 26’s poor usability – in particular, how the “transparency” of Liquid Glass made everything hard for many users to read.

Even during its pre-launch beta testing, Apple realised its new design had some issues, pushing design changes to reduce the transparency effects on notification backgrounds, for example. On the iPhone, the (very) transparent elements looked good on some stock wallpapers – but were widely rated unusable on others.

The first update, two months after the official September 2025 launch, let users disable Liquid Glass’s transparency to increase legibility. But by reducing transparency and blurs on some backgrounds, the user experience also became more sterile.

There’s still plenty to admire in Liquid Glass’s design and functionality. When using my iPhone, for example, I find the “glass bubble” magnifying glass effect during text selection exquisitely decadent.

Yet all the while, the great German designer Dieter Rams’ tenth principle haunts me: “Good design is as little design as possible.” Jony Ive, Apple’s design guru for more than two decades, based almost all of the iPhone’s original aesthetic on Rams’ designs.

Liquid Glass’s usability issues become (literally) clearest when I select the “clear” homescreen setting – a flagship visual aesthetic in Apple’s promotional material. Not only is it hard to read, but the app icons become almost indistinguishable.

Every time I look at my screen in this mode, I feel pain from the lack of colour and muddiness of the icons blending into the background (I can’t find the WhatsApp icon!). Selecting the “wrong” kind of wallpaper, such as a photo of my child on holiday, compounds the issue.

It feels a peculiar decision to let users get rid of the core colour signals that have underpinned Apple’s exceptional usability for so long. After one day I can no longer take the pain, switching back to the default colour setting.

What’s next for Liquid Glass?

I believe Liquid Glass’s design and UX issues are symptomatic of wider cultural issues at Apple. Dye’s departure came hard on the heels of the announcement of John Giannandrea’s retirement – the British software engineer who presided over the company’s AI chatbot system, Apple Intelligence.

Like Liquid Glass, this has so far failed to signal excellence, having been unfavourably compared with rivals such as Google Gemini and ChatGPT since its (delayed) 2024 introduction.

These leadership shifts come at a time when, according to one UK survey, 69% of consumers desire more affordable smart products – a market now well served by Chinese brands. Where once brands such as Oppo copied Apple mercilessly, now they are producing highly distinctive handsets.

Fixing Liquid Glass’s flaws will happen – I’ll put money on March’s OS 27 release making the necessary adjustments. But the necessity for them betrays an underlying problem: Apple is fallible. While a single poor design decision can be addressed, the pattern of underwhelming UX is eroding Apple’s luxury status.

Apple’s core philosophy of perfectionism should be non-negotiable. What it needs now is a bolder vision for the way people will interact with its products in future, not just yet another new aesthetic. To quote the American ice hockey legend Wayne Gretzky, as Jobs was fond of doing: “I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been.”

Christopher J. Parker 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. Apple’s unrivalled commitment to excellence is fading – a designer explains why – https://theconversation.com/apples-unrivalled-commitment-to-excellence-is-fading-a-designer-explains-why-274475

January 28, 2026

Ali Smith’s Glyph is an exhilarating and excoriating follow-up to Gliff

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Sarah Annes Brown, Professor of English Literature, Anglia Ruskin University

White Horse in a Green Meadow by Edvard Munch (1917) and the cover for Glyph. Munch Museum/Penguin

Ali Smith’s Glyph is the companion novel to her earlier novel, Gliff (2024). Gliff was set in a surreal near-future dystopia. Glyph, meanwhile, is set in the present. But like Smith’s earlier Seasonal Quartet, it offers the reader an uncanny version of our world, haunted by ghostly voices from the past.

The novel focuses on two sisters, Petra and Patricia (aka Patch). The action moves between scenes from their childhood in the 1990s and their present-day estrangement.

Two chance family anecdotes of wartime tragedy have a shaping influence on their imaginative lives. One is the story of a first world war soldier who deserted the army, fleeing with a blinded horse he wished to save. We learn that he was eventually court-martialled and executed.

