Sebastian Stier

Political campaigns worldwide experiment with AI. But how do people see different electoral uses of AI and with what consequences?

In a new study in @polcommjournal.bsky.social with @adrauc.bsky.social and @kunkakom.bsky.social, we address these questions. www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.... 1/

The SOUNDS initiative is hiring for 𝗪𝗶𝘀𝘀𝗲𝗻𝘀𝗰𝗵𝗮𝗳𝘁𝗹𝗶𝗰𝗵𝗲 𝗠𝗶𝘁𝗮𝗿𝗯𝗲𝗶𝘁𝗲𝗿𝗶𝗻/ 𝗪𝗶𝘀𝘀𝗲𝗻𝘀𝗰𝗵𝗮𝗳𝘁𝗹𝗶𝗰𝗵𝗲𝗿 𝗠𝗶𝘁𝗮𝗿𝗯𝗲𝗶𝘁𝗲𝗿 𝘂𝗻𝗱
𝗥𝗲𝗳𝗲𝗿𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗶𝗻/ 𝗥𝗲𝗳𝗲𝗿𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝗢𝘂𝘁𝗿𝗲𝗮𝗰𝗵 𝘂𝗻𝗱 𝗧𝗵𝗶𝗿𝗱-𝗠𝗶𝘀𝘀𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗺𝗶𝘁 𝗙𝗼𝗸𝘂𝘀
𝗪𝗶𝘀𝘀𝗲𝗻𝘀𝗰𝗵𝗮𝗳𝘁𝘀𝗸𝗼𝗺𝗺𝘂𝗻𝗶𝗸𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗶𝗻 𝗦𝗢𝗨𝗡𝗗𝗦 (𝗺/𝘄/𝗱).

Link: www.uni-saarland.de/fileadmin/up...

@ingmarweber.de @politicsunisaar.bsky.social

Really enjoyed writing this piece with @heinzleitgoeb.bsky.social. Helped me structure my own thinking about when and how to use digital behavioral data for causal inference. Hope others find it useful as well!

Very happy to see this out now! 📃

Coincidentally well timed with the ongoing DSA Observatory Conference in Amsterdam, a new publication titled “Election research in the age of regulated data access under the EU Digital Services Act” has been published in Internet Policy Review today! ✨

Election research in the age of regulated data access under the EU Digital Services Act In this paper, the authors discuss the implications of regulated data access under the European Digital Services Act for election research.

New paper by @philippdarius.bsky.social, @jasminriedl.bsky.social, @feloe.bsky.social, @meinungsfuehrer.bsky.social, @sebstier.bsky.social, and me in @policyr.bsky.social: "Election research in the age of regulated data access under the EU Digital Services Act"
policyreview.info/articles/ana...

The Societal Observatory Using Novel Data Sources (SOUNDS) project is inviting applications for the following position:

𝗣𝗼𝘀𝘁𝗱𝗼𝗰 𝗥𝗲𝘀𝗲𝗮𝗿𝗰𝗵𝗲𝗿 𝗽𝗼𝘀𝗶𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝘀 (𝗳/𝗺/𝘅) 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝗦𝗼𝗰𝗶𝗲𝘁𝗮𝗹 𝗖𝗼𝗺𝗽𝘂𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴 (𝗿𝗲𝗳: 𝗪𝟮𝟴𝟬𝟭)
Paygrade: E13 TV-L 100%
Duration: 2 years

@ingmarweber.de @politicsunisaar.bsky.social @uni-saarland.de

Upcoming Workshops May 2026: Preprocessing and Analyzing Web Tracking Data 04 – 05 May | Hybrid (Cologne | Online) Introduction to Conjoint Survey Experiments 06 – 07 May | Online Introduction to R 06 – 08 May | Online

New skills bloom this May with #GESISworkshops 🌸

Explore:
🌐📊 Preprocessing and Analyzing Web Tracking Data
🧩📈 Introduction to Conjoint Survey Experiments
💻⏱️ Introduction to R

@gesis.org

Full program ➡️ gesis.org/training
Workshop details 🧵👇

Congrats Lisa. Well deserved! Wish you a great start in Frankfurt.

