We are in the midst of many fascinating talks that all take a different perspective on the question of the "Impact of Social Media on Democracy and understanding the causal mechanisms of digital citizenship". This is the concluding conference of the @some4dem.bsky.social
some4dem.eu/activities/e...
Christmas came early this year! Very happy to see our paper out in Science Advances. Led by @lfoswaldo.bsky.social, we ran a unique collective field-experiment on Reddit, to better understand who is participating in online debates and why.
Paper: www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
And more below 👇
Für eine deutsche Zusammenfassung, hier ein kurzes Interview beim DLF www.deutschlandfunk.de/online-disku...
11.12.2025 19:36 — 👍 16 🔁 8 💬 0 📌 1
Some personal news to share www.mpg.de/25487784/aus...
01.10.2025 07:10 — 👍 179 🔁 22 💬 14 📌 1reminder ... please repost
15.09.2025 13:20 — 👍 2 🔁 1 💬 0 📌 0
New tool available!
some4dem.eu/news/explore...
Try it here: reddit-field-explorer.streamlit.app
@some4dem.bsky.social researchers @eckolb.bsky.social and @pournaki.bsky.social presenting their work at #ic2s2 on measuring political realignment in Switzerland and extracting conflicting narratives from polarized debates on social media.
22.07.2025 15:33 — 👍 8 🔁 3 💬 0 📌 0🧵 I often talk about VDA, Verification, Deliberation, Accountability, as the core functions that make democracy possible. But to understand what’s gone wrong, we need to look at how those functions have changed.
21.06.2025 08:02 — 👍 693 🔁 262 💬 18 📌 52Die Symbolsprache der Jubiläumsparade in Washington wäre wirklich eine ausführliche Beschreibung wert. Man befürchtete ja, dass dieser Präsident sich bei den Formen autoritärer Staaten bedienen wird, deren Militärparaden außerordentliche Macht und strikte ...
15.06.2025 17:55 — 👍 37 🔁 8 💬 2 📌 2
"If we remain silent when debates are needed, that endangers democratic culture itself." It was a pleasure to speak to @RND_de about #FreeSpeech in #Europe (interviewed in German but translation on request.)
www.rnd.de/politik/mein...
NetSci 2027 Dresden
06.06.2025 14:21 — 👍 6 🔁 2 💬 0 📌 0
Very cool new work by Felix Gaisbauer, @pournaki.bsky.social and @dscheykopp.bsky.social providing new methods for shedding light on a more systemic view of news sharing and uncovering important subtleties to the polarization/echo chamber debate:
arxiv.org/abs/2505.08359
Alt-Txt: Two people stand before multi-color strips of paper with text on them that stretch down an entire wall and onto the floor. The title of the installation "I Agree" appear in all caps on the wall, too.
Love this. In his “I Agree” installation Dima Yarovinsky-Yahel took the content from terms of service statements for companies like Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram, Tinder and printed them out on A4 paper with a standard font size for legal contracts to demonstrate the length of these agreements.
27.04.2025 19:52 — 👍 3108 🔁 1294 💬 23 📌 56Can confirm that my NSF grant "How False Beliefs Form & How to Correct Them" was cancelled today because it is "not in alignment with current NSF priorities" Shocking that understanding how people are misled by false information is now a forbidden topic. Our work will continue but at a smaller scale
18.04.2025 22:40 — 👍 3082 🔁 1372 💬 142 📌 64
Mit diesem Schreiben widersetzt sich #Harvard dem massiven Druck der Trump-Regierung: „The university will not surrender its independence or relinquish its constitutional rights. Harvard will not accept the government's terms as an agreement in principle“
www.nytimes.com/interactive/...
Columbia sociologists Gil Eyal and Peter Bearman: “We know what appeasing authoritarian leaders leads to: new sets of demands, even more preposterous than the first. When such demands are inevitably made, what shall we do? We must say “no more.” We must take our chance to lead.”
27.03.2025 22:24 — 👍 76 🔁 21 💬 0 📌 1This is an interesting question, and kind to ask. I am U.S.-based (not U.S.), but here are my thoughts. 🧵
29.03.2025 13:17 — 👍 141 🔁 66 💬 9 📌 13
Bluesky consolidating as key platform for science.
Bluesky, on most days, hosts more posts linked to new research than X.
This @altmetric.com blog gives an excellent analysis of the changing dynamics.
www.altmetric.com/blog/bluesky...
A packed room on the #physics of #democracy and #conflict #DPG2025
18.03.2025 13:02 — 👍 5 🔁 2 💬 1 📌 1An update on the update: Pubmed now appears to be back up (at least for me). Glad to see it was a glitch (?) rather than a planned takedown. At least for now... this is a warning signal that highights the importance of preservation efforts: safeguarding-research.discourse.group
03.03.2025 08:36 — 👍 11 🔁 4 💬 0 📌 0It is true. Global vandalism on an epic scale.
02.03.2025 08:21 — 👍 148 🔁 67 💬 12 📌 6What we’re witnessing in America is what happens when disordered discourse captures a political party, then the state itself. The Republican Party was the first to fall - abandoning truth for conspiracy, ideology for grievance, and policy for performative outrage.
28.02.2025 21:47 — 👍 10486 🔁 2845 💬 171 📌 344
FUNDING ROADMAP Q1 2025 Q4 2025 2026 RAISE SAM TO: • • • Set-up independent non-profit foundation Hire leadership and core team Build independent ATProto relay and core infrastructure, hosted in Europe in independent cloud RAISE §10M TO: • • Hire full foundation team Launch Public Interest Fund to support teams tackling critical issues in social media & help good ideas emerge & scale RAISE S30M TO: • Fully fund the foundation, infrastructure management, and public
"Free Our Feeds" will unabhängige Bluesky-Infrastruktur in Europa aufbauen, die nicht der US-Gerichtsbarkeit unterliegt. Angesichts des Staatsstreiches in den USA ein sehr wichtiges Ziel. Dafür will man in 8 Wochen drei Millionen Dollar samneln. Bisher hat man aber nur 100.000 Dollar zusammen. 1
20.02.2025 22:03 — 👍 32 🔁 18 💬 1 📌 1Immerhin wissen wir jetzt: Unter Bürokratieabbau stellen sich manche einfachere Formulare vor, und andere die Beendigung des Rechtsstaats. vielleicht fragen wir in Deutschland vor entscheidenden Wahlen nach den Details hinter schmissigen Schlagworten
10.02.2025 04:53 — 👍 1397 🔁 279 💬 32 📌 10
Trump & Musk führen einen administrativen Staatsstreich durch, brechen ein Gesetz nach dem anderen - die USA sind mitten in einer Verfassungskrise. Mein Text für @volksverpetzer.de ist jetzt online. Dank an @mjsdc.bsky.social für die juristischen Einordnungen! www.volksverpetzer.de/aktuelles/tr...
06.02.2025 09:13 — 👍 3392 🔁 1625 💬 100 📌 118
@bsky.app grew tremendously over the last year. Recently, the platform introduced “starter packs” (SP) to help users bootstrap their social graph. Anybody can create these SPs. They’re lists of accounts (e.g., “people creating anime”) that others can then follow.
🧵1/11
We're getting the social media crisis wrong
The bigger problem isn't disinformation. It's degraded democratic publics. On Zuckerberg today and Musk over the last few weeks. www.programmablemutter.com/p/were-getti...
