A lesson about networks that I’m kind of proud of: at the beginning of the year, I gave my 200 students a dumb survey: fav books, foods, etc. I told them they could use pseudonyms and that I’d share their responses with the class. We’ve been using that data in various ways: to make points about +

Come join @nathannunn.bsky.social James Fenske, Stephan Heblich and myself in the far north of 🇨🇦🍁🇨🇦 Yellowknife, Northwest Territories, boasts up to 240 nights of active aurora borealis per year ❤️

#sociology peeps: I am organizing a section at ASA called neuroscience, cognition, and sociology. Please submit. Please pass around. Papers need not do both neuroscience and cognition...

This is neat

Thinking about submitting some inequality-related research to ASA, but not sure what session it should go in? Or feel like it doesn't fit any of the session topics? Perfect! I’m organizing the Open Call session for @asa-ipm.bsky.social. Deadline: Feb 25. (Now back to working on my ASA paper...)

Spread the word! Tenure Track Assistant Professor position in Sociology of Work and Professions, with the ability to teach sociological theory. 📍Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Ontario 🇨🇦 Applications due March 19. Position begins July 1st. careers.wlu.ca/job/Waterloo...

I *love* the introduction to this new handbook. Yes to it all. "We ... hope that the book can help wrongfoot the widespread assumption that the integration of computational techniques ... comes at the expense of qualitative and/or hermeneutic sensibilities." www.elgaronline.com/edcollchap/b...

perennial reminder that this typographic thing: * * * is called a "dinkus" en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dinkus

So thrilled to be joining JCA as Special Features Editor! Pitch me your clusters, conversations, rapid responses, interviews, and short vignettes!

Chapter 6: @lauraknelson.bsky.social from UBC Sociology on computational inductive research. The chapter makes a strong case that unsupervised methods don’t replace theory: they reshape how we generate & validate it. Induction, abduction, deduction, combined with transparency & reproducibility.

I have a small project that is taking me outside of academia to dip into industry, just ever so briefly. I engage a lot with AI. I was not at all prepared for how industry is using it. Not. at. all. This brief little window is definitely helping me better frame my teaching in this new world.

Now posted ahead of print: "Conceptualizing Academic Freedom," forthcoming, Annual Review of Political Science. (Uncorrected proofs, so a few minor edits different from the version that will be published in June.) doi.org/10.1146/annu...

I'm looking for emergency reviewers for FAccT papers about ethics and LLMs. So many reviewers have ghosted, and I have one paper that currently has zero reviews, two days after the deadline :( Please reach out if you could write a review for me!

Whenever I see a complaint about robots serving food I think about a news segment where they interviewed service workers who had been laid off (COVID) and were hired as robot fixers at Amazon. When asked if they would go back to service again every single one said oh hell no this is so much better

I haven't promoted my own work on here in a while, but I do need to do a booking push because it's, you know, how I make a living. Bring me to your college, conference, festival, fundraiser, or other community event! This link has a contact form + more info about what I do: guante.info/booking

Ok but I'll be frank: the most mind blowing keynote I've seen was Kathleen Carley and she broke all of this advice. She stood right by the podium, never looked around, didn't command the stage. But holy crap she knows the science and it was stunning. Sure perform, but also just do good scholarship?

By some stroke of luck, I get to play on an NVidia Blackwell tomorrow. I'm really not sure what to expect, but I'm certainly excited to see one in action 👩‍💻

📢WORK! At the Sociology department of @utrechtuniversity.bsky.social we are hiring a postdoc who will work on applications of AI in sociological research. Join our vibrant-yet-cohesive research community doing cutting-edge research. Please share or apply! www.uu.nl/en/organisat...

We've extended submissions for our #CHI2026 workshop on Developing Standards and Documentation For LLM Use as Simulated Research Participants. Submit a short position paper by Feb 20th and let's think through some thorny issues together! sites.google.com/andrew.cmu.e...

Check out our new paper on the demographic foundations of trust in science in @poqjournal.bsky.social The tldr is that w/ all of the radical shifts in trust in the US over the last 50+ years, the demographic predictors of trust in science have been rock steady(!) academic.oup.com/poq/advance-...

Brandi Carlile's accompaniment for "America the Beautiful" before the game last night was SistaStrings. The duo, Chauntee and Monique Ross, played another American anthem, "Lift Every Voice and Sing," on the Library's Stradivarius instruments in 2024. Here's a clip of that impromptu performance. ⬇️

Recent publications arguing against the use of genAI in reflexive qual research inspired us (Elida Ibrahim and @andreavoyer.bsky.social) to write our own perspective. Not to convince anyone to use genAI but for those who might be interested and are looking for guidance. osf.io/preprints/so...