The other is the curious account of how a female agent, travelling under cover through France in the second world war, discovered a mysteriously flattened corpse on the road.

When young Patch becomes distressed by the fate of the flattened man, Petra pretends that she can communicate with him in the afterlife. Episodes from his life are presented in vivid detail, and the reader is invited to speculate that the ghost may be real.

Smith teasingly draws attention to the different levels of reality at work in the novel. The image of a flattened corpse becomes a metaphor for other kinds of flattening, including that of characters in fiction. At one point the narrating voice, with apparent authorial detachment, refers to “the flat character / literary device called Patricia”.

It is then revealed that Patricia herself is narrating this section. And the ghost of the flattened man – who may simply be Petra’s invention – remembers reading a book in which books are described as “flattened flowers at best”.

The novel also asserts a powerful link between stories and ghosts: “Story, however. It is haunting. Everything tells it.”

Glyph v Gliff

Although it can be read as a standalone work, Glyph inevitably invites the reader to explore its relationship with Gliff (2024), adding yet a further dimension to this multilayered novel.

In many ways Petra and Patch’s relationship mirrors that between Gliff’s siblings, Briar and Rose. Both younger sisters share a fondness for puns and sly malapropisms. And the soldier’s doomed escape with the horse seems to echo the mysterious disappearance of Rose on the back of a horse she rescued from being slaughtered.

Smith adds a further complication into the mix when it is revealed that the novel Gliff exists in the world of Glyph. A brief discussion of its merits (and weaknesses) between Petra and Patch offers a humorous reflection of real-world reader responses to Gliff: “A bit too dark for me. A bit too clever-clever, a bit too on the nose politically, for a novel.”

The presence of Gliff within Glyph also complicates the meaning of some of the links between the two novels. Petra is sure she is being haunted by the blind horse of family legend. But Patch suggests that this is a delusion sparked by reading Gliff. The duology forms a kind of textual Möbius strip – a mind-bending twisted loop with just one side – perhaps nodding back to the double strands of Smith’s 2014 novel How to be Both.

Alongside all this playful twistiness sits a passionate commitment to a more just society. Billie, Patch’s teenage daughter, is central to this element of the novel. She resembles young Florence in Ali Smith’s earlier novel Spring (2019). Both are charismatically exuberant Greta Thunberg-style campaigners for social justice.

The future world of the earlier novel Gliff seemed horrifyingly absurd in its unfairness. Viewed through Smith’s bitterly satirical lens in Glyph, our own present world seems little less surreal in its destructiveness, its attacks on creativity, freedom and the environment, and its addiction to war and violence.

Like all of Smith’s works, Glyph is multifaceted. She is equally adroit at capturing the emotional nuances of family life, mapping out the larger political landscape, or beguiling the reader with joyfully witty metafictional and linguistic games.

Readers often feel pulled in two directions when reading her novels. There is so much to pause on, so many startling turns of phrase or clues to hidden mysteries. Yet there is also an irresistible compulsion to turn the pages, to find out what happens next.

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.

Sarah Annes Brown 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. Ali Smith’s Glyph is an exhilarating and excoriating follow-up to Gliff – https://theconversation.com/ali-smiths-glyph-is-an-exhilarating-and-excoriating-follow-up-to-gliff-274075

January 28, 2026

Small-scale farmers produce more of the rich world’s food than previously thought – new study

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Oliver Taherzadeh, Assistant Professor, Environmental Economics, Leiden University

Who grows our food? This seemingly simple question is getting harder to answer in a world where our food crosses borders to get to our plate.

As countries increasingly rely on food imports, the mention of distant countries on our food labels is commonplace. Today, only one in seven countries are food self-sufficient across key food groups. So to understand who farms our food, researchers like me need to take a global vantage point.

The contribution of small and industrial-scale farming to global food supply has attracted much attention and debate. Yet, my research shows we’ve been measuring the wrong thing – production and not consumption. Focusing only on national farming systems skews our perception of which farmers are feeding the world by ignoring the food – and farmers – that sustain our daily diets.

