Michael Scharkow

Do swiss universities expect permanent SNF funding? I thought you still had a basic funding model in place, no?

Short announcement before the data get too old: ccsmainz.github.io/platformnews/. With 571 news outlets on TikTok, YouTube Shorts, and Instagram across 46 countries, matching the @reutersinstitute.bsky.social DNR. Computational analyses on topics, platformization, diversity, etc. Feedback welcome.

Künstliche Intelligenz in der Begutachtung

DFG erlaubt Einsatz von KI in der Begutachtung.

Wenn wir jetzt noch die AI dazu kriegen, die komplette Forschung zu machen, haben wir den Menschen komplett von der Last des Forschungsprozzeses befreit und er kann sich komplett auf wichtige Dinge wie Reisekostenerstattungsanträge konzentrieren.

Wondering whether the Michelangelo sauce is based on the artist or the hero turtle and how. 🤔

📍 Location: Munich
📅 Start: 1 Apr 2026
⏳ Apply by: 31 Jan 2026

Details:
German: job-portal.lmu.de/jobposting/6...
English: job-portal.lmu.de/jobposting/7...

SKULL OF THOMAS AQUINAS: TAKE A LEFT NOW
PRIEST: No, the GPS says we have to keep going—
SKULL: I KNOW A SHORTCUT
PRIEST: Do you remember the last ti—
SKULL: FOR THOSE WITH FAITH, NO EVIDENCE IS NECESSARY; FOR THOSE WITHOUT IT, NO EVIDENCE WILL SUFFICE

screenshot of my post

Big new blogpost!

My guide to data visualization, which includes a very long table of contents, tons of charts, and more.

--> Why data visualization matters and how to make charts more effective, clear, transparent, and sometimes, beautiful.
www.scientificdiscovery.dev/p/salonis-gu...

Happy "let's circle back in the New Year" season to all who celebrate.

PAUSE sign

1. Pausing new submissions about AI topics for 90 days. That is, papers about AI models, testing AI models, proposing AI models, theories about the future of AI, etc. We will make exceptions for papers that are already accepted for publication (or published) in peer-reviewed scholarly journals
/2

Professors in the media: dynamics of cumulative advantage, reputation, and gender Abstract. Translation of science to a general public is increasingly important in modern academia. Yet, there is little knowledge on whether and why scient

What gets professors into the media?
📢 New open access publication in @europeansocreview.bsky.social together with Raphael Heiberger from @s7css.bsky.social and @bashofstra.bsky.social!
👉 doi.org/10.1093/esr/...

🚨New Publication Alert 🚨"Gender diversity in the field of communication in Germany, Austria, Switzerland". 3 Studies in 1 Paper! We analyzed the scientific job market, publications, citations, and grants! Available open access: doi.org/10.1007/s116... [English]. German summary in 🧵 #commSky

There are some track features you can get, like runtime or explicit lyrics, but the interesting ones like key, bpm or danceability are part of the audio features API which has been disabled since last year (developer.spotify.com/blog/2024-11...). DDP+Track analysis could still be very interesting.

I tried to do this in my computational methods class this spring and it turned out the most of the Spotify tracks/music API is now disabled, so you cannot easily get matching song-level data anymore, except from large dumps of popular songs, or by using alternative APIs using artist/title.

For a second I was really impressed that @richardfletcher.bsky.social brought out HUGE cardboard printouts for his slides ;-)

I'd argue that BA/MA theses don't need to be informative re an actual research question, but only inform us whether students actually learned something. Of course, running naive studies with tiny self-selected or convenience samples isn't helping the students in that regard either.

Zwei männliche und eine weibliche Silhouette. Im Vordergrund Mikrophone wie bei einer Pressekonferenz

🔥Hot off the press: Studie zur Repräsentation weiblicher Forschender in den Medien 👉
doi.org/10.1177/0963...
📰 Inhaltsanalyse: 4.860 Medienartikel
👩‍🔬 Nur 18% der zitierten Expert:innen sind Frauen
📊 Frauenanteil in der Forschung: ca. 31%
➡️ Deutliche Sichtbarkeitslücke für weibliche Forschende

This year, I am living in a simulation - literally. 🌀

@mscharkow.bsky.social, and I are currently conducting a #simulation study on how users interact with algorithms in short-video environments such as #TikTok. I’ve had two incredible opportunities to share our progress so far.

Our Digital News Report 2025 is out!

📊48 markets
🌏Almost 100K respondents
📰Key headline: Audiences lean into video news and influencers, raising misinformation concerns and new dilemmas for publishers

📱Explore now buff.ly/xLP67Tg
🧵Findings in thread #DNR25

Do Large Language Models Solve the Problems of Agent-Based Modeling? A Critical Review of Generative Social Simulations Recent advancements in AI have reinvigorated Agent-Based Models (ABMs), as the integration of Large Language Models (LLMs) has led to the emergence of ``generative ABMs'' as a novel approach to simula...

Large Language Model-based social simulation has emerged as an exciting new research method.

But do LLMs actually resolve the problems that have historically limited use of Agent-Based Models? What do they bring?

We review the literature to find out!

with Maik Laaroij
arxiv.org/abs/2504.03274

Interesting. Do the funders provide reasons for this requirement, ie are they science-related or legal? In many ethics/IRB (equivalent) discussions I've had in the past, it seemed that collecting less demographic information seemed to be preferable in general for privacy/data protection reasons.

What happens if you have NA in your demographics? Do papers get rejected if the reported mean age is based on 73% of the sample? I get the warmup argument, but why not warm up with motivating items? If however, your experiment's primary outcome is age or gender, put that item in ASAP ;-)

This is also what I learned and continue to teach. Sociodemographics rarely a predictor (or outcome!) of interest, at least in my courses...

I am a big fan of www.soscisurvey.de The basics are free anyway but university licenses of various types including for own servers exist as well, I think psychology at UZH even has one.
Plus, I've had very good experiences with support as well.

Good and timely stuff! I wonder how we can navigate the (very real) tradeoff between quality and reproducibility. Will reviewer #2 accept a drop of .2 in accuracy between gpt/gemini vs. local models if you make this decision transparent? What if results change? Just add another robustness check?

LimeWire Wrapped 1. sistem_of_a_dowm_Zelda_song.flac 2. Nirvana - Glycerine.flv 3. track_8_(1)_(1)c.mp3 4. weird_al_Bert_and_Big_Bird_smoking_weed_FUNNY(parody).wav 5. jay-z_the-blueprint_FULL ALBUM_REAL.mp3.exe

finally finished downloading my limewire wrapped after 20 years

If you think of time as a sampling dimension (which we often do in many other contexts), it's not even a metaphorical population, but an occasion-specific sample. Which is also argued in the above literature regarding country-year data.

Not to be confused with Schöpfungshöhenselbstzweifel!

I sense a strong nudge to never reject anything 🤗

Wiener weniger unfreundlich Das Image der Wiener Bevölkerung, besonders unfreundlich zu sein, hat sich leicht verbessert. Im vergangenen Jahr noch auf dem letzten Platz von 53 internationalen Städten, liegt Wien in Sachen Freund...

Laut Studie ist Wien nicht mehr die unfreundlichste Stadt, sondern Berlin und München sind besser als wir. Es bringt nichts, irgendeinen Sündenbock zu suchen. Wir alle müssen jetzt reflektieren, wo wir im vergangenen Jahr Fehler gemacht haben könnten.

🚨New preprint 🚨

**A computational model of reward learning and habits on social media**

🧵

We develop a computational reward learning model of real-world social media data, which infers the separate goal-directed and habitual cognitive processes driving posting...