The potential existential threat of large language models to online survey research | PNAS The advancement of large language models poses a severe, potentially existential threat to online survey research, a fundamental tool for data coll...

Many have asked for the LLM Survey paper. The release was bungled a bit by PNAS, but it is live now: www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

This study was powered by #CatBoost, a machine learning model whose name was too perfect to pass up 🐱
Paper also available here: www.herbert-chang.com/researchport...

💵 Cat owners > Dog owners in total donations.
One reason: the urban–rural divide—cats are more common in high-cost-of-living cities, where donation levels are higher overall.

💵 Cat owners donate more frequently and to a wider variety of causes. This may be linked to higher psychological openness and neuroticism often associated with cat people.

💵 Non-pet owners give the most money overall—but they give less frequently and to fewer causes.

𝐍𝐞𝐰 𝐏𝐚𝐩𝐞𝐫 Alert! Are you a #dog person or a #cat person? Since the dawn of time, we have debated their superiority… but your answer reveals how you give to charity.
I analyzed 787M donations ($69B) across 10 years. A thread 🧵

Paper: www.tandfonline.com/doi/metrics/...

The unavoidable has happened: here's a study on pet ownership and donation behavior. Can you DAG this?
www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/08927936...

Grateful for my co-authors (and mentors as this was a dissertation chapter) James Druckman, @emilioferrara.bsky.social, and @robbwiller.bsky.social
#SocialMedia #Politics #ComputationalSocialScience #PNASNexus #RetweetAsymmetry

3/ Our analysis shows that
🔹 Liberals = more diverse, more toxic info environments
🔹 Conservatives = more filtered, less cross-cutting exposure
These results show that blanket, one-size-fits-all content moderation could have unintended ideological effects.

2/ Liberals also amplify toxic tweets—especially when Democrats criticize Republicans. However, when Conservatives avoid toxic content, when sourced from Democrats.

1/ Liberals retweet both Democrat and Republican lawmakers—across many issues.
Conservatives, by contrast, mostly share Republican-owned content.

Liberals and conservatives share information differently on social media Abstract. Social media provides citizens with direct access to information shared by politicians. Citizens, in turn, play a critical role in diffusing such

📢 Our new paper is out in PNAS Nexus!
We analyzed 13M users, 1.3M congressional tweets, and 3.5B tweets of media diet to uncover how liberals and conservatives share political content differently. 🧵
Full paper: academic.oup.com/pnasnexus/ar...

Special shout out to my two brilliant collaborators @ebharrington.bsky.social and Dan Rockmore.

Huh? Yes: elites in well-governed countries (Scandinavia, Singapore, etc.) also offshore wealth.

Why? To dodge high taxes, strict enforcement, or just to stay under the radar.

Secrecy is essentially a tool for both fear of authoritarianism and transparency.

Some highlights from the data. Corrupt countries or where asset confiscation is likely, elites use diversification.

And paradoxically: strong democracies = some form of identity concealment.

Elites don’t just stash money in tax havens—they strategically choose how and where to hide it.

We find three main “secrecy strategies”:

1. Diversify assets across jurisdictions

2. Conceal identity (nominees, bearer shares)

3. Use blacklisted havens despite stigma

We analyzed 6.9TB of leaked offshore data (Panama, Paradise, Pandora Papers) from the @icij.org and combined that with established Rule of Law indices from the World Justice Project.

The Patterns of Elites Who Conceal Their Assets Offshore | Dartmouth

What conditions foster the use of offshore finance?

Excited to share our work on how elites across 65 countries use the offshore financial system to keep their assets hidden.

Coverage: home.dartmouth.edu/news/2025/07...

Paper Link: doi.org/10.1371/jour...

Incredibly proud to be part of @mingyuezha.bsky.social top paper at #ica25!

If you’re interested in using game theory to quantify collaboration dynamics, she’ll be presenting this at #Cysoc #ICWSM in Copenhagen tomorrow, please swing by!

Full paper: lnkd.in/gegvA4g7

Excited to be at #MPSA for the first time! Will be presenting two papers:

Use of AI generated images in the 2024 US Presidential Election. (LaSalle 3, 7th floor, 11:40-1:10 PM Th)

Then, misinformation and conjoint analysis of the 2024 Taiwanese elections on Friday.

Please stop by! #mpsa2025

🚨 Call for Papers 🚨
We are organizing a Special Issue on "Risks and Unintended Harms of Generative AI Systems" at ACM TIST!

More details here: dl.acm.org/journal/tist...

Deadline: May 31, 2025 (review on a rolling basis)

#LLM #misinformation #disinformation #AI #genAI

Thrilled to be on Forbes Under 30 for Science!

(Still getting used to Bluesky 🥳 😅 )

Herbert Chang Herbert Chang on the 2024 30 Under 30 - Science - Herbert Chang's goal is to realize democratic values in our socio-technical infrastructure by studying

Congrats to @herbertchang.bsky.social, assistant professor of quantitative social science and Dartmouth 2018 alum, who is featured in the 2024 #ForbesUnder30 in Science list! 🎉  Via @Forbes ⤵️ bit.ly/40WgZHG

Dartmouth researcher shares how K-pop fans helped spread public health info during the pandemic At the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, we received a lot of public health guidance from the CDC, NIH and WHO. But another three-lettered group may’ve dwarfed their collective influence: BTS, the Ko...

Dartmouth professor @herbertchang.bsky.social led a study into how pop culture icons’ social media messages influenced mask-wearing habits during the pandemic, via Vermont Public ⤵️

🎉🎉 Let me use my first post here to announce that my first dissertation paper has been accepted to the Annals of the AAG. Pre-print forthcoming to my website, and hopefully published by AAG soon! 🎉🎉

final week to apply to the Quantitative Social Science opening at dartmouth!

apply.interfolio.com/130125

I'll be presenting our new paper "Subscriptions and External Links Help Drive Resentful Users to Alternative and Extremist YouTube Videos" (science.org/doi/10.1126/...) in the OSoMe Awesome Speakers series on Zoom Wed. at 12 PM ET

Join us! Registration here iu.zoom.us/meeting/regi...

As false war information spreads on X, Musk promotes unvetted accounts Elon Musk recommended that users follow accounts that have promoted lies in the past.

Reflections from my UW colleague @mikecaulfield.bsky.social: “Anecdotal evidence that X is failing this stress test is plentiful. Go on the platform, do a search on Israel or Gaza — you don’t have to scroll very far to find dubious or debunked information.” www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2...

UW misinformation researchers will not buckle under political attacks | Opinion As the 2024 election approaches, misinformation researchers at the University of Washington say they won't be deterred by those seeking to undermine their work.

Researchers of online misinformation (and related topics) aren’t “buckling” to politically-motivated attacks. Our critical work to understand and address online deception and manipulation continues. But only with the support of our colleagues and institutions. www.seattletimes.com/opinion/uw-m...

In our new paper out today at Trends in Cognitive Science, @lisik.bsky.social and I argue that social interaction perception is a visual process–computed by the visual system. (1/3)

tinyurl.com/nhh2dhx

#PsychSciSky #CogSci #CogPsyc #compneuro