This approach also amplifies the assumption that industrial farming is the foundation of global security. But when we lift the lid on our globalised food system, the story is very different.

By studying production and trade patterns of 198 countries, I have found that it’s small-scale farms (typically smaller than 20 hectares), not huge industrial operations, that underpin our daily diets. My team’s research, published in Nature Food, reveals that small-scale farmers contribute a third of the food consumed in high-income nations such as the UK and the US.

This insight has been overlooked by previous studies that solely focused on food distribution from farmers within national borders. These small-scale farms are often unrecognisable from the mega-farms that have come to dominate rural landscapes in Europe, South America and the US.

Although concentrated in sub-Saharan Africa and across Asia, small farms play a key role in exporting fruit, vegetables, pulses, and root and tuber crops, to western countries. A few key cases stand out.

Despite small-scale farms making up less than 1% of Australian farms they supply around 15% of their food needs. In Canada and Europe, small farms contribute nearly 20% to national food needs, mostly from overseas. They also make up the majority of the food supply in 46 of the countries we studied, meeting the bulk of food needs for 5 billion people every day.

Agri-food export of food crops such as lentils and sweet potatoes from small-scale farms comes at a cost to low- and middle-income countries where these farming systems are dominant. These nations end up importing vast amounts of cereals and oil crops from high-income nations, to compensate for food and nutrition insecurity created by cash cropping and contract farming.

These dynamics bear the signature of colonial extractivism in the global agri-food system. They also signal a growing consolidation of food supply chains in low- and middle-income countries due to imports from industrial farms, a dependency that is set to grow with increased appetite for meat and processed food in rapidly industrialising countries.

stacks of crates of red apples and other colourful fruit — Fruit shipped around the world is often produced on relatively small-scale farms.
Dusan Petkovic/Shutterstock

Small-scale farms play a crucial role in creating global food security. But farmers of small farms often find themselves facing insecure land tenure, climate risk, unequal terms of trade and international trade regimes.

This new research, also reported in the latest State of Food and Agriculture report from the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization, shows that such risks are not only contained to domestic food systems but will cross borders. Food and land insecurity for small-scale farmers means food insecurity for us all. Cuts to overseas aid from high-income nations makes this more likely, as support for climate-resilient farming dries up.

Safeguarding production from smallholders relies not only on domestic efforts to protect farmer livelihoods but transboundary measures to secure their land, rights and access to markets, such as land titles, small loans and living wages.

Subsidies, trade agreements and corporate consolidation erode these pillars of smallholder security and threaten the healthiest food on our plates – fruit, vegetables and pulses. Shining a light on the farmers hidden in national supply chains is a first step to ensure agri-food finance and regulation delivers sustainable livelihoods for all food producers.

This new study highlights the key role small-scale farmers play in meeting current food needs and hints to their importance in a sustainable food future. A plant-rich dietary transition, as called for by scientists, will rely on fruit, vegetable and pulse production, disproportionality produced by smaller farms, farms which typically produce more diverse food types than large-scale farms, higher yields and greater biodiversity. Now that we know who grows our food, we must give farmers equal priority in national farming policy, within and beyond our borders.

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Oliver Taherzadeh receives funding from Horizon Europe.

– ref. Small-scale farmers produce more of the rich world’s food than previously thought – new study – https://theconversation.com/small-scale-farmers-produce-more-of-the-rich-worlds-food-than-previously-thought-new-study-274057

January 28, 2026

Mesure des impacts environnementaux: les entreprises polluent souvent plus qu’elles ne le disent

Source: The Conversation – in French – By Mādālina Solcánu, PhD, CPA, Professeure en comptabilité, Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM)

Les entreprises canadiennes font face à une pression croissante afin de divulguer leurs impacts environnementaux. Elles peinent pourtant à produire des données fiables.

Une recherche menée auprès de 48 professionnels révèle un processus sous tensions, marqué par des ressources insuffisantes et des choix qui ne permettent pas de rendre compte de l’ensemble des impacts.

