We're launching a funding drive on Bellingcat today. It's a tough funding environment at the moment with global funder cuts & the fear of Trump scaring off donors, so support us here www.bellingcat.com/donate/?utm_... A short video about what your donations will fund www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Vzb...

The #WHATIF 2nd General Assembly meeting in Bucharest came to an end Many thanks to Facultatea de Comunicare si Relatii Publice for the excellent organisation and hospitality, and to the city of Bucharest for the welcoming atmosphere. Stay tuned for upcoming project updates!

Rudolphina, the Science Magazine of @univie.ac.at is featuring our @what-if-horizon.bsky.social, where we use #ABM and #LLM -powered simulations to explore civic engagement in digital information environments: rudolphina.univie.ac.at/en/computer-... @aytalina.bsky.social @compcommlab.bsky.social

🔥 Happening now: The 2nd General Assembly Meeting of the WHAT-IF project is currently taking place in 📍 Bucharest, Romania. Over the coming days, partners from across the consortium will come together to share progress, discuss preliminary findings and explore new research ideas. Stay tuned!

@what-if-horizon.bsky.social let’s go!

Thrilled and grateful that SYNAPS has been selected for ERC Advanced Grant funding. @erc.europe.eu SYNAPS looks at how 14- to 16-year-olds develop political interest, knowledge and engagement in a networked world shaped by peers, social media, influencers and algorithms. @compcommlab.bsky.social

Photo evidence by @aytalina.bsky.social 😃

A few days after the 76th ICA Conference is over and we’re still smiling when looking back at #hackICA26. What a great way to kick off the conference week — and what a week it has been overall. Marvin wants to say a big thank you to everyone who helped make it such a special experience 🐧

Posting live from stage at #ica26 where I present our #rstats 🎁 {atrrr} which can interact with 🦋

🌍 CCL is heading to #ICA26 with a broad set of contributions across panels and preconferences spanning multiple areas of communication research! 👋 Find us in Cape Town and explore the full overview here: compcommlab.univie.ac.at/news-detaila...

It was a pleasure to talk about ABM and the progress we made in @what-if-horizon.bsky.social with passionate researchers from around the world 🤩 Many thanks to @hackingcommsci.bsky.social for a fantastic first day at #ICA26 🙌

Less than 1 week left to apply for this exciting postdoc opportunity ⬇️ @kathleenbeckers.bsky.social & I look forward to receiving applications 😀

Thank you @lorenzspreen.eurosky.social for your guest talk today at @compcommlab.bsky.social 🙌 Very much appreciated the interdisciplinary discussions on content vs. source-level misinformation detection, LLM annotations and validation practices in the social sciences. Photo: @aytalina.bsky.social

🎯 New paper alert! It includes the main theoretical & empirical contribution of my dissertation: disentangling targeting and tailoring in political social media advertising. Really happy @meinungsfuehrer.bsky.social and I found such a great home for it 🏠 Open Access 👉 doi.org/10.1080/1369... 1/4

NEW - Who Do Parties Speak To? Introducing the PSoGA: A New Comprehensive Database of Parties’ Social Group Appeals https://cup.org/43fmXFj - @alonadolinsky.com, @lenamariahuber.bsky.social & @rwillh11.bsky.social #FirstView

End your week by hitting "submit"! Today is the last day to submit your abstract to the @dgpuk-meth.bsky.social conference of the DGPuK at @gesis.org!

Huge congrats to Paul Balluff on successfully defending his dissertation “Applications of Transformer Models in Communication Research”! 🎉 compcommlab.univie.ac.at/news-detaila...

50 years @oegk.bsky.social! At #KWT2026 @marvins.bsky.social & @janabernhard.bsky.social presented: “Paupers in the Papers” on how media reporting shapes perceptions of the welfare state recipients, a linkage-design study with @moritzsedlatschek.bsky.social.

