New survey: As measles cases rise, the public's views of the MMR vaccine's safety and effectiveness -- and a willingness to recommend it -- have dropped. www.annenbergpublicpolicycenter.org/as-measles-c...

This is very informative. Thank you @perrybaconjr.bsky.social and @victorpickard.bsky.social

There is no ethical use of AI because the continued existence of the AI industry is directly harmful to (alongside everyone else) the interests of everyone whose labour makes books exist—writers of fiction & nonfiction, illustrators, translators, researchers, editors, everyone.

The core concept I develop is defiant pride: when state institutions discriminate against a group, more exposed members double down on their identity as a psychological defense mechanism. This manifests as ethnicity becoming a larger part of the self-concept, which shapes preferences and beliefs.

This suggests that VAAs, while not increasing the quantity of voteswitching, do increase the quality of voteswitching: while many non-users switch their votes ahead of elections too, VAAs make it more likely for users to switch precisely to the party they are ideologically most aligned with. 12/14

📊 A new @jmcquarterly.bsky.social study by @teresaelena.bsky.social, @jlegelhofer.bsky.social and @solecheler.bsky.social compared how deepfakes, cheapfakes, and decontextualized videos influence perceptions, finding distinct effects. Read the full #OA paper: doi.org/10.1177/1077...

First off we pluralise L to accentuate there's no 1 approach. And we position ourselves in this interdisciplinary field of critically examining AI & reflecting on harms. We give 5 non-exhaustive angles: conceptual clarity, critical thinking, decoloniality, respecting expertise, slow science. 2/

We’ve been talking with writers, artists, and actors, and they’re not worried about AI’s abilities, they’re mad that it stole its creativity from them and worried that it’s now being used in ways that threaten to dry up the pipeline of creative jobs that gave many their start.

Why do citizens who say they support democracy tolerate leaders who dismantle it? Delighted to share my paper “Framing Democracy: How Elite Discourse Shapes Citizens' Understandings of Democracy and Enables Backsliding” is forthcoming in World Politics...(1/5, link at the end)

Excited that "Race, Gender, and Nascent Political Ambition" is now out in @bjpols.bsky.social. W/ survey of white, Hispanic, and Black American respondents, we show primary gap in nascent political ambition is not between men and women but between white men and the majority of the polity.

De Gruyter Handbook of Media Psychology, edited by Rachel L. Bailey & Glenna L. Read, has arrived, with comprehensive reviews of media psychology. It includes our chapter on psychology of digital news consumption and public opinion (Anita KC Liu & Ozan Kuru). www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi...

Using panel survey data collected before and after Elon Musk’s takeover, we ( @prowag.bsky.social @zeningduan.bsky.social Sijia Yang) find evidence of lagging resistance: users who view the takeover negatively intend to quit Twitter but do not (yet) reduce their actual use. 1/ shorturl.at/x3syg

Here we go! @lmesseri.bsky.social & I wrote about epistemic risks of synthetic participants ('AI Surrogates') in @cp-trendscognsci.bsky.social (see 🧵 here) bsky.app/profile/mjcr...

Over the past several months, we hosted several scientists, experts, and authors to discuss climate change issue from various angles. @fisherdanar.bsky.social @drpauldorfman.bsky.social @cdelawalla.bsky.social @djspratt.bsky.social @climatehuman.bsky.social Playlist: www.youtube.com/playlist?lis...

What's more effective, retrieval practice or elaboration? Retrieval practice with feedback > elaboration, and a stronger effect when the content was complex. I suspect, overall, what matters is using the best strategies for the content & task (i.e., why not both?). #PsychSciSky #AcademicSky #EduSky

ICYMI: The Supreme Court is revisiting the legality of religious vaccine exemption bans. That's bad news for public health. Religious exemptions are broader than medical exemptions, which can increase infectious disease risk. That's why (some) states treat them differently under the law.

"our work reaffirms the idea that scholars must not assume that broad theories of political behavior apply equally well across a diverse population of people..., demonstrating across multiple data-sources that their cross-cutting identities allows for relative inter-partisan harmony."

Singapore has recently introduced a range of measures aimed at reducing screen time in youths, including banning smartphones during school hours in secondary schools and updating guidelines on screen use.

New study on LLMs shows that while LLMs & humans converge on similar judgments of reliability of news media, they rely on very different underlying processes. In delegating, are we confusing linguistic plausibility with epistemic reliability? The age of "epistemia" www.pnas.org/doi/epdf/10....

📈New #SPPS research: Subjective economic inequality undermines engagement in health-promoting behaviors like regular physical activity and healthy eating. The research helps refute the idea that health issues are solely due to personal choices. 📖: https://ow.ly/ZM7v50XFRUb#SPPS

MY LATEST: Many religions are heavily concentrated in a few countries.

From October 2025 - Inflation and Incumbent Support: Experimental Evidence from the 2024 US Presidential Election - cup.org/3JaiZYj "priming Americans to think about inflation reduced support for the incumbent" - Selim Erdem Aytaç, @danielmcdowell.bsky.social & David A. Steinberg #OpenAccess

"Instead of treating all individuals and groups equally with respect to their status, power, or ends, a group theory of political communication requires normative analysis of the positioning of groups vis-a-vis one another and liberal democracy."

