“What you call in global north paranoia, we in the global south call history and trauma….” @mertcanbayar.bsky.social shared such a deep and thoughtful analysis of conspiracies and their political resonance with me @baykurt.bsky.social this week! Episode: itallhappenedbefore.substack.com

"What the global North calls paranoia, the global South calls history." @mertcanbayar.bsky.social on why conspiracy theories hit differently when your country has been carved up & couped, and how the "deep state" travels from Turkey to the US itallhappenedbefore.substack.com/p/episode-7-...

This was a delightful conversation with two amazing people and scholars! It all happened before podcast tells the stories of democracies slowly fading into authoritarian capture and this episode is about conspiracy theories leading the way in TR and in the US in a surprisingly similar way!

In case you missed this earlier this week, our team put out a report documenting our approach to "rapid research" during elections, crises, & other breaking news events. It demonstrates a role for university researchers — relying on contextual and methodological expertise — to act as "sensemakers".

Prominence brings influence 👇

I'm proud to be a co-author on this new @cip.uw.edu report with my colleagues @danielletomson.bsky.social, @katestarbird.bsky.social @mertcanbayar.bsky.social and @emmaspiro.bsky.social. Check out Kate's 🧵 ...

How did we do what we did in this type of adversarial setting? How can researchers in universities and think tanks replicate CIP model for tracking and making sense of emerging rumors in a given context? We have good starting points lined up for the ones who are courageous enough to "Sapere Aude."

Since 2020, our team has iterated on a model for “rapid research” to help surface, analyze, & resolve rumors about election administration. This work demonstrates an innovative role for researchers to support public sensemaking during rapidly unfolding events. uw.pressbooks.pub/rapidresearc...

Updates on the 3I/ATLAS convo on X: • Overall volume has stayed low over the past month. • But… 3I/ATLAS's new anti-tail and Avi Loeb’s new post about it have reignited the alien framing. • Mentions of the tail are up nearly 200% in the last 48 hours. Alien frame is up 28% at the same period.

Read Bayar's recent blog post, "Alien of the gaps: How 3I/ATLAS was turned into a spaceship online," on the @cip.uw.edu website: www.cip.uw.edu/2025/12/03/3...

“Our information systems reward the production of mystery and speculation,” @cip.uw.edu postdoctoral scholar @mertcanbayar.bsky.social recently wrote in a blog post about online discourse around the 3I/ATLAS interstellar comet. Read more in @geekwire.com: www.geekwire.com/2025/alien-i...

Anyone who loves #Luis #Buñuel might notice a tiny wink to Le charme discret de la bourgeoisie hidden in the piece. See if you spot it.

3I/ATLAS is only the third confirmed interstellar object we’ve seen. Astronomers see an interesting but natural comet. Online, it quickly became an “alien mothership” with a secret mission. I wrote about how that happened and what it tells us about us and our info systems.

While the scientific consensus is that #3I/ATLAS is a natural comet, one scientist's claims that the object shows certain anomalies that could indicate alien origins have ricocheted through the online universe, and these claims may be amplified as the comet passes Earth in mid-December. (3/3)

In the latest from @cip.uw.edu, Mert Can Bayar @mertcanbayar.bsky.social analyzes how knowledge gaps can lead to the spread of speculative theories, such as those shared by a Harvard astrophysicist that the comet known as 3l/ATLAS might be an alien "mothership." (1/3) www.cip.uw.edu/2025/12/03/3...

Analyzing posts on X, @mertcanbayar.bsky.social found that about 40% of the 3I/ATLAS conversations on on that platform invoked an aliens/ET frame. Bayar builds on the work of scholars including @katestarbird.bsky.social, who has written about how rumors travel within recognizable frames. (2/3)

UW CIP postdoc @mertcanbayar.bsky.social explains how a high-profile scientist's statements about the 3l/ATLAS comet harnessed uncertainty and attention dynamics, and spawned widespread speculation about an alien visitor, an "alien of the gaps" in human knowledge: www.cip.uw.edu/2025/12/03/3...

What if conspiracy theories were taken to their logical endpoint and put into practice as a form of governance? @mertcanbayar.bsky.social and I explore this question in our new article on the conspiracist theory of power in @cogitatiopag.bsky.social. www.cogitatiopress.com/politicsandg...

The open-access article, "The end of trust and safety?: Examining the future of content moderation and upheavals in professional online safety efforts," is available in the Proceedings of the 2025 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/...

The CIP researchers, Rachel Moran-Prestridge, @schafer.bsky.social, @mertcanbayar.bsky.social and @katestarbird.bsky.social, also examined current perspectives of content moderation and broader strategies for maintaining safe digital environments.

In a newly published research article in the Proceedings of the 2025 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, a team of @cip.uw.edu researchers interviewed trust and safety professionals and explored upheavals within the T&S industry.

Thrilled to be at the CHI conference this week where PhD student @schafer.bsky.social will present our paper — co-authored w/ Rachel Moran (1st author) & @mertcanbayar.bsky.social — titled, "The End of Trust and Safety?" dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/...

This is amazing

There is a right-wing infrastructure online and it got to a point of relevance for policy making and international politics. Nawfal is part of this. Here, you can also find a few quotes from me about our work on “newsbrokers” and how Nawfal is a prime example of a new class of elites around Musk.

