🚨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. 🧵

It's Election Day! The @cccr.bsky.social has been working hard to share research-based evidence about elections in the U.S. & how information relates to attitudes about elections, as well as public-facing work promoting voter turnout & citizen knowledge about the choices they face. Some examples: 1)

🚨Out in Science!🚨 Conspiracy beliefs famously resist correction, ya? WRONG: We show brief convos w GPT4 reduce conspiracy beliefs by ~20%! -Lasts over 2mo -Works on entrenched beliefs -Tailored AI response rebuts specific evidence offered by believers www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

I wrote about the Swift endorsement, with a political science/communication angle. How does her endorsement matter? And how do celebrity endorsements in 2024 differ from the past? Special thanks to @jessfeez.bsky.social for speaking with me about this! abcnews.go.com/538/taylor-s...

Wonder how social media moderators as gatekeepers decide what content is political? Come see my talk today at 2pm in Franklin 12, part of @polcomm.bsky.social session on The Limits of Free Expression on Social Media! #APSA2024

Jetlagged and up early at #APSA2024? Or just really eager to get thia conference started? Come see our 8 o'clock panel on party communications!

Just in time for #APSA2024, here’s Race and Ethnicity as Foundational Forces in Political Communication, co-edited by me and @danlane.bsky.social! Available now at www.routledge.com/Race-and-Eth...

For the night crew: I've written my first post for my substack, GENDER GAP. I took a small bite out of a big topic for my first post, writing about the gender gap in social media use. Hope you'll check it out: open.substack.com/pub/meredith...

In their #JMPSpecialIssue article, Musa Malik, Sungbin Youk (Ewha Womans University, Seoul) and René Weber (@ucsantabarbara.bsky.social) provide initial evidence of the linkages between moral content and the saliency of audiences' expressed moral understanding. econtent.hogrefe.com/doi/epdf/10....

Heading to #APSA24 in Philly? Call for travel grants from the Information, Technology, and Politics section. Apply thru survey link below. Applications will be evaluated based on need & the section's commitment to increasing diversity & inclusion. Due Aug. 16. unc.az1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_...

Our book "The Power Of Us" is on a huge sale today: It's only $7.54 for hardcover + $8.96 for the audiobook If you ever wanted a deal, now is the time to buy it: www.amazon.com/Power-Harnes...

Four headlines from The Post: prediction, prognostication, and the show plus reporters writing about themselves. No stakes here, nothing to inform the electorate.

Happy to be included in this virtual special issue with some other great scholarship on gender and presidential elections!

📊When teaching or giving a talk, do you like presenting plots step by step, revealing e.g. one group at a time? This is often useful for walking through complex results. I made a R package that makes it extremely easy to do this! ggreveal: Reveal a ggplot incrementally #rstats #dataviz #ggplot2

🚨Coming soon from Routledge: Race and Ethnicity as Foundational Forces in Political Communication, edited by me and @danlane.bsky.social! Pre-order your copy at www.routledge.com/Race-and-Eth...

I rarely donate to federal campaigns anymore since the marginal impact of that same money is much higher for downballot campaigns. I made an exception for Harris today, & this is why

1. we must say with one voice that political violence is unacceptable and wrong 2. do not amplify unverified reports until we know more

✨NEW ARTICLE✨ out in Political Communication by Matthias Hoffmann & me: Countering the “Climate Cult” – Framing Cascades in Far-Right Digital Networks We trace sequences of climate frames in the AfD's digital networks. #polcomm #commsky #polisky OPEN ACCESS here: www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Did you know that the Pew Research Centre lets you download their datasets? www.pewresearch.org/download-dat... For you R nerds, there is also an R package you can use

🚨New pub alert! 🚨 Out now in Communication Theory, I introduce a model for how media users evaluate media texts as politically relevant, leading to cognitive, affective, and behavioral outcomes bearing a variety of consequences. A 🧵... (1/10)

🚨WP🚨 We test 9 online samples and find clear tradeoffs between attentiveness and representativeness - which sample is best depends on research q and priorities. For social/political qs I rec Bovitz/Lucid, for complex designs I rec Cloud/Prolific osf.io/preprints/ps...

New research across 30 countries (N = 15,202) finds that online hostility is driven by a small number of status-seeking individuals. These folks are more hostile in situations of inequality (both online and offline) as a strategy to gain social status. osf.io/preprints/ps...

De Keersmaecker et al find: political MODERATES are more knowledgeable about politics than centrists or extremists. 45 nation study. That aligns with my personal experience discussing politics with people. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

How use of online platforms–like Facebook, Instagram or TikTok–differs among some U.S. demographic groups. YouTube Facebook Instagram Pinterest TikTok Linkedln WhatsApp Snapchat Twitter(X) Reddit BeReal Ages Household income Education Urban Suburban Rural Rep/Lean Rep Dem/Lean Dem source: Pew

3 yrs ago the insurrectionists sought to violently halt a procedure enshrined in the US Constitution & to overturn a freely and fairly-run election. With Khadijah Costley White, @dkreiss.bsky.social & @rebekahtromble.bsky.social we’ve edited a forthcoming volume - Media & January 6th 1/x

Join us @APPCPenn as a Civic Science Fellow! Develop research w/ community partners focused on the science of climate communication, action, and resilience w/ @falklab @PennCSSM @MichaelEMann @dalbarra @TheNetterCenter @danicosme & more (detail ). Apply: bit.ly/3TB8zUy

**POLCOMM PUBLICATION FRIDAY** The final #PolComm Publication Friday before this account goes into holiday hiatus re-focuses on this year’s two issues of the Political Communication Report: politicalcommunication.org/pcr/

We have a new paper on "Social Media and Morality" in Annual Reviews www.annualreviews.org/doi/10.1146/... We argue that social media accelerates existing moral dynamics: amplifying outrage, status seeking, and intergroup conflict as well as social support, prosociality, and collective action.

