people's opinions are formed through a combination of long-lasting exposures and political socialization, and we should not expect one-shot experimental settings to *scale* in the first place. this is such a needed correction to the "polarization" literature:

Some belated professional news: A few months ago I started working as a postdoc at Maastricht University on the exciting ERC project @erc-foodcharities.bsky.social led by @pipponcini.bsky.social Really happy to be part of this international team, based at the Maastricht Sustainability Institute!

I have taught in 5 countries for more than 25 years and I had never before been warned for being set-up and reported by my own students by university administrators… until this semester.

Nota: este es el mismo trato que reciben los presos americanos normalmente. El sistema penitenciario de Estados Unidos es un puto gulag desde hace décadas.

Our methodological open-access article (co-authors: Louise Ryan & @alexciordia.bsky.social), presenting new interactive visual tools to inductively explore social categorisation and boundary-making processes within personal networks, is out in Sociological Research Online doi.org/10.1177/1360...

The amount of carbon that forests can take up is much lower than previous estimates. If we don't reduce CO₂ emissions rapidly, we can say goodbye to the Paris climate targets forever.

🚨🚨📢📢 New open-access article (co-authored w/ @nuriatargarona.bsky.social & @mirandalubbers.bsky.social), just out in American Behavioral Scientist: “The Relational Toll of Political Involvement in Polarized Times: Relationship Decay Within Activists’ Personal Networks” doi.org/10.1177/0002...

Ten years ago, the world saw the image of Alan Kurdi lying lifeless on a Turkish beach after his family’s boat sank on the way to Greece. That photo shocked millions, but was also an example that the more we face extreme suffering, the faster we grow numb to it.

Honored to receive the Best Paper Prize 2024 from @politicalnets.bsky.social together with the brilliant Luigi Schiavo. Many thanks to the jury and colleagues!

The Tel-Aviv Stock Exchange is up 150% in the past 12 months (and 62% in the past 6m) in case you are wondering why the government feels no pressure to end the war on Gaza.

🚨 New in Journal of Politics! 🚨 Do radical right parties need to cut ties with old dictatorships to succeed? 👉 @sergipardos.bsky.social and my study of Spain’s VOX says: ❌ Not necessarily.

Excellent turnout and insights at our panel on Comparing Political Networks today at the ECPR General Conference! Thessaloniki is a perfect location to reconnect with older and newer members of the #polnets gang.

Do you ever think about how the fine for peeing in public is substantially more than the fine for dumping tonnes of CO₂ in public?

Anas Al Sharif had these words to publish if he was martyred which he was tonight as Israel starts the invasion of Gaza City

📣 Exciting news: The 'Handbook of Social Networks & the Environment' - co-edited with the brilliant Örjan Bodin - is now out! Access here: 🌐 tinyurl.com/hb2cz9er

"Genocide, ethnic cleansing, mass punishment –all these descriptions still somehow do not capture the lurid and varied ways in which Palestinians in Gaza are being killed: bombed in their homes, and in their tents, burned alive in their hospital beds, shot while queueing for food and now starved."

I wrote about Grok going "MechaHitler" over at X, and the need to view LLMs correctly: as remarkably powerful plausibility engines. Their AGI marketing and the strong inclination to project human qualities to anything that can speak is misleading us. NYT gift link: www.nytimes.com/2025/07/11/o...

“Why didn’t you include…?” Because I was trying to finish the paper before death thank you next

🚨The Social Sciences dept @ UC3M is looking to sponsor candidates for the César Nombela Program, an initiative to attract researchers to Madrid. Successful candidates get a job with us & great work conditions for 5 yrs (more below). To express interest, complete form (by 06/24) 👉 n9.cl/qdjvz

Together with @paugrau.bsky.social, we have just posted our first Substack, which is our quick take on the outcome of the labour rights and citizenship referendums in Italy on 8-9 June 1/ open.substack.com/pub/simonhix...

Trump has an interest in turning up the heat and escalating--it's scary. How the LA protests might work for activists and politicians. A note on strategy. politicsoutdoors.com/2025/06/09/h...

🤩I'm extremely excited to have @laiabalcells.bsky.social at the WZB to discuss secessionism, protest, and affective polarization in Catalonia on June 20 - including findings from her research and my very own book. 📖 The event will be hybrid at the WZB and on Zoom - more info how to register below!👇

New paper in Sociological Methodology with @mbojan.sciences.social.ap.brid.gy, @alexciordia.bsky.social, & @nuriatargarona.bsky.social about the measurement properties of aggregated relational data (responses to "how many people do you know who..?") and NSUM estimates: doi.org/10.1177/0081...

Yes!! Let’s also remember that this initiative became a referendum thanks to serious coordinated efforts across civil society and trade unions, and the current right government is absolutely against it — campaigning for abstention and asking public administrations to ignore speaking about it.

Are social revolutions over, or is a new age of upheaval in the making? Jeff Goodwin and Donatella della Porta. Happening today

Weird that moral panic about migrants always focuses on coloured people working in construction, personal services or gig economy, and never on investors, assets managers or anonymous holdings that take over large portions of the economy, pay no taxes and literally have 0 interest in the common good

Loved being part of this work with the @coalescelab.bsky.social team! Some striking insights from our interviews on the “yes, but…” of inclusive dialogue. Worth checking out 👇🧵

It‘s puzzling how reluctant people are to use fascism as a term to describe and as an analytical lens to understand the current US administration. The parallels with esp Italian 1920s fascism are huge. Not everything fits but better than the populism euphemism. Authoritarianism alone is too broad.

