A systematic review of social science studies analyzing social media data, 2010-2024 Social media platforms have long served as important data sources for social scientists. Policies around academic access to platform data, however, have seen substantial changes in recent years.
#sociology link
Eine Dunkelfeldstudie der @unicologne.bsky.social unter Leitung von @clemenskroneberg.bsky.social liefert neue Erkenntnisse zur Entwicklung der Jugenddelinquenz in Nordrhein-Westfalen. Die neuen Ergebnisse wurden als ECONtribute Policy Brief veröffentlicht 👉: www.econtribute.de/RePEc/ajk/aj...
LMU CSS Master
Jetzt an der LMU: Master Computational Social Science (M.Sc.)
Bewerbungen für die 2. Kohorte sind offen. Der interdisziplinäre Studiengang verbindet Kommunikationswissenschaft, Soziologie und Politikwissenschaft mit daten- und computergestützten Methoden. Info-Sprechstunde: 27. April.
The number of submissions will only increase and I believe their solution is a poor fix. But my friends and I disagree about better solutions. To make resubmission intervals longer for people who get a low rating acts as a penalty for low ratings. If these ratings reliably evaluated quality: good.
New paper with Alexander Patzina (@patzinaalex.bsky.social) out now in @actasociologica.bsky.social! We investigate the connection between wages and institutional trust in Germany between 2019 and 2023 1/n
Let me say it with Kieran Healy (2017): Fuck nuance!
// References
Healy, K. (2017). Fuck Nuance. Sociological Theory, 35(2), 118-127. doi.org/10.1177/0735...
Open-mindedness was the strongest predictor of *rejecting* conspiracy theories in a sample of 46,745 participants in 68 nations
In particular, participants who were threatened by people who disagree with them were the most likely to believe conspiracy theories.
www.cambridge.org/core/journal...
A study of around 44,000 papers finds that the credibility revolution has spread unevenly beyond applied micro, driven mainly by difference-in-differences, with finance and macro lagging by roughly 15 years, from Paul Goldsmith-Pinkham www.nber.org/papers/w35051
Doing computational social science research on inequality on your own? This special issue is for you!
We’re inviting submissions for a Historical Social Research issue on “Computational Social Inequality Research in Practice.”
📅 Deadline: 15 May 2026
#CallForPapers #CompSocSci #Inequality
"comments that criticize or correct a published study are 20% to 40% less likely than regular papers to have a female author"
doi.org/10.1162/rest...
Das kannte ich gar nicht!
An average day on the Internet 👇
![2026-04-22 | Input talk | Leah von der Heyde (GESIS)
AIn't Nothing But a Survey? Using Large Language Models for Coding Open-Ended Survey Responses
Hybrid event [A5, 6, Room A231 + Zoom]
April 22, 2026, 13:45-15:15
Abstract
Large language models (LLMs) have the potential to make survey research more efficient, including the classification of open-ended survey responses. However, as most existing research on this topic has focused on English-language text or single LLMs, it is unclear whether their applicability generalizes and how the quality of classifications compares to established methods. In this talk, I will demonstrate how LLMs can be used for coding open-ended responses using different access options and prompting and fine-tuning techniques. I will present a study testing these approaches on a dataset of German open-ended survey responses, comparing several LLMs to human coders and other automated methods. Finally, I will discuss the implications of the study findings for practitioners, including the many trade-offs researchers need to consider.
Presenter(s)
Leah von der Heyde is a computational social scientist and survey methodologist. Her research focuses on the potential and pitfalls of new data sources, such as large language models, for improving the measurement and representation of public opinion. Substantively, she is particularly interested in political attitudes and voting behavior. Leah received her PhD in Social Data Science and Research Methodology from the University of Mannheim. She has a background in political science from LMU Munich, the University of Mannheim, and Georgetown University. Previously, Leah was part of the Social Data Science and AI Lab at LMU Munich, worked for the European Social Survey at GESIS - Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences, the European Parliamentary Research Service, and several market and public opinion research institutes in Germany and Sweden. At GESIS, she is part of KODAQS, researching and educating…](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:oizrkjzyr6vekl76tjctghcl/bafkreigb4xgjzges3yeoup7w3z3goxg6fgei4qiystwxbq4zkvjughks6m)
2026-04-22 | Input talk | Leah von der Heyde (GESIS) AIn't Nothing But a Survey? Using Large Language Models for Coding Open-Ended Survey Responses Hybrid event [A5, 6, Room A231 + Zoom] April 22, 2026, 13:45-15:15 Abstract Large language models (LLMs) have the potential to make survey research more efficient, including the classification of open-ended survey responses. However, as most existing research on this topic has focused on English-language text or single LLMs, it is unclear whether their applicability generalizes and how the quality of classifications compares to established methods. In this talk, I will demonstrate how LLMs can be used for coding open-ended responses using different access options and prompting and fine-tuning techniques. I will present a study testing these approaches on a dataset of German open-ended survey responses, comparing several LLMs to human coders and other automated methods. Finally, I will discuss the implications of the study findings for practitioners, including the many trade-offs researchers need to consider. Presenter(s) Leah von der Heyde is a computational social scientist and survey methodologist. Her research focuses on the potential and pitfalls of new data sources, such as large language models, for improving the measurement and representation of public opinion. Substantively, she is particularly interested in political attitudes and voting behavior. Leah received her PhD in Social Data Science and Research Methodology from the University of Mannheim. She has a background in political science from LMU Munich, the University of Mannheim, and Georgetown University. Previously, Leah was part of the Social Data Science and AI Lab at LMU Munich, worked for the European Social Survey at GESIS - Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences, the European Parliamentary Research Service, and several market and public opinion research institutes in Germany and Sweden. At GESIS, she is part of KODAQS, researching and educating…
🚨 Upcoming: "AIn't Nothing But a Survey? Using Large Language Models for Coding Open-Ended Survey Responses"
👤 Leah von der Heyde (GESIS)
🗓️ Wed, April 22, 13:45-15:15 CET
📺 Register for the live stream: us02web.zoom.us/meeting/regi...
