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.

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.

Congratulations to Monica Gao and Sanjana Manjeshwar for being selected to receive the Charles H. Percy Undergraduate Grant for Public Affairs Research!

Each year, the Institute of Governmental Studies awards four Charles H. Percy grants to UC Berkeley undergraduate students who are conducting research on an aspect of American politics, including public opinion, electoral behavior, civic participation, government institutions, social movements, and public policy.