25 years ago, many of us believed the internet could empower everyday people. What happened, and what does it mean for the AI era we are now entering? www.oii.ox.ac.uk/news-events/...

Ultimately, if you're going to do a frowny face and a 'the people must be told' then it should be a 'why did a bald man buy TWO Dyson hairdryers?' and 'seriously, what were the other five DSes for?'

for a high-level write up of the findings, check out this insight.kellogg.northwestern.edu/article/can-...

As I mentioned in the below thread, this project involved many feats of engineering, led by the fantastic @markptorres.bsky.social. If you're a CS or CSS person interested in the gory details, see his blog post: markptorres.com/research/202...

Come work with me from September! Brilliant opportunity to shape high-quality, impactful research within a team with a really positive work culture 🙂

Still time to apply!! Come & work with me at the Hasso Plattner Institute & @bmittelstadt.bsky.social @cruss.bsky.social @oii.ox.ac.uk If you care about ethical, legal, and social aspects of AI, generative AI and other emerging technologies and EU tech laws, then apply now! tinyurl.com/556jty8t

Come work with me from September! Brilliant opportunity to shape high-quality, impactful research within a team with a really positive work culture 🙂

Well there’s my bank holiday reading sorted 😎☀️ www.vatican.va/content/leo-...

Great work from my former colleague @j-hancock.bsky.social at @demos-uk.bsky.social 👏

** Quick request - top tips for ECRs / PhDs engaging with policymakers? ** Got a couple of really helpful responses on LinkedIn, so sharing here too! Feel free to DM me 🙂

📢 Call for Papers: first Annual Digital Publics Conference 📅 21–23 October 2026 | Digital Society Initiative, University of Zurich 👉 To submit: forms.cloud.microsoft/e/BxVnAMyxNh ❗Deadline for abstract submissions is 31 May 2026❗Acceptance notifications will be sent by early july.

🚨 #Jobalert Are you looking for a #postdoc position in political communication research? We are looking for a postdoc for the Horizon Europe-funded project. 📅Deadline: 8 June 2026 🔗Read More: tinyurl.com/5xecsskf

Come and work with me!

Good piece by ex-BBC News boss Deborah Turness, doubt established newsrooms can move fast enough though. This is basically the shift that's happened and as she says I think the real challenge is how you fund original investigative reporting if this is the news. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Here's a free link to the paper: rdcu.be/fiyrF

I’m excited to share a new paper in Nature that shows how large language models launder the strategic rhetoric of authoritarian states. Paper here: www.nature.com/articles/s41.... A thread.

We hosted our 2026 Digital Good Network summit in Birmingham last week. It was great to hear from our Digital Good Research Fund recipients and other network members about their work exploring what a good digital society looks like and how we get there.

Postdoc alert! Fellow in Public Policy at the LSE School of Public Policy. Up to 3 years, a great job in a tight market. Needs to be able to support teaching on our MPP program, but political scientists could definitely do this (make your case!) www.jobs.lse.ac.uk

We're hiring a Post-Doc (3 years) at the @hertieschool.bsky.social for a @scripts-berlin.eu project on authoritarian influence in the video games industry (I am soooo excited about this project)! More details here (deadline 31 May): hertie-school.dvinci-easy.com/en/p/en/jobs...

This by danah boyd, on how social media is now parasocial, is vg journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

We are offering two great initiatives for humanities and social sciences researchers interested in applying to Horizon Europe. On 1st June we are holding an ERC Reading Day where you can read previously successful ERC grant proposals from a selection of 50 www.thebritishacademy.ac.uk/projects/eur...

I spoke to the @thetimes.com about the UK's impending social media restrictions for teenagers. Until it is clear about what harms to children it is trying to mitigate, government is likely to make sub-optimum policy choices about the services to target and how. www.thetimes.com/uk/technolog...

These are legitimately good post-PhD jobs for junior researchers -- we have (and have had) many fantastic young scholars as Fellows (e.g. @zachdickson.bsky.social @catarinaleao.bsky.social @lanabi.bsky.social @yuanmohe.bsky.social to name a few, along with an all star cast of alumni). Please apply!

This is great in itself, but is also an excuse to share my old blog that aligns nicely on some of these points alexparsons.co.uk/blog/posts/2...

Interesting piece. This is something BBC R&D have been thinking about over the past couple of years - the fragmentation of “social” media into bonfires (small, closed spaces) and broadcasting (feeds comprised of short-form video)

Is social media dying? How much did Twitter change as it became X? Which party now dominates the conversation? Using nationally representative ANES data from 2020 & 2024, I map how the U.S. social media landscape has changed Here are the key take-aways 🧵 Full paper out now in in JQD:DM!