Big news: I started a new position as Professor for Computational Social Science (W1 tenure track) at the Center for Critical Computational Studies (C3S) at Goethe University in Frankfurt am Main!

www.c3s-frankfurt.de/who-we-are#m...

Introducing the GESIS AppKit: An app-based mobile data collection infrastructure: https://osf.io/q8v72

Since joining the GESIS Panel in 2024, the GESIS Panel.dbd Digital Behavioral Data Sample has released its first dataset, opening new research opportunities by using survey data linked with digital behavioral data.
Dataset: search.gesis.org/research_dat...
Documentation: shiny.gesis.org/gpdbd/

Mitarbeiter*in für vertrauenswürdige Forschungsumgebungen (DSS-25) | Jobs bei GESIS – Leibniz-Institut für Sozialwissenschaften GESIS ist eine der weltweit führenden Infrastruktureinrichtungen für die Sozialwissenschaften und steht Forscher*innen mit Expertise und Infrastrukturangeboten auf allen Ebenen ihrer Forschungsprojekt...

There is a permanent position available in my team! You will help researchers gain access to highly sensitive data and analyse them in a secure environment: gesis.jobs.personio.de/job/2495658?...

Go for it and see you in Cologne ❤️🤍

🚨 Coming up: DACH-CSS 2026 Conference
“Democracy at Risk? Societal Challenges, Data, and Research Infrastructures in the Age of CSS”

📅 Date: May 21–22, 2026
📍 Location: CEU, Vienna, Austria
🔗 Program and Registration: computational-social-science.org/workshops/20...

#AI #GESISPanel #DBD
1st wave of data from GESIS Panel.dbd Digital Behavioral Data Sample: The data covers topics such as demographics, internet use, attitudes toward AI, trust in the media. In the future, the data can be linked to a wide variety of digital behavioral data.
search.gesis.org/res...

New @gesis.org data set publication: "Social Media Accounts of German Candidates from the German Federal Election 2025"
doi.org/10.4232/1.14...

Digital Technologies and Sampling. Comparing Estimates From Different Recruitment - Approaches Within the GESIS Panel.dbd. Using a dataset of the GESIS Panel.dbd from 2023, this article examines AI use and attitudes in Germany. Almost half of the respondents had tried ChatGPT while one in five had not heard of it.

#blog
The new post on the #GESISblog highlights the use of and attitudes toward #AI in Germany. Julius Kleinbub, Dr. Joachim Piepenburg, and Katharina Kraft show that most people had heard about ChatGPT, while frequent use was scare, with mixed attitudes toward AI.

Postdoc position in CSS/Sociology at @unidue.bsky.social:
www.uni-due.de/karriere/ste...
EG 13 TV-L for three years
Please apply before Feb 5th 2026
Research cluster Anja Weiß, Institute for Sociology, University of Duisburg-Essen #computationalsocialscience

New article with @corinnaoschatz.bsky.social and @jenniferbast.bsky.social in Party Politics on the perceived costs and benefits of negative campaigning for male and female candidates and its impact on attack behavior

doi.org/10.1177/1354...

Applications via the EU's DSA Data Access Portal: An Introduction Researchers can submit requests to the EU's "Data Access Portal" to obtain non-public data from very large online platforms in certain cases. What information do researchers need to provide and what d...

January 16, 2026: Julian Jaursch from the German Digital Service Coordinator @bnetza.bsky.social will introduce the EU's #DSA Data Access Portal during the series "Show & Tell – Social Media Data in Research Practice". Register here: events.gwdg.de/event/1259/ #digitalservicesact #platformdata

🫵WE WANT YOU 🎓
Are you interested in political communication, negative campaigning, and social norms? Are you experienced in quantitative methods? Do you have good rain clothes?

Then our postdoc position might be just for you: werkenbij.uva.nl/en/vacancies...