I decided to start a #thread 🧵 of stories about legal residents and tourists being (illegally) arrested, detained and/or deported by the Trump regime. I'll only post stories from serious sources, as rumors and conspiracies are really not needed in this authoritarian moment.

I have just learned that the deadline was extended to March 28!

Given the role Columbia has played in facilitating Khalil’s detention and news on sanctions to other students, should we consider boycotting it academically? for instance by declining to attend conferences there or make review on their behalf. Or we just go on as if nothing is happening?

📢 4 days left to apply! Full-time postdoc for social network research in Barcelona (22 months) in a big European Research Council-funded project! No ref. letters needed. No teaching. Incl. healthcare. Mediterranean climate 🌞, partially working from home allowed... #sociology #netsky

We joined Bluesky! Starting in 2021, we are a research team dedicated to studying processes of social exclusion, cohesion, and polarization from a social network perspective. We aim to connect micro-level relationships to macro-level outcomes by conducting interdisciplinary mixed-methods research.

REMINDER! Join us this Friday @wzb.bsky.social for the book presentation "Movement Parties of the Far Right" w. @andreapirro.it & @pietrocastellig.bsky.social NEW: @dom-of-tronina.bsky.social will start the event with short input & first Qs on the book! Registration: www.wzb.eu/de/veranstal...

Given the dominant narrative out there, this story should be shared wide far and wide. The Spanish city of Coruña has given the status of "adopted sons" to two migrants who were the only people to intervene when a homophobic mob brutally attacked a gay man in 2021. www.bbc.com/news/article...

📢 Postdoctoral position opportunity! We're seeking a full-time postdoc for 22 months to dive into societal cohesion research using network science/network statistics. At the COALESCE Lab in sunny Barcelona, Spain: euraxess.ec.europa.eu/jobs/319601. Apply before March 7th! #sociology #NetSci

CfP Protests and Social Movements between Innovation and Tradition. 1 & 2 October 2025. This year the ipb annual conference addresses the tension between tradition and innovation in protests and social movements. CfP and details available at: protestinstitut.eu/veranstaltun...

Do extreme protest tactics help climate movement? New study surveyed 8,001 French citizens for “effects of exposure to four protest actions with different degrees of extremity.” Found “relative to controls, extreme protest actions reduced support for the activist group…” osf.io/preprints/so...

🚨In Nature🚨 Meta is dropping fact-checking to avoid anti-conservative bias- but is there actually evidence of bias? We this test empirically & find that conservatives * ARE suspended more * BUT share more misinfo So suspension isn't necessarily evidence of bias www.nature.com/articles/s41...

‼️ I am looking for a ECR/postdoc working at the intersection of protest event and social network analysis. This is a 2-year position part of the Horizon EU ProTest project. The successful candidate will work with me (mostly) on the Italian case. Deadline: 11 December. bandi.unibo.it/ricerca/asse...

📣 In June, we are organizing a workshop on political behavior and public opinion in Barcelona Send us your abstract 👇

Here's a preprint version of our (w/ Paulina Erices-Ocampo & Miranda Lubbers, @mirandalubbers.bsky.social) forthcoming paper in ARS on social capital - osf.io/preprints/so...

New article co-authored with @Aurora_Perego just published in Partecipazione e Conflitto! 🎉 "Taking a detour to travel farther afield: reconstructing collaborative collective action networks through documentary traces of events" 🔗 siba-ese.unisalento.it/index.php/pa... A short 🧵 (1/6)

I wrote a blog post with some reflections about academic argumentation and giving and receiving critique. Aimed at Political Science PhDs in their first year. joenoonan.se/post/critique/

Opting into online surveys is itself a political behavior: respondents have high rates of voter turnout, campaign donations, and attending rallies, finds @dhopkins1776.bsky.social & Gorton dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn...

When I think about "what we're up to" in social science, I think a lot about this paper. www.cambridge.org/core/journal... #polisky

Face-to-face conversations about divisive political issues between out-partisans can reduce affective polarization while conversations between in-partisans can cause more extreme political views, finds Fang et al. in an impressive field experiment in Germany www.econtribute.de/RePEc/ajk/aj...

Controversial opinion #2: "self-plagiarism" is a stupid concept, confusing publisher's copyright claims to a text with a writer stealing others' work. There may be dishonesty in counting the same work twice on a c.v. or to get course credit, but it isn't plagiarism.

In January, the Spanish Ministry of Science will launch 2 calls for postdoc positions (2- & 5-year, also open to foreigners). We´ll support a candidate for each call if someone wishes to join our COALESCE Lab in Barcelona, participating in ERC research or related: coalesce-lab.com/en/news/27/p...

Our slightly geeky, but very inclusive session "The Network Scale-up Method (NSUM) & Aggregated Relational Data (ARD): new insights and developments" at the Sunbelt 2024 in Edinburgh, June 24-30 (sunbelt2024.com/organised-se...) is open for abstracts until Feb 4th!