Today, I kicked off this year‘s #BikeAndTalk2026 trip through Switzerland together with @alexaisa.bsky.social . Thanks to @stefaniebailer.bsky.social and amazing colleagues for hosting us! Tomorrow, I’m off to Fribourg and then Bern (Wednesday).

Delighted to share a short blog post on the dark logic of visual "strongman" propaganda — drawing on survey experiments in Venezuela, Türkiye and the US!

That said, there are really interesting avenues for research on plausible expert biases using coder-level data. @nilsweidmann.bsky.social, @melinaplatas.bsky.social and @sarahbush.bsky.social have great work on this topic in different contexts... doi.org/10.1177/0010... doi.org/10.1177/0010...

How often do ethnic elites use grievance frames online? @frederikgremler.bsky.social, Lea Haiges, @nilsweidmann.bsky.social & Christina Zuber examine 646k posts showing such frames are rare & track political, not economic, inequality. Read OPEN ACCESS: buff.ly/swifESz @polstudiesassoc.bsky.social

📢 New article 🌟 👥 Jens Jungblut @jjungblut.bsky.social (ISV), Nils B. Weidmann @nilsweidmann.bsky.social, & Carl Henrik Knutsen @chknutsen.bsky.social (ISV) 👉 The politics behind political science: A cross-national perspective 📗 Open Access in European Political Science 🔗 doi.org/10.1017/s168...

I'm hiring a postdoc! @goetheuni.bsky.social Focus: CSS, political behavior, political communication & transforming information environments. 📍 Frankfurt | ⏳ 3 years | 📅 Deadline: 14 April 2026 Full job ad here: www.uni-frankfurt.de/48794987/Zen... (search for “political behavior” to find it)

How often do ethnic elites use grievance frames online? @frederikgremler.bsky.social, Lea Haiges, @nilsweidmann.bsky.social & Christina Zuber examine 646k posts showing such frames are rare & track political, not economic, inequality. Read OPEN ACCESS: buff.ly/swifESz @polstudiesassoc.bsky.social

🆕 Together with @krishogl.bsky.social, I’m excited to share several new outputs from our joint research project on the actors of electoral violence. 🧵 A thread... #polisky #conflictsky

❇️ FirstView -💼 Profession @jjungblut.bsky.social, @nilsweidmann.bsky.social & @chknutsen.bsky.social examine political science departments at universities across the world to assess the extent to which they vary with regime type. 👉 buff.ly/qEIeGoB

In a new study (OA) in @epsjournal.bsky.social @nilsweidmann.bsky.social @chknutsen.bsky.social & I study the global distribution of polit. science depts. Political science is today a truly global discipline & we find few differences along the democracy–autocracy continuum: doi.org/10.1017/S168...

📣CfA for a Postdoctoral Fellow Position in political science (3-4 years) as part of the ERC project “Waging of War” (WOW) - PI Scott Gates. The application deadline is March 16th, 2026. www.jobbnorge.no/en/available...

Good and bad news from @epssnet.bsky.social, if I could only figure out which ones of my submissions this is about...

🚨Job alert 🚨 I have an opening for a postdoc in my team at @ipz.bsky.social in the area of digital democracy starting Sep 1, 2026. If you are working on the impact of the digital transformation on politics, please apply by 🗓️ Mar 1, 2026. 📤 Please share widely! www.ipz.uzh.ch/de/ueber-uns...

🚨 Postdoctoral Position at the University of Konstanz 🚨 We’re hiring a post-doc for our @excinequality.bsky.social project on political elites and decision-making. 4-year position | Deadline: Feb. 20 | Start: Sept 2026 Please share widely 🙏 The ad is here stellen.uni-konstanz.de/jobposting/f...

