Plenary Session 1 #EUA2026AC Universities and democracy: rethinking relationships of trust
🎙️ Maximilian Conrad, @haskoliislands.bsky.social
🎙️ @nielsmede.bsky.social, Wageningen University & Research
🎙️ Sijbolt Noorda, University of Amsterdam
🎙️Daciana Pop, @esuonline.bsky.social

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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Thanks for reaching out — sure, I just added you to the pack!

Thank you, Nadja!

Thank you, Tobias!

Wow, what a surprise at @etmaal2026.bsky.social: I received @nefca.bsky.social's Young Scholar Award 2026. I am honored and grateful to the jury — and for all the colleagues I’ve worked with. The work this award recognizes was not a solo run, but a series of highly enjoyable #team efforts with you 🫶

The silicon gaze: A typology of biases and inequality in LLMs through the lens of place - Francisco W. Kerche, Matthew Zook, Mark Graham, 2026 This paper introduces the concept of the silicon gaze to explain how large language models (LLMs) reproduce and amplify long-standing spatial inequalities. Draw...

"Drawing on a 20.3-million-query audit of ChatGPT, we map systematic biases in the model's representations of countries, states, cities, and neighbourhoods. From these empirics, we argue that bias is not a correctable anomaly but an intrinsic feature of generative AI”.

ht: Dagmar Monett

‘Public trusts university-based scientists more than others’ - Research Professional News Public Attitudes to Science survey finds faith in government and private-sector researchers has fallen

‘Public trusts university-based scientists more than others’.

Public Attitudes to Science survey finds faith in government and private-sector researchers has fallen.

www.researchprofessionalnews.com/rr-news-uk-u...

Public opinion and communication about science: Global evidence from a 68-country survey For science communication to achieve informed citizenries and meaningful public engagement with science, it is instrumental to analyse how people perceive scientists and communicate about science. How...

📣 In our next research seminar, @nielsmede.bsky.social from @w-u-r.bsky.social will talk about 'Public opinion and communication about science: Global evidence from a 68-country survey'.

📅 Friday, 23/1/2025 | 3:00-4:15 PM (CET)
📌 Online & at CWTS

www.universiteitleiden.nl/en/events/20...

Looking forward to visiting @unileiden.bsky.social and speaking in the research seminar series of @cwtsnl.bsky.social this Friday. Come to CWTS or join online! 👇

Interesting paper in incentice effects, with nice descriptives like this one that shows that surveys are alive and kicking

Replications Sourcing Sheet

Join our Replicability Project: Health Behavior!

We have 55 replication studies underway, our target is 65-70.

We are only recruiting for secondary data replications--i.e., using existing data to test the original question.

Here's a list of studies we think could be feasible.

If interested...

New Paper in @computationalcommunication.org

The Telegram COVID-19 Protest Dataset 2020-2022

with the most wonderful co-autohors @buehling.bsky.social & @maxzehring.bsky.social

>> 2020-2022
>> 715 channels & 229 public groups
>> 5,641,026 messages
>> Manually curated
>> Open for researchers

This plot shows average response rates of the European Social Survey. Between 2002 and 2023 the have fallen from 61 to 41 per cent.

This plot breaks down ESS response rates by country. In almost all countries, the rate has gone down over time - in some cases, like Sweden, quite dramatically so.

In line with the 'credibility revolution', we are thinking about research designs that allow us to get closer to causal effects. Those who use surveys have often turned to survey experiments. At the same time, survey response rates have dropped considerably. Below are the figures for the ESS.

Fake DOI-like strings are increasingly common. Learn how to check whether a DOI is valid, how prefixes work, and more. https://tinyurl.com/599yk8yv

#metadata #research #funders #librarians #community

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🚨 New paper out in PLOS ONE! w/ @caropradier.bsky.social @benzpierre.bsky.social @natsush.bsky.social @ipoga.bsky.social @lariviev.bsky.social
We studied 43k authors and 264k citation links in U.S. economics to ask:
👉 Why do some papers cite others?
🔗 journals.plos.org/plosone/arti...

Fake expert and pseudo-scientist labels are increasingly used in science and public debates to delegitimize actors or claims, often in the context of misinformation 📰 In our newest publication in Communication Theory we explore what such terms actually mean. 👇

An open dataset of EurekAlert! press releases for science communication research - Scientific Data Scientific Data - An open dataset of EurekAlert! press releases for science communication research

📰 Quantitative research on science communication requires suitable data. When it comes to academic press releases, that data is scarce. In a new paper, we introduce a dataset of more than 500,000 press releases published on @eurekalert.bsky.social. doi.org/10.1038/s415...

📢 Call for Papers!
Theme: “Dark Side” of social conversations around science
Join us for the #ICA2026 preconference hosted on 2 June 2026 in Stellenbosch.
✅ No registration fee (limited to 60 participants)
🗓 Submission deadline: 2 Feb 2026
Details & submit: www.imidibaniso.co.za/ica-pre-conf...

Trust in science is increasingly being studied across the globe—which is good news. However, expanding geographic coverage alone isn’t enough.

doi.org/10.1016/j.co...

🎉 The PolComm Database Dashboard is live!

The database content is now available in an interactive dashboard: a milestone since launching submissions at #ICA25 in Denver.

Explore this resource here
👉 politicalcommunication.org/resources/

Perhaps a combination of several things, including true difference, different conceptions of what “science” means, and presumably some sort of acquiescence bias

@matthewfacciani.bsky.social, co-author of our latest study on science communication behavior in 68 countries, just published a blog post with a great summary of the main results. Check it out! ⬇️

How the World Talks About Science Our new international study finds that science communication looks very different depending on culture, media systems, and access to technology.

How do people around the world encounter science, and what shapes those encounters?

Our new global study found that social media now carries much of the world’s science content, but local culture, infrastructure, and curiosity still determine how people engage. #ScienceSky #scicomm

Thanks for the repost, @nordeco.bsky.social!

Thanks a lot for the shout-out, Kim! 🙏

AI Surrogates and illusions of generalizability in cognitive science Recent advances in artificial intelligence (AI) have generated enthusiasm for using AI simulations of human research participants to generate new know…

Can AI simulations of human research participants advance cognitive science? In @cp-trendscognsci.bsky.social, @lmesseri.bsky.social & I analyze this vision. We show how “AI Surrogates” entrench practices that limit the generalizability of cognitive science while aspiring to do the opposite. 1/

Many thanks, @maibached.bsky.social. It's really a pleasure to be able to work with you and all the other members of the #TISP project.

Thanks for sharing, @oceanhelen.bsky.social, I hope our work is useful for you and other people researching/practicing science communication 💪

...and we're excited to have you as a member of our project! Looking forward to your newsletter post 🙌