We are way closer to Pontifex Maximus quoting Zizek than I would like “the horror of modernity is not that bad people do bad things — they always do. It's that good people do horrible things thinking they are doing something great.”

Anyone working in history of comedy/satire, television, modern British politics - there's a fully funded PhD to research the Spitting Image archive @theul.bsky.social, with supervision at Exeter Uni. All disciplines considered, pls do share widely. www.exeter.ac.uk/study/fundin...

I'll be at #ICML2026 on July 10-11 in Seoul to speak at the Workshop on Culture x AI: Evaluating AI as a Cultural Technology. The workshop is currently accepting submissions, with humanities, ML, HCI, and social/cognitive sciences all welcome. Submit papers by May 1! Join us in Seoul! 🇰🇷

"The constitution is not a neutral charter standing above the firm but, rather, a company document that prioritizes its mission, market position, safety research, and normative influence all at once." Lisa Klaassen and Ralph Schroeder detail their criticisms of Claude's Constitution.

Really looking forward to this talk in Bristol later in the month: www.tickettailor.com/events/esrcc...

We opened a new PhD position in our department focusing on CSS research on and with AI agents. Please share the job ad and contact us if you have questions: gesis.jobs.personio.de/job/2594220?...

I also made a YouTube tutorial on how to apply the tools to your research: www.youtube.com/watch?v=sm_0...

Looking forward to reading this paper. Really cool to see the authors made a YouTube tutorial for applying their method! 🙂

More context on this #Artemis II image: * This is the night side, lit by moonlight. You can see city lights in Spain & Portugal, & a sliver of day at lower right * The Sun is entirely behind Earth, which makes it a kind of solar eclipse, but w/ Earth doing the eclipsing instead of the Moon: ☀️🌍🚀🌕

Update: Today, opt-in online pollster YouGov revealed that bogus respondents biased their 2024 religion survey. Based on this survey, Bible Society's 2025 The Quiet Revival report claimed a massive surge of churchgoing in England and Wales. The report has now been retracted.

3-year contract for a Phd position in Sociology on the discourse of/about AI, at l'Institut polytechnique de Paris.

Super interesting #scicomm #scipol #STS job in UK Govt.

Join us for the first AoIR Roundtable Series on Methods 🔓📊 🤖 featuring long-standing AoIR members Dr. Annette Markham, Dr. Bernhard Rieder, and Dr. Axel Bruns - moderated by Dr. Meg Jing Zeng 🎉 🗓 13 April, 2026 🕒 18.00-19.30 CEST (Berlin) 🔗 Register: www.members.aoir.org/event-6612843

“Vice President JD Vance thinks aliens are visiting earth and that they are Demons” is the most “I wish Carl Sagan were alive” moment I’ve had in a while.

Terrific piece by @henrymance.ft.com on the thinking and the finances behind the British right's turn to explicit religiosity:

'Young people are now clearly social-first rather than online-first when it comes to news.' Handy blog from @reutersinstitute.bsky.social on how young people are taking in news - a big shift towards social, and individual news creators reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/understandin...

Really interesting - there’s so much happening in the overlap between religion, politics, media & technology! One day I’ll have time to think more about this space… 🤞

Went to a Star Trek event last night at London’s Science Museum - now it’s Friday afternoon and it feels like maybe there’s hope for the future after all 🖖

@nancybaym.bsky.social, a member of our College of Experts, has written an argument for renewed approaches to sociotechnical futures amidst growing social media harms, and we are delighted to be mentioned as an example of best practice. journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

Stay up to date with the latest news and events from the Digital Good Network by joining our newsletter: mailchi.mp/digitalgood/...

I'm hiring a postdoc! @goetheuni.bsky.social Focus: CSS, political behavior, political communication & transforming information environments. 📍 Frankfurt | ⏳ 3 years | 📅 Deadline: 14 April 2026 Full job ad here: www.uni-frankfurt.de/48794987/Zen... (search for “political behavior” to find it)

🚨 Amazing job alert!! 🚨 Are you a #polcomm person and a computational social scientist? Want to work at Northeastern AND live in Dublin, Ireland, the EU? Then have we got the OPEN RANK search for you: northeastern.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com/careers/job/...

Come be my colleague! Postdoc position at the University of Amsterdam: Open-source AI for Social Sciences & Humanities. Work on open LLM infrastructure, reproducible research tools, and ethical AI for SSH. 🗓 Tight deadline: Apply by April 3 werkenbij.uva.nl/en/vacancies...