Mango Mussolini is the new expression that I didn’t know I needed until now!

Almost back from #ic2s2 (thanks Lufthansa). The most positively-surprising impression from the conference, almost a decade after the first edition, is how much the discipline has coalesced. In 2016, it was easy to distinguish a paper authored by computer scientists vs sociologists. Not so easy now!

🚨 Study alert! We've developed a prototype that enables you to create personalized social media feeds using natural language rules and import them into Bluesky. Join our study to try out the tool, give us your feedback, and earn a $50 gift card! Sign up: forms.gle/MkSGKzxDfBEc... Please share :)

FOMO for #ic2s2 is hitting hard---especially for Francesco, who is bravely pretending he’s totally fine without me. Go check out our poster on early linguistic fingerprints of conspiracy theorists on Reddit (w. @gdfm.bsky.social )! Full paper here: arxiv.org/abs/2506.05086

@c0rrad0.bsky.social presenting our work on the Russia-Ukraine war on social media #ic2s2

If you're @ic2s2.bsky.social #IC2S2 and are looking for a faculty position, get in touch. @uni-saarland.de is hiring. Right now, there's an open call in Computer Science @saarland-informatics-campus.de: www.uni-saarland.de/fileadmin/up... Soon, there'll be open calls in the Social Sciences.

Causality center stage at #ic2s2 with opening keynote by @eckles.bsky.social

🚨Are moral judgements biased by the gender of the subject? We find *no* direct effect when looking at Reddit! Our causal study design is based on carefully matching similar situations that people with different genders experience (and share). Study led by @loreb92.bsky.social rdcu.be/eumlQ

Hugging my poster at @icwsm.bsky.social! 🥰 Back in Copenhagen to present "Variational Inference of Parameters in Opinion Dynamics Models"! Great time here, meeting all my @nerdsitu.bsky.social friends and creating new connections in the community! ojs.aaai.org/index.php/IC...

Our paper "Conspiracy theories and where to find them on TikTok" has been accepted at the Main conference of @aclmeeting.bsky.social 2025! Great work led by @fracorso.bsky.social supervised by @gdfm.bsky.social and yours truly. For more details check the preprint: arxiv.org/abs/2407.12545

Great experience in Sydney at #WWW2025! Today I presented the paper "Causal modeling of climate activism on Reddit", the work done during my visiting period in Copenhagen with the amazing team @c0rrad0.bsky.social, @lajello.bsky.social, @gdfm.bsky.social! dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/...

📢 Deadline Extended! 🚨 6th Workshop on Data for the Wellbeing of the Most Vulnerable at #ICWSM2025! 🗓️ New Deadline: April 7th, 2025 Submit your abstract or paper 🔗 tinyurl.com/DWMV25 #DataForSocialGood @yelenamejova.bsky.social @danielapaolotti.bsky.social @isi.it @icwsm.bsky.social

One day remaining to submit to our #ICWSM Workshop on #Data for the Wellbeing of the Most #Vulnerable -- submit your short and long papers by March 31! sites.google.com/view/datafor...

I am hiring PhD students and Postdocs to join me in beautiful Copenhagen. Together, we will develop data science methods to improve epidemic preparedness. Copenhagen is amazing, salary is good, we have plenty of funding, and a great community. Read more..: candidate.hr-manager.net/ApplicationI...

📢📢📢"The Relativity of Causal Knowledge" THANK YOU to @clabat9.bsky.social for working side by side with me on this exciting project and making this article possible. Big thanks also to @hansmriess.bsky.social and Fabio Massimo Zennaro for their valuable feedback on an earlier version of the paper.

See you in the amazing Copenhagen! 🍻🇩🇰 Extended abstract of "Variational Inference on Parameters of Opinion Dynamics Models" accepted at @icwsm.bsky.social ! Big thanks to @gdfm.bsky.social and Fabrizio Silvestri! Check the arXiv arxiv.org/pdf/2403.05358 (TL;DR: Model + Data = ❤️)

📢 Meet the keynote speakers of the upcoming #ICWSM Workshop on #Data for the Wellbeing of the Most #Vulnerable 👉 Paddy Brock at World Bank & UNHCR Joint Data Center 👉 @robysinatra.bsky.social at University of Copenhagen Join us! Submission deadline: March 31 sites.google.com/view/datafor...