La crise climatique actuelle a pour conséquence que les entreprises sont de plus en plus sollicitées pour fournir des informations fiables sur les risques et les opportunités liés aux changements climatiques et au développement durable.

Le Conseil canadien des normes d’information sur la durabilité (CCNID), chargé de la production des normes dans ce domaine, a ainsi récemment promulgué de nouvelles normes qui marquent une étape essentielle vers des informations en matière de durabilité plus cohérentes et comparables pour les entreprises canadiennes.

De nombreuses organisations ont souligné les coûts et les difficultés liés à la mise en place d’une divulgation environnementale. Pourtant, on sait aujourd’hui peu de choses sur ce processus. En effet, si de nombreuses études se penchent sur la divulgation externe des données environnementales, peu de travaux s’intéressent aux difficultés rencontrées par les entreprises pour produire ces rapports.

En tant que professeurs universitaires spécialisés en comptabilité et données environnementales, nous avons voulu ouvrir la « boîte noire » de la production de ces informations afin de mieux comprendre les enjeux. Nous avons ainsi mené une recherche fondée sur des données recueillies auprès de 48 personnes impliquées dans la production et l’utilisation des données environnementales dans des secteurs d’activité à fort impact environnemental (exploitation des ressources naturelles, industrie manufacturière, transport, etc.).

Cette recherche permet de montrer que la production des données environnementales est un processus sous tension, ce qui soulève des questions sur la fiabilité des données environnementales publiées.

Une divulgation environnementale souvent limitée au minimum légal

En termes de collecte d’informations environnementales, notre recherche montre que la plupart des entreprises se limitent à ce que la loi exige. De ce fait, dans de nombreuses entreprises, certaines formes de pollution ou d’impacts environnementaux ne sont pas divulguées, puisque non visées par la conformité environnementale.

Certaines entreprises choisissent toutefois d’aller au-delà de ce périmètre légal. Elles se concentrent alors sur les enjeux jugés les plus pertinents, en s’appuyant sur les concepts de matérialité simple ou double.

Le concept de matérialité simple, aussi appelé matérialité financière, est celui qui a été retenu par l’International Sustainability Standards Board (ISSB), chargé d’établir un cadre mondial de normes d’information financière liées à la durabilité. Il stipule que les entreprises doivent divulguer les impacts environnementaux susceptibles d’avoir un effet significatif sur les résultats financiers, et par conséquent, sur les décisions des investisseurs.

D’autres référentiels de divulgation environnementale, comme la Global Reporting Initiative, vont plus loin. Ils exigent que les entreprises rendent compte non seulement des impacts financiers, mais aussi des impacts significatifs sur l’environnement et la société, ce qu’on appelle la matérialité d’impact ou la double matérialité.

Certaines entreprises choisissent donc de publier des informations environnementales qui dépassent les exigences légales. Si certaines d’entre elles cherchent à offrir un portrait global de leur empreinte environnementale en adoptant la double matérialité (financière et d’impact), la plupart se limitent à la matérialité financière.

Des formes de pollution peuvent ainsi rester dans l’ombre, même lorsqu’elles génèrent les plus importants impacts environnementaux d’une entreprise. Par exemple, les données que nous avons collectées montrent que les effets environnementaux liés à la fin de vie des produits, ou à la restauration des écosystèmes dégradés sont rarement évalués ou divulgués, faute de connaissances scientifiques suffisantes, de moyens financiers, ou d’obligation légale.

Le périmètre d’analyse des impacts environnementaux est donc souvent limité par des choix internes, des lacunes réglementaires, ou des contraintes pratiques. Cela mène à une divulgation partielle, parfois ambiguë, des véritables impacts environnementaux des entreprises.

Une collecte et un traitement complexes

Afin de mesurer et d’analyser les impacts environnementaux retenus, les entreprises doivent déterminer les indicateurs de mesure appropriés et collecter des données.

Or, les indicateurs qui doivent être retenus pour mesurer les impacts environnementaux ne sont pas normalisés. Par exemple, les indicateurs d’émission de GES retenus au niveau fédéral et provincial peuvent utiliser des méthodes de calculs différentes. Ainsi, pour un même impact environnemental, il peut exister plusieurs mesures.

