Everything government, Parliament, the statistical agencies and the major policy institutes published — read, summarised and ranked so you can skim the day in a minute.
5,498 articles · 37 live sources · updated 5h ago
Pew’s survey research shows most online communities are not centred on politics, and a majority of members say political discussion should generally be kept out of the communities they visit most.
About half of US adults report never using chatbots; non-users most commonly cite disinterest, privacy worries and concerns about accuracy as the main reasons for avoiding them.
Most Americans discuss news privately online (via messaging or private groups), while only about a quarter publish news-related posts publicly on social platforms, according to Pew’s analysis of online news engagement behaviours.
A Pew-Knight Initiative survey finds about one in three US adults have ever left an online community, based on data from the American Trends Panel conducted in May; the release explores motivations and prevalence of departures.
Global public‑opinion polling finds widespread concern that social media harms democracy by spreading rumours; accompanying survey highlights anxieties about AI, job losses, and inequality in some countries.
About 38–39% of US adults belong to an online community such as Facebook groups, gaming communities or Reddit fandom forums, which function as virtual ‘third spaces’ for social connection and shared interest.
The methodology describes building a custom architecture for synthetic surveys and comparing AI-generated ‘silicon sample’ responses to three American Trends Panel waves (185, 190, 192), replicating those human-administered benchmark surveys.
Survey experiments using Opus 4.6 and GPT‑5.1 produced markedly different synthetic public‑opinion results, with neither model’s output matching actual human survey benchmarks, highlighting model-dependent distortions in AI polling.
Digital twin synthetic surveys performed poorly at estimating public sentiment overall and were especially error‑prone for some subgroups, notably Republicans and Black adults, calling into question AI stand‑ins for human survey‑takers.
Global polling by Pew finds 64% of Americans in 2026 say social media harms democracy, with public attitudes in many other countries becoming markedly more negative compared with earlier years.
Synthetic survey responses did not match real public opinion on timely early‑2026 topics, showing large errors on presidential approval and attitudes toward data centres, indicating digital twins poorly capture current public mood on topical questions.
Globally, growing majorities say social media harms democracy by fostering manipulation and division, even as many also report it informs people and gives individuals a political voice, according to Pew Research Center’s global polling analysis.
Synthetic poll respondents were likelier than humans to converge on a single answer or skip response options, indicating reduced diversity and response variability in AI‑generated survey data versus human respondents.
Synthetic samples tended to overstate differences between demographic groups and presented some answers as nearly universal, implying digital twin approaches can distort subgroup estimates and population distributions.
A national Australian survey finds around 80% of adults back restricting children’s access to social media, including 51% who strongly support such limits.
AI‑generated survey respondents were much less likely than humans to choose “not sure” and far less likely to give factually incorrect answers, suggesting synthetic respondents express higher certainty and apparent factual knowledge.
Global data on social media platform use shows Facebook typically remains the most-used platform worldwide, followed by Instagram, with lower overall penetration for TikTok, X and Snapchat.
A practical guide for nonprofit communicators on treating AI systems as audiences, summarising key takeaways from a ComNet 2026 session and linking to Pew’s broader research on American attitudes to AI and its role as an intermediary.
A monthly Pew digest summarises recent internet, science and technology research, noting items like phone‑use concerns, supplement use, and attitudes among young Americans across the Centre’s latest studies.
Sets out Pew Research Center’s current internal guidelines for using artificial intelligence and identifies areas the organisation may experiment with, explaining what AI will and will not be used for in its work.
Across 12 surveyed countries, a median 43% say they trust China to effectively regulate AI, compared with 35% for the United States and 34% for the European Union, according to Pew Research Center polling.
Pew’s survey of 41,113 adults across 37 countries finds that concerns about AI’s growth and economic effects are more common in high-income countries than in middle-income nations.
Public opinion in the US toward data centres has become more negative since January, while a substantial share of Americans remain unfamiliar or uncertain about what data centres are and how they affect communities and the environment.
A 37‑country Pew Research Center survey finds more respondents expect AI to cause job losses than to create net job growth, expressing both concern and excitement and reporting pessimism about AI’s likely effect on economic inequality.
Surveying 37 countries, Pew finds many young adults are simultaneously excited and worried about AI’s future impacts, though views vary significantly by country and demographic group.
Appendix A reproduces the model prompt text used to generate synthetic survey respondents, including the respondent role, profile JSON placeholder and the sequence of previously seen questions provided to the AI agents.
In 37 countries surveyed, most adults have at least some awareness of AI, but the share who have heard or read a lot ranges widely — over half in Japan and Germany, versus around one-in-ten or fewer in some countries.
Weekly roundup highlighting Pew Research Centre’s latest findings, including public attitudes such as the share of Americans who would feel uncomfortable with a new data centre being built in their area, among other polling insights.