🚨Deadline: Apply now for the POLNET School on Social Network Analysis @politicalnets.bsky.social 🗓️ 21–25 Sep, Universität Konstanz Curious about SNA and its applications in political network research? ✔️Gain skills in advanced methods, including Relational Event Models & Discourse Network Analysis

A stunning visualization born from a collaboration with @manlius.bsky.social : 55,486 galaxies and 29,555 streamlines tracing how matter flows across our local universe, built on data from the CosmicFlows-4 project. Article in the first reply 👇

It was such a pleasure to host @dstoltenberg.bsky.social at CCL! She presented her newly founded Emmy Noether research group and the award-winning project “Place-Based Issue Publics: The Rearrangement of Local Public Spheres in a Digitalized and Globalized World” 🌍 🛜 Congratulations, Daniela! 🎉

Can TikTok be a space for constructive environmental journalism? 🌱 @veronikaebner.bsky.social shared her work on what drives engagement—a study together with Fabienne Lind & Hajo Boomgaarden at #COMPTEXT2026

From humor to hostility? 💬 At #COMPTEXT2026, @daisukenakamura.bsky.social explored how disparagement humor by influencers links to polarization in TikTok comments —a study together with Petro Tolochko & Desirée Schmuck

Yay infrastructure! 🧰 @marvins.bsky.social cial and @janabernhard.bsky.social present a first usecase between @medem.bsky.social l AmCAT instance and @iriscc.bsky.social sky.social climate reporting dataset. at #COMPTEXT2026

🧵 I’ve spent the last couple years studying authoritarianism around the world, and wrote a book about how to defeat it. Three things that happened in the U.S. THIS WEEK left me convinced things in here are going to get worse before they get better. But there are specific things we can do. 🧵🧵

Having so much fun at #langenachtderforschung 🥳 @anniewald.bsky.social @hajoboo.bsky.social @aytalina.bsky.social @gruenika.bsky.social

Happening tonight! #LangeNachtderForschung @univie.ac.at ✨ Play with our simulation model and learn how social issues compete for public attention 👇 Shout-out to our collaborator Leon Olszewski from @tuwien.at! Find @maikovska.bsky.social @aytalina.bsky.social & myself in main building booth C04.

This Friday, 24 April 2026, meet CCL at #LangeNachtderForschung @univie.ac.at main building: 📍C04: How do social issues compete for public attention? 📍H01: What changes when we listen to literature? 📍E03: How do political emotions shape climate communication? Find us 👇

Getting this paper published was quite a ride. Thrilled to see it out now! 🎢 ✨ Analyzing ~740k coordinated tweets during China’s COVID-19 protests, we found communities amplifying protest, and others pushing repression through distracting and demoralizing content. Led by @aytalina.bsky.social 👏👏👏

👩🏻‍💻 Looking forward to giving an introduction to agent-based modeling in communication research and sharing insights from our work @what-if-horizon.bsky.social at #HackICA26 Join us to explore more👇

@anniewald.bsky.social, @aytalina.bsky.social, and I present at the Long Night of Research!⚛️ How do social issues compete for public attention?🤔 You will learn via playing with an agent-based model 🤖🎲 langenachtderforschung.at/station/5656 📍24.04, 5-11 PM 📍Stand C04, Main Building of @univie.ac.at

📢 New publication! “Connective action and digital repression during China’s COVID-19 protests: a computational analysis of multilingual coordinated activity on Twitter" w/ brilliant Paul Balluff, @nicolarighetti.bsky.social, @anniewald.bsky.social out in EPJ Data Sci. Read #openaccess👇 rdcu.be/feZzK

Heading to #COMPTEXT2026 this week? Meet the CCL team sharing new work on social identities, political influence, environmental journalism, partisan polarization and more! Details👇 compcommlab.univie.ac.at/news-detaila...

@au.dk is hiring 3 postdocs (2 yrs) on personality cults & strategic communication in autocracies, led by Jakob Tolstrup & Alexander Baturo. They're looking for profiles with text-as-data, survey experiments and/or Chinese politics experience. Start fall 2026. Looks like a great opportunity!

