Ross Weistroffer 🌈⭐

Civic Signals: The Qualities of Flourishing Digital Spaces - Center for Media Engagement Discussions of digital space often focus on eliminating troubling content or improving the user-friendliness of the design. We’re proposing that digital spaces, like the physical spaces we inhabit, sh...

What does a flourishing digital space look like? Our Civic Signals collaboration with @newpublic.org, identifies 14 design principles that healthy platforms should aspire to.

💡Welcome. Connect. Understand. Act

🔗Full study: mediaengagement.org/research/civ...

Absolutely *need* to read this

It's amazing to have the book in my hand now, after several years of working on it with Kasper and Per Ola.

In a nutshell, it's a new textbook for introductory-level HCI courses:
✅ 10 parts, covering the whole HCI process
✅ 864 pages and 1.9 kgs
✅ Open access (!)

LA City Charter Reform Commission Meeting. LA is beginning its first comprehensive review of our city's governance structure in 26 years. Let the Commission know what reforms you would like them to prioritize. Wednesday, July 30th, 10 AM. Location: Baldwin Hills Library Community Room (2906 S La Brea Ave, Los Angeles, CA, 90016) Agenda: * Planning & Infrastructure * Presenters: LA City Planning & Capital Infrastructure, Long Beach Public Works, Investing in Place, ACT-LA, Abundant Housing LA, & Central City Association. Talking points & meeting info at: bit.ly/FRLA26. Our website: FairRepLA.com

This Wednesday (7/30) at Baldwin Hills Library at 10 AM, the Charter Reform Commission will hear presentations from Fair Rep LA coalition member @abundanthousingla.bsky.social & others on planning and infrastructure.

Check out bit.ly/FRLA26 for more information and talking points!

*Please repost* @sjgreenwood.bsky.social and I just launched a new personalized feed (*please pin*) that we hope will become a "must use" for #academicsky. The feed shows posts about papers filtered by *your* follower network. It's become my default Bluesky experience bsky.app/profile/pape...

I’d absolutely subscribe to whatever paid newsletter product/platform/other publication that contains these gems 👌

We are looking for a Research Coordinator! Come to Penn to do research with us! my.spsp.org/Career-Cente...

Exclusive | Justice Department Told Trump in May That His Name Is Among Many in the Epstein Files Attorney General Pam Bondi told the president that the department also decided to not release more Jeffrey Epstein documents because of the presence of child pornography and the need to protect victim...

Here you go! :) www.wsj.com/politics/jus...

These course notes on nonparametric regression (including kernel density estimation) by Eduardo García Portugués are *fantastic*. So clear, with great visuals and clear code.

Proud & excited to share, 8 years(!) after starting this work.

🚨New paper in Nature Human Behaviour🚨
BEAST-GB: a hybrid model predicting human choice at near-ceiling levels.

It uses small data, beats behavioral & AI models, generalizes across contexts, and even explains human choice!

1/x

Like It or Not, Democratic Societies Need Clearly Defined Adversaries Over the past decade, the “boiling frog” has been a popular metaphor for the democratic decline in Western societies. While this gradual decline has several causes—such as the deleterious effects of economic and cultural globalization, the crisis of democratic representation, and the polarizing impact of dominant social media platforms—analysis has overlooked one critical factor: the absence of a shared understanding and clear conceptualization of external and internal adversaries, or even enemies, of democratic societies.

All good points, but what's even worse: many adversaries operate from the inside, and many citizens struggle to understand not only who the enemies are, but also what democracy stands for

Working on platform governance?

Join for PlatGovNet 2025
Free online conference Dec 1-2
Extended abstracts (800-1000 words) due Sep 2

Amazing community, opportunity to share work, get feedback, meet others working in this area.

Glad to be part of organizing it
Details: platgov.net/conferences/...

🚨 New preprint alert:

We show that web-browsing GPT and LLaMA models can infer social media user demographics with reasonable accuracy—using only usernames.

This opens new possibilities for social media research in the post-API era but raises important privacy concerns.

Revisiting the Origins of Civic Tech In era of DOGE, what can we learn from a different approach to tech and government

I'm excited that "Revisiting the Origins of Civic Tech"—an interview by @donmoyn.bsky.social with Emily Tavoulareas and Kathy Pham—is out today!

You can find their complete oral history of the USDS (from over 50 interviews) at usdigitalserviceorigins.org

donmoynihan.substack.com/p/revisiting...

I’d like to be added, if you please! 🙏

Are you a #CSCW researcher? I'm building a BlueSky starter pack for @acm-cscw.bsky.social. Reply to this message if you'd like to be added! As a Community Co-Chair for #CSCW2025, one of my goals this year is to help get our community synced up off of Twitter/X. TY for helping me build this out!

