Ben Lyons
@benlyons.bsky.social
📤 3108
📥 259
📝 61
Associate prof at University of Utah Dept of Comm. Associate ed
@misinforeview.bsky.social
pinned post!
Updated "Exposure to low-credibility online health content...", now w YouTube data: Older adults consume less YT, but a higher proportion is low-cred. Dubious political news ex is linked w low-cred health ex.. suggests shared consumption profile spans topics + platforms
osf.io/preprints/os...
4 months ago
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Ben Lyons
Brendan Nyhan
7 days ago
"While high-quality content is posted more and receives more total engagement across platforms...a given author attracts higher levels of engagement when they post lower-quality content" "pattern we find seems to be driven more by an underperformance of particularly popular high-quality outlets"
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Divergent patterns of engagement with partisan and low-quality news across seven social media platforms | PNAS
In recent years, social media has become increasingly fragmented, as platforms evolve and new alternatives emerge. Yet most research studies a sing...
https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2425739122
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Ben Lyons
Matt Grossmann
10 days ago
cultural over economic coverage on cable news mobilizes viewers who would otherwise watch entertainment programming, so cable news emphasizes cultural politics much more than politicians trying to maximize vote share
www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/27v4x...
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Ben Lyons
Stanford Tech Impact and Policy Center
13 days ago
Why do older adults engage more with
#misinformation
online, even when they often identify falsehoods correctly in surveys? In our next
#FallSeminarSeries
talk,
@benlyons.bsky.social
of the University of Utah will investigate that paradox. RSVP to join us in person or online on Tuesday, Nov. 4!
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November 4 | Dubious News and the Aging American: Understanding Discernment
https://stanford.io/3WwCOw5
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Ben Lyons
mark brandt
26 days ago
Recruitment was tricky, but we got ~200 people in our pre-post experiment In the simple (and not causally identified) one group pre-post design, the intensive intervention seemed to reduce toxic polarization
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mark brandt
26 days ago
This preprint reports on a project with
@j-rock.bsky.social
. We merged a light touch intervention (typical of survey experiments) w/ an intensive intervention (more typical of practitioner efforts) for reducing toxic polarization to see if we could cheaply boost 🚀 the more intensive intervention
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Rosie Campbell
about 1 month ago
@electoralstudies.bsky.social
If you’re interested in academic studies of political polarisation we have loads of great papers at Electoral Studies. Check out this one by Joseph Phillips
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
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Affective polarization and habits of political participation
Affective polarization, or relative dislike of opposing partisans, is associated with several negative outcomes for democracy. However, a number of st…
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0261379423001555
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Ben Lyons
Florian Stoeckel
about 1 month ago
Really excited that our book just came out! The Power of the Crowd: How the Public Can Both Spoil and Improve Social Media as a Source of Information Open access for the next 2 weeks!
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Barry Burden
about 1 month ago
The 2024
@electionstudies.bsky.social
has the share of "pure independents" in the US at its lowest level since 1952 (7%)
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our new Element on social corrections is now published and currently open access
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about 1 month ago
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The Simulacra (PK Dick, 1964)
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about 1 month ago
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Ben Lyons
Rich Lucas
about 1 month ago
We already know that lagged effects in CLPMs are likely to be upwardly biased, but just how easy is it to find significant effects? Way too easy. I tested CLPMS in 100 randomly selected pairs of correlated variables and found significant effects in 98 of them. New preprint:
osf.io/preprints/ps...
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OSF
https://osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/b9p6u_v1
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Derek Holliday
12 months ago
In our PNAS we don't necessarily find a negative relationship between affpol and antidemocratic norm support, but certainly a non-linear one (appendix fig. below). Personally, I think FT measures have some pretty major empirical oddities we're still evaluating 🔗
www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...
