The @ec.europa.eu 'Democracy Shield' plans have dropped. The focus on free, independent media, fact-checking, literacy, election integrity etc make sense. But: it needs to be acknowledged that many of these challenges are not from outside the EU only. Also from within. ec.europa.eu/commission/p...

Apparently, back in late Summer, some clown with my email/name volunteered for numerous review and writing tasks due at the end of this *very busy* month. 🤡😭

Nice work by these always excellent colleagues: Embedding platform affordances within the contexts (and confines) of the media/political regimes in which they are used by various social movements. Smart stuff!

Research by our own @waqasejaz.bsky.social and others proves that climate journalism truly matters. Drawing on online survey data from 🇧🇷🇫🇷🇩🇪🇮🇳🇯🇵🇵🇰🇬🇧🇺🇸 they show that mainstream news use is consistently associated with pro-climate behavioural intentions (using less energy, flying less often)

It’s not just British I woudl wager that’s the algorithm It’ll have the same impact on Irish people including the public, politicians and journalists who will all imagine they’re living live in a far scarier more radicalised right wing environment that is the case in reality .

How Elon Musk boosts the British right.

Hi #PolComm & #commsky folks! What are some of your go-to texts for an intro into (digital) communication?

Chapter 1+2 work pretty good and are interesting for students in interdisciplinary study programs (as far as I can tell) - www.wiley.com/en-gb/Platfo... @ulrikeklinger.bsky.social @dkreiss.bsky.social & Bruce Mutsvairo

Hi #PolComm & #commsky folks! What are some of your go-to texts for an intro into (digital) communication?

Social science is so cool

This must be what it's like to be American when the World Cup is on.

Posting is correlated with affective polarization: 😡 The most partisan users — those who love their party and despise the other — are more likely to post about politics 🥊 The result? A loud angry minority dominates online politics, which itself can drive polarization (see doi.org/10.1073/pnas...)

🚨 Evergreen Post 🚨 Like almost every other West European election in this century, the Dutch election is not about “populism” but about nativism, i.e. xenophobic nationalism.

Made this meme, in celebration of passing my Danish language module 3.1. exam today. 🇩🇰🎶🫡

I contributed some quotes citing our research to this @euobserver.com piece on the German center-right's relation to the far right. 🔗 euobserver.com/migration/ar... TDLR: We are witnessing a shift in the party of Merkel's "Yes we can" towards ethno-nationalist frames widely used by the far right.

Why does the country think CBS News is biased? Because the modern conservative movement has been pushing that narrative for the better part of 80 years!

New publication alert🔓🚨 Toxic speech is widespread on social media – but do users mirror the toxic behavior of their ingroup or react defensively to outgroup toxicity? Our new paper in JCMC examines how ingroup and outgroup behavior shape the spread of toxicity on social media.

If you've been reading that fantastic new paper by @dasalgon.bsky.social & @tevoelker.bsky.social on how mainstream parties lose if they adopt far-right issues: We looked at a case study & found similar dynamics for media. This was partly based on data from Daniel & Teresa!❤️ bsky.app/profile/curd...

In our new article, @tevoelker.bsky.social and I show how far-right actors have increased their influence on mainstream parties' agenda-setting. For the @euobserver.com, Hannah Kriwah has written about our study, and I had the pleasure to comment on it. euobserver.com/eu-and-the-w...

Work!! 🚨 We are looking for a #postdoc in our AI, media and Democracy Lab @aimediademlab.bsky.social Dynamic position, great team, nice colleagues 💥 Profile: communication/ poli sci/ computational social sci 🗓️ DL November 1 Spread the word 📣 werkenbij.uva.nl/en/vacancies...

Showed the poop plane video to our five-year-old. He didn’t seem to think it was funny. White House comms not landing as well as one might think with the preschool males demographic.

One unexpected thing I learned from today's #NoKings protests is that an inflatable mascot costume is only going to set you back bz about 25-50 $\€

What's the opposite of doomscrolling? Need a word for what I'm doing right now.

DARTMOUTH OUT! We are at 6 rejections. Vanderbilt is the only private left standing "considering" the compact along with UT Austin and the University of Arizona.

Very cool to see friends’ work being reported in the national media, congrats @tevoelker.bsky.social!

12 days to go and clearly a good time to share this again. While it looks like the PVV is going to do worse than in the last election (although let's not forget a lot of movement in the last week in 2023), taken together far-right parties might do as well or better than in 2023.

Of all the ways in which media coverage of Trump II is failing, it's this kind of stuff that makes me despair the most. It's right there! In the foundational text!! You don't even have to cite anyone else. ARRGHH!!!