“You cannot live within the lie of mutual benefit through integration when integration becomes the source of your subordination.” This speech is 🔥 and easily one of the most remarkable (and alarming) by a Canadian PM

In any somewhat functioning democracy this would lead to the removal of the leader

Large Language Models Are Democracy Coders with Attitudes @pspolisci.bsky.social @nilsweidmann.bsky.social Mats Faulborn @dgarcia.eu www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

📅 Vortrag & Diskussion: Wie stehen Studierende zur Redefreiheit an Unis? In welchen Situationen wären sie bereit, Vorträge oder Personen auszuladen? Di, 13.01.2026 | 19:15 | A0701 @uni-konstanz.de & im Stream: t1p.de/ix7me Mit @cdiehl.bsky.social, Richard Traunmüller & @nilsweidmann.bsky.social

🚨Job alert! 🚨 I'm advertising a PhD position (66%) in Comparative Politics at HU Berlin. Ideal candidates combine a research interest in autocratic politics, conflict, and/or political violence with strong quantitative methods skills. ⏳ 4 (+2) years | 🗓 DL 16.01; Start March/April 26 More info:

🧵 PhD position (75%) in Political Behavior / Political Communication / CSS 📍 LMU Munich | ⏳ 3 years | 🗓 start March–May 2026 We’re hiring for DemocraGPT, a @bidt.bsky.social-funded project developing an AI-based training for difficult conversations in times of growing polarization

📝 How often do ethnic elites use grievance frames online? @frederikgremler.bsky.social, Haiges, @nilsweidmann.bsky.social & Zuber examine 646k posts showing such frames are rare & track political, not economic, inequality. Read OPEN ACCESS: buff.ly/lC7RH6t @polstudiesassoc.bsky.social #PSNotes

We @uni-konstanz.de are hiring a full professor in machine learning for our MSc program in Social and Economic Data Science: stellen.uni-konstanz.de/jobposting/6...

How often do ethnic elites use grievance frames online? @frederikgremler.bsky.social, Lea Haiges, @nilsweidmann.bsky.social & Christina Zuber examine 646k posts showing such frames are rare & track political, not economic, inequality. Read OPEN ACCESS: buff.ly/lC7RH6t @polstudiesassoc.bsky.social

Inequality matters for ethnic conflict. But do group elites actually frame a situation as unjust? In a recent article (doi.org/10.1177/00323217251401758), @frederikgremler.bsky.social, Lea Haiges, Christina Zuber and I analyse “grievance frames” in social media posts of ethnic organisations.

If you get asked to review... please respond!!! And if you agree to review, please turn in the review. If it's a little late, that's ok, but let the journal know.

📣 We're hiring a postdoc in political science for our ReJust project @uni-konstanz.de! Project with Dirk Leuffen @leuffen.bsky.social and Urs Fischbacher 3-year position | Deadline: Dec. 15, 2025 | Start: April 2026 Please share widely 🙏

Thanks to the great help by @rstrauch.bsky.social, Gabriele Spilker and the Cluster of Excellence "The Politics of Inequality" @excinequality.bsky.social, version 5.0 of the "Mass Mobilization in Autocracies Database" (coverage until 2022) is now available at mmadatabase.org!

Auf der Suche nach einer Postdoc-Stelle im Bereich der empirischen Menschenrechtsforschung? An der @fau.de suchen wir eine*n Postdoc für 3+3 Jahre für unser Team. tinyurl.com/4d3w3th6

#OpenAccess from the new issue of @psrm.bsky.social - Intra-ethnic divisions and disagreement over self-determination demands in ethnic movements - https://cup.org/481UkPS - @frederikgremler.bsky.social, Manuel Vogt & @nilsweidmann.bsky.social#OpenAccess

📄 Does the Community Understand the Community Guidelines? with @yannistheocharis.bsky.social , @mianahrgang.bsky.social , @nilsweidmann.bsky.social & Molly Roberts

This is an excellent special issue! Highly recommended.

Thanks for the endorsement, @kailmarkvart.bsky.social! This work was only possible because there's a large coding project with full transparency in its procedures and data, and with unrestricted access. Kudos (again) to the @vdeminstitute.bsky.social for providing this huge public good.