🔗 socialsciencedatalab.mzes.uni-mannheim.de/page/events/
🔍 Read our interview with @jkhoehne.bsky.social & @jclaass.bsky.social on #Bots in web-based studies 👉 t1p.de/Training-NL-...
GESIS Summer School in Survey Methodology Applied Introduction to Bots in Web-based Studies 10 to 14 August 2025 | Hybrid (Cologne & online) Jan Karem Höhne & Joshua Claassen (both University Hannover)
Bots in web surveys - threat or opportunity? 🤖
In our #GESISsummerschool course, learn how bots operate, how to detect and prevent them, and even how to use them for pretesting, all while considering ethics and data integrity.
Info & registration ➡️ t1p.de/GSS26-C8
#LLMs #websurveys
@gesis.org
GESIS Summer School in Survey Methodology Applied Causal Inference Using Directed Acyclic Graphs (DAGs) 12 to 14 August 2026 | Online Beyers Louw (Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University)
🚀 Boost your causal reasoning with #DAGs!
Our short #GESISsummerschool course introduces key advances in causal inference and shows how to tackle challenges like backdoor paths, bad controls & selection bias — hands-on in R.
Info & registration ➡️ t1p.de/GSS26-SCE
@gesis.org
GESIS Summer School in Survey Methodology Sampling and Weighting in Survey Statistics 10 – 14 August 2026 | Hybrid (GESIS Cologne & online) Anne Konrad (Leibniz Institute for Educational Trajectories)
Modern surveys often rely on complex designs like stratification and clustering — not simple random sampling. How do you account for this?
Join our #GESISsummerschool to learn sampling and weighting techniques to properly adjust and analyze your survey data.
➡️ t1p.de/GSS26-C9
@gesis.org
Post Doc at Uni Tübingen! 100% position for 3 (+3) years; they're looking for somebody to analyze large-scale longitudinal datasets in education research.
Expertise in machine learning is an advantage, commitment to research transparency desirable 😌 proficiency in German beneficial but not required
First pass at a website that keeps track of the data availability status of various published papers:
paulgp.com/replication-...
Very much in Alpha mode, so data will be updated soon.
Joint work with @fseiffert.bsky.social @alexandra-heyden.bsky.social @maxpi.bsky.social
Utrecht University is hiring an Assistant Professor in Statistics and Social Data Science - great opportunity for scholars working at the intersection of advanced statistical methods and computational social science research. #AcademicJobs #ComputationalSocialScience
uu.nl/en/organisation/worki...
Weberian Social Status Reimagined: A Sociological and Empirical Critique of Existing Status Measures and a Viable Alternative This paper re-considers social status in contemporary Britain by initially duplicating and further improving upon prior analysis from Chan and Goldthorpe
#sociology link
We've got ISSUES. Literally.
We scraped >100k special issues & over 1 million articles to bring you a PISS-poor paper. We quantify just how many excess papers are published by guest editors abusing special issues to boost their CVs. How bad is it & what can we do?
arxiv.org/abs/2601.07563
A 🧵 1/n
Gift link to paywalled article: www.faz.net/aktuell/karr...
Paper:
Fuchs, Heinz, Pinger, & Thon (2025). How to Attract Talent? Field-Experimental Evidence on Emphasizing Flexibility and Career Opportunities in Job Advertisements (IZA Discussion Paper 18310). www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/r...
Screenshot of the title: Friends don't let friends run moderated cross-country regressions
Okay folks, I think it's time that this blog post is finally written
Unsure about the sample selection process here ("random sample of 95 PLOS ONE health research papers from 2019 reporting linear regression [...] From the randomly selected sample, the first 20 papers with available data were assessed for computational reproducibility").
Important work nevertheless.
Nice list of papers on survey response rates over time.
We opened a new PhD position in our department focusing on CSS research on and with AI agents. Please share the job ad and contact us if you have questions: gesis.jobs.personio.de/job/2594220?...
Haha, ja, in Monnem herrscht nicht nur auf der Straße, sondern auch in den Fluren der Fakultäten und Institute ein rauerer Ton als anderswo. 🤣
Das würde ich gegenüber den mir persönlich bekannten netten Kollegen in diesem Fall natürlich so nicht sagen. 😉 Bin aber schon etwas enttäuscht.