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Ben Lyons
HKS Misinformation Review
about 2 months ago
Now live: “Do language models favor their home countries? Asymmetric propagation of positive misinformation and foreign interference audits” by Ho-Chun Herbert Chang, Tracy Weener, Yung-Chun Chen, Sean Noh, Mingyue Zha, Hsuan Lo
misinforeview.hks.harvard.edu/article/do-l...
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Ben Lyons
Nick Davis
about 2 months ago
super cool work.
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great title
link.springer.com/article/10.1...
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A Tutorial for Deception Detection Analysis or: How I Learned to Stop Aggregating Veracity Judgments and Embraced Signal Detection Theory Mixed Models - Journal of Nonverbal Behavior
Historically, deception detection research has relied on factorial analyses of response accuracy to make inferences. However, this practice overlooks important sources of variability resulting in pote...
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10919-024-00456-x
2 months ago
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Ben Lyons
HKS Misinformation Review
3 months ago
Now live: “New sources of inaccuracy? A conceptual framework for studying AI hallucinations” Anqi Shao
misinforeview.hks.harvard.edu/article/new-...
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hey I wrote a book... coming to you at some point in the future from
@oxfordacademic.bsky.social
3 months ago
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Ben Lyons
APSA & ICA Political Communication Divisions
5 months ago
✨The Kaid-Sanders Best Political Communication Article of the Year Award 🏅 Awardee: Nicolai Berk (U Zurich) 📄 The Impact of Media Framing in Complex Information Environments
www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....
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The Impact of Media Framing in Complex Information Environments
To what extent do news frames influence public opinion? While a large body of experimental research suggests sizable effects, it is unclear how these findings translate to authentically complex inf...
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10584609.2025.2456519
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Ben Lyons
APSA & ICA Political Communication Divisions
5 months ago
✨The Kaid-Sanders Best Political Communication Article of the Year Award Runner-up article: Megastudy testing 25 treatments to reduce antidemocratic attitudes and partisan animosity By Jan G. Voelkel et al.
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
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Megastudy testing 25 treatments to reduce antidemocratic attitudes and partisan animosity
Scholars warn that partisan divisions in the mass public threaten the health of American democracy. We conducted a megastudy (n = 32,059 participants) testing 25 treatments designed by academics and p...
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adh4764
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Ben Lyons
Leticia Bode
3 months ago
Want to get a sense of my book with
@ekvraga.bsky.social
but not ready to commit?
@oxfordacademic.bsky.social
has released Chapter One free and downloadable for the next month.
academic.oup.com/book/60489/c...
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Introduction
Abstract. This chapter introduces the core concept of the book, observed correction, which occurs when direct public corrections of misinformation are witn
https://academic.oup.com/book/60489/chapter/522465928
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Ben Lyons
Matt Williams
3 months ago
This is a nice write-up of our recent paper by PsyPost, with clear info about limitations and small effect sizes. I would like to clarify that I am not in fact the person in the photo, though
doi.org/10.1002/ejsp...
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Timothy Caulfield
3 months ago
Normalizing lies...👇 Repeated exposure effect on moral condemnation of fake news
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
@dgrand.bsky.social
"...frequently seen headlines receive lower moral condemnation" "Without this condemnation, the publication & spreading of online misinformation may be more common."
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Ben Lyons
Jenny Allen
3 months ago
New in TiCS w
@dgrand.bsky.social
@gordpennycook.bsky.social
It’s been ~10yrs since misinfo research exploded but our paradigms are stuck in the post-2016 “fake news” model Time for new approaches: o True/False → Content that misleads o Belief → Behavior o Eval interventions in ambiguous settings
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Love that thing where you use Google Scholar too much so get locked out because it thinks you're sending automated queries.
4 months ago
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Ben Lyons
4 months ago
How effective are user corrections on social media, and does adding a link to a fact check improve effectiveness? In piece led by
@sachaltay.bsky.social
we find corrections have small effects, adding a fact-check unlikely to make them more effective
misinforeview.hks.harvard.edu/article/the-...