"Urban Highways Are Barriers to Social Ties" out on PNAS! The 1st large-scale measure of how highways weaken social connections between the communities they separate. This barrier effect is strong in the 50 largest US cities--especially for low-income Black communities. www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Join my group in KTH Royal Institute of Technology! One PhD position available funded by the Swedish Research Council (VR). Application deadline on March 6, 2025. More details at: kth.varbi.com/en/what:job/...

📢 CfP: #ICWSM2025 Workshop on #Data for the Wellbeing of the Most #Vulnerable 👉 #AI #NLP #epidemiology #demography #sociology #humanitarian #datascience submit your abstract, or short or long paper by ⏰ March 31 sites.google.com/view/datafor... w/ @kyriakikalimeri.bsky.social + Daniela Paolotti

👉 preprint: The Role of Science in the Climate Change Discussions on Reddit how was science cited in the past 14 years? preprints or journals? find answers are here: arxiv.org/abs/2502.05026 w/ Paolo Cornale @mictiz.bsky.social @kyriakikalimeri.bsky.social @elisaomodei.bsky.social Daniela Paolotti

📣 The PhD Open Call 2025 is now open! Get in touch with us to apply for a PhD with NERDS in beautiful Copenhagen. Deadline: Feb 24th nerds.itu.dk/2025/01/31/p...

👇 accepted at The Web Conference 2025 🍾🍻

Just in time for the acceptance at WebConf 2025: "Causal Modeling of Climate Activism on Reddit" @jlenti.bsky.social @lajello.bsky.social @c0rrad0.bsky.social See you in Sydney!

Italian gestures at italian conference 🤌 Great vibes at #CS2Italy! I presented my last work during my 6 months with @nerdsitu.bsky.social ! Reddit data + social theory -> Causal model of climate activism! @lajello.bsky.social @c0rrad0.bsky.social @gdfm.bsky.social arxiv.org/abs/2410.10562

New tool to estimate the level of participation in collective action expressed in natural language. Applied to social media, it can produce large-scale and granular estimates of behavior change wrt collective action. github.com/ariannap13/e... @nerdsitu.bsky.social @itu.dk @carlsbergfondet.dk

Highly recommended: my colleagues at the GESIS Computational Social Science department are searching for a new team lead. Great people, great research, work on research infrastructure and open science. Plus: tenure option ("Entfristung")

Very excited and grateful to receive an ERC Consolidator grant #ERCCoG on Counterfactuals in Minds and Machines! Are you interested in a postdoc or Ph.D.? Please get in touch by email!

Breaking news: South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol declared “emergency martial law” on Tuesday evening, accusing the opposition of “antistate” activities for paralyzing the government with impeachment motions.

It's amazing how much of my feed on Xitter was pseudo-gurus trying to clickbait with some pseudo-science. I hadn't even realized until I moved here (boiled frog syndrome). So refreshing!

Is this the time we move off Xitter?

Doing computational research on how we form opinions on climate change? How does climate awareness spread? When does communication bring change? Have some early results to present, or published work to discuss? Join our NOCAPS workshop at ICWSM 2024! no-caps.github.io/2024/

How can you assess the statistical significance of your graph mining results? With a null model! In our paper (w/ Giulia Preti & Matteo Riondato) we propose ALICE, an MCMC algorithm to sample from a null model that preserves the bipartite joint degree matrix. rdcu.be/dp9AV

Have you ever calibrated an Agent-Based Model? Typical simulation-based solutions can be slow and inaccurate. With Jacopo Lenti and Corrado Monti we show that an alternative likelihood-based approach is faster and more accurate. #WSDM2024 arxiv.org/abs/2310.02766

This is where enshittification* comes in. The search engine business is a curious internet business. The better you are at it, the less time people spend on your website—and the less ad revenue, among other things, you receive. 6/n *https://www.wired.com/story/tiktok-platforms-cory-doctorow/