Gender hierarchies in reporting genocide: an analysis of the dehumanization of Palestinian men in Western media url: academic.oup.com/ccc/article/...

"As the university trades its teaching mission for “AI-tech integration,” it doesn’t just risk irrelevance—it risks becoming mechanically soulless. Genuine intellectual struggle has become too expensive of a value proposition."

"Our certainty-weighted extension to the expectancy-value model clarifies why certain misbeliefs remain deeply influential, and how knowing more can move —but also polariz— public opinion."

In light of record submission rates and a large volume of AI-generated slop, SocArXiv recently implemented a policy requiring ORCIDs linked in the OSF profile of submitting authors, and narrowing our focus to social science subjects. Today we are taking two more steps: /1

Data Cleaning Tools and Techniques for Non-Coders gijn.org/stories/data...

I am realistic enough to understand the demand-side issues, but I am also old skool about stuff like this and I really wonder how you can have a fully-realized university if you are just continually dropping coverage of significant areas of knowledge like this

"A new poll suggests nearly half of Britons think there are more migrants in the UK illegally than legally, but in reality just 7% arrive through irregular channels" Charlie Angela on how sensationalist reporting in the right wing press is fuelling falsehoods and misconceptions

Over 100,000 killed in Gaza, by 6 Oct 2025, as direct (violent) deaths, according to researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research and the Centre for Demographic Studies www.demogr.mpg.de/en/news_even...

"Integrate blogs into catalogues and repositories, assigning ISSNs and DOIs. Encourage open licensing to facilitate reuse and archiving. Support preservation initiatives like Rogue Scholar that combine openness with technical sustainability."

Deadline extended to 10 December. Workshop on #Digital Authoritarianism in the Global South and East. #ecpr #ecprjs26 #polisky #digital #asia #africa #latinamerica #europe

Do policy preferences of voters and non-voters differ in European democracies? My new article in @ejprjournal.bsky.social finds: Yes, sometimes, but this is not the norm. Let's break it down. 🧵 1/10

Postdoctoral Researcher Positions!

It's already time for the third session of our PolCom Classics! This round, we’re diving into mediatization & media logic with none other than @jesperstromback.bsky.social 🗓 November 27 ⏰ 12:00–13:00 CET 📲 Register via the QR code or the link below — hope to see you there!

STOKED that our paper on smartphone and spatial habits is out in Scientific Reports! 🎉 Using mobility 🏃 and app 📱 data (27,446,977 logs; 7,226 trip questionnaires) we found that smartphone habits are stronger in habitually traveled and visited spaces 🏡 Personal thread below! rdcu.be/eQ7q0

completed the semester for our undergraduate political communication seminar with a 2h digital detox news reading & discussion session

presented & met colleagues at 11th Conference of the International Journal of Press/Politics, Singapore, #IJPP, fass.nus.edu.sg/cnm/events/1...

Excellent presentation and lively discussion about "Strategic Legalism and Journalistic Agency under Security Governance" by Saira Ali (Adelaide University), focused on journalists in 🇵🇰. #IJPP2025

Fantastic 1st day of conferencing at #IJPP2025. Lots of new faces, projects & ideas. Topics: International ✅ Press (in various shapes and mediums)✅ Politics ✅ @taberez.bsky.social @shannimcg.bsky.social @patyrossini.bsky.social @profvaccari.bsky.social @rasmuskleis.bsky.social @polcomm.bsky.social

My university is promoting Qualtrics new “synthetic data” initiative that “simulates human behavior so enable quicker experiments” and it is HORRIFYING that a UNIVERSITY promotes this “as transformative for how we collect data” and I don’t know who to scream at 😭😭😭😭

I enjoyed writing this piece for the LSE Impact Blog on Musk's latest swing at Wikipedia, and its future in a hostile AI-skewed political landscape 👇

Autocratization is not isolated within country borders. In POQ, Chan argues that an authoritarian's electoral success abroad can shatter democratic norms and demonstrate the viability of authoritarianism. Read more: doi.org/10.1093/poq/...

"Specifically, participants who were exposed to the longer conversations were more likely to express increased interest in engaging in political behaviors than those in the shorter conversations and control group."

"anthropologist Susan Blum written about “schoolishness,” a system that rewards the trappings of learning rather than learning itself. Schoolishness alienates the learner through packaged learning experiences.Are we using this moment to promote authentic learning, or to doubledown on schoolishness?”

Preliminary data from @umich.edu survey on student AI use for class. Most rarely/sometimes use AI & always follow class policies, but think others frequently use AI & only sometimes follow policies. Perceptions of misuse ≠ reality Misperceptions may provide implicit permission for misuse.

ONLINE FIRST! This article by Amaka Peace Onebunne looks at #journalists’ views of #AI in Nigerian newsrooms and how geographical and cultural factors influence AI usage, by conducting interviews with 18 #Nigerian journalists. www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Interesting review documenting the rise in scholarship on visual misinformation, how it is more persuasive than text misinformation, and how #GenAI is both increasing visual misinformation content and being used to combat it. (!) #PsychSciSky #AcademicSky #EduSky doi.org/10.1080/1520...

"It’s going to be used to remove books from collections that are about queerness or sexuality or race or history. "