It’s the 6th anniversary of the publication of #HashtagActivism. Much has changed about social media since @moyazb.bsky.social @foucaultwelles.bsky.social and I started researching the site formerly known as Twitter over a decade ago. Forever grateful we were on the ride together.

The IC2S2 deadline is right around the corner! We really need more reviewers to make this conference work. I know (I KNOW) you all get a lot of requests but please consider signing up, especially if you submit. It’s just a few abstracts, we’ll keep the review load light. Promise!

Our new paper (w. @foucaultwelles.bsky.social ) shows how Asians online created new vocabularies for subversive humor and "everyday activism" that defy both Western propaganda and Asian hypernationalism. Link: doi.org/10.1080/1071...

Bluesky data now on @icpsr.bsky.social -> "A Blue Start: A large-scale pairwise and higher-order social network dataset" by Smith, Amburg, @diesagar.bsky.social, @foucaultwelles.bsky.social, @nwlandry.bsky.social. arxiv: arxiv.org/abs/2505.11608 Social Media Archive: socialmediaarchive.org/record/78

Please boost! The NOEL PRIZE, in memory of the great and good and much-missed Will Noel. Celebrate your (or any) open access library project. No project too small, or too big. Full details here, deadline 8/1, extremely low-effort Google Form: pacscl.org/what-we-do/f...

Possibly useful if you’re the victim of a cancelled grant! www.spencer.org/grant_types/...

I am so heartened to this seriously AWESOME #SaveNSF website go up today!!!! Has a take action toolkit with: 1. Press outreach templates 2. Social media toolkit 3. Elected official outreach 4. Talking points Check it out and share widely!!!! Likely more to come. www.savensf.com

First they came for humanitarian aid, Then they came for health, Then they came for education, Then they came for culture, Now they come for truth.

Church bells ring across Massachusetts to commemorate the 250th anniversary of the start of the American Revolution and people gather on the lawn to defend our fragile democracy. No kings in 1775 and no kings in 2025.

Superb news. There are numerous modern-day Vavilovs stepping up. Dark times always bring out the best in people, too. www.theguardian.com/world/2024/n...

What if Elon is the first autistic person RFK has ever actually met and that’s why he assumes we don’t pay taxes or go on dates

My heart goes out to every international student in the United States. Foreign students have helped make American universities the best in the world. Without them America will suffer.

The precedent set here is the end of Congress, which I don't think Congress will even notice

If your NEH grant was terminated, please share that information with @humanitiesall.bsky.social via the form below.

@modernlanguage.bsky.social is working with many orgs in the face of ongoing attacks on higher education and the humanities. Let MLA know what you need and what strategies you’d like to share with others. docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...

Good to see you here altNEH, we know it’s a risk. Humanities and culture are worth fighting for!

If you/your grant admin receive/received an official looking email last night or today from NEH (letterhead, correct names), make sure you check the domain it was sent from. Official emails from NEH go through eGMS Reach and would have neh.gov as the domain. Check in with your grant admin today.

A sliver of good news in the dumpster fire of this week—new paper shows how amplification on social media rewires information networks and permanently shifts attention. Most of us have long assumed this is true (it’s why we repost/reskeet/etc) but now we have proof 😊

So let me get this straight - they cut funding for DEIA, gender, climate, misinformation, the arts and public health research and they think that’ll make us shut up about stuff that makes them feel uncomfy? Lol ok. We don’t have anything left to do but scream.

Groups across the country have received letters notifying them that their grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities have been canceled, raising alarms about serious harm to museums, historical sites, and a wide range of community projects.

No news organization should ever use the words "third term" without the word "unconstitutional" preceding it

Building the biggest talent pipelines and retaining top talent is good for business, full stop. Study after study after study shows this, it’s literally management 101.

For folks who don’t know, ethnic studies programs like African American/Africana Studies, Asian American Studies, Chicano Studies and the like come directly from civil right era campus activism. Attempts to disempower such programs should be framed as attacks on civil rights same as much else rn.

Over here watching my friends compile tips about how to safely enter my country … … and I’m so proud of my friends for helping … … and I’m so sad for my country.

Is your PhD research on game design, game production, HCI, or design theory? I've got three 2-year postdoc positions in my ERC StG project to investigate what makes theory useful and usable in game design / interaction design. Reposts much appreciated. Thx! candidate.hr-manager.net/ApplicationI...

