Come and join us for our 2nd Zurich Population Research Conference from February 1-2 2027! The call for abstracts is now open. www.prc.uzh.ch/en/conferenc... @populationeu.bsky.social @karstendonnay.bsky.social @melindacmills.bsky.social @ezagheni.bsky.social

New in Nature: LLMs give "the party line" in the languages of authoritarian regimes. This works when they control the media, which feeds pretraining data. We show more state control over the media means less critical LLMs. 6 studies spanning 38 languages & 13 models. Details ↓

Excited to contribute to the teaching at @ecpr.bsky.social this year, with a short course on Causal Inference for Observational Data ✨ Do you hesitate to reach out if you may be interested, have questions, or want to chat about research in this space

In June, Switzerland will vote on what is so far the most radical far-right popular initiative launched by the Swiss People‘s Party SVP: capping the population at 10M (currently ≈9.1M). In this thread, I’ll break down what it’s about and how it fits into broader findings on Swiss direct democracy

What can we learn from automating an entire quantitative social science paper, from prompt to finished product? Thread about ongoing work with @natewilmers.bsky.social 1/12 Paper: osf.io/preprints/so...

Excited to be teaching this one! Come with a rough research idea and leave with a complete, ready-to-field Pre-Analysis Plan. Five half-days, fully applied, no frontal lecturing — just you, your RQ, and a solid experimental design. See you in Krakow 🎉

I love SciDraw. Excited to check out the other resources as well!

The new support for pre-filled searches might interest you: bsky.app/profile/ortu...

What's your actual #academicsky impact? It's tricky to say if you want to impress a selection committee, a grant panel, or any group of people from different (sub)fields. Journal impact factor is fine, but are your citations a lot or too few? I have a tool to compare any article to its peers 1/2

🌊 #Illiberal Wave No.46 💪 @plutscher.bsky.social, @draege.bsky.social, @karstendonnay.bsky.social & @chknutsen.bsky.social draw on 3 experiments across Venezuela, Türkiye + the US to show that visual strongman #Propaganda can deter opposition movements + mobilise supporters. 👉️ bit.ly/48vkRV3

🚨CfA🚨 We're looking for a postdoc joining us in summer in Berlin. 3-year position @hertieschool.bsky.social @hertiedatascience.bsky.social. Pursue your own research agenda in data science for public policy - ML/AI, causal inference, computational methods. Questions? Don't hesitate to reach out!

This is great! Municipal population change 1961 - 2024 in 🇪🇺🇬🇧🇨🇭🇳🇴🇮🇸🇱🇮, courtesy of @correctiv.org @fridathurm.bsky.social @adahomolova.bsky.social

📚 Book Talk am Bodensee 🗓 Do, 23.04.2026 🕖 19:15–20:45 📍 Zeppelin Universität Für alle, die sich für Politik, Geschichte & Autokratien interessieren. Ich freue mich auf den Austausch! Vielen Dank an @debremaria.bsky.social & @steffenhurka.bsky.social für die Einladung. Mehr Infos & Anmeldung: 👇

📢 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.

New publication 📄 "Little change in a changing landscape: Tracking exposure to untrustworthy news in Germany from 2017 to 2024". So far, my shortest paper - and the first with @simonsaysnothin.bsky.social! Read our brief description of news web browsing @journalqd.bsky.social

(1/8) New Open Access paper out today in the @ejprjournal.bsky.social: doi.org/10.1017/S147... "The effects of government propaganda in electoral authoritarian regimes: Evidence from Turkey" with @draege.bsky.social & @chknutsen.bsky.social #polisky #socsky #commsky #dictatorsky #OA

📣 New job at Oxford's Centre for Advanced Social Science Methods (CASSM)! 📣 The Departments of Politics & IR (DPIR) and Social Policy and Intervention (DSPI) are hiring an Associate Professor of Causal and Experimental Methods. Come work with me and amazing Oxford peeps! Deadline NOON April 27th.

Looking at the consequences of the US/Israeli war against Iran in cyberspace apparently shows similar patterns of low-tech retaliation cyberattacks as documented in my study on the consequences of US sanctioning events: academic.oup.com/jogss/articl... - www.radware.com/security/thr...

Die Hintermänner von Glassworm wollen Wallets ausrauben, suchen aber auch nach Informationen zu System-Zugängen.

Who produces hate speech? And how does that matter for content moderation? We show that across different countries and platforms, a relatively small share of users are responsible for a very large share of hate - overall, 5% write 83-100% of hateful content. www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

EPSS Travel Grants for 2026 Belfast conference: PhD students & junior scholars @ institutions in European countries that are often underrepresented, can apply for full fee waiver & £500 stipend Apply: lnkd.in/ehXjhCgf Deadline: March 8, 11:59pm GMT. More details: lnkd.in/eZTP5sWR

🚨 Very insightful thread on a fundamental issue/misunderstanding when we are engaging with LLMs!

This is a heart wrenching read.

Quick PSA for all mid-career academics and above: people may be citing articles with your name on them that don't exist.

Can feed algorithms shape what people think about politics? Our paper "The Political Effects of X's Feed Algorithm" is out today in Nature and answers "Yes." www.nature.com/articles/s41...

12 neue Projekte werden im 5. Projekt-Call gefördert: von der Intensivstation über das Klassenzimmer bis ins Forensische Institut, von antiken Inschriften bis zu Deepfake-Stimmen. Der 6. Projekt-Call entfällt, die Mittel wurden vorgezogen. Mehr Informationen: www.dizh.uzh.ch/2026/02/18/f...