🚨 New paper 🚨 Despite the small prevalence of false news, media literacy tips typically encourage people to be more skeptical of the news🧐 Would they be effective if they promoted trust in true news instead? And does the proportion of true-false news matter?

🚨New Preprint: "Generative language models exhibit social identity biases" Did you know LLMs mirror human-like biases, showing human-levels of ingroup solidarity & outgroup hostility? @profsanderlinden.bsky.social @steverathje.bsky.social 📄 arxiv.org/abs/2310.15819

What do we know--and what don't we know--about corrections of misinfo? Now at Current Opinion in Psychology, @thomasjwood.bsky.social and I offer answers. TLDR: Corrections improve accuracy across groups (see figure); tiny fx on attitudes; open questions about durability + exposure. bit.ly/3Qt0IVD

✨OUT NOW:✨ 📰POLITICAL COMMUNICATION REPORT Issue 28 APSA & ICA’s #PolComm Divisions are happy to announce the 2023 Fall issue of the PCR, titled: “De-westernizing PolComm Theories and Research: More Perspectives, New Directions”! polsky commsky 🧵⤵️ politicalcommunication.org/issue/fall-2...

🚨PhD position in Pol Comm🚨 We are looking for a PhD candidate on the project 'The Role of Social Norms in Negative Campaigning and Affective Polarization', supervised by the awesome @CorinnaOschatz, myself, and Andreas Schuck Please repost for N and diversity! Details below polisky commsky

Can lifestyle influencers shape political beliefs? @arielhasell.bsky.social and I explore how *aspirational* social media use is associated with attitudes and beliefs about expertise -- OUT NOW in SM+S! journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

New publication! LSC Asst. Prof. @omgbearss.bsky.social and @arielhasell.bsky.social's research uncovers the subtle influence of lifestyle influencers, linking social media content to more anti-expert attitudes and less accurate beliefs. doi.org/10.1177/2056...

News coverage of social media increasingly emphasizes negative uses (e.g., misinformation) and its remedies (e.g., regulation), while increasingly using using anxious, angry, and moral language, finds @danlane.bsky.social @overbye.bsky.social & Gagrčin doi.org/10.1093/jcmc...

Folks, it seems we are desperately in search of purpose, connection, & community but modern life has us distracted, isolated, and untrusting. The link between individual well-being and democratic well-being is the next big nut to crack.

New in JCMC! We analyze 16 yrs of pol news stories on social media: coverage a) increasingly uses anxious angry & moral language, b) is consistently focused on national politicians, & c) emphasizes normatively neg uses (e.g., misinformation) & remedies (i.e., regulation) tinyurl.com/sm-story

From CNN today: "Journalism professor’s six-word mantra is a blueprint for how news outlets should cover the 2024 race." Not the odds, but the stakes.

I'm late to post this but I'm THRILLED that this paper is finally out in the world. The project has been a labor of love, building a dataset that using machine learning to map civic infrastructure in the U.S. at scale. Finally it's out there!! And hopefully this paper is just the beginning....

We are hiring a postdoc for 2 years as part of the ERC-StG project INEQNEWS aiming to examine social inequalities in digital news consumption! Apply by December 15! smit.vub.ac.be/vacancy/post...

Hot off the press! Congratulations to @benjamintoff.bsky.social, Ruth Palmer, and Rasmus Nielsen on the arrival of their new book, AVOIDING THE NEWS: RELUCTANT AUDIENCES FOR JOURNALISM. bit.ly/49sXnyE @reutersinstitute.bsky.social

🚨CALL FOR AUTHORS🚨 We are looking for authors willing to write a short entry (2.5k words) on the topics below for our Encyclopedia of Political Communication Interested? ➡️ Reach out asap via email ([email protected]) Plz repost for N and diversity @maxgroemping.bsky.social @dswirz.bsky.social

🚨New pub alert!🚨 Out now in New Media & Society, @danlane.bsky.social and I explore the utility of re-framing the goal of confronting racist speech online from attitude change to norm setting. A 🧵 (1/7)

“[T]he misinformation panic is largely misguided … [T]hose who consume high rates of misinformation are largely hyper-partisans or dogmatists anyway. Moreover, even when people’s misinformed beliefs are corrected, this often seems to have little effect on their behaviour.”

Removing these inflationary features from survey questions produces knowledge estimates that are more strongly associated with established predictors of political knowledge, such as interest, participation and education. 4/7

I’ve been studying news avoidance in some form or another since 2016… so I am truly excited to be able to share this with the world. Available now for pre-orders! Official pub date in December. cup.columbia.edu/book/avoidin... or a.co/d/7wgQkYR