AI usage by political campaigns is still low (this project estimates about 2% of posts), but it's certainly a pattern that when it is used, it's most used by the far right.

Sometimes misinformation is rather blunt and unsophisticated but still a genuine hoax. 100+ fake accounts pretending to be real news found on TikTok. Piece by @mantzarlis.com indicator.media/p/101-tiktok...

The US is currently a case study of how quickly fringe far-right ideas become policy. The unspeakable is articulated -> a cleavage forms -> it becomes an in-group signal -> then a political demand -> policy. Also note the transnational component here: This concept originated in Europe's far right.

'flood the zone' --> 'map the flood' "We are documenting the actions, statements, and plans of President Donald Trump and his administration that may pose a threat to American democracy, since the start of his second term in January 2025." www.trumpactiontracker.info

After a great evening at the first @wzb.bsky.social conference on the future of democracy I’m looking forward to the first full day first tomorrow. I’m presenting work (w/ @curdknupfer.bsky.social & @yunkangyang.bsky.social) at 9:30am in B001 mikecowburn.com/wp-content/u...

New publication out in #IJPP! 📑 We study how audience expectations of journalism 📰 shifted during COVID-19 in Austria 🇦🇹 – showing both short-term rally effects & longer-term recalibration 🔄. Led by @clmron.bsky.social & @danielwiesner.bsky.social , w/ @andreasriedl.bsky.social & me. 1/n

"The royals loved the show." The rules were negotiated down to... "don’t make fun of royals". So I guess that leaves the non royals? What did they think?

Honest question, since I am not familiar with US military protocols: Are high-ranking members of the military even allowed to clap at these events? Based on inaugurations and state-of-the-union addresses, it seems like they generally don't do this?

Excellent Op-ed by @pastpunditry.bsky.social, on the history of the censorious right. What she observes here for the US also goes for other national contexts, where formations on the far right often self-depict & are seen as free-speech absolutists, when they're anything but...

This was basically my dissertation. Slightly expanded to... Am I watching things on television that are different from what's happening AND from what other people are watching?

Maybe a loss of trust can be traced back to growing discrepancies between public debate and one's own information environment. In an increasingly fragmented info- and social space and resulting majority illusion, this poses a fundamental problem as media and institutions can never cover all topics.

Wow! AI is so advanced, it can now generate entire videos for a regime promising made up miracle cures, while slashing funding for medical research and cutting social benefits. Practically zero propaganda skills required.

I don't think it's a good idea to use "left-wing" or "right-wing" as categories to classify terrorism. These terms stem from parliamentary politics & blur more than they reveal. More precise labels should be applied -- which would also lead to more meaningful comparative values.

Hey #PolComm folks! The #ICA26 @icahdq.bsky.social election for the PolComm Division @polcomm.bsky.social is now open. There are fantastic candidates running for Vice Chair, Early Career Rep, & International Liaison. Go read their statements & cast your votes! 🗳️ www.icahdq.org/surveys/?id=...

You wouldn't know this from following mediated debates in Germany, but it turns out there are reasons beyond illdefined anxieties about immigration for where and why the far right wins votes...

Spoke to the Danish Online Magazine @kforum.bsky.social about "Ragebaiting" and how the attention economy can be exploited for political gain. kforum.dk/nyheder/digi...

Our political debates (in Europe and the US) are missing a crucial part of the real story: The quiet consolidations, planned mergers, & vying for Trump’s favor that will decide who becomes America’s Next Top-Mogul.

Most Sinclair & Nexstar stations did not address the Jimmy Kimmel Live issue at all, but a few did. Here's Nexstar station WTEN in Albany:

I truly hate to say it, but I called it. 5 years ago.

A good reminder for Europeans to protect our public media. They are far from perfect, but I'm very sure we wouldn't like the alternative ...

Excellent work here by @mikecowburn.bsky.social and @meredithconroy.bsky.social! Very interesting dynamics potentially driving these gendered trends: Dems worry (too much) about a what an imagined public might want. Reps do what they want, when they feel like they can.

Early New Year's wish for 2026: To review fewer papers on far-right party communication that still refer to it as "populist" simply because it constructs an out-group. There's plenty of work out there on actual far-right comms. No need to use these imprecise euphemisms.

If you make it through to Episode 9 of Chief of War (Apple TV), you're in for one of the most epic battle scenes I've ever seen on TV. The whole cast is perfect. Super cool historical setting, I knew next to nothing about. Worth the watch! 👍