Thanks for the shout-out @jlgleason.bsky.social Web search has changed a lot since early 2000s. Yet, papers still rely on Broder's taxonomy of search intent from that time. It's time to change that! In this paper led by Elsa Lichtenegger we present a new taxonomy, accounting for AI search as well!

Introducing Datapages, a new project from Mika Braginsky and me. Datapages are open-source templates for creating interactive websites that make research datasets easy to find, explore, and reuse. No coding required for the basic setup. babieslearninglanguage.blogspot.com/2026/04/data...

New preprint out today (osf.io/preprints/ps...). We tested whether AI agents are actually infiltrating online surveys. Spoiler alert: they aren't Thread 🧵 [1/9]

I've built a free open-source intelligence dashboard tracking every coordinated inauthentic behaviour (CIB) operation Meta has disclosed since 2018. 214 operations. 53 origin countries. $22.7M in ad spend. 71 reports analysed. Access it here! marcowenjones.substack.com/p/i-created-... #disinfo

“Conflict entrepreneurs”--leaders who frequently use personal insults—are damaging democracy. An analysis of 2.2 million public statements from members of Congress finds that this type of rhetoric is linked to increased media coverage, but has no other benefits. academic.oup.com/pnasnexus/ar...

Hab mir auch mal einen Reim auf die jüngsten Vorfälle im Literaturbetrieb gemacht

Brilliant sweepthestrait.com

🚀 PhD (100%) | Disinformation, Youth & Cross-Platform Dynamics 👤 Profile: Strong affinity with CSS, Experience with digital data (social media, text corpora, etc.), Quantitative & computational methods (e.g., NLP, ML), Interest in political disinformation 📍 Cologne (up to 60% remote) is.gd/dYxJ9L

#CallForProposals for the 2nd funding period in the Infrastructure Priority Programme "New Data Spaces for the Social Sciences" (SPP 2431). Objective: Expanding data sources and methods for the social sciences. Interested researchers are invited to a workshop on 8 May 26. Details: sohub.io/2s2g

Professur für "Quantitative Methoden der digitalen Kommunikationsforschung" ausgeschrieben an der @unisalzburg.bsky.social Bewerbungfrist: 01.04.; Beginn: 01.10.

+++ Mainz-Tagung 2027: CfP +++ Vom 7. bis 9. April 2027 trifft sich unsere FG zum Thema „Zur Lage der Meinungs- und Pressefreiheit: Aktuelle Konfliktlinien und Folgen für demokratische Öffentlichkeiten“ zum nächsten Mal. CfP & Tagungs-Website sind jetzt online: ifp.uni-mainz.de/polkomm27/

Gestern bei #FM4aufLaut ein für mich neues Format ausprobiert – eigene Rolle finden, immer eine Herausforderung. Thema: die #TrumpEpsteinFiles – warum Datadumps ideales Material für Verschwörungsnarrative sind & welch realen moralischen Abgrund sie zugleich offenlegen. sound.orf.at/podcast/fm4/...

New paper this week by V-Dem's director, @silindberg.bsky.social, on the the current wave of autocratization: www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1... Including this important statement: "...it is by my own analysis no question that the USA no longer qualifies as a democracy."

6 years ago, we first noticed sudden upticks in German fringe far right networks, using terms like "climate cult" to disparage climate activists and green policy initiatives. www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

🚀 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 🎨

our polcom conference at @uni-hamburg.de has ended, but I am still fan-girling on @jolukito.bsky.social, that was such a brillient talk! very inspiring for my new research project on right-wing defensive publics with @lauraliebig.bsky.social, but also for her stance on mutual support in Academia

Herzlichen Glückwunsch an @franzreiter.bsky.social und @utarussmann.bsky.social zum Top Contribution Award unserer diesjährigen Tagung! Ihr Vortrag zum Thema "Politische Kommunikation und Partizipation in Gemeinden" wurde von den Reviewer:innen herausragend bewertet.

