Abstract

In recent years, city leaders, law enforcement, and news outlets have warned that digital social media—platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram—are amplifying the frequency and severity of urban violence. In turn, police departments and prosecutors increasingly rely on social media content to secure arrests, convictions, and sentences. Despite this development, however, there is surprisingly scant empirical data capable of disentangling the relationship between social media and violence.

The assumption that in China before the 20^th century the examination system made it possible for men to qualify for appointment as an official based on their talent and without regard to their family background underpins claims that the imperial bureaucracy was meritocratic.

In recent decades, Israel has become known as a tech powerhouse – the country is fondly referred to as a “start-up nation.” Yet Israel’s current fame in developing and exporting cyber technologies is only the latest phase in a longer history, in which part of Israel’s export-led economic development focused on security products and services, including weapons, military training, drones, and intelligence collection.

Liberals and progressives in the US and elsewhere often speak of defending or restoring liberal democracy. This implies that democracy can be sustained through a series of policy choices, and ignores the problem of the fraught relationship between democracy and capitalism.