More information about suspensions by @bsky.app. 59 accounts are being censored by Turkish authorities due to reasons of “national security” and “public order.” 13 accounts and one post has been censored by @bsky.app. Such accounts cannot be viewed or accessed from Turkey.

CfP is out for the upcoming conference I co-organise with @bilgeyabanci.bsky.social & Sonia Alonso Sáenz de Oger in Bilbao this coming October. Those working on radical right movements, conspiracy theories, and societal violence, send an abstract here 👇 agenda.deusto.es/en/conferenc...

Well, that's disappointing. @bsky.app started banning accounts complying with Turkish government demands. Not the safe haven those who migrated from X was seeking, it seems.

“If Bluesky is going to cave to ‘local laws’ in authoritarian regimes and suspend accounts for political reasons, then what’s the point of migrating from X? @bsky.app @support.bsky.team @moderation.bsky.app — you have to know BETTER.

Very important study here! Congrats @mertcanbayar.bsky.social

🚨 Bluesky’a göç eden Türkiye ahalisi, hoş geldiniz! Komplo teorilerine ilginiz varsa, bu yayında tam da bu inançların siyasal boyutuna dalıyoruz. Kim neden inanıyor? Ve neden bu inançlar güçlü lider arzusu ve otoriter rejim tercihiyle bu kadar iç içe? Akademik ama yormayan bir sohbet 🤞🏼

If you’re into the politics behind conspiracy theories and misinformation, check out this talk I gave at UW Impact. I dig into how these beliefs aren’t just fringe—they’re often tied to calls for stronger presidents and even leanings toward authoritarianism.

Fantastic paper by @mertcanbayar.bsky.social, a postdoc at the UW Center for an Informed Public, examining how conspiracy theories drive political action in the U.S. and Turkey — and revealing key differences between partisan vs. non-partisan conspiracy theories.

🚨 @bsky.app #Türkiye app store’da en çok indirilen uygulama olmuş durumda. Bluesky became the #1st app in #Turkey’s app store! Looks like X’s decision to suspend opposition accounts in favor of Erdoğan is backfiring. How great to see this platform becoming a hub for democratic voices all over 🌍

I am looking for a post-bac (Dartmouth language for a pre-doc) researcher to join our team studying elections and democracy. If you (or someone you know) have expertise in data science or political science, please apply or share this opportunity! polarizationresearchlab.org/hiring/

🚨 My first solo-authored piece is out in Electoral Studies! 👽 I examine when and how conspiracy theories become participatory, increasing political mobilization. Using the United States and Turkey as cases of a most-different-systems design, I explore how conspiracy theories drive political action.

1/ Ekrem İmamoğlu, the Mayor of Istanbul and a key opposition leader, has been detained by Turkish authorities. This is a direct assault on democracy in Turkey. #İmamoğlu #Turkey

Masnick brings the receipts in this detailed “fact-check” of Zuckerberg’s interview by Joe Rogan, where the duo pushed a twisted narrative about the Biden admin pressuring Meta, and ignored how Zuck’s recent moves come after and in response to open threats by Trump. www.techdirt.com/2025/01/16/r...

Two things can be true at once. 1. Meta has long had a real problem of excessive moderation and censorship, mostly caused by its own automated systems, not fact-checkers 2. Zuckerberg is ending fact-checking now because it's the politically expedient thing to do for him and Meta

Meta was by far the biggest funder of fact-checking till this week. Probably, most of these third party fact-checking companies will vanish soon. This is a huge development for the information environment. It was not unexpected since the latest trends in content moderation at Meta or elsewhere.

It may seem strange to folks outside of academia, but there has been a line of prominent research within it arguing that misinformation isn't a problem. This paper pushes back, noting how those arguments often rely on poor definitions & operationalizations of what misinformation is & how it works.

If you aren't subscribed to the @cip.uw.edu News & Insights newsletter you can read the most recent edition here: www.cip.uw.edu/2024/12/19/c... Sign up to receive the next edition: docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...

In @washingtonpost.com, @pbump.com cites observations from @cip.uw.edu co-founder @katestarbird.bsky.social of the 1954 #Seattle "windshield pitting epidemic" where "there was no rash of unusual damage, just usual damage receiving unusual notice." www.washingtonpost.com/politics/202...

Well I always tell people Santa is real. The priest (St. Nicholas) who inspired the Santa myth is actually from my hometown Demre. The archeologists discovered a tomb beneath Nicholas’ 1500 year old church in 2022 and now they found the tomb which potentially could be St. Nicholas’ tomb 🤞🏼.

We are hiring!! Feel free to reach out to me if you have any questions.

Hello Bluesky! We’re the University of Washington’s Department of Human Centered Design & Engineering (HCDE). Here, we explore the intersection of people, technology, and design to build a more just future. Follow us for updates on research, events, and stories from our community!

🧵We’re proud of our efforts to support multidisciplinary research and the development of educational programming and info literacy resources for use in WA and beyond. In this @cip.uw.edu video, we highlight MisinfoDay, our Loki's Loop educational games and more. Watch: youtu.be/7FTqLhQ1iBQ?...

More of these in this app please! We need more humor!! One of the best things about twitter was the online Turkish humor, let’s build something similar 🙏🏻

@cip.uw.edu’s official account is here as well! ✌🏼

Here is a starter pack for our team at Center for an Informed Public (CIP) at University of Washington. @uwischool.bsky.social