Stephan Lewandowsky, University of Bristol and Jana Lasser, Graz University of Technology
According to fact checkers, Donald Trump made more than 30,000 false or misleading claims during his presidency. That’s around 20 a day. But, according to several opinion polls during his presidency, around 75% of Republican voters still considered Trump to be honest.
Natalie Wall, University of Liverpool
If you’ve been in a bookshop recently, you may have seen references to BookTok – whether it’s stickers on books or whole tables dedicated to “BookTok favourites”.
BookTok is a community on the social media app TikTok. Creators make short videos recommending, reviewing, or just generally chatting about books. This community has become one of the biggest on the platform and its hashtag (#BookTok) has been used on over 60 billion videos. BookTok’s influence over the publishing industry and what young people are reading is staggering.
Simon Potter, University of Bristol
Global media tycoon Rupert Murdoch has announced his retirement as chairman of Fox and News Corp, making way for his son Lachlan. He has been demonised as a puppet master who would pull the strings of politicians behind the scenes, as a man with too much power. But what influence did he and his fellow media moguls really wield?
Adam Taylor, Lancaster University
Record-breaking temperatures have been recorded in many countries in 2023. In some parts of Europe, summer temperatures even exceeded 45℃.
While this kind of heat can be uncomfortable, our body is built with many adaptations that help it continue to function when it’s hot.
Gavin Evans, Birkbeck, University of London
A new book on South African liberation struggle icons Nelson and Winnie Mandela is a masterful biography of the pair. It’s a work of scholarship involving an immense body of primary and secondary research, written with flair and panache but in an easy and compelling style, making it accessible to anyone with an interest in politics, power and South Africa and looks set to become the definitive work on them.
Sebastian Walsh, University of Cambridge
A prominent childhood memory is of my grandparents living with and then dying from dementia. As is universal with dementia, there was a double blow: watching my grandparents lose their identity and seeing the suffering of those closest to them.
Alpesh Bhudia, Royal Holloway University of London; Anna Cartwright, Oxford Brookes University; Darren Hurley-Smith, Royal Holloway University of London, and Edward Cartwright, De Montfort University
In May 2023, the Dallas City Government was hugely disrupted by a ransomware attack. Ransomware attacks are so-called because the hackers behind them encrypt vital data and demand a ransom in order to get the information decrypted.
Stefan Wolff, University of Birmingham
Two months after challenging Vladimir Putin’s leadership in an apparent but abortive “mutiny”, Yevgeny Prigozhin – the former owner of the mercenary private military company Wagner Group – has joined a long list of prominent Russians to die in mysterious circumstances.
Jenny Bulstrode, UCL and Sheray Warmington, UCL
In a speech to mark Unesco’s campaign for the Remembrance of the Slave Trade and its Abolition, UN secretary-general António Guterres told the United Nations general assembly earlier this year that the inequalities created by 400 years of the transatlantic chattel trade persist to this day. “We can draw a straight line from the centuries of colonial exploitation to the social and economic inequalities of today,” he said.
Christina Philippou, University of Portsmouth
A long-awaited official review of women’s football in England sets out ten recommendations designed to transform and develop the sport at every level. The review, which was chaired by former international player Karen Carney, covers everything from playing standards to diversity goals and equal access to sports for girls.