The sky is not falling; high-quality platforms (Prolific, Verasight, CR Connect) have low rates of apparent bots. osf.io/preprints/ps... But also not zero; vigilance is very much needed!

New post: Can AI Replace Social Science Researchers? (No. No it can't. Come on, now.) davekarpf.beehiiv.com/p/can-ai-rep...

🧵on my new paper "Synthetic personas distort the structure of human belief systems" w Roberto Cerina I'm v excited about... 🚨 Do synthetic samples look like human samples? We compare 28 LLMs to the 2024 General Social Survey (GSS) to find out + develop host of diagnostics...

New Video Analysis Reveals Flawed and Fatal Decisions in Pretti Shooting www.nytimes.com/video/us/100...

Everybody should watch this and see this woman, who has a baby in her arms and is thrust into basically a standoff, develop courage in real time.

Using facts to provide clarity. This is what good journalism is all about. “Videos Contradict Trump Administration Account of ICE Shooting in Minneapolis www.nytimes.com/video/us/100...

Remember when “authentic” was the word of the year in 2023? That was also the first full year generative AI became a household term, and the last year authenticity still meant “human,” not “well-prompted.” #PostAuthentic #DigitalShift

After 3 years and 5,322 emails (and counting) our Encyclopedia of Political Communication is finally out at @elgarpublishing.bsky.social 📚 Three volumes ⭐ 431 entries 🎓 581 wonderful authors from across the world A very short 🧵

IC2S2 2026 registration is open! Explore the 2026 conference here ➡️ ic2s2-2026.org ✔️ Submissions open December 15th ✔️ Keynotes will be announced between now and February ✔️ Full program of selected talks and tutorials will be available in late April

🚨New pub alert!🚨 Now available open-access in @journal-of-comm.bsky.social, we (w/ @dkreiss.bsky.social, @danlane.bsky.social, & @shannimcg.bsky.social) critique political communication's "Identity Turn" and offer instead a foundation for studying #polcomm from a *group* perspective. 🧵

🔍 Insightful piece debunking some of the "mythology” behind Big Data: journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.... #commsky #polsky #bigdata

Our latest paper on how #metoo got entangled in partisan discourse, explained in a two-minute AI generated video!

Timely research on news creators and their influence across the globe!

Open Research (OpenAI-linked research outfit) just put out a new report on using LLMs for public opinion polling that suggests they may improve response rates substantially: www.openresearchlab.org/findings/ai-...

”It’s a lot easier to blame food dyes, vaccines, or lack of exercise for every health issue your family faces… It makes you think if you eliminate or do that one thing, or take a supplement instead, it will all be fine. It gives you control — a false sense of control.”

🚨New publication in Social Media + Society🚨 Candidates Be Posting: Multi-Platform Strategies and Partisan Preferences in the 2022 U.S. Midterm Elections And it's open access! journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10....

🚨New Pub🚨 Media-bashing became an identity. When Trump attacked the news media on social media, how did political influencers on the left and right amplify his rhetoric? Check out our new article (w/ @yinizhang.bsky.social): www.tandfonline.com/eprint/Z8NQW...

📣Call for Papers: CCR Special Issue on Computational Approaches to Researching Short Videos co-edited by Jing Zeng, @lrossi.bsky.social, and @rupertkiddle.com Abstract deadline: 25-Jul-2025 See announcement for more information - journal.computationalcommunication.org/announcement...

💡 Ever wondered how social media and digital technology shapes our democracy? Join our team @CSMaP_NYU as a Research Engingeer and help us build the tools that power cutting-edge research on the digital public sphere. 🚀 Apply now! apply.interfolio.com/165833

Reading Careless People makes me appreciative of @bsky.app and the AT Protocol. The open social web feels like this bright light in a sea of mercurial CEOs. Seeing teams like @graze.social and @stream.place build on it, solidifies this belief for me. Grateful to be here 💕

Couldn’t agree more! @shannimcg.bsky.social's amazing talk at UB last Friday and this clip really helped clarify the current presidential-press relationship for me.

