My students have designed a survey to collect data for their final papers in my Public Opinion course at OU. I would greatly appreciate if you would take some time to complete it! Let me know if you have any questions! Please share far and wide!
qualtrics.ou.edu/jfe/form/SV_...
Do protests change elections?
Prior research: "yes, and dramatically so."
But is that always true? What about protests in the last few years?
Our latest working paper challenges prevailing logic.
Our finding: most recent protests have failed to do anything to influence elections.
April 16th, 2026 Members of the Los Angeles City Council 200 North Spring Street Los Angeles, CA 90012 Re: Charter Reform Process - Council File 26-0489 Dear Honorable Councilmembers, This Council is about to enter one of its busiest stretches in recent history. In addition to the annual budget process, we will be considering Charter reform, potential amendments to Measure ULA, a number of revenue-generating ballot measures, and multiple citizen initiatives. We, the undersigned organizations, write to respectfully request that City Council engage in a thorough and inclusive review of the Charter Reform Commission’s (CRC) recommendations:
LA Charter reform is about to head to City Council -- but *will the process be set up for success?*
🧵Check out our SIX key asks for a *thorough, inclusive* review of the Charter Reform Commission's recommendations below:
📨Have your org sign on at: docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...
Good news! The Critical AI & Tech Feed is up and running again after some maintenance. If you haven’t pinned it yet, here’s the link ⬇️
TIRED: Theranos scandal: alleged scientific breakthrough in blood testing by shady biotech startup
WIRED: TheranOstrich scandal: alleged scientific breakthrough in...ostriches...by shady...ostrich startup?
www.cbc.ca/news/canada/...
Gave a talk today on some of the pragmatic ways I use agentic tools in my work, including for building tools and using local models. I recorded some simple examples and shared everything here: anastasiasalter.net/PragmaticAge... (the site itself is a silly example 👾)
4 NOTE TO READER – We tried to enhance the sections and titling of the report as if one were experiencing a Hollywood Movie. Likely it won’t win an Academy Award, but maybe you’ll be invited to an after-party. Sit back and enjoy the popcorn. The following is based on real events QUEUE the big yawn This is a story of big government, big companies, big infrastructure, big politics, but most importantly – big pressure. Unfortunately, despite the magnitude of the issues, some of the material (actually most) is very dry and boring. “The Big Sleep7” • Big numbers, • Construction contracts, • Ownership structures, • Bond ratings • Construction schedules • Change orders, • Organizational structures and • Financial reporting and consolidations • City charter BACKGROUND THE THEATRE GOES DARK, THE CURTAIN IS DRAWN, MUSIC STARTS AND THE AUDIENCE IS LISTENING... YOU WANT THE TRUTH ! - YOU WANT THE TRUTH !! – YOU CANT HANDLE THE TRUTH !!!8 The first requisite to understanding this investigation is a general understanding of the overall framework of the People Mover Project and the parties involved. Project Description –
Oh, surely it can't be THAT bad -- OH GOD
(Spectators: the LAX people mover section begins on page 549 here: grandjury.co.la.ca.us/pdf/2024-25%...)
At @poqjournal.bsky.social there is a call for papers on a special issue on Artificial Intelligence and Survey Research.
If you have papers on this obviously important topic then here's a link for more information!
static.primary.prod.gcms.the-infra.com/static/poq/d...
Friends, you've been submitting great proposals for this project and we're now coming up to capacity. We're closing proposals on April 15th; please send yours in!
Thus could perhaps be leveraged for AI bot detection in online surveys
LLMs will transform e-commerce in ways that consumer protection is unprepared for!
Our new preprint finds that conversational AI can strongly steer consumer choices: sponsored product selection nearly tripled relative to traditional placement (N=2012).
Link: arxiv.org/abs/2604.04263
🚨NEW DISINFO PAPER🚨 TLDR; disinformation circulates as narratives, not false facts. This paper took five years (!!!) and a rotating cast of collaborators and GRAs. Our case studies include the pee tape, and we have an entire appendix justifying that. www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....
What's a soundtrack album you haven't thought about in a long time but still is great? Here's one: Amélie.
Front of Clueless soundtrack CD cover
List of songs: 1. "Kids in America" (The Muffs) 3:24 2. "Shake Some Action" (Cracker) 4:25 3. "The Ghost in You" (Counting Crows) 3:30 4. "Here (Squirmel Mix)" (Luscious Jackson) 3:33 5. "All the Young Dudes" (World Party) 4:00 6. "Fake Plastic Trees (acoustic version)" (Radiohead) 4:45 7. "Change" (Lightning Seeds) 4:01 8. "Need You Around" (Smoking Popes) 3:42 9. "Mullet Head" (Beastie Boys) 2:53 10. "Where'd You Go?" (The Mighty Mighty Bosstones) 3:16 11. "Rollin' with My Homies" (Coolio) 4:06 12. "Alright" (Supergrass) 3:01 13. "My Forgotten Favorite" (Velocity Girl) 3:49 14. "Supermodel" (Jill Sobule) 3:07
The Clueless soundtrack hasn't been mentioned yet? WhatEVER!
