The #WHATIF 2nd General Assembly meeting in Bucharest came to an end Many thanks to Facultatea de Comunicare si Relatii Publice for the excellent organisation and hospitality, and to the city of Bucharest for the welcoming atmosphere. Stay tuned for upcoming project updates!

Rudolphina, the Science Magazine of @univie.ac.at is featuring our @what-if-horizon.bsky.social, where we use #ABM and #LLM -powered simulations to explore civic engagement in digital information environments: rudolphina.univie.ac.at/en/computer-... @aytalina.bsky.social @compcommlab.bsky.social

🔥 Happening now: The 2nd General Assembly Meeting of the WHAT-IF project is currently taking place in 📍 Bucharest, Romania. Over the coming days, partners from across the consortium will come together to share progress, discuss preliminary findings and explore new research ideas. Stay tuned!

Thrilled and grateful that SYNAPS has been selected for ERC Advanced Grant funding. @erc.europe.eu SYNAPS looks at how 14- to 16-year-olds develop political interest, knowledge and engagement in a networked world shaped by peers, social media, influencers and algorithms. @compcommlab.bsky.social

A new CCL #SeniorScientist position is now officially open on the @univie.ac.at job portal! Please apply and/or share with colleagues with a matching profile! 📑

Excited that my first peer-reviewed article, co-authored with @fabiennelind.bsky.social and @sonjablum.bsky.social is out! We ask how German and Italian parties used emotions in energy policy communication during the 2024 European Parliament elections. 👉Open Access: doi.org/10.1002/epa2...

🌍 CCL is heading to #ICA26 with a broad set of contributions across panels and preconferences spanning multiple areas of communication research! 👋 Find us in Cape Town and explore the full overview here: compcommlab.univie.ac.at/news-detaila...

Thank you @lorenzspreen.eurosky.social for your guest talk today at @compcommlab.bsky.social 🙌 Very much appreciated the interdisciplinary discussions on content vs. source-level misinformation detection, LLM annotations and validation practices in the social sciences. Photo: @aytalina.bsky.social

End your week by hitting "submit"! Today is the last day to submit your abstract to the @dgpuk-meth.bsky.social conference of the DGPuK at @gesis.org!

Training data for AI models matter for what you get. A lot. And states can benefit. Good primer by @justinhendrix.bsky.social and @techpolicypress.bsky.social on @hwaight.bsky.social and team’s important piece in @nature.com www.techpolicy.press/language-mod...

Huge congrats to Paul Balluff on successfully defending his dissertation “Applications of Transformer Models in Communication Research”! 🎉 compcommlab.univie.ac.at/news-detaila...

50 years @oegk.bsky.social! At #KWT2026 @marvins.bsky.social & @janabernhard.bsky.social presented: “Paupers in the Papers” on how media reporting shapes perceptions of the welfare state recipients, a linkage-design study with @moritzsedlatschek.bsky.social.

Feiert mit uns 50 Jahre @oegk.bsky.social & erfahrt mehr über unsere Arbeit zu politischem Vertrauen, Wissenschaftskommunikation, Online-Inzivilität, Medieneffekten auf Einstellungen zu Migration, Wohlfahrtsstaatswahrnehmungen, Debatten zur Energiewende & @medem.bsky.social! #KWT2026 Details👇

Always a genuine pleasure to spend time with y'all in beautiful Vienna. Thanks for having me! 🤩

Join our workshop for students/early-career scholars going to #ICA26 organized by @facusuenzo.bsky.social, @ambervdwal.bsky.social, @wendi-li-phd.bsky.social, @mqrmobile.bsky.social, @floprim.bsky.social. 📅 Friday, May 8th ⏰ 8:00 AM EDT | 12:00 PM UCT 🔗 Register here: forms.gle/AryewUXumCsC...

