🚨CfA🚨 We're looking for a postdoc joining us in summer in Berlin. 3-year position @hertieschool.bsky.social @hertiedatascience.bsky.social. Pursue your own research agenda in data science for public policy - ML/AI, causal inference, computational methods. Questions? Don't hesitate to reach out!
so glücklich habe ich Paul Lendvai noch nie erlebt. Er sagt er habe die Ungarn-Wahl „mit einem Gefühl der Freude erlebt, wie er es noch selten in seinem langen Leben verspürt hat.“ Seine Gedanken sind sehr lesenswert: www.zeit.de/politik/2026...
New paper out in @thejop.bsky.social : "Immigration, Public Housing, and Support for the French National Front."
How does expanding public housing affect far-right support? The answer depends heavily on local conditions, and specifically on local immigrant shares.
Paper: doi.org/10.1086/736361
Job vacancy announcement for a postdoctoral position at the University of Vienna Department of Government, starting August/September 2026. Research focus includes political representation, party competition, political institutions, political economy, political behavior, or related fields. Application deadline: 29 April 2026. Full details are also available through the shared link.
🚨 Job Alert 🚨
We have an opening for a 𝗣𝗼𝘀𝘁𝗱𝗼𝗰 𝗣𝗼𝘀𝗶𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 @stawi-univie.bsky.social starting Aug/Sep 2026!
Focus: political representation, party competition, political institutions, political economy, political behavior, or related fields
📅Apply by 29 April 2026
jobs.univie.ac.at/job/Universi...
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)
Do conjoint/factorial/vignette experiments reflect choices in the real world?
Are hypothetical scenarios in the artificial survey context externally valid? Do hypothetical bias, intention-behavior gap and social desirability biases undermine validity?
Two cautionary studies on this question:
Our first guest at the Inside Data Journalism series, was Laura Bronner @laurabronner.bsky.social, who brings a rare combination of editorial experience and methodological training to questions about how quantitative evidence enters public discourse.
Read more👉 www.hertie-school.org/en/datascien...
Mehr auch hier:
bsky.app/profile/laur...
Unsere neue Studie zeigt, dass der meiste Hass online von einer Minderheit der User:innen geschrieben wird. Und das hat Konsequenzen für die Inhaltsmoderation -- da besonders toxische User:innen sich durch Gegenrede nicht vom Hass abbringen lassen.
Details:
www.public-discourse.org/articles/has...
Today we kick off Inside Data Journalism, a spring talk series where leading practitioners share insights into their work and the future of data-driven storytelling.
Join @laurabronner.bsky.social for an inspiring talk on skepticism in data storytelling.
ℹ️👉 www.hertie-school.org/en/datascien...
Super interesting - and mirrors what we find for hate speech, as well:
bsky.app/profile/laur...
Can feed algorithms shape what people think about politics? Our paper "The Political Effects of X's Feed Algorithm" is out today in Nature and answers "Yes."
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Very happy to have done this work with @gloriagennaro.bsky.social, Laurenz Derksen, @maelkubli.bsky.social, Ana Kotarcic, Selina Kurer, Philip Grech, @karstendonnay.bsky.social, @fgilardi.bsky.social and Dominik Hangartner!
These findings suggest that content moderation may be most effective on users who only occasionally post hate, while the most hateful users – who produce almost all the hate posted online – are largely resistant, at least to the kind of pressure tested here, and may need more targeted interventions.
This matters for how hate speech can be countered. In a field experiment on Twitter in 2021-2, we found that replying to hateful tweets with counterspeech worked to reduce users’ future hate tweet propensity – but only for less hateful users. For more hateful users, counterspeech was ineffective.
Who produces hate speech? And how does that matter for content moderation?
We show that across different countries and platforms, a relatively small share of users are responsible for a very large share of hate - overall, 5% write 83-100% of hateful content.
www.cambridge.org/core/journal...
The Data Science Lab presents Inside Data Journalism, a spring talk series featuring leading practitioners who share practical insights into their work and the evolving field of data journalism.
More ℹ️👉 www.hertie-school.org/en/datascien...
🚨My first preprint is out on @socarxiv.bsky.social!
How do AI-generated content labels shape what people see as authentic on social media — and do labels have unintended side effects? osf.io/preprints/so...
A thread 🧵
Going forward, we're planning to add additional annotations and analyses to help us better understand trends in online commenting behavior. Let me know if there's anything you're particularly interested in!
(2) What else can we learn about online behavior? We find that a small minority - 5% of users - is responsible for 78% of the hateful comments submitted to these platforms. But they're active in general, with lots of innocuous posts as well.
www.public-discourse.org/en/articles/...
By tracking how discourse on major Swiss platforms is evolving, we can answer the question: Is it true that online discourse is getting worse?
In this data, in this period, on these platforms, on these measures: no. There are spikes in toxicity and hate, but no overall trend - up or down.
(1) Basic description: what's happening? How many comments are submitted to these platforms every week, and what share is toxic/hateful? @nicolaiberk.bsky.social built classifiers to measure toxicity and hate, and scores are debiased every week using LLMs to avoid drift in the models.
Is online discourse getting worse?
To bring actual data to bear on this question, we launched the Public Discourse Indicator, a dashboard tracking online comments submitted to several major Swiss newspapers. Our aim here is twofold:
www.public-discourse.org/en/public-di...
✖️Who produces most online hate speech and how effective is counterspeech?
➡️ @gloriagennaro.bsky.social et al. find that hate speech is concentrated among a few users and that counterspeech on X mostly fails to curb prolific offenders www.cambridge.org/core/journal... #FirstView
I assume not? Would also be interesting
These average solve times don't seem to account for out-selection as the puzzles get harder... Mondays/Tuesdays probably include a bunch of people who never do the rest of the week. It'd be interesting to show the average number of solvers per day, for context.
This is so cool, congrats!!
Join us on Thursday, 18 Sept, at 14:30 CET for the International Roundtable on Computational Social Science with Laura Bronner @laurabronner.bsky.social 🔹Tackling harmful online comments on news platforms: three field experiments 🔹More info: liu.se/en/article/s...
📢 In a new online field experiment, we find that #counterspeech with perspective-based messages can reduce online hate speech, and its 🌟amplification🌟
with a large research team across #ETHZurich @ipz.bsky.social @uclspp.bsky.social and beyond
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Wow, thank you for helping to keep this alive. I get so many notes from people using this in their coursework.