🧵 New report just dropped 🚨 "Fractured Reality: How Democracy Can Win the Global Struggle Over the Information Space" — from the EU Joint Research Centre, led by Mario Scharfbillig and I. A landmark read for anyone working on disinformation, platforms & democracy. 👇 1/10

Who talked about climate action? 🌱➡️Our multilingual multi-country 🇪🇺election campaign analysis shows the party families and countries that made this topic visible on social media. Details? Visit our poster #Klimatage 2026

#toread #paper Little mentioning, moderate attention, great relevance: The quality of online platform data in the Digital Services Act by Yannik Peters, Katrin Weller https://doi.org/10.1177/29768624261438624

I’d especially like to encourage women to apply. We’re a fantastic department with excellent scholars, in beautiful Vienna. Data shows that women are less likely to apply for positions than equally qualified men (Muriel Niederle & Lise Vesterlund 2011), so if you’re considering it, please go for it!

📣 We're excited that the program for this year’s #GESISfallseminar in Computational Social Science is out & registration is now open! 🗓️ 31 Aug – 29 Sep 2026 📍 GESIS Mannheim or online More info at gesis.org/fallseminar. Full program & registration at t1p.de/FallSeminar2026-Program. @gesis.org

📢 New publication! My dissertation paper "Online Protest and Repression in Authoritarian Settings" co-authored with 🌟 @anniewald.bsky.social and Nanda Wijermans 🌟 is now out in @jasssjournal.bsky.social Read the full #openaccess article: www.jasss.org/29/2/4.html #ABM #CSS #dreamcollab

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)

🎉 New publication 😍 The 4th wave of the #farright is marked by #mainstreaming & #normalisation - but how can we distinguish between them? In our new article, @gefjonoff.bsky.social and I map the existing literature, introduce a conceptual framework & outline research avenues. doi.org/10.1017/S147...

Pics or it didn't happen! 📱 @olgaeisele.bsky.social, @hdnrch.bsky.social & @phoebemaares.bsky.social look at a decade of EU social media posts to show that how images are used strongly shapes user engagement

Good news! 🎉 The registration issue has been resolved — everything should now work smoothly. 🔗 Direct link: www.icahdq.org/event/Hackat... 🗓 Registration is open until April 5, 2026 Looking forward to seeing you at the ICA Hackathon 2026 @SU School for Data Science and Computational Thinking! 🚀💡

Welcome aboard! 🛶 We’re excited to welcome Matt Minich (University of Wisconsin–Madison), who has joined the department as an ÖAW APART-USA Research Fellow. A former social scientist at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, Matt is now researching digital health communication here in Vienna 🇦🇹

🚀 Save the Date! If you're considering joining us, now is a great time to block the dates and start planning your #trip. We can’t wait to see you at the SU School for Data Science and Computational Thinking in Stellenbosch on 3rd and 4th June 2026 for this year's #Hackathon! 🌍✨

📢 AUTHLIB webinar How do illiberals challenge democracy in Austria, Italy & France? 🗓️ Jan 26 |🕒 10:00 CET 🎙️Batuhan Eren (Scuola Normale Superiore), @caterinafr.bsky.social @sciencespo-cee.bsky.social, Sylvia Kritzinger (Uni Vienna) & @veghzsuzsanna.bsky.social @gmfus.bsky.social 👉 t.ly/DdE4e

Have you ever explored our toolkit? This is where you'll find our favourite tools for digital investigations. From tools that help you dig through historic court cases to exploring nighttime satellite imagery. bellingcat.gitbook.io/toolkit

Do you have colleagues interested in Computational Methods? Help us spread the word and invite them to join our first Computational Methods Labs Showcase by the ICA CM Division @icacm.bsky.social. Share the registration link 👇 forms.office.com/e/zHBkwUWNFw