As an American in Canada I'm very happy about my proximity to certain groups here 🇨🇦

☞ ☞ ☞ the index finger is a pointing gesture to be found in manuscript and print traditions. It was used to draw the reader's attention to a certain part of a text or image. This slow-moving thread highlight a few of them:

Consider submitting a paper to the session I am organizing at ASA this year on “Comparative-Historical Sociology and Computational Social Science.” The submission deadline is February 25.

"Sinners" is a musical Some of you are probably going "Duh...?" but a few people got legitimately angry at me for saying it after the movie first came out. It's not a traditional take on the genre but it's 100% a musical.

This is a truly stunning book 👇

📣 CALL FOR APPLICATIONS Join us at the 2026 Summer Institute in Computational Social Science at Penn, from June 15–26! ℹ️ More info: sicss.io/2026/penn . ⏳ Deadline: Friday, March 6, 2026, at 11:59 pm EST. #SICSS #ComputationalSocialScience

Interested in #Moltbook? Social scientists have been studying whether LLMs can simulate entire social media platforms for some time. 2.5 years ago we published the paper below, and there have been dozens of studies since then which I reviewed last year in this piece: www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

If you're thinking seriously about slop (and we should) consider applying for this virtual mini-conference hosted by the great @dlcplus.org on SLOP call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2026/01/...

"Why Slop Matters" The authors argue that AI slop "should be taken seriously as an object of study in its own right." AI slop has (1) an important social function and (2) has aesthetic value. This is great. Any sociologists out there studying the social function of slop?

My 4 y/o has switched his default response question from "Whyyy?" to "How do you know that?" and I am so ready for this moment

Whoa this is neat

Hey sociologists, I'm organizing an ASA Methodology session on AI! Submissions are due by 2/25. Looking forward to a timely cross-method convo on emerging research best practices and disciplinary norms and ethics in August.

If you are in the Bay Area next week, join us for what will surely be a fascinating discussion about the future of higher education in California. Feat. UC Provost Katherine Newman, Charlie Eaton, et moi. matrix.berkeley.edu/events/calif...

JOB! I'm hiring a postdoc for 2 years on my ERC MaMo project. Looking for someone with strong quant methods, ongoing work close to the project's aims, and a desire to publish in sociology. Start flexible in the next 12 months. Formal call out shortly, but contact me first.

Chappell Roan is absolutely serving at the Grammys

This is quite an interesting humanities & AI essay contest, with a large grand prize, for using AI as “intellectual partner” to write on the theme: “Will there still be myths in the age of AI?” Contest call: networks.h-net.org/group/announ...

Microsoft Research NYC is hiring a researcher in the space of AI and society!

Bruce Springsteen releases a new protest song about Minnesota: 👏👏 Billy Bragg releases a new protest song about Minnesota: 👏👏✊✊ NOFX *comes out of retirement* to release a new protest song about Minnesota: 😲🤯💀🤘🤘🤘 youtu.be/sU6s6VEJxrU?...

👀 I've had mixed experiences with BERTopic but I'm very happy to see this tutorial And more to come, it seems?

What are the main issues discussed in a set of documents? We’ve just released a step-by-step BERTopic tutorial. We also launch a new page, gathering various NLP tutorials for social scientists. 👉 www.css.cnrs.fr/tutorials-an...

More good news, this time on the local front. DATA BY DESIGN has a page on the MIT Press website and with that, an official pub date! October 20th, 2026. Watch the skies! mitpress.mit.edu/978026205618...

Now out in Sociological Science (How) do sociologists use GenAI for their research? Find out in our paper. Written with @ajalvero.bsky.social @dustinstoltz.com and Marshall Taylor. Thank you to everyone who participated in the survey!!

🎺 On May 21/22 @lespin.bsky.social , @doriantsolak.bsky.social, and I host “Democracy at Risk? Societal Challenges, Data, and Research Infrastructures in the Age of CSS” in Vienna Keynotes: @lauraknelson.bsky.social and @lorenzspreen.bsky.social computational-social-science.org/workshops/20...

For social scientists interested in LLMs for text classification/coding, the process here is potentially very helpful (even if you don't use the product itself). Their core technique: Contradictory Example Training Their training method: Binocular Labeling More details in the linked post below.

We just published the methodology behind CoPE, our 9B parameter model that matches GPT-4o at content classification at 1% the size! The model is already open source, but now we're sharing our training technique. blog.zentropi.ai/how-we-built... 🧵 1/6

Ok I did it, and the student evals are in. No one mentioned Hegel or Wittgenstein specifically, and the evals were truly substantively helpful to me as I develop this new (to me) course (thanks to those who provided those comments!). One comment did catch me off guard (in a good way). +

Conference update: IC2S2 Virtual Day. While Vermont is an incredibly kind and welcoming state, national policies and federal actions have a real impact on conference access, particularly for people from countries who cannot enter the US due to federally enacted travel bans. 1/6