🚨 New blog alert! 📢 Struggling with family members sharing conspiracy memes? 🧐 In our latest blog, @laurenscottdev.bsky.social tells us about her research revealing why it happens, and shares expert tips on how to face these sticky situations! link below 👇 psatip.uk/blog/help-gr...

How to protect democracies from falsehoods? By empowering the young with open-source investigation skills, argue @bellingcat.com founder @eliothiggins.bsky.social and @drnataliemartin.bsky.social from @cmpcr.bsky.social in this new piece reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/news/how-pro...

Wise insights as always from @leelum.bsky.social www.politicshome.com/thehouse/art...

And we're off! Interesting keynote and panels so far and many more to come 🙌🏻 #PSAMPG2025

“We find that fact-checks are successful in debunking misperceptions. Moreover, this debunking effect is consistent across countries” Posting this key finding from our recent 16 country study. For no particular reason today. doi.org/10.1080/1520...

Over the past 4–5 years, Facebook has sunset tools (chiefly CrowdTangle) used by researchers and journalists, made data difficult and expensive to get, and iced out academics studying disinformation. Now, it's shutting down the fact checking on its platform.

Important context from @dannagal.bsky.social @andrewchadwick.com on the Meta announcement

Great that Meta have just announced they're axing fact checkers. Love that so much

I mean, there is a really obvious reason for this change... but leaving that aside, how did anyone keep a straight face in a meeting and say, "Have you seen X's community note feature? That seems to be working well. Let's emulate that model." www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

"Young people’s climate and environmental activism in Britain: Cooperation, confrontation and fragmentation in intersectional prefigurative politics" That's the title of a new publication from Dena Arya and me about the 'do-ability' of activism for young 'non-stereotypical' climate activists 1/3

“My point is that Haidt claims strong scientific support from a large number of studies that range from appallingly bad to weak. He has a few good studies, but none that support his view, and the best ones contradict it.”

Come work with us! Funded PhD scholarships at the Department of Communication at @UCPH_Research. Join a world-class public research university with international colleagues in a city ranked high in quality of life. Starting salary $48k Apply by Feb 16 jobportal.ku.dk/phd/?show=16...

Is doom scrolling really rotting our brains? The evidence is getting harder to ignore www.theguardian.com/... Many have asked for my take on this. So, is it another example of "I have concluded that my gut feelings are correct and I'm cherry picking 'evidence' to support it"? Yes, yes it is 1/21

As the TikTok ban becomes reality, we’re going to need to anticipate major economic changes to digital labor and information sharing. Platforms aren’t forever. When creators tie their labor around one platform, that can enhance precarity in an already patchworked system.

If anyone needs a citation for this very sensible point, may I modestly suggest doi.org/10.1177/0267... ?

One of the reasons the university sector has come so spectacularly off the rails is the fact it's so unfriendly to family life, people with caring responsibilities and parents. The attitude is often: 'Not working 24/7? You're not fully committed!' www.science.org/content/arti...

Applicants are invited to contact potential supervisors (soon!)

Future of Journalism conference 2025 at Cardiff University CfP. Deadline 14th February 2025. Dates 11th-12th September 2025. Time to get drafting abstracts! It would be awesome to see some podcast people there.

I'm so tired from baby number two that I just got Paul Mason and Paul Mescal confused in my lecture.

New article in Journal of Communication looking at changes to trust in news across 46 countries in the last 10 years. Trust in news declined in just over half of countries. It decreased more in countries where TV news use has declined, and/or where social media news use has grown. A thread:

It's staggering that any country would let this happen to something it's good at. Honestly think that when we look back at this disaster - which is only in its initial stages - it'll be seen as a national scandal. There should at least be an independent investigation. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Thrilled to be featured in the US Election Analysis 2024 which brings together leading media and politics scholars for early analysis of the election and campaign. I contributed three pieces to the report, covering media sexism, AI, and non-traditional news - more below 🧵👇🏻

"The percentage of male news influencers was highest on Facebook (67%) and YouTube (68%) and the gender gap was smallest on TikTok — where 50% of news influencers are men." www.niemanlab.org/2024/11/two-...

@davekarpf.bsky.social with the line of the day: "Seventeen years of network effects should...have been an insurmountable advantage. But network effects and habitual user behavior have proven no match for the strongest repulsive forces in the known universe: Elon Musk’s personality."

To all the newly-arrived Twitter refugees, I've created a starter pack of UK political journalists, experts, commentators and politicos to follow here go.bsky.app/2CwmVfN

I guess it has fallen to me, the humor columnist, to endorse Harris for president wapo.st/3UqHWRM

New working paper out! I test whether phone use in early adolescence displaces academically beneficial activities, using DiD and longitudinal #TimeUse data 📱👧👦 Key finding: No time displacement effects on enrichment, sports, & sleep, but reduction in TV/movie watching. dx.doi.org/10.48350/199...

This is extraordinary on three levels. (All of them bad. We're talking levels-of-hell here, obviously.) 1. From a narrow business perspective, news orgs like WaPo benefitted in 2017-21 by branding themselves as courageous journalistic defenders of democracy. (...)

I said I would post more on my paper at the #IJPP conference in Edinburgh. This is new work on what I have been calling the post-election campaign. I am interested in the role played by political communication after polling day.

The American Political Science Association has some explaining to do. #APSA2024 open.substack.com/pub/davekarp...

Want to fight misinformation? Teach people how algorithms work www.niemanlab.org/2024/09/want...

Would a tech tax be a fair way to make Google and Meta pay for the news they distribute and profit from? www.niemanlab.org/2024/09/woul...

I am presenting some new work on media coverage of focus groups in UK elections, 1992 - 2024 tomorrow at 1400 in Franklin 5 at the Marriot. A few selected slides below, and you can download the whole slidedeck via the link. https://buff.ly/47n34xC #apsa2024

Hi 🟦☁️! I'm a Senior Lecturer in Political Communication and Journalism at the University of Portsmouth (UK). I research the impact of social media on politics. I'm currently focusing on how young people who experience social inequality engage with news. I also ❤️ retro games and Derby County 🐏.

⭐️Really looking forward to editing PSR w/h @jameswilldennis.bsky.social David Norman & Daffyd Tonwley, following the excellent work of Brunel colleagues. We hope to assist @polstudiesassoc.bsky.social specialist groups for special issues &symposia. More to follow 👀 journals.sagepub.com/home/psw