De plus, les outils employés pour la collecte des données environnementales sont généralement rudimentaires. Quelques entreprises utilisent des logiciels spécialisés à cet effet. Cependant, la majorité des entreprises que nous avons analysées procède à une collecte essentiellement manuelle. Cette collecte est souvent inefficace du fait de la complexité et du volume des données.

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Notre recherche souligne également que le manque de collaboration interne des autres départements pose aussi souvent problème aux équipes responsables de la collecte et de l’analyse des données environnementales, même quand la protection de l’environnement est déclarée comme étant une valeur fondamentale de l’entreprise.

Enfin, certaines données sont externes, puisque les entreprises ont besoin des données brutes de leurs fournisseurs ou sous-traitants afin de compléter leur portrait environnemental. Ces données peuvent présenter des lacunes importantes : les fournisseurs peuvent exagérer des chiffres qui leur sont favorables (par exemple, pour la production « responsable »), ou fournir des données incomplètes. Ces lacunes se reflètent dans la qualité des données de l’entreprise.

Des ressources insuffisantes

Les données que nous avons recueillies montrent que, dans beaucoup d’entreprises, le service responsable de l’environnement ou du développement durable est très réduit, particulièrement dans le domaine de la production d’informations. Même dans les grandes entreprises, cette équipe est souvent trop petite par rapport aux tâches à accomplir. En effet, produire des informations environnementales est vu comme une dépense, qui a au mieux des effets bénéfiques sur la réputation, et non comme une source de profits.

Les équipes font le nécessaire pour respecter les exigences légales de divulgation environnementale. Néanmoins, pour d’autres activités importantes comme l’analyse approfondie des indicateurs environnementaux et leur utilisation stratégique afin d’améliorer la performance environnementale de l’entreprise, elles manquent de moyens. Ces activités sont donc accomplies partiellement, selon les ressources disponibles.

Les trois tensions mises en évidence en ouvrant la boîte noire de la production d’informations environnementales – concernant le périmètre, la collecte et le traitement, et les ressources allouées – soulèvent des questions sur la fiabilité des données publiées.

Mesurer les impacts des entreprises sur la nature est un processus complexe, en raison de contraintes scientifiques, techniques et économiques. La portée des exigences législatives environnementales reste limitée et certainement insuffisante pour traduire de manière fiable les impacts environnementaux des entreprises et faire face à l’urgence climatique.

Mādālina Solcánu, PhD, CPA a reçu une bourse doctorale de l’Ordre des Comptables Professionnels du Québec. Elle est membre de cette organisation.

Samuel Sponem ne travaille pas, ne conseille pas, ne possède pas de parts, ne reçoit pas de fonds d’une organisation qui pourrait tirer profit de cet article, et n’a déclaré aucune autre affiliation que son organisme de recherche.

– ref. Mesure des impacts environnementaux: les entreprises polluent souvent plus qu’elles ne le disent – https://theconversation.com/mesure-des-impacts-environnementaux-les-entreprises-polluent-souvent-plus-quelles-ne-le-disent-267481

January 28, 2026

Chiffrer l’immigration ou écouter les personnes ? Le pouvoir des récits de vie

Source: The Conversation – in French – By Consuelo Vasquez, Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM)

Les débats sur l’immigration qui défraient les manchettes québécoises et internationales abordent fréquemment le sujet à travers les chiffres. Comme tout dossier politique, l’immigration soulève bien entendu des défis logistiques, mais aussi des réalités humaines. Considérant la prévalence d’une approche technique de la question migratoire, nous déplorons le peu de place accordée collectivement aux humains derrière les indices numériques, à leurs parcours, à leurs histoires.

Derrière ces chiffres se trouvent des trajectoires particulières, faites d’espoirs, de ruptures et d’ajustements. C’est ce que nous cherchons à mettre en lumière dans le projet de recherche Entraide dans les marges, à l’Université du Québec à Montréal, qui documente les formes d’entraide émergentes dans des contextes de précarité, comme celui associé à l’immigration.