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Ben Lyons
HKS Misinformation Review
4 months ago
Now live: “The small effects of short user corrections on misinformation in Brazil, India, and the United Kingdom” by Sacha Altay, Simge Andı, Sumitra Badrinathan, Camila Mont’Alverne, Benjamin Toff, Rasmus Kleis Nielsen, and Richard Fletcher
misinforeview.hks.harvard.edu/article/the-...
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Ben Lyons
Briony Swire-Thompson
4 months ago
The truth sandwich is baloney! New paper out. We show that the “truth sandwich” correction format (in which false information is bookended by factual information) does not enhance corrections.
psycnet.apa.org/fulltext/202...
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APA PsycNet
https://psycnet.apa.org/fulltext/2026-40110-001.html
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Ben Lyons
Kevin Yang
4 months ago
We are excited to share that this paper has been published in Scientific Data. The whole dataset is now available to download. Please see the paper for details! Link:
doi.org/10.1038/s415...
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Ben Lyons
Avital Livny
4 months ago
It seems increasingly likely that we will be hiring (two positions — Political Behavior, broadly defined, and American Institutions!) at UIUC this year. I plan to add this link to all recruitment materials.
www.nytimes.com/2025/07/14/d...
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Chinese Students Flocked to Central Illinois. Their Food Followed.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/14/dining/chinese-food-urbana-champaign-student-visa.html
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Ben Lyons
Max Kozlov
4 months ago
NEW: In an unprecedented move, the NIH will soon disinvite dozens of scientists about to take positions on advisory councils that make final decisions on grant funding. NIH staff were told to select others aligned with the Trump administration and told to expect placements by political appointees.
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Exclusive: NIH to dismiss dozens of grant reviewers to align with Trump priorities
The move would undo years of work, leaving advisory councils understaffed, and without the full expertise needed for reviews.
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-02221-6
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Now out
@hcr-journal.bsky.social
: we find evidence of overconfidence, but decomposition analyses show assoc. b/w OC & behavioral correlates are accounted for by deficits in actual discernment ability rather than lack of metacognitive insight
academic.oup.com/hcr/advance-...
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Overconfidence in ability to discern cancer misinformation: a conceptual replication and extension
Abstract. This study conducts a conceptual replication and extension of prior research on overconfidence in discerning political misinformation, shifting f
https://academic.oup.com/hcr/advance-article/doi/10.1093/hcr/hqaf017/8200799?utm_source=advanceaccess&utm_campaign=hcr&utm_medium=email
4 months ago
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Ben Lyons
PNAS Nexus
5 months ago
Identifying images as “AI-generated” has little impact on an individual’s stated likelihood of engaging with them, according to a survey, but labeling images as “False,” “Manipulated,” or “Artificial” does reduce engagement intentions. In PNAS Nexus:
academic.oup.com/pnasnexus/ad...
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Ben Lyons
David Rand
5 months ago
🚨 Call for Abstracts! I'm excited to announce the 2nd workshop on Directions of Polarization, Social Norms, and Trust in Societies @ MIT on Dec 5-6 Keynotes from
@bgoldberg.bsky.social
&
@adamberinsky.bsky.social
🗓️ Deadline to submit: July 14, 2025 🔗
sites.google.com/view/polariz...
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Updated "Exposure to low-credibility online health content...", now w YouTube data: Older adults consume less YT, but a higher proportion is low-cred. Dubious political news ex is linked w low-cred health ex.. suggests shared consumption profile spans topics + platforms
osf.io/preprints/os...
4 months ago
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reposted by
Ben Lyons
Timothy Caulfield
5 months ago
How We Can All Respond to Misinformation
academic.oup.com/book/60489
by
@leticiabode.bsky.social
@ekvraga.bsky.social
Needed: "...correcting publicly to build social norms around responding to misinformation." Platforms must "promote corrections & take action against toxic behaviors."
