Why do some minority groups organize around their ethnicity, while others do not? In a new study just out in AJS @amjsoc.bsky.social (w/@mschaeffer.bsky.social, S. Carol and S. Böller), we crunched data on over 25000 immigrant organizations for an answer. www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/...

New (free) workshop by the Paul Meehl Graduate School on agent-based modeling: paulmeehlschool.github.io/2026-04-24-a... The workshop will be exclusively in-person on May 27, 2026, in Eindhoven. Register before May 18th!

New version of my R package {democracyData} available: github.com/xmarquez/dem...

@shirleywu.studio @nadiehbremer.com @sonjakuijpers.bsky.social @tulpinteractive.com @laesser.bsky.social @visualisingdata.com

New paper published today in @pnas.org with @filippozimmaro.bsky.social Mirta Galesic and @jacrickets.bsky.social LINK: www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/... We use evolutionary game theory to study when populations will fracture into groups that differ in their beliefs, behaviors and preferences.

Can we have an ORCID CV or sth, pretty please? I've various versions of my CV for various funders and it just doesn't seem like a good use of anyone's time.

A new research post on Kozminski Review! @mbojan.bsky.social shows how his take on network analysis, combining personal network surveys and statistical network modeling uncovers social groups that are out of the picture in discussion networks. No hear, no see? www.kozminski.edu.pl/en/review/ti...

Doing computational social science research on inequality on your own? This special issue is for you! We’re inviting submissions for a Historical Social Research issue on “Computational Social Inequality Research in Practice.” 📅 Deadline: 15 May 2026 #CallForPapers #CompSocSci #Inequality

V-Dem v.16 is now released, w. updated scores for 2025. Most countries remain stable from 2024, but some clear improvements (on diff’t democracy indices), incl. S. Korea, Sri Lanka & Mauritius. Largest declines came, by far, in the US. This figure shows 10-yr changes on the Liberal Dem. index.

How does social influence shape collective outcomes? When does it lead to lock-in on inferior options? In our 🚨 new preprint 📝 osf.io/preprints/so... we make three contributions w/ @alexgelas.bsky.social Alex Jochim @leostnbrk.bsky.social Peter Steiglechner & @pantelispa.bsky.social 🧵1/4

Want to learn about computational social science *for free* and identify new research partners across academic fields? Apply to one of the 2026 Summer Institutes in Computational Social Science (described in yellow in the attached map) here: sicss.io/locations

Clear and brief communication on a critical topic. If you care about ways of making social media better give this one a scan!

🧵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...

All my Alysa Liu associations.

AI agent goes nuts on open source maintainer after having its pull request denied. This is a pretty insane story. Open source development as we've been used to for the last few decades is likely over. 1/ theshamblog.com/an-ai-agent-...

Always a pleasure chatting with students who ask sharp questions 😊 Thanks to The Governance Post for having me - and yes, I stand by the autopilot line.

Book just published (Free to download). This collects together work done by the groups at the Research Incubator held in Groningen in the summer of 2023 which I participated in. link.springer.com/book/10.1007... #abm #polarization #socialscience #cohesion

🚨 New working paper – Wealth Taxation, Capital Gains Taxation and the Inequality–Mobility Trade-Off Together with @janlo.de and @jansg.bsky.social, we compare wealth taxes and capital gains taxes in a random growth model with idiosyncratic investment risk.

How do parties debate minorities? New study based on all parliament speeches in Germany and the UK 1980-2021, with @younghyunlee52.bsky.social , F. #Piñeyrúa, & @max-web.bsky.social, published in the edited volume Computational Social Science of Social Cohesion and Polarization:

I made a map of 3.4 million Bluesky users - see if you can find yourself! bluesky-map.theo.io I've seen some similar projects, but IMO this seems to better capture some of the fine-grained detail

Today Springer published an Open Access book edited by @janlo.de , Marijn Keijzer and myself covering a diverse range of Computational Social Science approaches to questions about social cohesion and polarization. Come and get it at link.springer.com/book/10.1007... 🧵1/4

🧵 New WP with @kaimiele.bsky.social. We document 2 unsettling patterns in mental health care: 1) despite universal coverage, few individuals with mental illness receive guideline-consistent treatment, and 2) the more severe the illness, the lower the treatment uptake & the longer the wait times. 1/n

Until we as a species can settle on which modifier key we should use to switch between "newline" and "submit" when hitting ↩ I see no future for us

🚨Job alert 🚨 I have an opening for a postdoc in my team at @ipz.bsky.social in the area of digital democracy starting Sep 1, 2026. If you are working on the impact of the digital transformation on politics, please apply by 🗓️ Mar 1, 2026. 📤 Please share widely! www.ipz.uzh.ch/de/ueber-uns...