Pour réintroduire l’humain dans un débat largement dominé par des considérations quantitatives et objectives, nous nous appuyons notamment sur la notion d’escrevivência, qui désigne un acte d’auto-narration politique permettant aux personnes marginalisées de raconter elles-mêmes leur expérience depuis les marges, et ainsi de se réinscrire dans l’histoire.

L’escrevivência se distingue à cet égard de l’autobiographie classique en ce qu’elle porte explicitement une visée politique et collective : elle émane toujours de personnes subalternisées, dont la prise de parole vise à transformer le regard social envers leurs communautés et à revendiquer une place dans l’espace public.

Escrevivência : réhumaniser par l’auto-narration

L’escrevivência, concept forgé par la romancière brésilienne Conceição Evaristo en 1996, désigne l’acte d’« écrire-vivre » : une écriture où la vie devient affirmation politique et production de savoirs. Ancrée dans les traditions afrodiasporiques, elle souligne la mémoire collective, la réappropriation des racines et l’identité communautaire.

Écrire, ici, c’est résister à la « désmémoire » que les récits de ceux en situation de pouvoir imposent lorsqu’ils parlent en notre nom, nous instrumentalisent, ou tout simplement ne parlent jamais de nous. L’écriture vient dans ce contexte transformer la douleur en force créatrice, l’oubli en volonté de se faire entendre.

Née dans les marges, l’escrevivência permet aux sujets historiquement réduits au silence – notamment les femmes noires – de passer de l’objectité à la subjectivité. Par l’auto-narration, elle reconstitue le lien entre corps, mémoire et parole, redonnant humanité à celles et ceux que l’histoire a souvent effacés ou condamnés.

L’écrivaine afro-brésilienne Conceição Evaristo est une figure importante de l’escrevivência. Dans son conte « O espelho opaco de Seni », écrit en portugais et publié en 2022, Evaristo relate l’histoire de Seni, une femme noire incapable d’apercevoir son reflet dans le miroir. Au terme du récit, devant les miroirs dorés de sa petite-fille, elle parvient enfin à se reconnaître avec une clarté ancestrale. En saisissant son propre reflet – celui d’une lignée de femmes noires longtemps déniées – elle transforme l’image en mémoire vivante. Ce geste d’auto-reconnaissance, partagé par sa petite-fille et toutes leurs ascendantes, reconstitue le lien entre corps, temps et parole : un passage de l’objectivité imposée à la subjectivité réaffirmée.

L’écrivaine Conceição Evaristo parle au micro — L’écrivaine Conceição Evaristo lors d’un débat au Festival Latinidades en 2013.
(Wikimedia | Fora do Eixo), CC BY

Dans le contexte migratoire, cette pratique acquiert une portée universelle : raconter devient un acte de guérison et d’émancipation. Les auto-narrations se présentent comme des discours minoritaires assumés, mais revendiquant la possibilité de pouvoir « parler en retour » afin de réinscrire tant l’histoire subjective que collective.

L’escrevivência devient ainsi un geste collectif de reconstruction, un espace pour recréer le monde depuis les marges.

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« Je ne veux pas être traitée comme un numéro » – L’expérience de Cecilia

Parmi les récits oraux recueillis dans le cadre de notre projet Entraide dans les marges, celui de Cecilia (un pseudonyme), arrivée du Mexique il y a deux ans, illustre la portée de l’escrevivência dans le contexte migratoire.

