Three 2-year full-time postdoctoral positions in autocratic politics at the Department of Political Science at Aarhus University (in connection to projects headed by Jakob Tolstrup and Alexander Baturo). Flexible start date. Application deadline: June 1, 2026.
international.au.dk/about/profil...
New post on my Substack summarizing our ambitious cross-national study of online hostility, published in @nature.com Nature Human Behavior - with @boralexander.bsky.social @m-b-petersen.bsky.social @leapradella.bsky.social
Vi gør klar til anden runde debat om Magtudredningen på Nørrebro Teater. Vi har lige afholdt første halvleg af “Magtens mange former” for nogle hundrede gymnasieelever, og nu tager vi endnu en runde for nogle hundrede nye tilhørere. #dkpol
New study showing that online hatred is worse in countries with higher economic and political inequality. www.nature.com/articles/s41...
By @m-b-petersen.bsky.social et al.
Fra den danske maktutredningen (og kollegaer): mer ulikhet og mindre demokrati gir mer aggressive sosiale medier Det er altså ikke bare tek-oligarkene og algoritmene som er problemet. Det gir håp!!
The whole thread about the recent study is well worth reading, but this is what it boils down to.
We have to reject the temptation of simple technological determinism and the notion that everything is just "because of the algorithm". In short: unsurprisingly, the world matters.
Online hostility is predicted by economic & political inequality
Inequality breeds online hostility because people crave status in unequal societies and status-seekers constitute the main perpetrators of hostility in political settings, whether online or offline.
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Overall, we find that efforts to reduce hostility online must consider the broader socio-economic and political contexts. Addressing societal inequalities may be essential to disrupting a mutually reinforcing cycle between societal discontent and aggression on social media.
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Societal forms of inequality interact with this psychology of status seeking. Most consistently, we found that societal inequality creates more status-seekers in society and, hence, creates more perpetrators of hostility.
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We hypothesized that this reflects that both forms of hostility is generated by the same underlying psychological trait: An orientation towards status. The results strongly support this hypothesis.
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We hypothesized that societal conditions related to inequality breed hostility because they in general breed polarization & hostile interactions.
Indeed, we find that people who are hostile in online settings are also hostile in offline settings across all 30 countries.
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This cross-country variation is far from random. As preregistered, we find that political equality (i.e., liberal democracy) & economic inequality strongly predicts victimhood. 1 SD increase in democracy reduce victimhood with 71 % of a SD.
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Map of world with levels of online victimhood.
We surveyed 500 individuals in 30 countries from all inhabitated continents, sampled to be representative on key dimensions.
Experiences of online victimhood differs substantially across countries. Denmark had the lowest levels, while Turkish respondents reported the highest levels.
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🚨 New in Nature Human Behaviour: www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Many prior accounts of social media hostility focus on algorithms. With @boralexander.bsky.social, @a-marie-sci.bsky.social & @leapradella.bsky.social, we use data from 30 countries to focus on the role of societal conditions.
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Our paper just hit 50 citations 🎯: "Political conspiracy theories as tools for mobilization and signaling", Current Opinion in Psychology, 2022, with @m-b-petersen.bsky.social
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
Two map graphs show the state of liberal democracy according to the V-Dem Liberal Democracy index for 2025 and 2024. The higher the score (or darker blue), the more democratic the country. Lower scores (or dark red) mean less democratic. While North and South America, Western Europe and Oceania are mostly in the blue, most parts of Asia and Africa are in the red in 2025. In comparison to the map for 2024, the map graph for 2025 shows democratic backsliding in some traditionally stable democracies in Western Europe and North America, in particular the USA, United Kingdom and Italy.
📢 Out Now! V-Dem Dataset v16 & the V-Dem Institute Democracy Report 2026
💾 The V-Dem Dataset: v-dem.net/data/the-v-d...
📰 The Report "Unraveling The Democratic Era?”: v-dem.net/publications...
📈 Explore the new data with the V-Dem Graphing tools: v-dem.net/graphing/gra...
#PoliSky #PoliSciSky
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@anjabechmann.bsky.social og jeg kommer med en bog til juni i magtudredningen omkring, hvad vi ved om disse ting - også baseret på danske data. Vores konklusioner flugter med det, som du beskriver.
IN NEW ISSUE: What drives populists to accept expert advice? Cross-country study by A Peresman, @thoruplars.bsky.social, @honoratam.bsky.social & @m-b-petersen.bsky.social compares how populists & non-populists evaluate expertise: buff.ly/MY1U8CH
@polstudiesassoc.bsky.social
New w/@scottclifford.bsky.social.
Lots of work uses agree-disagree scales, and a lit review shows these are 1) frequently just measured in one direction (agree = higher trait) and 2) correlated with each other.
This has potentially big issues for conclusions.
link.springer.com/article/10.1...
Thank you for doing this - these findings are important and should influence subsequent work! My only additional thought (which is not relevant to your core message) is that I am not surprised that populism & NFC do not correlate, given our own prior work: www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edi...
IN NEW ISSUE: What drives populists to accept expert advice? Cross-country study by A Peresman, @thoruplars.bsky.social, @honoratam.bsky.social & @m-b-petersen.bsky.social compares how populists & non-populists evaluate expertise: buff.ly/MY1U8CH
@polstudiesassoc.bsky.social
Cc @leneholmp.bsky.social
Then @paulrosenberg.bsky.social talked about Denmark’s multiyear self-examination of their democracy, which he spoke with @m-b-petersen.bsky.social about www.liberalcurrents.com/america-if-y...
Det første billede ligner det ikoniske billede fra Independence Day over Det Hvide Hus 🛸 Hvad er det?
Important read 👇
Yes, agree that the v-dem data set will be crucial. My guess (which I guess is consistent with yours) would be that it will be categorized as an electoral democracy.
Tak, Jesper!
I don’t have access to the article right now so I cannot check the exact numbers. But it wasn’t super high. Denmark increased in trust since and the US decreased. This is the relevant paper: academic.oup.com/esr/article-...
Homogeneity, economic equality snd low corruption are all key factors. So, it is not easy to generate. But Denmark and US had actuslly similar trust levels in the early 80s.
In this interview with @paulrosenberg.bsky.social, I discuss a Scandinavian tool for protecting democracy: Parliament-initiated audits of democracy carried out by independent researchers
Currently, I direct such an audit in Denmark & discuss the challenges to liberal democracy in the 21st century 👇