I was at at #BISA2026 for a roundtable on AI and research. We agreed: #LLM based #AI will fundamentally change #internationalrelations and the discipline studying it. Teaching, methods, what counts as scholarship. All of it.

A single trigger word ( #Rwanda, #Brexit, #Feminism) causally increases engagement by 3–13 %pts and negative sentiment by up to 5.5 %pts. New paper with Dimosthenis Antypas, @nedjmaou-nlp.bsky.social , Carla Perez-Almendros & Jose Camacho-Collados at #ACMWebSci26.

Just gave a talk at the University of Western Ontario (work w/ @ankuepfer.bsky.social & @pluggedchris.bsky.social). Key finds: object prominence in images matters; GOP more often sidelines women in ads than Democrats; #AfD populism is scripted, not spontaneous. #ImageAsData #CSS

I just presented recent research (with @chrisguarnold.bsky.social) on the benefits of integrating workflow management systems in computational social science studies at @parliview.bsky.social workshop at UCD in Dublin! #multimodaldata #replication #researchinfrastructure #CSS

🥳 @comptext.bsky.social conference 2026 at @unibirmingham.bsky.social is over! I had the chance to give a 3-hour workshop on high-performance computing for computational social scientists, during which we covered cluster access hurdles, hands-on sessions, and workflow management tools. #COMPTEXT2026

What an epic dinner at @comptext.bsky.social yesterday in the Cricket stadium! Clearly next level. All praise to Aditi Dutta for scouting this one out. #comptext2026 #sciencerocks

IT’S COMPTEXT BABY!! #comptext2026 #sciencerocks

You must all be en route to @comptext.bsky.social now. Excited to welcome you all to campus. Workshops look 💯. Panels 💯 +1. We could not ask for more from the weather. Really looking forward to welcoming you all. Bon voyage! #sciencerocks #comptext2026 www.comptextconference.org/8th-annual-c...

Final countdown to COMPTEXT 2026 April 23–25 at the University of Birmingham. Great workshops, sessions & conversations ahead. We will shamelessly show off our Teaching & Learning building. Safe travels! www.comptextconference.org/8th-annual-c... #COMPTEXT2026 #TextAnalysis @comptext.bsky.social

⏳Final reminder: Registration for #COMPTEXT2026 closes today. 📍University of Birmingham 📅23–25 April 2026 Workshops (23 April): bit.ly/4bW0AZN Registration: bit.ly/4v4ghXC If you have trouble meeting the registration deadline, contact the organisers: comptext26(at)comptextconference.org

@comptext.bsky.social registrations are live. Go and tell your friends. #comptext2026 #sciencerocks www.comptextconference.org/8th-annual-c...

⏬📽️Excited to talk about (1) studying videos from complex local meetings (w/ @mirya.bsky.social + @simko.bsky.social), (2) substantively using eye contact seeking in legislative debate videos, and (3) workflow managers to process video data (w/ @chrisguarnold.bsky.social + @pluggedchris.bsky.social)!

#sciencrocks #dreamteam

@chrisguarnold.bsky.social & I had a fun, productive kick-off for our ESRC ⭐ ♻️ RecAIqual ♻️ ⭐ project “Exploring the Re-Analysis and Recycling of Qualitative Data with Machine Learning”. We discussed how multimodal ML/AI can complement qual research& secondary data analysis+where humans are peerless.

🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿 #ManifestoWeek in Wales: we digitised 29 Senedd manifestos (99–21) & extracted 10,000+ pledges using AI. Finding: Parties increasingly promised *more*, not less. 👇 blogs.cardiff.ac.uk/thinking-wal... #WelshPolitics #Senedd #sciencerocks Daksh Dewgun @jaclarner.bsky.social @frasmcm.bsky.social

I feel these takes are often narrow regarding what includes social science. I am sympathetic to the idea of qualitative research and fieldwork becoming rel more weighty as AI improves. ATM, these changes seem most drastic for quant analysis. What really changed for qualitative inquiry, yet?(1/2)