Enseignante de mathématiques dans son pays, mère d’un jeune enfant, elle amorce au Québec une recherche d’emploi qui la confronte à de multiples obstacles linguistiques et administratifs. Elle raconte qu’un premier organisme d’aide lui aurait conseillé, allant à l’encontre des principes interculturalistes québécois, « d’oublier tout ce qu’elle savait », comme si son expérience, sa formation et son identité professionnelle n’avaient plus aucune valeur ici. « Une claque dans la figure », dira-t-elle plus tard

Heureusement, son parcours ne s’arrête pas à cette blessure. Une intervenante, elle-même migrante, puis un enseignant de français dans un centre communautaire – devenu depuis un ami proche – l’ont accueillie et soutenue. Lors de ces rencontres, dit-elle, j’ai été « traitée comme une personne, pas comme un numéro ». Peu à peu, elle reconstruit sa confiance et redéfinit sa trajectoire professionnelle. Aujourd’hui, elle travaille au sein d’un organisme communautaire, où elle accompagne des travailleurs internationaux temporaires en les informant de leurs droits et des ressources disponibles.

Pour Cecilia, raconter son histoire l’a amenée à réaliser que « le problème n’était pas en moi, mais en fait dans le regard des autres ». À son tour, elle souhaite soutenir d’autres femmes migrantes pour leur éviter, si possible, de traverser seules les mêmes épreuves.

Des initiatives inspirantes

D’autres initiatives s’inscrivent dans cette volonté de donner place aux autonarrations des personnes migrantes et réfugiées. C’est le cas de Jade Bédard et de Kristina Bastien, fondatrices de l’OBNL Histoires d’Espoir avec lequel nous collaborons dans le cadre du projet Entraide dans les marges. Par la diffusion de récits de personnes ayant immigré au Québec, elles offrent un espace d’expression où se croisent résilience, courage et espoir. Ces témoignages visent à rejoindre d’autres personnes ayant un vécu semblable tout en sensibilisant la société d’accueil à la pluralité des trajectoires.

De la même manière, Paul Tom, réalisateur du documentaire Bagages, avec qui nous collaborons aussi, explore le pouvoir de la narration collective à travers le récit de jeunes nouvellement arrivés au Québec. Provenant de pays aussi divers que le Brésil, la Chine, l’Ukraine, la Colombie, ces jeunes racontent leurs parcours migratoires et leur intégration via des ateliers d’art dramatique.

Ces deux initiatives, parmi tant d’autres, nous rappellent qu’au-delà des chiffres et des slogans, les histoires vécues, fragiles, puissantes et multiples, comptent également, et qu’elles ont le pouvoir de tisser des liens et de transformer les imaginaires.

Le projet Entraide dans les marges est financé par le Conseil de recherche en sciences humaines du Canada (CRSH).

Camila Goytisolo De Sainz et Hoang Kham NGUYEN ne travaillent pas, ne conseillent pas, ne possèdent pas de parts, ne reçoivent pas de fonds d’une organisation qui pourrait tirer profit de cet article, et n’ont déclaré aucune autre affiliation que leur poste universitaire.

– ref. Chiffrer l’immigration ou écouter les personnes ? Le pouvoir des récits de vie – https://theconversation.com/chiffrer-limmigration-ou-ecouter-les-personnes-le-pouvoir-des-recits-de-vie-267697

January 28, 2026

Why Iran keeps turning off the internet during mass protests

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Niloofar Hooman, PhD candidate, Communication Studies and Media Arts, McMaster University

What began on Dec. 28 in Iran as a revolt against economic hardship and the collapse of the national currency quickly spread across dozens of other Iranian cities and provinces. People from diverse socioeconomic, religious and ethnic backgrounds joined what has become the largest anti-regime protest since the 1979 revolution.

Chants of “death to the dictator” and “death to Khamenei” echoed far beyond Tehran’s Grand Bazaar. As a response, the government shut off all internet services, leaving roughly 92 million Iranians in a digital blackout since Jan. 8.

The protests are not an isolated eruption but the latest chapter in a continuous cycle of uprisings from the 1999 student movement, the Green movement of 2009, the protests of 2017 and the bloody November of 2019, the “uprising of the thirsty” in 2021 and the Woman, Life, Freedom uprising of 2022. Each was driven by different grievances but united by a deepening crisis of legitimacy and governance.

For authoritarian regimes, internet blackouts are a powerful political tool of repression that conceal state violence.