🚨🚨🚨The Berlin Court of Appeal ruled today that @democracyreporting.bsky.social (DRI) is entitled to publicly available data from X to conduct research on election interference and disinformation on X in connection with the elections in Hungary 🗳️ 🇭🇺 democracy-reporting.org/en/office/EU...

A lot of smart people have been in denial about AI for understandable reasons: – the people pitching it can be distasteful – there’s been a ton of snake-oil hype – it’s easier not to reckon with a major disruption

I have a new paper. We look at ~all stats articles in political science post-2010 & show that 94% have abstracts that claim to reject a null. Only 2% present only null results. This is hard to explain unless the research process has a filter that only lets rejections through.

🚀 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 🎨

Early-career researchers: we offer a Peace Research Fellowship at @ipz.bsky.social University of Zurich - fully funded, 2-week research visit with the Decades of Peace team. Deadline: March 20 Application details: www.decadesofpeace.com/fellowship August in Zurich may include a swim in the river.

New CIS Position Openings including a Senior Research Coordinator, Postdoc Position with Karsten Donnay in Digital Democracy, and a Postdoc Position in the Political Economy of Low-Carbon Technologies: cis.ethz.ch/news-and-eve...

🚨 Join us for the next edition Summer School for Women* in Political Methodology in Mannheim 🚨 7 days of hands-on advanced methods + networking for PhDs, postdocs & early-career researchers. Free of charge (limited travel support). Deadline 1 March 2026: summerschoolwpm.org #methodsky #polisky

Last week the story was that TikTok censored anti-Trump/ICE/Pretti videos after the U.S. ownership change. We investigated with a large set of US TikTok data and found some interesting results, short thread...

Was TikTok blocking certain political posts last week? We investigated & found no systematic evidence of political censorship on TT post-restructuring at this point. A server outage better explains the data. But the story isn't over, and platforms need to provide the public more transparency.

⬇️ Please repost in your networks, thank you! @csmapnyu.org @jatucker.bsky.social @solmg.bsky.social @henryhenryhenry.com @benansell.bsky.social @nachristakis.bsky.social @dingdingpeng.the100.ci @claesdevreese.bsky.social @dgrand.bsky.social @ecpr.bsky.social @fil.bsky.social

I am really angry about all of the scientists who cozied up to Epstein even after it was known who he was. I am nearly as angry at how many people are justifying this as "they had to, it's how academia works" NO IT FUCKING WELL ISN'T

🚨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...

#OpenAccess from @polanalysis.bsky.social - Potential and Pitfalls of Audio as Data for Political Research: Alignment, Features, and Classification Models - https://cup.org/4t9JG1r - @r-mestre.bsky.social#OpenAccess& Matt Ryan #FirstView

At his year's annual CIS Colloquium, researchers from @ipz.bsky.social and @ciseth.bsky.social presented their latest work, showcasing the vital role of political science in developing multidisciplinary responses to today's complex global challenges.

#OpenAccess from @ejprjournal.bsky.social - Improving hate speech detection with large language models - cup.org/3YYVnKy - @nataliaumansky.bsky.social, @maelkubli.bsky.social, Kotarcic, Bronner, Kurer, Grech, Hangartner, Gilardi & @karstendonnay.bsky.social#OpenAccess #FirstView #LLM

Fascinating that NZ's FM publicly lectures RBNZ Governor about respecting statutory independence whilst simultaneously demonstrating precisely why central bankers worldwide felt compelled to defend institutional independence from political interference! The irony has clearly stayed in its own lane.

#OpenAccess from @psrm.bsky.social#OpenAccess- Media effects revisited: corporate scandals, partisan narratives, and attitudes toward cryptocurrency regulation - https://cup.org/4jn9aUE - Pepper D. Culpepper, Taeku Lee & Ryan Shandler #FirstView

✖️Who produces most online hate speech and how effective is counterspeech? ➡️ @gloriagennaro.bsky.social et al. find that hate speech is concentrated among a few users and that counterspeech on X mostly fails to curb prolific offenders www.cambridge.org/core/journal... #FirstView

#OpenAccess from @psrm.bsky.social - The distribution of hate speech and its implications for content moderation - https://cup.org/4sgFqNl - Gennaro, Bronner, Derksen, @maelkubli.bsky.social, Kotarcic, Kurer, Grech, @karstendonnay.bsky.social, @fgilardi.bsky.social#OpenAccess& Hangartner #FirstView

📄 New paper out in @poppublicsphere.bsky.social with my amazing co-author @plutscher.bsky.social ! 💡 Ever wondered if authoritarian strongman messaging also works in democracies? We find that, yes, it did under Trump during the BLM protests in the U.S. in 2020. polisky csssky socsky commsky

Madrid is quickly becoming a great hub for social science research. If you would consider moving here, here’s one potential way to do so:

¡¡VOLUME 23, ISSUE 4 IS NOW OUT!! doi.org/10.1017/S153... cambridge.org/core/journal... Incl. work by @miloward.bsky.social, @mfroman.bsky.social ,@klirro.bsky.social, @hlw.bsky.social, @arielrwhite.bsky.social, @eckhouse.bsky.social, @dramyhliu.bsky.social, @karstendonnay.bsky.social...

Excited to be back at my alma mater, the University of Zurich, for the Digital Democracy Workshop! Looking forward to two days of interesting presentations, reconnecting with familiar faces, and meeting new ones. Thank you very much for hosting me @karstendonnay.bsky.social over the week!