Thank you for sharing. Merry Christmas

It's out!!

www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Big thank you to my coauthors @small-schulz.bsky.social and @lorenzspreen.bsky.social, and to all participants who discussed 20 political issues over 4 weeks in 6 subreddit, 3 experimental conditions and let us observe.

⏰ I’m happy to share that a major paper from my dissertation was published today (🔗 doi.org/10.1017/pan....) in Political Analysis. In the paper, Clemens Lechner and I conduct an extensive validation study on how to measure politicians’ public personality traits using computational text analysis!

Cover page of the article. "Affective States: Cultural and Affective Polarization in a Multilevel-Multiparty System" by Dylan Paltra, Marius Sältzer and Christian Stecker. "Affective Polarization—the growing mutual dislike among partisan groups—has been identified as a major concern in democracies. Although both economic and cultural ideological divides contribute to ideological polarization, their affective consequences can differ. This paper argues that cultural polarization becomes especially consequential when mobilized by far-right parties. Using data from 116 elections in Germany’s 16 states (1990-2023), we combine more than 550 state-level manifestos with more than 150,000 survey responses to examine how party polarization translates into voter affect. Our analyses show that both economic and cultural polarization increase affective divides, but cultural disagreements fuel hostility only in the presence of the Alternative for Germany (AfD). Acting as a cultural entrepreneur, the AfD amplifies the emotional impact of cultural divisions such as immigration, employing affective rhetoric and provoking strong rejection from other parties and voters. These findings highlight the catalytic role of far-right parties in transforming ideological competition into affective polarization."

🚨Publication Alert!
My first first-author publication with @msaeltzer.bsky.social and @pluggedchris.bsky.social is out in @polbehavior.bsky.social, which began as my bachelor's thesis. We study how party polarization shapes affective polarization—with a particularly important role of the AfD. (1/7)🧵

Within our @meta-rep.bsky.social project on research practices in Computational Communication Science (CCS), we are conducting a survey among CCS researchers. We would be grateful if you could participate (takes 10 to 15 minutes) and/or share the link: www.soscisurvey.de/AutoFrontCCS/
#CommSky

Benefit from many advantages! We provide attractive workplaces in Cologne or Mannheim and offer you generous home office arrangements. We attach great importance to work-life balance and our employees benefit from our company health management program. Get more information: https://www.gesis.org/ Working at GESIS

#jobs #stellenangebote #GESISjobs #CSS
Work at GESIS and benefit from many advantages.
youtu.be/YnPMagm0GWE

Apply now for a job as #PostDoc / #SeniorResearcher in Computational Social Science

(13 TV-L, working time 100 %, initially limited for 4 ys. with possible tenure)
www.gesis.org/en/ins...

Join our CSS department @gesis.org! Postdoc/senior researcher position, tenure track! All info at: www.gesis.org/institut/kar...

What a New Study Reveals About the Production-Consumption Gap on Social Media | TechPolicy.Press Prithvi Iyer considers new research on how online content reveals the tip of the iceberg, leading to incorrect inferences about online public opinion.

A new paper analyzes the “production-consumption gap” on social media, where a small subset of users produce most of the content, and considers its implications for the study of phenomena such as political polarization, and for the design of policy interventions. Prithvi Iyer considers the results:

*Preprocessing and Analyzing Web Tracking Data* by Frank Mangold, Helena Rauxloh & @sebstier.bsky.social

🗓️ 04-05 May 2026
🏢 Hybrid: Cologne | Online
🌐 t1p.de/WebTrackingD...

Interested in the sociodemographic background, policy preferences, attitudes and campaign strategies of candidates for the 2025 Bundestag election? The @gles.bsky.social Candidate Study 2025 is now available (doi.org/10.4232/5.ZA... @gesis.org) and includes CCS Module IV
@ccs-project.bsky.social 👇

We have a new preprint: osf.io/preprints/so...

What have we learned about social media - the constantly moving target of empirical research - over the past decade?