Jan Zilinsky

The Epstein files have managed to unite liberal and conservative media: A new analysis shows President Trump’s handling of this story has prompted critical headlines across the board.
(@janzilinsky.bsky.social @goodauth.bsky.social)
More, via Opinion Today:
opiniontoday.substack.com/p/250807-top...

The Epstein files managed to unite liberal and conservative media. A new analysis shows Trump’s handling of this story has prompted critical headlines across the board.

The Epstein files have managed to unite liberal and conservative media.

A new analysis shows Trump’s handling of this story has prompted critical headlines across the board.

Read the latest from @janzilinsky.bsky.social: goodauthority.org/news/the-eps...

I go to read an academic paper on ScienceDirect, and before I can even see the abstract, there's this "offer" staring at me.

Looking forward to seeing new and old friends there next month!

Zooming in on the articles about the released video (with the "missing minute")

A key news driver seems to be the demand for release of new information. See terms like: files, list, records, documents, unseal, and release.

(A quick analysis of the recent coverage of the Epstein case in US & UK outlets)

The NY Post and Fox News are ignoring this poll, at least for now.

But Newsmax and Brietbart are reporting the unflattering news:

title: Informal (De-)Regulation in the Marketplace of Ideas abstract: Democratic societies face tradeoffs regarding the production, acquisition, and exchange of information and ideas. On the one hand, they benefit from institutions that reduce the transaction costs citizens must pay to acquire reliable information they can use to pursue their goals; on the other hand, those institutions impose conformity costs on citizens’ belief systems. This has traditionally placed civil institutions such as the media, the scientific community, and political parties in the role of informal regulators, which set norms regarding the (combinations of) beliefs citizens should or should not express in lieu of the government setting rules regarding the beliefs citizens can or cannot express. I argue that the interaction of heightened political sectarianism with changes in the structure of the public sphere have weakened these institutions and altered the informal regulations that govern the proverbial “marketplace of ideas.” This framework illuminates recent phenomena of scholarly concern – namely, the health of the political information environment and the evolution of contemporary political ideologies.

new working paper: osf.io/7v4zj

tl;dr: taking the "marketplace of ideas" metaphor seriously requires taking the nuances of actually-existing markets seriously, which means thinking about tradeoffs between transaction costs and conformity costs. applied to misinfo and ideological belief systems.

Very cool that people can be open-minded

And yet I keep getting news from you, so it seems you’re still not news-avoidant ;)

The 4% didn’t pass an attention check…

Our recent paper on partisan cheerleading / faultfinding in public opinion surveys:

Cover image of my book. Orange cover with bold white font of the title, and a large wrench superimposed over a forest fire.

No Option but Sabotage The Radical Environmental Movement and the Climate Crisis Thomas Zeitzoff Provides a unique perspective on one of the most important and salient issues facing the public: the threat of climate change and how activists are confronting it Features in-depths interviews with more than 100 past and current activists and experts Incorporates case studies of the radical environmental movement from origins of Earth First! to the ELF to ecofascism to present-day climate activists

Thrilled to share the cover of my upcoming book, out February 2026 from @oxfordacademic.bsky.social

NO OPTION BUT SABOTAGE
The Radical Environmental Movement and the Climate Crisis

global.oup.com/academic/pro...

Full paper here:
www.thelancet.com/journals/lan...

Young people are experiencing significant emotional distress regarding climate change.

For many, though, disagreeing with an item like "people have failed to take care of the planet" could feel equivalent to dismissing environmental problems entirely, creating social pressure to affirm it.

Lies spread faster than the truth. Right?

Well, OK, it depends on what stories you select.
(It helps to exclude a ton of true stories about the weather, traffic, or sports results)

Incidentally, how did 2.5K rumors in the dataset become 126,000 rumors in the abstract?

Discussions of misinformation naturally group around three main themes: health misinfo, social media platform responses, and political lies and contested claims.

Terms like "vaccine" bridge health and political discussions.

Misinformation discourse:

The term itself connects multiple thematic clusters.

- We see platform governance, political misinfo, and vaccine-related clusters.

- "Facebook" and "Covid" are major structural hubs, bridging different conversation domains.

Lies spread faster than the truth. Right?

Well, OK, it depends on what stories you select.
(It helps to exclude a ton of true stories about the weather, traffic, or sports results)

Incidentally, how did 2.5K rumors in the dataset become 126,000 rumors in the abstract?

What people already believe about politics seems to matter more than the information they consume

cc: @acerbialberto.com @andyguess.com @simonchauchard.bsky.social @m-b-petersen.bsky.social

New paper with @yannistheocharis.bsky.social

When it comes to health choices that seem to run counter to people's own self-interest, politics is overwhelmingly more important than individuals' cognitive styles or media diet:

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

A distinctly 2020s form of masochism:

Truly begging reporters to understand how LLMs work even a little bit

Those who build power on cynicism eventually become victims of it

The July 2025 DOJ/FBI memo presents itself as a model of institutional integrity: victim-sensitive & dismissive of conspiracy theories surrounding Epstein

Now DT asks his followers to... trust institutions!

After how many years of equating law enforcement with a "deep state"?

I used to teach a course on voter learning and behavioral economics. Now posting the core material publicly on GitHub:
Repo: github.com/zilinskyjan/...
Slides: zilinskyjan.github.io/information-...

A shift from shared TV experiences to personalized YouTube feeds is changing American culture. And some of the YT content is probably harming kids.

Though remember that TV was deemed terrible not so long ago?

In a few years, will we say: "how healthy it was when people used to watch YouTube" ?

Brian Mann: "please- accept finally that social media is not a viable way to get factual information. It was a noble experiment. It failed. Traditional journalism, while imperfect, is the way. Please pay a little bit and use it."

One of the slides that students seem to like

zilinskyjan.github.io/information-...

Walks in Wales - recommended