If you want to learn more about our MSc AI & Government or MSc AI & Sustainable Development, join us on Tues,27.1.26 (4-5pm UK). Together with student rep Daksh Dewgun you can ask us anything. Register: [email protected] #AIforgood #datascience #computationalsocialscience #sciencerocks

Term has kicked off! Teaching my 2 favourite modules again: AI and Global Challenges & AI for Government and Public Policy. We bring together coding, ML & AI with domain expertise from Government.Privilege to teach such a talented&driven crowd!#ComputationalSocialScience #DataForGood #sciencerocks

New homepage online: www.chrisguarnold.github.io Everything you already new about me. Hosted on GitHub. Built with Jekyll. No cookies, no trackers, no WordPress updates at 2am. #sciencerocks

The weather between Cardiff and Birmingham is like somewhere close to the walls of Mordor today. Lambas almost running out. Please send hope...

How to analyse audio, text, and video data for more than 15,000h of German parliamentary speech? For our #DFG project, we spent last year building compute infrastructure. Pushing ▶️ on the server soon. First results in summer #PoliticalScience #ComputationalSocialScience #sciencerocks #watchthisspace

Congrats @ankuepfer.bsky.social !!! A pity I could not be there.

The submission deadline for papers and workshop proposals to #COMPTEXT2026 is this Friday, January 16th. We are looking forward to receiving your proposals. Feel free to share the news and circulate shorturl.at/gRg0p #sharingiscaring #sciencerocks See you in Brum, 23–25 April 2026!

🧵 PhD position (75%) in Political Behavior / Political Communication / CSS 📍 LMU Munich | ⏳ 3 years | 🗓 start March–May 2026 We’re hiring for DemocraGPT, a @bidt.bsky.social-funded project developing an AI-based training for difficult conversations in times of growing polarization

Really looking forward to helping build bridges between what was formerly known as 'qualitative' and 'quantitative' research. Couldn't think of a better colleague than @floriangkern.bsky.social to pull this off. Xtra happy to see this happening in the current dire times of UK HE #sciencerocks

#COMPTEXT2026 is taking place in Birmingham. Go and tell your friends! #sciencerocks

New paper with @caschulz.bsky.social: Minimal Participation Thresholds in international treaties help cooperation by overcoming uncertainty. #Freeriding matters, but less so than so far assumed. Full paper: journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/... #TreatyDesign #ScienceRocks #CollectiveAction

SAVE THE DATE! We are pleased to announce that the 8th COMPTEXT Conference will take place at the Institute of Data and AI (lnkd.in/ebN7za_Q) of the University of Birmingham, 23-25 April 2026, with @chrisguarnold.bsky.social serving as the lead local organiser. Call for Papers coming soon!

I am over the moon to announce that #COMPTEXT2026 will take place at the "Institute for Data and AI" at the University of Birmingham. Look out for the imminent CfP on all channels. And go and tell your friends. Looking forward to hosting y'all in April 2026 #sciencerocks ‪@comptext.bsky.social

On my way to the LSE workshop "#ComputationalSocialScience meets Qualitative Research." Presenting @floriangkern.bsky.social and my framework on how #multimodalML & #LLMs help re-analyse & recycle qual data. Let's leave qual–quant clone wars behind us. #ScienceRocks www.lse.ac.uk/methodology/...

Today, we welcomed the second cohort of students to the MSc in AI & Government and MSc in AI & Sustainable Development today. Excited to support them in developing their AI & ML skills over the coming year! #AI #MachineLearning #HigherEducation #SustainableDevelopment #AIandGovernment #ScienceRocks

👏Applause offers a revealing lens on party competition! In a recent article @wepsocial.bsky.social (w/@[email protected]), we study how applause reflects party and coalition unity, ideological agreement, political exclusion, issue ownership, and the electoral cycle! (1/6)

Today @10 in Pacific Rim 2: our framework for assessing LLM output. a) separates general vs. domain-specific similarity b) handles existing classifiers c) accounts for probabilistic DGP d) model-independent & efficient #APSA2025 @jamespcross.bsky.social Tim Henrichsen @christinesheldon.bsky.social

I'm at #APSA25! On Saturday at 2 pm (Panel "Seeing is Believing: Innovations and Applications in Image Data Analysis"), I'll present a new project with @chrisguarnold.bsky.social, Oliver Rittmann, and @smtorres.bsky.social in which we quantitatively measure media slant based on news article images.