In which @tompepinsky.com suggests that #genAI may have is uses for social scientists (and social science?) after all

We've got ISSUES. Literally. We scraped >100k special issues & over 1 million articles to bring you a PISS-poor paper. We quantify just how many excess papers are published by guest editors abusing special issues to boost their CVs. How bad is it & what can we do? arxiv.org/abs/2601.07563 A 🧵 1/n

Well, this is what I ended up with. Somewhat fitting as I gave up my professorship in Zurich for my husband's love of these (according to family legend, at least)

I take no leave of you, 2025. I send no compliments to your mother. You deserve no such attention. I am most seriously displeased.

Call for Applications for the Data Quality #Academy Certificate Program 2026 The call for applications for the #KODAQS Academy’s certificate program is open: www.gesis.org/en/ges...#Academy#KODAQSThe program is aimed at early-career researchers from various disciplines who work with social science data.

The Call for Papers and Panels for #COMPTEXT2026 in Birmingham (23-25 April) is out; feel free to circulate: shorturl.at/gRg0p! Deadline: January 16!

Here's a peek at our new Social Media Research Toolkit, a curated collection of more than 50 social media research tools. This toolkit is unique in that it only features tried and tested tools that have been used in peer-reviewed academic studies. (ETA Jan 5, 2026) #academicsky #comsky

Ban the Business Model, Not the Child. Read these wise (research based) words from colleague @jesstpiotrowski.bsky.social on the social media ban in Australia @ascor.bsky.social @antmandan.bsky.social www.jessicataylorpiotrowski.com/2025/12/11/b...

Mitten in der Pandemie startete BILD den Versuch eines eigenen Fernsehsenders. Warum das Experiment scheiterte, habe ich u. a. auf Basis von 43 Interviews rekonstruiert. Jetzt Open Access in Medien & Kommunikationswissenschaft [@bredowinstitut.bsky.social] erschienen. www.inlibra.com/de/document/...

"Die Analyse enthält auch einen 20-seitigen internen Evaluationsbericht der Armee (...) Die Militärexperten kommen zu dem Schluss, dass ein Abfluss von Daten aus den #Palantir Systemen technisch nicht verhindert werden könne." #Schweiz 🇨🇭

We're looking for a colleague (postdoc) 📢 @politikuhh.bsky.social 3+3 years Doing your own research while teaching 2.5 courses per semester Research agenda with links to our team (democracy, digital politics, political competition/behaviour) DL 🗓️ 05/01 stellen.uni-hamburg.de/jobposting/6...

Ist denn schln Weihnachten? Hatte ein FETTES BROT in der Post!!

Happy to announce the 2nd edition of our Summer School in Computational Social Science that will take place in the beautiful Villa del Grumello on Lake Como between June 22-26, 2026! *** DEADLINE FOR APPLICATION: February 15, 2026 (firm deadline) *** More details here: css2.lakecomoschool.org

1. Pausing new submissions about AI topics for 90 days. That is, papers about AI models, testing AI models, proposing AI models, theories about the future of AI, etc. We will make exceptions for papers that are already accepted for publication (or published) in peer-reviewed scholarly journals /2

This chimes with our new open-access @polcommjournal.bsky.social study of French-language immigration posts, which shows how far-right users flood feeds with hyper-partisan sources for political purposes: doi.org/10.1080/1058...

Google AI overviews now reach over 2B users worldwide. But how reliable are they on high stakes topics - for instance, pregnancy and baby care? We have a new paper - led by Desheng Hu, now accepted at @icwsm.bsky.social - exploring that and finding many issues Preprint: arxiv.org/abs/2511.12920 🧵👇

Super important and dear to my heart! Also a good opportunity to remind people of the super helpful systematic list of open science/access media and communication research journals by Moritz Büchi and @tobiasdienlin.com here: docs.google.com/spreadsheets...

