"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"

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...

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!

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

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

@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...

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!

The 2024 @electionstudies.bsky.social has the share of "pure independents" in the US at its lowest level since 1952 (7%)

our new Element on social corrections is now published and currently open access

The Simulacra (PK Dick, 1964)

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...

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/...

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...

super cool work.

great title link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Now live: “New sources of inaccuracy? A conceptual framework for studying AI hallucinations” Anqi Shao misinforeview.hks.harvard.edu/article/new-...

hey I wrote a book... coming to you at some point in the future ‪from @oxfordacademic.bsky.social‬

✨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....

✨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/...

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...

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...

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."

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

Love that thing where you use Google Scholar too much so get locked out because it thinks you're sending automated queries.

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-... 1/6

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-...

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...

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...

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...

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.

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-...

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...

🚨 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...

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...

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."

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/...

new working paper (reposted with fixed/public link): osf.io/gbkn5

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)

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...

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...

New working paper with two great coauthors!

this is an incredible resource!

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... 2/3

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...

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.

📄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

The advice at the end is very similar to where I've landed in my editing/reviewing roles

(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.

More on the NIH termination of vaccine hesitancy studies.

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...