But seriously, what a bunch of bangers: www.youtube.com/watch?v=dq5s...
New study finds that correcting false health claims directly is as effective or more effective than trying to discredit the source, even if they lack expertise.
iaap-journals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1...
Screenshot of a paper titled “Contextualizing Misinformation: A User-Centric Approach to Linguistic and Topical Patterns in News Consumption,” authored by Ross Dahlke and colleagues. The abstract says the study uses web-browsing data from 1,240 U.S. adults during the 2020 election to compare misinformation and hard news. It finds that misinformation people consumed was generally easier to read, more negative in tone, and more morally framed, with substantial variation across topics and across groups such as older adults and Republicans.
Image description Two side-by-side horizontal bar charts compare topic distributions for hard news and misinformation. Hard news is led by general news at 35.9%, followed by U.S. electoral politics at 27.0%, social issues at 17.1%, COVID-19 at 14.2%, and health at 5.7%. Misinformation is much more concentrated in U.S. electoral politics at 53.0%, followed by social issues at 23.7%, COVID-19 at 11.6%, general news at 6.8%, and health at 4.9%.
Two stacked line charts show how topic shares changed over time from late August to early December 2020, with a vertical marker at Election Day 2020. In misinformation, U.S. electoral politics rises sharply in October and November and becomes the dominant topic around the election. In hard news, general news remains largest throughout, while U.S. electoral politics also spikes around Election Day before declining afterward.
Image description Two stacked line charts show how topic shares changed over time from late August to early December 2020, with a vertical marker at Election Day 2020. In misinformation, U.S. electoral politics rises sharply in October and November and becomes the dominant topic around the election. In hard news, general news remains largest throughout, while U.S. electoral politics also spikes around Election Day before declining afterward.
Most web browsing studies analyzing news and misinformation operate at the domain level. Work by me,
@fangjingtu.bsky.social et al., scrapes the content from web visits to go beyond the source to the content level, finding significant topical and linguistic variation doi.org/10.1145/3757571
This is a great simple dashboard -- just a graphic, or will you have this on the web at some point?
Re: additions: maybe add the Countywide Signal Priority program? 🤔 media.metro.net/board/Items/...
Can social media algorithms be designed to foster pluralism? Does doing so come at the expense of engagement? Kylan Rutherford from the Prosocial Ranking Challenge put that question to the test in a large-scale field experiment.
He joins to share what he's learned 📅April 29. luma.com/pvxgxop8
🚨New paper alert🚨 What happens when a polarized democracy bans a social media platform? New work with @cbarrie.bsky.social, Molly Roberts, Chris Schwarz, and @jatucker.bsky.social. We study Brazil's 2024 ban on X and find it created what we define as a "partisan sorting ratchet ." 1/
"What’s changing is that we now need to design with the expectation that much of what we publish will be read indirectly, atomised, summarised or reinterpreted by systems we don’t control" designnotes.blog.gov.uk/2026/03/31/w...
New bombshell mayoral poll from LMU’s Center for the Study of Los Angeles: Raman 32.5%, Bass 17%, Huang 16.6%, Miller 13.4%, Pratt 11.5%.
Nearly 48% of those surveyed said they prefer a democratic socialist for mayor:
lmu.app.box.com/s/i6jtszzmyo...
Very interesting new paper by @jonnekamphorst.bsky.social, Alexander Davenport, Marcus Heagly, @eliasdinas.bsky.social and @arnoutvanderijt.bsky.social questioning the idea of a momentum for winners of US Presidential primaries: www.cambridge.org/core/journal...
A reminder that the UX Sky feed is AI free, and made entirely by a human
DAMN this is well written (not to mention the many excellent points)
Excellent questions I wish AV companies, politicians, and policymakers would publicly take up nationwide.
An excellent short list of values for tech regulation. But if past performance over the last couple of decades is any indication, governments will likely need to *make* emerging tech embrace them.
Anthropic’s Claude Constitution sets out safety and ethical rules, but does not explicitly reference human rights, writes Yuval Shany. Recent clashes with the DoD and reported military use highlight its limits and gaps in safeguards and accountability in high-risk deployments, he argues.
An excellent, deep analysis of Denmark's snap election, and
"competing visions" of the country's future -- and, to my mind, Europe's larger struggle with policy priorities and perspectives in an increasingly ugly and isolationist world order.
We should treat large social and AI systems like critical infrastructure and adopt "building codes" for them, write David A. Broniatowski and Joseph Simons. Building codes are not suggestions; they are the baseline that ensures a structure is fit for its intended use, they write.
AI can help us learn hard-to-teach human skills, like showing empathy. Preregistered study of 968 people found almost no correlation between feeling empathic & communicating empathy. But a single practice session with an AI coach made people measurably better at it arxiv.org/pdf/2603.15245