About fifty years ago, NASA strapped a message in a bottle to a rocket and flung it into the deep dark It wasn’t supposed to go this far, but it did. Long past its mission, it’s still out there so far away now that a simple hello takes a day to reach it, and another day to hear if it says hello back

🚨New paper alert! 🚨 We all know activism is a marathon not a sprint. New paper shows how environmental activists maintain momentum over time. Hope you like it!

🚨 New preprint alert! 🚨 Love this one because it bridges network and communication theory and gives us an model for understanding the very real phenomenon of being bombarded with news but not having much information (even when folks are genuinely trying to spread information!)

Hey, artists, in case you were wondering if your work matters: I'm a scientist working on climate change and biodiversity, and I would not be who I am today without The Lorax, The Secret of NIMH, Watership Down, The Last Unicorn, and The X-Files. I know I'm not alone. Thank you for all you do.

For decades, the US government has painstakingly kept American science #1 globally—and every facet of American life has improved because of it. The internet? Flu shot? Ozempic? All grew out of federally-funded research. Now all that's being dismantled. 1/ www.technologyreview.com/2025/02/21/1...

Crockett: "Down in Alabama, who's broke. Down in Louisiana, who's broke. I can go through pretty much the entire south and tell you that they're broke and rely on a lot of welfare from the government. To be perfectly honest, it is tax dollars from these big blue states...we're in the find out phase"

Listen, university research isn’t perfect, but it is absolutely astonishing to me that anyone believes that the way to balance a federal budget is to cut spending on the folks who get paid a smidge more than minimum wage to bring us things like computing, clean air, and the cure for cancer.

part of me simply cannot believe, finds it literally unbelievable, that there are people whose main thing is bringing back deadly plague diseases that we have basically eradicated

Boston University is building a database of datasets that have been scrubbed from agency's sites: findlostdata.org

I planned this workshop and second everything that Milo said.

Got outside and fed some birds from our hands this weekend. It was a very nice change of pace.

Interested in using data on human behaviour to understand and predict epidemics? Come do a PhD with us! Deadline 7 March – please get in touch if interested! www.lshtm.ac.uk/study/fees-a...

Thinking back on all this I better understand the pain I feel to see science under devastating attack here. It’s not just about my livelihood or my university. It’s about my identity. And it’s about a pursuit that I see as standing along with art, literature, and music as among our highest callings.

US higher education had become a world-class sector, one of the greatest strengths of this country, even with the amount of work still to be done in making it more just and equitable. But a cabal of mediocre whites, out of pure spite and belligerent stupidity, have decided to choke it to death.

If you oppose DEI you should have to use the full phrase, “I oppose diversity, equity and inclusion.” Bonus points if you add your points, “I oppose disabled veterans equal access to employment.” “I oppose mothers having jobs.” Making it an acronym turns it into a thought-terminating cliche.

Shoutout to Noodle the Cat for making me take breaks from this nonsense.

What, this brick of yeast and 20lb bag of flour? Just supporting the local Costco, my love.

Apropos of everything, resharing my favorite essay on children and politics, “The Innocent Child and Other Modern Myths.” Children have rights and political agency too. web.mit.edu/~21fms/Peopl...

Apply to the "Software and Data for Supporting Network Science" satellite workshop at @netsciconf.bsky.social before Feb. 7th! Got some cool network data or software to share? This is the satellite for you! Submission form at netsci.nascol.net/cfa

I don’t have a definitive source on this yet but it looks like NSF review panels have been canceled. Sixty-some years ago, Eisenhower transformed higher education because he viewed a science education gap as the single greatest threat to national security. This is absolutely an act of sabotage.

Spoke with a very empathetic staffer at @markey.senate.gov’s office today, offered to help in any way I can. I’m sure she had a very long day listening to very sad stories, but I am grateful folks are still picking up the phone.

My occasional reminder to folks on tenure and promotion committees that there will be a cohort of people whose early careers were defined entirely by the pandemic and *waves vaguely* this nonsense, and it *will* impact their productivity. It can't not.

There is simply no plausible argument that the president has the constitutional authority to refuse to spend appropriated funds because he doesn’t like how the money is being spent. The legality of policy impoundments is just not a close question.