Please share: by Sept 1, we solicit nominations for @isanet.bsky.social Karl Deutsch Award to recognize 𝘀𝗰𝗵𝗼𝗹𝗮𝗿𝘀 𝘂𝗻𝗱𝗲𝗿 𝟰𝟱, 𝗼𝗿 ≤𝟭𝟱 𝘆𝗲𝗮𝗿𝘀 𝗼𝗳 𝗱𝗲𝗳𝗲𝗻𝗱𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘁𝗵𝗲𝗶𝗿 𝗱𝗶𝘀𝘀𝗲𝗿𝘁𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 who have made significant contribution to the study of #𝗜𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗿𝗻𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝗮𝗹𝗥𝗲𝗹𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝘀 & #𝗣𝗲𝗮𝗰𝗲𝗥𝗲𝘀𝗲𝗮𝗿𝗰𝗵 🔗 www.isanet.org/Programs/Awa... #IR

EPSA have announced that they will hold a conference in July 2026. 😵‍💫 We understand that there might be some confusion about EPSS and EPSA. 👉🏽 So we thought we would clarify some things. A short 🧵

Now online ft. @nilsweidmann.bsky.social & coauthors! Large language models can help us assess the state of democracy for comparative research, but they do so with their own attitudes. doi.org/10.1017/S104...

ACLED locking researchers out feels less like data protection, more like damage control. Especially when the numbers already… don’t add up because they're sourced from people doing the fighting. 📉 👉 journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

This article should have been published alongside the one it responds to. The original article finds that the authors' own (commercial) data outperforms the free UCDP data. Conflict of interest? Nah. But at least we know now that this conclusion is based on "a series of unfounded claims." 👇

Very interesting on LLMs and democracy coding: Quite good at «easy» cases, but very problematic for tough ones: «Some LLMs are too pessimistic and others [too optimistic] … it is difficult to replace human coders with LLMs because the extent and direction of these attitudes is not known a priori.»

#OpenAccess from @pspolisci.bsky.social - Large Language Models Are Democracy Coders with Attitudes - cup.org/3H8EebY - @nilsweidmann.bsky.social, Mats Faulborn & @dgarcia.eu #FirstView #LLM

... and here's a short press release about the article: www.uni-konstanz.de/en/universit...

Very happy that the joint paper with Ore Koren on infectious diseases and trust in politics has now been published: www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/... A nice result of his fellowship at @uni-konstanz.de, funded by the @humboldt-foundation.de!

This fall, we’re launching two new Master’s programs focused on applied methods in the social sciences at Uni Marburg. More info + details 👉

I still don’t understand why we’re not adjusting the semester dates such that the teaching ends before the summer heat kicks in? If the University of Mannheim (and many other institutions worldwide) can do it, we can too. What we’re currently going through is completely avoidable.

Terrific news! Count me in for Belfast 2026.

This is fantastic news, and I'm grateful to the members of the EPSA Reform Working Group for managing this transition. "Reform" would have been the preferred outcome, since this also would have resolved the ownership question of @psrm.bsky.social, but let's take one step at a time. Belfast 2026!!

🔗📃 Link to he paper now published in the ICWSM conference proceedings (ojs.aaai.org/index.php/IC...) co-authored with @nilsweidmann.bsky.social, @friederikeq.bsky.social, @sebnagel.bsky.social, @yannistheocharis.bsky.social & Molly Roberts

@nilsweidmann.bsky.social and Mina Rulis study the link between university disciplines and political protest in autocracies. They focus on how the composition of academic institutions shapes the likelihood of activism in university cities. Read more: journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

📣 Happy to announce the publication of our article (w @nilsweidmann.bsky.social, @friederikeq.bsky.social, @sebnagel.bsky.social, @yannistheocharis.bsky.social & Molly Roberts) on the complexity and availability of community guidelines @icwsm.bsky.social! 🔗 ojs.aaai.org/index.php/IC...

With Mina Rulis, I've been studying the link between higher education and dissent in autocracies: "Activist disciplines: Universities in autocracies and political protest" has now been published at doi.org/10.1177/2053...! Thanks to the @uni-konstanz.de for supporting open access!