Public Policy

Data-driven public policy depends on data. And, in the area of technology policy, access to data has been a significant barrier to research. Concerned about how online services might intrude on privacy, push hyper-partisan misinformation, or disadvantage their competitors? Those services aren’t sharing the relevant data with researchers.

Great uncertainty surrounds the origins of SARS-CoV-2. Early on, some suggested a link between COVID-19 and a seafood market in Wuhan, China. Other theories are now circulating, though the origins of the virus are still unknown.

In response, governments have pushed for the closing of so-called “wet markets” around the world, but this is not an effective policy solution, Princeton University researchers report.

Partisan media outlets are often blamed for growing polarization, but new research points to another consequence of consuming partisan news: an erosion of trust in the media.

A team of researchers combined computational social science techniques and experimentation to study the long-term effects of online partisan media on political opinions and trust.

The alarming rate at which COVID-19 has killed Black Americans has highlighted the deeply embedded racial disparities in the U.S. health care system.

Princeton researchers now report that low-income Black households also experienced greater job loss, more food and medicine insecurity, and higher indebtedness in the early months of the pandemic compared to white or Latinx low-income households.