Could social media make us less polarized instead of more? We tested 5 algorithms on 3 platforms with 10,000 people for 6 months during the 2024 election, and found that the answer is yes. 🧵

Remember I told you about the work we have been doing at @howtobuildup on the #polarizationfootprint a few months back Find out more on the methodology we piloted in Kenya. Coming soon to EU 👇👇👇 bsky.app/profile/guyb... @juliehawke.bsky.social @allancheboi.bsky.social @lukethorburn.com

I'm excited to be at #BuildPeace2025 this week. If you were not able to make it this year but have interest in peacebuilding using technology and art, you can listen to the live conference radio here for both content and a fantastic playlist. 🎧www.howtobuildpeace.org

💥My report out now💥 📗 *VLOPs - how big is your Polarization Footprint? Towards a metric to give EU citizens transparency about an online systemic risk driving conflict in our societies* Connecting #polarizationfootprint concept to systemic risk framework of Digital Services Act (#DSA)

I have a new labor of love article in Peacebuilding: "Towards a third side on social media" www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.... Current platform policies reinforce conflict models that are both dyadic and agentic. Helena Puig Larrauri and I show how this is a faulty foundation.

Why did free speech vanguards change their tune following the murder of Charlie Kirk? Is it possible to leave the low hanging fruit of content moderation alone and reach a little higher up the tree? My initial thoughts here: howtobuildup.medium.com/moderate-the...

“It’s an uncomfortable truth that platforms are profiting from this event, and that’s built into deeper structures than content moderation” said @juliehawke.bsky.social, peace-building and research lead (and my colleague!) at Build-Up @socialcohesiontech.bsky.social thehill.com/policy/techn...

“[I]t is hard not to notice that, in the aggregate, something poisonous is in the architecture of [online] platforms and the way that our technologies demand not just our attention, but our most heightened emotions,” @cwarzel.bsky.social writes. www.theatlantic.com/technology/a...

TB testing for new students is in room 105. My office is 'O 105.' With all the knocks and redirections this morning, I just think I'm missing good opportunities. Oh you thought we were testing for tuberculosis? This is a Toxic Boyfriend screening. A Trust Building exercise. Therapeutic breathing...

Are you trained in or currently engaged in responding to toxic speech online, and able to take a short 5-10 minute survey? This survey asks you to reflect on skills and strategies for responding to toxic speech. Thanks in advance for your time! www.google.com/url?q=https:...

Some of you probably have a use for RSS-scraped US news stories from 2022 through 03/2025. This collection apparently has ABC, CBS, CNN, LA Times, NBC, NPR, NYT, Politico, ProPublica, USA Today, and WaPo.

🔔 (new paper!) You might have heard of the "Habermas Machine", an AI-human pipeline that is really good at finding common ground between ideologically diverse groups, at least in lab settings. But can this kind of approach help in real world conflicts?

I just finished a syllabus for a hopeful future course that I want to teach so, so badly. In 3-5 years can a university hire me just to run this course? DYSTOPIAN OR UTOPIAN FUTURES: Technology, Peace, and Conflict through Science Fiction FALL 3024 (👀) SYLLABUS & COURSE SCHEDULE

Not today Statan, not today #sociology

Seems like maybe there should be laws preventing this.

So about ten years ago I found a small network of bots on Reddit dedicated to spreading hate. The thing about it is that these weren't even responding to political topics - they were just responding to random keywords with insults and hate. The same bots are now here. You should understand why. 🧵

New article: Understanding to intervene: The codesign of text classifiers with peace practitioners 👉 bit.ly/3Or79rX #machinelearning #socialmedia #peacebuilding

Consciousness and bureaucracy - The two words that have always escaped my spelling capabilities and also the two words I keep writing papers about