Violence justified for ‘security’

As the protests spread, the regime responded by unleashing lethal violence on the streets. Security forces fired live ammunition and pellet guns at demonstrators, deployed tear gas, carried out mass arrests and raided medical facilities where injured protesters were being treated, including hospitals in Illam and Tehran.

Arrests have surpassed 40,000, while estimates of the death toll vary widely, with reports suggesting that tens of thousands have been killed during the most intense days of repression. In cities such as Rasht, witnesses documented massacres as protesters attempted to flee security forces.

At the same time, state media outlets and senior political and judicial officials labelled protesters “terrorist agents” serving the United States and Israel, rhetoric that helped legitimize extreme violence in the name of national security.

The internet blackout as political strategy

Plunging millions of people into digital darkness was not a security precaution but a deliberate strategy used to disrupt collective action, prevent the documentation of state violence and control what both domestic and international audiences could see.

Mobile data, broadband connections and even phone lines were cut across the country, leaving families unable to contact loved ones, protesters cut off from one another and the outside world largely blind to events inside Iran. This was neither an unprecedented move nor a temporary security response. Iranian authorities have repeatedly restricted or disabled internet and telephone access during periods of sociopolitical unrest.

Under blackout conditions, the internet is not simply a space for expression, it is vital infrastructure that allows for information to flow.

By fragmenting connectivity, the state does not need to erase every image or silence every voice. It only needs to prevent a shared public record from forming. Violence becomes harder to document, deaths harder to count and accountability easier to evade.

Diaspora activism under blackout conditions

Outside Iran, this enforced silence prompted a wave of digital mobilization.

Iranians in the diaspora and their allies turned to platforms such as X and Instagram, circulating the hashtag #DigitalBlackoutIran to draw global attention to the shutdown and the escalating repression inside Iran. The hashtag became a way to make absence visible, revealing that the lack of images, videos and updates was itself the product of deliberate regime suppression and crackdown.

As the blackout continues, what’s at stake is not simply connectivity but the ability to bear witness. The struggle over internet access in Iran is therefore a deeply political one: it’s a struggle over who’s allowed to narrate, who’s allowed to be seen and whose suffering is allowed to register as real.

This use of #DigitalBlackoutIran didn’t emerge in vaccuum. It drew on previous movements and uprisings in Iran, where independent journalists are tightly restricted and repressed, public dissent is criminalized and uprisings are often followed by violent crackdowns and information blackouts.

When people cannot safely gather, publish or speak openly, and when documentation is actively disrupted, hashtags become a way of speaking out and of preserving what might otherwise disappear.

They allow dispersed users to find one another and construct a shared narrative of what’s happening. In this sense, hashtags function as a tool for mobilization and advocacy and as living archives of protest, keeping a record of repression and resistance alive when the state seeks to fragment, deny or erase it.

Yet the very visibility that gives hashtag activism its power also makes it vulnerable under authoritarian rule.

In Iran, the regime does not rely solely on blocking platforms or cutting access. It also actively manipulates online conversations from within. Alongside internet shutdowns, blocking social media platforms and filtering news websites, the state deploys co-ordinated networks of pro-regime accounts, often referred to as a “cyber army,” to disrupt protest hashtags.

These accounts flood hashtags with abusive and degrading language, disinformation and conspiracy narratives. The aim is to make participation emotionally, psychologically and socially costly.

This strategy reflects a broader shift in how autocratic regimes manage dissent online. Rather than silencing opposition, they increasingly seek to dominate digital spaces by overwhelming them, blurring truth with falsehood, intimidation with debate and visibility with noise.

The communications blackout and the disruption of online space point to the same reality in Iran: both operate as deliberate strategies of repression embedded in the regime’s broader architecture of control and discipline.

Under these conditions, the role of Iranians in the diaspora, along with sustained international media coverage, becomes critical not only in countering the silencing of dissent within Iran, but also in resisting the systematic erasure, distortion and fragmentation of the country’s ongoing history of defiance.

Niloofar Hooman 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 Iran keeps turning off the internet during mass protests – https://theconversation.com/why-iran-keeps-turning-off-the-internet-during-mass-protests-273793