📣 It’s official – we launched the Humboldt Governance Lab! 📣

We use innovative methods to deliver evidence-based insights for policy-makers, public admin, and civil society – tackling the key challenges facing democracy today.

🌐 hu-govlab.de
@humboldtuni.bsky.social

How does a focusing event shape public opinion? Natural experimental evidence from the Orlando mass shooting by Youlang Zhang & Xinsheng Liu Scholars of the policy process posit that focusing events often shift public attention, policy preferences, and reshape the policy agenda. The scholarship, howev…

NEW BLOG POST!

Explore the latest PSJ blog introducing the “deep water null effect”, showing why even focusing events like the Orlando shooting spark concern, but not support for specific reforms.

By Youlang Zhang & Xinsheng Liu

Read here:
psjblog.net/2025/07/16/h...

#PSJ #PolicyStudiesJournal

LA City Charter Reform Commission meeting: Wednesday, July 16th, 4 PM. LA is beginning its first comprehensive review of our city's governance structure in 26 years. This will be the first meeting of the full Charter Reform Commission. LA City Council Chambers: * Selection of Commission Leadership * Discussion of Budget, Schedule, Engagement Plan & Issue Focus * Talking Points & Meeting Info at: bit.ly/FRLA26 Website: FairRepLA.com

The full Charter Reform Commission is meeting for the first time this Wednesday at LA City Hall!🎉

They'll be selecting Commission leadership and discussing the new Outreach Plan.

Find out more about the meeting, and check out our talking points at: bit.ly/FRLA26

The most useful participatory democracy resources, all in one place — People Powered Our curated, interactive collection of nearly 500 resources in 39 languages, compiled by a global community of practice.

🎉 Reintroducing: the People Powered Resource Center —
500+ curated tools, guides, and case studies from around the world 🌍

🧰 Find what works
🌐 Filter by topic, region, language
🤝 Learn from global peers

Explore now: www.peoplepowered.org/news-content...

#ParticipatoryDemocracy

Folks of comm, social psych, social computing, and HCI: who in our fields do you think ought to have a Wikipedia page who does not yet?

Noticing that most of the Wikipedia bios in our fields could have been written when I was starting gradschool in 2011 and thinking it's high time for additions.

Misinformation, trust, and health: The case for information environment as a major independent social determinant of health We argue for the inclusion of information environment as a major independent element in social determinants of health (SDoH) models. During the early …

The quality and reliability of information people are exposed to is a major social determinant of health, like income or education. Improving information environments is essential to combat misinformation, reduce health inequities, and improve health outcomes.
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Got a project that engages youth in policymaking or governance?

The Democratic Innovations Accelerator (DIA) offers free mentorship, tools & a peer community to help you design or grow your initiative!

📅 Deadline: July 6, 2025
👉 nets4dem.eu/democratic-i...

Thanks, Don Green, for inviting me to share "Persuasion at Scale: ML, Causality & Information," a course retrospective @ Columbia's DSI.

@eunjikim.bsky.social & I covered the power & limits of causal inference & AI: from RCTs to LLMs

talk: bit.ly/PScaleTalk20...

class: lnkd.in/etbR2Dqc

🚨 Now out in Nature Human Behaviour 🚨

We show that following the news on WhatsApp or Instagram (N = 3,395 🇫🇷🇩🇪) increases current affairs knowledge, participants’ ability to discern true from false news stories, awareness of true news stories, as well as trust in the news.

doi.org/10.1038/s415...

Twelve years ago today, the Supreme Court struck down the coverage formula of the Voting Rights Act.

They ripped out one of the central features of the most successful civil rights laws in American history.

The result has been a disastrous growth in the turnout gap
papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

Five fabulous panellists talk about how deliberative democracy can support climate justice!

Precis and link to recording in blog 👇

@climateoxford.bsky.social @oxprimarycare.bsky.social
@alanrenwick.bsky.social
@timschwanen.bsky.social @reemaspatel.bsky.social #MutiraoGlobalCOP30 #RHRNClimate

Detecting participation in collective action from social media text. Great tool to build large-scale ground truth about collective engagement online. Fantastic work by @ariannapera.bsky.social at #ICWSM.
Paper: ojs.aaai.org/index.php/IC...
Code: github.com/ariannap13/e...

Potentially in shorts (still undecided), I'm presenting the last chapter of my dissertation, on Friday 13:10 - 14:50! #EPSA2025

🪧 New research 🪧

osf.io/preprints/os...

Can protests move bystanders, people who observe protests without being part of the march?

We conducted a 3-wave field experiment during real Fridays for Future (FFF) protests in Berlin.

Here's what we found 🧵👇