Online activism is a frequently debated topic amongst journalists and researchers alike. What effect can a popular Twitter hashtag really have in achieving political or social change? Wasim Ahmed looks in depth at last year’s heavily tweeted #ThisIsACoup hashtag. While concrete outcomes may still be indeterminate, [...] social media is now a rich space for activism, expressions of solidarity and information sharing.

US Secretary of State John Kerry said a global deal to limit climate change could not have been won without China's help "to build a working partnership". But that soft power win was of short duration. With the thugs outside Pu Zhiqiang's trial, Beijing was back to form, squandering soft power as if it had no use for it.

Today, on International Anti-Corruption Day, we recognize all those who fight corruption daily and help lift up economies weighed down by graft. The United States government takes this fight seriously, and is working to broaden the range of countries that partner with us to actively combat bribery and corruption.

Politicians and some technologists say that [ISIS accounts], and hundreds just like it, show how Silicon Valley’s efforts to crack down on the use by terrorists of social media have been toothless [...] On Sunday, Hillary Clinton [...] called on tech companies to become more aggressive. “Resolve means depriving jihadists of virtual territory, just as we work to deprive them of actual territory,” she told an audience [...]

Jon Cohen, who covers HIV/AIDS for Science magazine, and photographer Malcolm Linton have been documenting the lives of HIV-infected people in Tijuana for two years. In their new book, Tomorrow Is A Long Time, they tell stories of the people in El Bordo as well as the Zona Norte (the red light district) and La Mesa prison.

The sad truth is that a significant number of global philanthropic foundations have investments in the fossil fuel industry, including those where donations to environmental causes and climate change is a significant part of their portfolio… As we move from the UN's Sustainable Development Goals...to the Climate Change Summit in Paris...the deep contradictions in global philanthropy must be acknowledged.

The movie was The Martian, and it had everything we should be promoting: It showed Americans as smart, resourceful, and innovative. It showed us as independent thinkers, but also as selfless team members who worked together when needed... And it showed America as a culturally diverse nation where people with talent could succeed, regardless of their race or religion.

Some Americans chose to react to the Paris tragedy with embarrassing displays of xenophobia and bigotry. Others, however, chose compassion instead. A’s baseball player Sean Doolittle and his partner Eireann Dolan invited 17 Syrian refugee families to share in their Thanksgiving meal […] They are also launching a crowd-funding campaign to help sponsor Syrian refugee families who have arrived in Chicago.