Every system that was regulated, either explicitly or implicitly, by the fact that they were effortful for humans (letters of recommendation, government filings, essays, or, as this paper finds, lawsuits) will break under a wave of AI.

Also today at #SANS2026, Ziyu Zhao investigates the “brain rot” hypothesis. When studied rigorously, in large multi-national samples, we find a whole lot of nothing. Conclusion: previously observed alarming results might be driven by sampling bias and/or measurement error (P1-C-20)

Science is good. We should fund it.

1/n New preprint with Ziyu Zhao, @dougaparry.bsky.social, & @jacobtfisher.online Can an AI bot complete a live online reaction-time task & produce data that passes as human? We built an autonomous bot to take the Attention Network Test (ANT) in real time Preprint: doi.org/10.31234/osf...

the Norwegian campaign against enshittification is pretty great tbf vimeo.com/1168468796

The last edition of this conference was one of the most intellectually exciting conferences I have ever attended. I'm looking forward to September!

Hey y'all! Very pleased to announce that we'll be hosting Communication Science Futures again in East Lansing later this year. The conference in 2024 was a blast, and we're looking forward to running it back! Keynote speaker: James Pennebaker Submission deadline: June 5th. → commscifutures.com

🚨 New Preprint Alert 🚨 Communication science has no shortage of data. But what do we do with all of it? Experience sampling, sensors, digital trace, location aware observations are growing in popularity and scale.

On almost everything – fraud, polarisation, radicalisation, misinformation – evidence suggests that over 60s are in much more urgent need of online protection and education than teenagers. But that issue gets zero political attention, and is a total non-starter. Nothing good will come of it.

One of my favourite events of the year! Learn about new tools/methods/people and hack on some dataset/tool/project 😍

Depressed? Anxious? Lonely? What if mental health doesn’t just result from media use, but shapes how we choose media? In a new preprint, Valerie Klein, @gongxuanjun.bsky.social @aeden.bsky.social and I and I test this using a computational decision-making model: doi.org/10.21203/rs.... 🧵Thread

We're getting excited... just putting the finishing touches to **PsychoPy Studio** This is a complete rewrite of the PsychoPy Builder/Coder app, now packaged in Electron. Faster load, modernised UI, web-ready, independent of the Python interpreter 🎉 🚀 blog.psychopy.org/general%20bl...

In the future we're gonna look back at online gambling and prediction markets in the same way we look now at cigarettes on airplanes and lead-based paint www.wsj.com/business/med...

The "smartphones/social media" discourse suffers from some amazing historical amnesia. There was no 2008 financial crisis and no global pandemic starting in 2020, it's all SCREENS SCREENS SCREENS. Major world events? Just the backdrop against which SCREENS happened.

Works the other way around too. “If I was Jonathan Haidt, how would I destroy the next generation?”

Very cool study! Happy to see someone is actually studying this. My anecdotal experience aligns as well. Framing overuse/compulsive use of screens as "addiction" robs people of their agency and masks the issues we should actually be talking about (adversarial design tactics, attention economy, etc).

I'm recruiting PhD students to join my new lab in Fall 2026! The Shared Minds Lab at @usc.edu will combine deep learning and ecological human neuroscience to better understand how we communicate our thoughts from one brain to another.

I still get chills Meet Mike *30+ years severe depression *first hospitalized @ 13y *20 meds *3 rounds of ECT *2 near-fatal suicide attempts Mike felt joy for the first time in decades after we turned on his new brain pacemaker or PACE see videos, read paper, follow thread doi.org/10.31234/osf...

🎉 Huge congrats to our team @overbye.bsky.social, Kristy Hamilton and @jacobtfisher.online for receiving a Top Student Paper award in the Communication & Social Cognition Division at #NCA25! 🏆

Wrapping up #ica25 with @rzhprfshr.bsky.social presenting our work with @joebayer.bsky.social reviewing the research under the broad umbrella of “social connection”. And perfect timing because the paper was published TODAY at @natrevpsychol.nature.com 🥳 rdcu.be/erayE

Very happy to see that @overbye.bsky.social’s fantastic work on detecting bias in human-in-the-loop algorithms was awarded a top paper in @icacsab.bsky.social this year. Incredibly interesting, rigorous, and timely research! #ica25

Took some time off to get into the mountains for a little different view on #ica25 this morning! Out of breath but totally worth it!

Can we kick off #icacoffee for #ica25 on here? First on the docket for me is Huckleberry Coffee Roasters. About .5mi from the hotel but definitely worth the walk. maps.app.goo.gl/ncBAAchbFJzi...