It was such a pleasure to host @dstoltenberg.bsky.social at CCL! She presented her newly founded Emmy Noether research group and the award-winning project “Place-Based Issue Publics: The Rearrangement of Local Public Spheres in a Digitalized and Globalized World” 🌍 🛜 Congratulations, Daniela! 🎉

What do users think about IP location disclosure online? 🌐 @huanl.bsky.social shared a Zhihu case study on Chinese netizens’ sentiments in the final panel at #COMPTEXT2026

How do emotions and economic frames shape TikTok debates on energy & mobility? ⚡ @fabiennelind.bsky.social presented new insights at #COMPTEXT2026 with Veronika Ebner, Sonja Blum & Nora Habelitz

🌱🤖 At #COMPTEXT2026, @fabiennelind.bsky.social facilitated a panel “AI & Sustainability” Among the issues discussed, the panelists focused on how CSS interacts with AI tools, who governs these tools, and what professional responsibility researchers could look like.

Yay infrastructure! 🧰 @marvins.bsky.social cial and @janabernhard.bsky.social present a first usecase between @medem.bsky.social l AmCAT instance and @iriscc.bsky.social sky.social climate reporting dataset. at #COMPTEXT2026

Can TikTok be a space for constructive environmental journalism? 🌱 @veronikaebner.bsky.social shared her work on what drives engagement—a study together with Fabienne Lind & Hajo Boomgaarden at #COMPTEXT2026

From humor to hostility? 💬 At #COMPTEXT2026, @daisukenakamura.bsky.social explored how disparagement humor by influencers links to polarization in TikTok comments —a study together with Petro Tolochko & Desirée Schmuck

Having so much fun at #langenachtderforschung 🥳 @anniewald.bsky.social @hajoboo.bsky.social @aytalina.bsky.social @gruenika.bsky.social

“How much can political actors shape the topics they talk about?” @janabernhard.bsky.social tries to tackle exactly that at #COMPTEXT2026 using word embeddings to trace influence on public discourse 📊

Great start to #COMPTEXT2026 🎉 @marvins.bsky.social presented his findings on how political parties and citizens structure and polarise social identities—joint work with Fabienne Lind, Hajo Boomgaarden & Markus Wagner.

Happening tonight! #LangeNachtderForschung @univie.ac.at ✨ Play with our simulation model and learn how social issues compete for public attention 👇 Shout-out to our collaborator Leon Olszewski from @tuwien.at! Find @maikovska.bsky.social @aytalina.bsky.social & myself in main building booth C04.

Come meet us at #LangeNachtderForschung tomorrow, and have fun playing with our simulation model 🤖▶️💡 @compcommlab.bsky.social @ipkw.bsky.social

Getting this paper published was quite a ride. Thrilled to see it out now! 🎢 ✨ Analyzing ~740k coordinated tweets during China’s COVID-19 protests, we found communities amplifying protest, and others pushing repression through distracting and demoralizing content. Led by @aytalina.bsky.social 👏👏👏

This Friday, 24 April 2026, meet CCL at #LangeNachtderForschung @univie.ac.at main building: 📍C04: How do social issues compete for public attention? 📍H01: What changes when we listen to literature? 📍E03: How do political emotions shape climate communication? Find us 👇

@anniewald.bsky.social, @aytalina.bsky.social, and I present at the Long Night of Research!⚛️ How do social issues compete for public attention?🤔 You will learn via playing with an agent-based model 🤖🎲 langenachtderforschung.at/station/5656 📍24.04, 5-11 PM 📍Stand C04, Main Building of @univie.ac.at

📢 New publication! “Connective action and digital repression during China’s COVID-19 protests: a computational analysis of multilingual coordinated activity on Twitter" w/ brilliant Paul Balluff, @nicolarighetti.bsky.social, @anniewald.bsky.social out in EPJ Data Sci. Read #openaccess👇 rdcu.be/feZzK

New version of my R package {democracyData} available: github.com/xmarquez/dem...

Heading to #COMPTEXT2026 this week? Meet the CCL team sharing new work on social identities, political influence, environmental journalism, partisan polarization and more! Details👇 compcommlab.univie.ac.at/news-detaila...

