I’m excited to share a new paper in Nature that shows how large language models launder the strategic rhetoric of authoritarian states. Paper here: www.nature.com/articles/s41.... A thread.

🛍️Major AI companies are increasingly embedding sponsored content into chatbot conversations. Across two preregistered experiments (N=2,012), we test how effectively AI can steer consumers toward sponsored products in a realistic shopping scenario. 📝https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.04263

New from me, @yunkangyang.bsky.social @jolukito.bsky.social @jasong.bsky.social @m-dot-brown.bsky.social @beccalew.bsky.social: analyzing sales data released from InfoWar's court case, we find that certain styles (linguistic and auditory) used by Alex Jones on his radio show predict next-day sales

Should Harris have gone on Rogan? Check out my response here on American Friction. Thanks for having me @jacobjarvis.bsky.social @chrisjonesprod.bsky.social open.spotify.com/episode/16Uy...

Do reasoning models have real “Aha!” moments—mid-chain realizations where they intrinsically self-correct? In a new pre-print, “The Illusion of Insight in Reasoning Models," led by @liv-daliberti.bsky.social we provide strong evidence that they do not! 📜: arxiv.org/abs/2601.00514

Social media feeds today are optimized for engagement, often leading to misalignment between users' intentions and technology use. In a new paper, we introduce Bonsai, a tool to create feeds based on stated preferences, rather than predicted engagement. arxiv.org/abs/2509.10776

Does your work explore mis/disinformation, scams, hate speech, or other forms of harmful information online? We’re convening a CSCW workshop to convene a global community focused on information disorder. Submissions 2-6 page; due Aug 8. Hope to see you there! cscw2025infodisorder.netlify.app

🚨New publication in Social Media + Society🚨 Candidates Be Posting: Multi-Platform Strategies and Partisan Preferences in the 2022 U.S. Midterm Elections And it's open access! journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10....

Excited to share “Quantifying Narrative Similarity Across Languages” was just published! Amazing work by my wonderful coauthors — read more below!

This week, Natalia Umansky will present our paper (with Christian Pipal, @jasong.bsky.social and @aurman21.bsky.social) at @connectedpol.bsky.social: "Dances, Duets, and Debates: Analysing elite political communication on TikTok". Mailing list registration: eepurl.com/gGbBpr

Natalia Umansky presenting our (Christian Pipal, @jbgruber.bsky.social @jasong.bsky.social) work-in-progress on the ways European political parties use TikTok at the Digital Democracy Workshop in Zürich!

The distinction between fear-inducing and hate speech is so importantly highlighted by @juliaangwin.com https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/06/opinion/fear-speech-social-media.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

Hello (bluesky) world. Thanks @solmg.bsky.social for the invite!