From text-as-data to sleep data collection, this year‘s #hackica25 in Boulder, CO, was a blast and we‘re proud to say that we‘ve (again) successfully hacked communication science. Thanks to all participants and see y‘all at #ica25 ✨

We’re thrilled to see MNL represented at @hackingcommsci.bsky.social! Huge thanks to @jacobtfisher.online and @kyliewoodman.bsky.social for organizing another fantastic hackathon and sharing valuable comm sci insights such as using GitHub and running fMRI analyses. #hackica25 #ica25

Kicking off our fourth(!) annual #hackica this year at @colorado.edu. This is always the highlight of ICA. Super excited to get hacking! #hackica25

Leading up to #ICA25 we're sharing info on papers that received Top Paper awards. Today, you can read about "Expectation of Algorithm Bias Increases Caution: Implications for Human-in-the-Loop Decisions" by @overbye.bsky.social Kristy Hamilton & @jacobtfisher.online : commscience.org/ica-top-pape...

As someone who is actually on this paper, this critique (and many others) is absolutely spot-on. I can't speak for other authors, but this process has left me with far more questions than answers. The gap between what the data say and how it's being framed publicly is...notable to say the least.

Amidst all of this, @jacobtfisher.online & I have a new paper in @jmp-hogrefe.bsky.social! We discuss theoretical, methodological, & practical concerns with the media multitasking (MMT) index & lay out an agenda for better research on MMT 📄 doi.org/10.1027/1864... 📝 OA osf.io/preprints/ps...

While the 'belief' plot draws attention, the core message of the final, deliberative consensus statements is that evidence linking smartphone and social media use to negative outcomes is limited, mixed, context-dependent, insufficient to support causal claims, and better research is needed.

Alex Lover from the @jacobtfisher.online group presents new computational approaches to parse subtitles and film scripts for extracting moral conflict patterns. Excellent presentation, way to go Alex! What a nice memory of some MNL work with @fhopp.bsky.social and @jacobtfisher.online. Nostalgia!

osf.io/preprints/ps... turns out, u can analyze meta-d' w/ just reaction times rather than confidence. loses some info & also a bit different. but maybe RT really isn't so metacognitive, so we might have to call it pseudo-meta-d' new preprint with Kiyo Miyoshi & Doby Rahnev 🧠📈

Grateful that some Republican leaders are pushing back against efforts to defund American universities: www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/202...

I'm excited to share that I'm officially a Ph.D. candidate 🎉 Meaning I'll be on the job market this fall (gulp). My research explores human-algorithm interaction and the social impact of emerging tech at the intersection of mass communication & decision-making. #commsky #AcademicSky

Two new preprints from my group at WashU! First, Merve @mileritayar.bsky.social tests whether people place an effort cost on switching between cognitive control settings. We find that people avoid switching between focused and relaxed attentional states. osf.io/preprints/os...

Tens of thousands of psychological measures have been created, but 79% are not reused more than twice. In a new article in NHB lead by @faridanvari.bsky.social and @ruben.the100.ci we quantify this fragmentation in psychology's measures and propose solutions. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

🚀 #hackica25 registration is open! 🚀 Register now! Hack with us and join the free sunset mountain bus tour 🌄👩‍💻 Join the hack, and get to see a lot more than hotels and convention centers at this ICA!

🚀 #hackica25 registration is open! 🚀 Spots are limited—secure yours now: forms.gle/ssZFtZmfWYaC... 📅 June 11-12, 2025 📍 UC Boulder (shuttle from Denver available) No coding skills required! Join us to explore methodological & substantive challenges in communication science. See you there! 🍻

🚨 NEW REPORT – Better Feeds: Algorithms That Put People First 🚨 As policymakers around the globe grapple with addressing concerns about algorithms, KGI’s new report offers guidance on improving the design of algorithmic systems that shape billions of users’ digital lives. bit.ly/3QzxVzq

just gonna be the thousandth person to remind you all that segregationists start the open bigotry with people they feel they can target most easily but do not end there

Would love to see communication organizations follow. @icahdq.bsky.social or National Communication Association?

higher ed is the largest employer in 10 states and in over 60% of the 100 largest cities. destruction of federal research funds is economic sabotage.

So far persuasion work in polisci has mostly centered on message -> opinion (main result imo: messages have small fx in the right direction that don't differ too much by message or person or issue) with less work on message -> attention need to figure out experimental paradigm for attention

This will effectively kill both science and higher ed in the United States. Universities will be accessible only to the rich, and the number of people who can afford to do the bench work behind most research would plummet.

Just used Gemini Live to participate in a beh. experiment without even reading the instructions or speaking the language. LLMs acting as participants on platforms like Prolific could pollute data meant to study humans. With OpenAI’s operator model, this issue is growing. 🎥👇 youtu.be/NujyGZSA7Hg

The fact that NIH grant-making has been switched off so haphazardly, for reasons that remain unclear, and despite the scope of troubles it creates, suggests that higher ed will be profoundly vulnerable during the second Trump era, writes @ibogost.bsky.social:

I didn't think I'd have to say this, but as someone who's spent years studying and treating "addictions" there is no such thing as "dopamine addiction," no matter what Insta/ TikTok tell you, and anything using that phrase is a gutter trash scam. You cannot be addicted to your own neurotransmitters.

If you are ready to advocate to your representatives (or friends and families) about the economic value of NIH funded research, you can check your state at www.unitedformedicalresearch.org/nih-in-your-...