The Centre for AI in Government is at #APSA25 for the first time. Really impressive line-up and testament of a strong group of curious, committed and kind scholars. Come and find us! #sciencerocks #CAIG #computationalsocialscience #aiingovernment @christinesheldon.bsky.social

Excited to speak at the 4th #cardiffnlpworkshop tomorrow at Cardiff NLP group. I’ll give a talk on the #Triggerpoint Project & join the panel on Interdisciplinarity and NLP. Great lineup incl. CohereForAI, BSC, DCU. www.cardiffnlpworkshop.org #sciencerocks #NLP #AIandPolitics #LLMs

On my way to Geneva for the #AIforGood conference. Looking forward to the Crisis Computing Workshop and discussing how AI can help solve and prevent wars and crises. crisiscomputing.org #AI #CrisisComputing #sciencerocks

📣 Call for Applications 📣 3-year Postdoc position in Berlin 🚀 Join our Comparative Political Behavior Group at @humboldtuni.bsky.social & the @humboldt-govlab.bsky.social Great people, great projects, great city – come work with us! 🗓️ Deadline: 31 July 2025

Next week I’ll be in Geneva for the UN’s #AIforGoodSummit2025. I’m especially excited for the Crisis Computing workshop on how AI can help us anticipate, manage & recover from crises. If you’re there too, feel free to reach out! #CrisisComputing #AI4Peace #sciencerocks

Heading home from #EPSA2025 I really enjoyed seeing so much dedication and passion to produce good science. A pure joy to be part of the community. Meetings like this are crucial for giving me sense and purpose during those endless hours in front of the computer. #sciencerocks

On my way to #EPSA2025. Passenger next to me is sporting snowwhite #NVIDIA socks. #nextlevelhipster

Heading to #EPSA2025 in Madrid next week! I will be part of a paper asking: "How Useful is Your LLM Output?" It is the first from a project on simulating political negotiations w/ LLMs. DM if you are around---tea, coffee, or confusion matrices? #sciencerocks #LLMs #SyntheticData #AIandPolitics

Our MSc students in #AIGovernment & #AISustainableDevelopment swapped lecture halls for a day in #Cardiff — visiting the #WelshGovernment ’s Data Science Unit and the brilliant team at @cardiffnlp.bsky.social. Great to see how #MachineLearning meets real-world #PublicPolicy. Also: dragon spotted. 🐉🔥

Really cool event. Consider going! #sciencerocks

40110 #AI and #GlobalChallenges & 40111 #AI for #Government and #Policy is a wrap! From designing research to deploying ML solutions on ‘people data’—we covered it. Rewarding but challenging, given the cohort’s diversity & the material’s breadth. Want to join next round? Apply! Questions on how? PM!

On Friday, I’m presenting at TCD (w/ @ankuepfer.bsky.social . We explore how to measure object prominence in news photography & curated images. Applications: 📌 US newspaper ideal points (Visual BoW); 📌 Gender bias in US campaign videos. More info & enrolment: 🔗 www.tcd.ie/Political_Sc...

Making sure y'all saw this CfP for the Special Issue on Digital Communication in Social Movements. Timeline: 8.3.25 abstract; 7.8.25 full paper; end of year publication. #AI #TextasData #ImageAsData #SocialMovement #ScienceRocks journal.computationalcommunication.org/announcement...

Read our Op-Ed on the UK Government's "AI Opportunities Action Plan" here: www.birmingham.ac.uk/news/2025/th... #AI #Government #PublicPolicy

What started as a political science project with Slava Jankin and Hannah Béchara spiraled into its own paper, exploring how language shapes how we perceive distances & construe events. Excited to share the journey! #sciencerocks