Big thanks to @stollenwerk.bsky.social & M. Anranter for presenting findings from their project “[un]reliable science” about the long afterlife of retracted scientific publications. One of the many findings: #LLMs aren’t going to be the one solving this problem – possibly the opposite. 😬

Who talked about climate action? 🌱➡️Our multilingual multi-country 🇪🇺election campaign analysis shows the party families and countries that made this topic visible on social media. Details? Visit our poster #Klimatage 2026

We opened a new PhD position in our department focusing on CSS research on and with AI agents. Please share the job ad and contact us if you have questions: gesis.jobs.personio.de/job/2594220?...

🚨 Job Alert 🚨 We have an opening for a 𝗣𝗼𝘀𝘁𝗱𝗼𝗰 𝗣𝗼𝘀𝗶𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 @stawi-univie.bsky.social starting Aug/Sep 2026! Focus: political representation, party competition, political institutions, political economy, political behavior, or related fields 📅Apply by 29 April 2026 jobs.univie.ac.at/job/Universi...

📢 New publication! My dissertation paper "Online Protest and Repression in Authoritarian Settings" co-authored with 🌟 @anniewald.bsky.social and Nanda Wijermans 🌟 is now out in @jasssjournal.bsky.social Read the full #openaccess article: www.jasss.org/29/2/4.html #ABM #CSS #dreamcollab

Hiring a PhD student with Master's in CS & expertise in AI ethics at Weizenbaum Institute, Berlin Focus: critical empirical analysis of systems & scientific practices in AI, esp. related to creation & use of evals, data, & infrastructures Apply here 👉 www.weizenbaum-institut.de/news/detail/...

I'm hiring a postdoc! @goetheuni.bsky.social Focus: CSS, political behavior, political communication & transforming information environments. 📍 Frankfurt | ⏳ 3 years | 📅 Deadline: 14 April 2026 Full job ad here: www.uni-frankfurt.de/48794987/Zen... (search for “political behavior” to find it)

COMPTEXT registration is now open until 30 March. Really looking forward to seeing you in Birmingham!

💻🤝 Applications are open for the Helsinki Digital Humanities Hackathon 2026 (#DHH26)! Collaborate, innovate & work across disciplines in one of DH's most exciting annual events. 🔜 Deadline: 14 April 2026 ➡️ Read more here: www.dariah.eu/2026/03/18/h...

How to keep social media audiences engaged for the environment? 🗣️👍🌱@veronikaebner.bsky.social presents exciting ongoing work on the potential of solutions-oriented communication at the @cidape.bsky.social Conference on Political Emotions and Climate Change

Applications are still open until the end of the week!

Happy to release the initial version of ParlAT, an #rstats package wrapping the API of the Austrian Parliament @parlament.gv.at . If you are a researcher, student, journalist, simply someone interested in the AT Parliament, ParlAT hopefully comes as a helpful tool. werkstattcodes.github.io/ParlAT/

Welcome aboard! 🛶 We’re excited to welcome Matt Minich (University of Wisconsin–Madison), who has joined the department as an ÖAW APART-USA Research Fellow. A former social scientist at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, Matt is now researching digital health communication here in Vienna 🇦🇹

Good news! 🎉 The registration issue has been resolved — everything should now work smoothly. 🔗 Direct link: www.icahdq.org/event/Hackat... 🗓 Registration is open until April 5, 2026 Looking forward to seeing you at the ICA Hackathon 2026 @SU School for Data Science and Computational Thinking! 🚀💡

🚀 dashboardr is out! An #rstats package for building interactive dashboards with tidyverse-style syntax. Launched with a fun hackathon at @ascor.bsky.social (🍕 included). 📦: favstats.github.io/dashboardr/ Big thanks to the dashboardr team, Digicomlab, and @vivifabrien.bsky.social for the logo 🎨

Monday next week, 5 pm, I’ll deliver my UZH inaugural lecture. Title: „Ban, improve, or ignore? Social Media Regulation from a Communication Research Perspective“ The talk is open to the public: you can join either on-site or via live-stream. Details, see: www.uzh.ch/de/events/ag...

🚨 Join us for the next edition Summer School for Women* in Political Methodology in Mannheim 🚨 7 days of hands-on advanced methods + networking for PhDs, postdocs & early-career researchers. Free of charge (limited travel support). Deadline 1 March 2026: summerschoolwpm.org #methodsky #polisky