fantastic piece from @marionf.bsky.social and @kjhealy.co that provides tools for thinking about surveillance, knowledge, identity, and much more it links pressing issues, from DOGE to AI cheating, that demonstrate how our Faustian bargain with infinite data and infinite content is playing out

hello #ASA2025! K. Schilt and I will be talking about research ethics, vulnerable populations, and legal attempts to access confidential data on Sunday during this great and wide-ranging paper session! it will be...relevant to "contemporary issues" facing our discipline. also PS I'm at ASA say hi :)

DISASTROUS. This means they will send people to horrific situations with no due process — in direct violation of promises the Solicitor General made to the Court in previous cases. This greenlights sending people to be enslaved in Libya or tortured in any random foreign country.

The day after, essentially no (@nytimes.com @npr.org) or minimal (@apnews.com @cnn.com) front page coverage of one of the largest protests in US history. This: 1) cedes narrative control to RW "riot" narratives; 2) makes the military parade the leading edge of Trump-obsessed media, and...

Oracular, protagonistic ideas espoused by chatbots are reminiscent of doomsday cult beliefs. Theorists have long argued that such "cults" rely on members' social support: echo chambers + cognitive dissonance. But not so for chatbots! It's a dissonance chamber and the "social" is a technical trick.

this is the same kind of magical thinking that we see with AI and generally techno utopianism why have proactive, preventative initiatives if we have magic? which is exceptionally absurd when they are gutting the only funding that could even hypothetically "reanimate" the dead

ah yes what's that famous quotation? something about "millionaires see themselves as temporarily embarrassed coal miners"

Two concepts to help explain the persistence of MAGA support: First, there's "conspiracy fictioning + hyperstition" from @ddzeeuw.bsky.social and Gekker: When Trump claims the economy is rigged by foreign interests, then acts as if it is, he creates the original conditions for his conspiracy theory

I’ve long used FiveThirtyEight’s interactive “Hack Your Way To Scientific Glory” to illustrate the idea of p-hacking when I teach statistics. But ABC/Disney killed the site earlier this month :( So I made my own with #rstats and Observable and #QuartoPub ! stats.andrewheiss.com/hack-your-way/

Are you working in a setting where historical data is at risk of being lost/erased/removed? Let the OAH know. I think this is an important way to account for what's there now so that we understand what goes missing. You can fill out the form anonymously. #historysky www.oah.org/2025/03/12/r...

This is a fascinating, disturbing, and complicated piece from @nberlat.bsky.social. Martin Niemöller Was an Antisemite www.everythingishorrible.net/p/martin-nie...

Critical Sociology compiled Michael Burawoy's articles and allowed free access. I hope other journals will do the same. journals.sagepub.com/page/crs/vir...

FANTASTIC ICPSR at U Mich is coordinating the archiving of at-risk federal data (all of it?) You can upload data you have & search for data you don’t have www.datalumos.org/datalumos/

Halfway through the Zuckerberg interview: We cannot separate his criticism of the Biden admin from the massive fines Meta has faced in the EU. He makes a tacit link between the politicization of Big Tech and the US's decision to abandon tech companies to places that disregard "the rule of law."

We lost our house in the Eaton Fire. We're safe, but the level of devastation is impossible to convey. I won't be able to work for a while, so if you want to support us, I'd appreciate a Patreon subscription or buying one of my books. It will help. www.patreon.com/MikeRothschild

With each update, tools like Midjourney promise us more »realistic« representations – but the »reality« these images represent has often little to do with the one we live in. Rather, they are best described as »Platform Realism,« a second-order aesthetic of generic images. A thread ... 1/9

Outraged by Jan 6, he spent two years getting inside the top ranks of militias like the Oath Keepers. He was stunningly successful. He penetrated a new generation of militia leaders, which included doctors, cops & government attorneys. This is his story. www.propublica.org/article/ap3-...

AI letting you publish a book for yourself, AI letting you have a social media platform dedicated to yourself, AI letting you have a relationship all by yourself... ...to riff on Fisher, it's solipsistic hedonia, all the pleasure of recognition without any of the people, processes, and communities.

Optimist: The cup is half full. Pessimist: The cup is half empty. Sociologist: The "full/empty" opposition represents the categories with which we classify the social world—when we classify the cup as "full" we classify ourselves as one who sees the cup as "full," a member of the "full" class

✨New from @ryanmoore.bsky.social me @peterforberg.bsky.social & Hancock in #CSCW2024. We take a mixed-methods approach to studying American's exposure to QAnon, finding those on the political extremes are most likely to be exposed, but with distinct types of consumers dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/...

hello! grateful to all the new followers! I mostly lay low on here, but I am a sociology PhD student who studies political mobilization, digital technology, and data ethics. I used to run a research newsletter on QAnon, and I'll link some recent work below!

Our team is tracking election rumors, publishing rapid analyses, predictions for what to expect on Election Day, and tools for understanding and explaining how specific rumors mislead. We plan to be very busy this coming week. Follow us on Substack to keep up: uwcip.substack.com

New from me, as we lead up to the 2024 presidential election: A video explainer about the how the election denial movement has developed a very real & dangerous partnership with the QAnon community.

This looks like a great CfP for people working on "alt tech." New Media & Society special issue on "Alt Tech Platforms: Into the Mirror Worlds of Reactionary Digital Media." Abstract deadline is Nov 30 digitalpolicy.ie/call-for-abs...

Next Wednesday, I'll be in conversation with Prof Taylor Carlson about her new book "Through the Grapevine" at the Chicago Center for Democracy. Given our messy information environments, how can we understand the effects of our interpersonal relationships on our political beliefs? Details below!

Great piece. Another striking similarity between QAnon and BlueAnon is the reconstitution of media literacy. Agar's quotations from Biden "dead-enders" capture this: Entry into a conspiratorial milieu entails developing new, emotionally-resonant ways of reading and interpreting info in your favor.

Looking at the full True the Vote/Konnech story, it's likely one of the biggest stories in the history of QAnon. True the Vote appears to have funneled material from QAnon figures to the LA County DA to in part result in a case that resulted in taxpayers there having to pay a $5 million settlement.

A lot of great points have already been made, but it's also necessary to think about the marketing/sci-fi aspect to this: You can't say "This thing is near human!" and "Give us money to stop it from being hubris manifest!" if it is just good at predicting the weather. It feeds popular imaginaries.

media literacy has rapidly evolved from "can you identify the link between filming techniques and narrative themes?" into "can you compete with a super powered pattern imitator designed to subvert your fundamental understanding of reality?" literacy is noble but no panacea

Right-wing users have targeted a video game consulting company, pushing misleading claims about it forcing diversity & inclusion into games. 4chan users & others on platforms like YouTube have joined in, with some calling it “Gamergate 2.0.” My newest reporting:

Brenden Dilley, a conspiracy theorist podcaster who has previously supported QAnon & leads a pro-Trump “meme team,” revealed on his show that he received press credentials from Trump’s 2024 campaign for its Iowa caucus “War Room.” My newest reporting:

buzzed in the laundromat reading max weber's protestant ethic on a saturday afternoon, a memoir