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Ben Lyons
Public Opinion Quarterly - POQ
6 months ago
More and more, people rely on quantitative forecasts to understand society and politics. Barnfield et al. show that 2022 French election forecasts significantly shaped public expectations. Read now in POQ:
doi.org/10.1093/poq/...
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Ben Lyons
Jon Green
6 months ago
new working paper (reposted with fixed/public link):
osf.io/gbkn5
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Joe Phillips
6 months ago
Out now at
@poqjournal.bsky.social
! Do election forecasts set realistic election expectations?
doi.org/10.1093/poq/...
🧵 (w/
@mbarnfield.bsky.social
,
@florianstoeckel.bsky.social
,
@benlyons.bsky.social
,
@vittoriomerola.bsky.social
,
@jasonreifler.bsky.social
and other awesome BlueSky-less colleagues)
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The Effects of Forecasts on the Accuracy and Precision of Expectations
Abstract. Quantitative forecasts have become increasingly prominent as tools for aiding public understanding of sociopolitical trends. But how much, and wh
https://doi.org/10.1093/poq/nfaf003
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Ben Lyons
Matthew Barnfield
6 months ago
Our paper "Wishful Thinking in Response to Events" is now out
@electoralstudies.bsky.social
! w/
@polpsychjoe.bsky.social
@florianstoeckel.bsky.social
@vittoriomerola.bsky.social
@benlyons.bsky.social
@jasonreifler.bsky.social
et al
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
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Ben Lyons
HKS Misinformation Review
7 months ago
Now live: “Feedback and education improve human detection of image manipulation on social media” by Adnan Hoq, Matthew J. Facciani, and Tim Weninger @matthewfacciani
misinforeview.hks.harvard.edu/article/feed...
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Ben Lyons
Scott Clifford
7 months ago
New working paper with two great coauthors!
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this is an incredible resource!
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8 months ago
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Ben Lyons
Kevin Yang
10 months ago
We derive the data from a panel of over 1.5M Twitter users matched against their US registration records. 📰 Preprint:
arxiv.org/abs/2501.09035
🧑💻 Github (with data):
github.com/LazerLab/Dom...
🖥️ Interactive app:
domaindemoexplorer.streamlit.app
📻 Podcast:
notebooklm.google.com/notebook/e27...
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Ben Lyons
Matthew Facciani
8 months ago
Over the past two decades, online news headlines have become longer, more negative, and increasingly use features linked to clickbait. This shift is widespread across outlets of all political leanings and journalistic quality.
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
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The evolution of online news headlines - Humanities and Social Sciences Communications
Humanities and Social Sciences Communications - The evolution of online news headlines
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41599-025-04514-7
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Ben Lyons
Joanne Miller
8 months ago
Join
@smotus.bsky.social
,
@aesokhey.bsky.social
,
@jenvictor.bsky.social
, and me for a celebration of Dr. Scott McClurg's impact on the field and mentorship. Friday, April 4, 11:40-1:10,
@mpsa.bsky.social
.
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Ben Lyons
Christopher Barrie
8 months ago
📄NEW PAPER📄 Ever wondered content people actually pay *attention* to online? Our new research reveals that you likely pay attention to far more varied political content than your likes and shares suggest
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Ben Lyons
mark brandt
8 months ago
The advice at the end is very similar to where I've landed in my editing/reviewing roles
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Ben Lyons
Olaf Borghi
8 months ago
(5) Turning to our competing hypotheses, we find that it is 20 times more likely that cognitive reflection is associated with less (!) politically motivated reasoning – contrary to the influential hypothesis from political science. For inhibitory control, our results are less conclusive.
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Ben Lyons
Carl T. Bergstrom
8 months ago
More on the NIH termination of vaccine hesitancy studies.
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Ben Lyons
PSA Political Psychology Specialist Group
9 months ago
Starting next week, we are hosting a fortnightly seminar series! We have an exciting programme of six great speakers presenting new work on a diverse range of topics. More details and links to register for individual sessions here:
www.psa.ac.uk/specialist-g...
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