Finally!!

🎓 Doctoral Scholarship Opportunity in Cologne! Join the CGS at the University of Cologne for a 3-year PhD focusing on Demography & Social Inequality. Benefit from a tax-free stipend, an international network, and cutting-edge research. 📅 Deadline: March 15, 2026 🔗 Application: uni.koeln/JQGW2

For absolutely no reason, let me remind people of this banger of a paper by @caroartc.bsky.social doi.org/10.1016/j.jp...

We are looking for a doctoral researcher to work with us on a supercool project in collaboration with linguists. The deadline is Feb 15th, contact me if you have any questions! stellen.uni-konstanz.de/jobposting/9...

A colleague at MPI asked how to get better at math. My vote is Thompson and Gardner's classic *Calculus Made Easy* (originally published in 1910!) I've uploaded my own (almost complete) worked problem sets from this classic book. A few thoughts.../

But then what happens to those that have zero income? 😢

Last term I tried an experiment: I walked into my Tech and Design Ethics class, admitted that I had *no idea* what to do about ChatGPT - so I would let them figure it out. As in: their first project was to decide and write the ChatGPT policy for the class. Here's what happened:

If you tell an AI to convince someone of a true vs. false claim, does truth win? In our *new* working paper, we find... ‘LLMs can effectively convince people to believe conspiracies’ But telling the AI not to lie might help. Details in thread

"10 simple rules for good model sharing practices" journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol...

“The Problem with Mesearch” New For The Love of Science vlog on how to strike the right balance in science between a deep connection to one’s work and objectivity. www.youtube.com/watch?v=P-rS...

I started reading up on the whole "loneliness pandemic" narrative because this seems like a literature where the age-period-cohort problem may be relevant (or maybe it isn't?). Here's data from Australia (HILDA), average agreement with the statement "I often feel very lonely" (SD of ca. 1.8).>

Mesh-Netze als Versuch, die Zensur zu umgehen:

I have to correct a typo in a manuscript, but I love my creation so much! (ChatGPT's visual)

I realised I follow several journals and now I learn about new publications and interesting papers often here first - so I made a Starter Pack with journal accounts in case you wanted to as well. Let me know if I missed an important journal and I'll add it. go.bsky.app/L57tAru

After 5 years of data collection, our WARN-D machine learning competition to forecast depression onset is now LIVE! We hope many of you will participate—we have incredibly rich data. If you share a single thing of my lab this year, please make it this competition. eiko-fried.com/warn-d-machi...

1. My new preprint has its own bluesky account. Why? The problems facing social media & scientific publishing are similar: both are dominated by powerful oligopolies. The @atproto.com tech underlying bluesky that aims to solve the social media prob might also help solve the scientific pub prob 🧪 🧵

The work of @moritzstefaner.bsky.social is just amazing, and it seems to get even better over time. One of the most talented people in the business. 📊 Here are a few of his recent projects in his latest update.

Thrilled to announce the Handbook of Computational Social Science is officially out! 956 pages, 118 authors, and truly global, interdisciplinary perspectives. Deep thanks to the contributors and anonymous reviewers who shaped this over 4 years. Buy your copy now! @elgarpublishing.bsky.social

🎄 Still looking for a gift for your favourite social scientist? How about a #preprint with 717 urban areas, 30 countries, and 16,164 models of #Immigrant #Segregation across Europe? Just published with @kasimirdederichs.bsky.social & David Kretschmer 🎅 🎁 Wrapped up here: arxiv.org/abs/2512.17037

here’s a free version: neat_research_panel <- data.frame( id = 1:100, treatment = sample(c(TRUE, FALSE), 100, replace = TRUE), outcome = rnorm(100, mean = 50, sd = 5) )

The Max Planck Society has begun an exploratory round table for open science. We are drafting some recommendations to leadership. Still a long way to go! But here are my notes on the most recent draft, just so you all know how I am trying to steer things.

In line with the 'credibility revolution', we are thinking about research designs that allow us to get closer to causal effects. Those who use surveys have often turned to survey experiments. At the same time, survey response rates have dropped considerably. Below are the figures for the ESS.

We’re excited to announce the winners of the 2025 Pudding Cup! Our entry pool was the strongest ever with close to 100 submissions. Show our 3 winners some love 🫶 on this thread, and check out the full details and honorable mentions at the link: pudding.cool/pudding-cup/

2️⃣4️⃣🎁🎄 Doing something new for Advent this year: one great data journalism piece per day until Dec 24. I’m teaching a data journalism course @hertieschool.bsky.social next semester, so this is partly selfish homework. But maybe interesting for others too.

Graz Winter School: Talk 2: docs.google.com/presentation...