🚨 New paper out in @journalqd.bsky.social! 🚨 How do different social media platforms connect to each other? In our latest study, we propose that social media can be understood as a system made up of differentiated yet interconnected platforms, shaped by how users share information. #socialmedia🧵

🌟pub🌟 "Communicative AI in the scientific public sphere" is out in Telematics & Informatics! w/ @yinizhang.bsky.social Jiawei Liu & Yukyung Yang We examine public discussions on generative AI tools from both cognitive and affective dimensions. first 50 copies 👇 authors.elsevier.com/a/1kmCI2dUkY...

Over the past two decades, online news headlines have become longer, more negative, and increasingly use features linked to clickbait. This shift is widespread across outlets of all political leanings and journalistic quality. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Columbia grad student with a green card and a pregnant US citizen wife, abducted by ICE because of his political organizing, and now his lawyers can't find him. Hey, @schumer.senate.gov. This is your constituent. Bring him back home.

Reminder: When a person or institution you hate is targeted for illiberal persecution by an aspiring authoritarian, you have to defend them EVEN IF you don't like them. It doesn't matter if you don't like campus protestors or Columbia or the law firms. We must defend them or we're all at risk next.

This makes our understanding of “trading up the chain” a mockery. Conservative activists have direct access to power via Twitter: www.nytimes.com/2025/02/26/u...

The pool reporter is the eyes and ears of all the press not in the room (because they cannot all be in the room). There's a reason why WHCA journalists choose this person; it depends on being able to trust the source, a basic reporter question. What favors/obeyances are required to get picked now?

Tiktok boosted Republican messages 11.8% more than Democrat messages during the 2024 U.S. Presidential Race according to this new study that employed bots to view ~394,000 videos.

The social media landscape is shifting so quickly these days that there will be so many things to talk about in my social media class. From Musk’s instrumentalization of Twitter in the 2024 election, Zuckerberg’s sudden turn against fact-checkers, to the TikTok ban and migration to Red Note.

🚨New Publication in New Media & Society🚨 Co-First-Authored w/ @m-dot-brown.bsky.social @meredithpruden.bsky.social & @markriedl.bsky.social Making academia suck less: Supporting early career researchers studying harmful content online through a feminist ethics of care. jlukito.com/s/brown-et-a...

New, from me: Four years ago we lived through a pivot point. History could have gone one way, but went another. Why was Jan. 6 not the end of Trump? At key moments, key Republicans who knew better protected or resurrected Trump. 🧵 open.substack.com/pub/donmoyni...

My department at the University of Utah is hiring a teaching position (3/3 load; no research expectations) in strategic communication. Great department and SLC is an underrated place to live. I'm on the search committee and am happy to answer questions. Info here: careers.icahdq.org/jobs/view/as...

No research that uses social media data can get around questions like “how was your data collected?” and “what did you do to ensure that you got all or most of the data you needed?” Our article provides some ideas and a method for addressing such questions.

Job Alert 🚨 GW’s School of Media & Public Affairs is hiring an asst prof of political communication, focused on digital platforms and tech. The new hire will get to work closely with amazing colleagues in the Institute for Data, Democracy & Politics. #commsky #polisky www.gwu.jobs/postings/116...

The RSC comes out of research that Prof. Katie Searles (Univ of S Carolina) and I have been conducting into the impacts of occupational intimidation (OI) on experts—scientists, journalists, public health and election officials, etc.—focusing in particular on what can be done to mitigate harms. 1/

New article in Journal of Communication looking at changes to trust in news across 46 countries in the last 10 years. Trust in news declined in just over half of countries. It decreased more in countries where TV news use has declined, and/or where social media news use has grown. A thread:

Twitter was essential for Donald Trump to gain media attention. Now he's on Truth Social (an alt-tech platform), can he use it to obtain comparable levels of news attention as he could with Twitter? From our latest paper w/ @jolukito.bsky.social @JiyounSuk, @antisomniac.bsky.social🧵

New from me and @yinizhang.bsky.social. We find that after Trump's defeat, only his female supporters lowered their levels of political expression on Twitter, with the effect being greater for those who expressed a gendered identity in their bio doi.org/10.1093/jcmc...

Please help promote the 2024 APSA PolComm Division's Award Calls @apsa.bsky.social @kcoe.bsky.social @yinizhang.bsky.social #polisky #commsky

The IC2S2 organizing team is thrilled to launch the website and post the call for abstracts and tutorials for the 2024 conference, to be held here at Penn July 17-20. * Tutorial proposals due January 19th, 2024 * Abstracts due February 24th, 2024 URL: ic2s2.org