📢Fantastic job-opportunity at the #UZH department for communication and media research @ikmz.bsky.social: Professorship in Communication Studies with a focus on Change and Innovation in Communication 100% 😍 Deadline for applications: December 17, 2025. jobs.uzh.ch/offene-stell...

🎓 We’re hiring! Two researcher / PhD positions in the ERC project DANCE – Dark Nerd Communities at the University of Münster 🇪🇺 🧮 Quantitative: survey, lab + field experiments 🎙️ Qualitative: ethnography, focus groups, interviews Apply by 28 Nov 2025 👇 #AcademicJobs #ERC #PhD #CommunicationResearch

Here is the first piece in a series of short articles I'm doing about the DSA and researcher access to publicly available information. It focuses on categories of researchers under the DSA, and what data they are each authorized to use. 1/ verfassungsblog.de/dsa-platform...

Noch drei Tage! Wir freuen uns über Eure Einreichungen zu Demokratischer Resilienz - auf bald in Hamburg!

Vorbildliche Darstellung des NDR. Klimawandelfolgen auf Regionen heruntergebrochen, die dort beschriebenen Entwicklungen in größeren Kontext gesetzt und vermeintliche Widersprüche aufgelöst. Liebe Norddeutsche, hier habt ihr was zum Teilen www.ndr.de/nachrichten/...

So, now it's official: for the next four years, I'll be researching "Defensive Publics and their Imagined Security Communities in the Digital Realm" (with @lauraliebig.bsky.social) as part of the new DFG research group "The Promise of Security in Catastrophic Times"!!

Studie "How to sell democracy online (fast)" ist ein Brett 🛹. Superspannend und extrem hilfreich, da sie erklärt: - Wie junge Menschen Plattformen nutzen - Was sie sich wünschen - Was funktioniert? 📝 www.progressives-zentrum.org/publication/... Inklusive 13 konkreter Handlungsempfehlungen. 💯

Populismus & Polarisierung funktionieren super auf #TikTok & Insta #Reels. Aber wie können Demokraten vertikale Videos nutzen, um junge Zielgruppen zu erreichen & Impact zu erzielen? Neue Studie von @dpzberlin.bsky.social & @bertelsmannst.bsky.social hat 30.000 Videos analysiert & gibt Tipps 👇

Now out in @cpsjournal.bsky.social. In our new article, @denis-cohen.bsky.social @thmskrr.bsky.social and I show that where local rent prices increase more, residents with lower incomes become more likely to support the radical right AfD. journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

"Die Veränderung der Welt durch Internetkultur betrifft mittlerweile nicht mehr nur Einzelersonen, die einfach mal Gras anfassen sollten. Internetkultur ist keine Nische mehr, die man wahlweise ignorieren oder als obskuren Quatsch verlachen kann..."

Diese Annäherung an Trumps Politik finanzieren US-Stiftungen, oft unterstützt von der fossilen Industrie, sowie marktradikale Denkfabriken aus Ungarn und Deutschland. Viele CDU-Urgesteine fürchten diese Trumpisierung zutiefst. Text mit @gabrielakeller.bsky.social correctiv.org/aktuelles/tr...

Die Reaktionen auf den Mord an Kirk zeigen klar, wie deutsche Konservative den Trumpschen Stil aus Halbwahrheiten, wilden Beschuldigungen und Hass kopieren. Das ist keine spontane Gefühlswallung, sondern Strategie. Millionenschwere (US-)Stiftungen und rechtskonservative Netzwerke arbeiten daran 🧵

Our study on the strategic narratives about the Russian-Ukrainian war in 7 EU countries, co-authored with @eddahumprecht.bsky.social, is out in the IJoC. We trace pro-Russian messages across countries, platforms, and actor types ahead of the 2024 EP election. Check it out: ijoc.org/index.php/ij...

🚨 New paper alert 🚨 Using LLMs as data annotators, you can produce any scientific result you want. We call this **LLM Hacking**. Paper: arxiv.org/pdf/2509.08825