Dan Mercea

TakePart-CFP - Take Part A Two-Day Conference Organized by the TakePart Project at Babeș-Bolyai University, Cluj, Romania

📣Join us on 7–8 May 2026 at Babeș-Bolyai University for Time to Take Part: Mobilisation, Resistance and Learning in Times of Polarised Communication and AI. CfP here: www.takepart.ro/takepart-cfp/. Deadline for abstracts (400–500 words) is 18 January 2026. Send yours to victor.cepoi@ubbcluj.ro

IN NEW ISSUE: Analysing protest participation - @danmercea.bsky.social, @feligsantos.bsky.social & Matthias Hoffmann argue it's a gradient, beyond the binary of participation and non-participation & suggest practical mobilisation pathways: buff.ly/XfEkdYm (OPEN ACCESS)

@polstudiesassoc.bsky.social

We are looking for journalist to collaborate with on @interfaced-eu.bsky.social project
edgeryders.eu/t/call-for-j...

I have penned an @icsjournal.bsky.social editorial: a reflective pause, lookong back on the journey iCS has been on since 1998. lt's helped assemble a vibrant academic community, nurtured new ideas, intellectual discontinuities, critical & rigorous scholarship. Great research, lots more to come!

Editorial comment: looking back to go forward Published in Information, Communication & Society (Ahead of Print, 2025)

#Now in #iCS
Marking the first year of a new editorial team,
@danmercea.bsky.social reflects on iCS’s evolving role in the field. The journal looks back to move forward, reaffirming our commitment to rigour and to the well-being of the academic community.
www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

The social lives of COVID-19 data: following disease surveillance from institutions of power into everyday pandemic society In the early stages of COVID-19, investments in digital infrastructures supported the rapid circulation of disease surveillance data throughout pandemic society. Scholarship on the social lives of ...

#OutNow in #iCS
This article examines the social lives of COVID-19 data, illustrating how statistics on infections and deaths have become tools of governance, sources of anxiety, and everyday reference points.
www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

#OutNow in #iCS
Why does AI regulation look so different across countries? This article shows how legal frameworks vary, shaped by risk perceptions, political priorities, and institutional legacies.
www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

ICS Book Review offers 2024

Book reviews keep #iCS at the heart of evolving debates. Want to shape the conversation?

🚨 Pick a title and join us. 📚

Contact Víctor Ávila Torres (Lincoln) after browsing:

docs.google.com/spreadsheets...

Protesting at the intersection of individual characteristics and obstacles to participation: an analysis of the in-person, online and pivoting styles Engaging with long-standing debates on the crisis of democracy, manifested as a downturn in civic involvement, this paper scrutinises the evolving landscape of protest participation. First delineat...

@feligsantos.bsky.social, Matthias Hoffmann and @danmercea.bsky.social unpack characteristics of in-person and online protesters

🔗 www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

We are looking for Community Engagement Ambassadors for the #INTERFACED project. Please see the call 👇 for more details and contact info, apply or help us spread the word!

📢 the first of several short videos introducing the #INTERFACED project. More details about the project and ways to get in touch at www.interfaced.eu

📣 The INTERFACED project is live on @bsky.app We're approaching political participation as an interfacing process linking multiple forms of engagement. Looking at how that linking happens, we expect, will help us provide fresh insights into the participation of key social groups. Blog 👇 & follow us

Fellowship call for INTERFACED Project Are you passionate about citizen participation and political engagement? Are you established in citizen participation (on or offline), and are able to reach out to everyone in your community? Do you h...

Are you established in citizen participation and are able to reach out to everyone in your community? We are looking for Community Outreach and Engagement Ambassadors to help connect researchers to communities we want to engage with
edgeryders.eu/t/fellowship...

@interfaced-eu.bsky.social

Fellowship call for INTERFACED Project Are you passionate about citizen participation and political engagement? Are you established in citizen participation (on or offline), and are able to reach out to everyone in your community? Do you h...

📣@interfaced-eu.bsky.social is looking for Community Outreach and Engagement Ambassadors to help connect researchers w/ diverse communities, especially of hard-to-reach and disengaged people, to gain insights into political participation since the pandemic. See call 👇

edgeryders.eu/t/fellowship...

Analysing protest participation - @danmercea.bsky.social, @felipegsantos.bsky.social & Matthias Hoffmann argue it's a gradient, beyond the binary of participation and non-participation & suggest practical mobilisation pathways: buff.ly/cxrnvln (OPEN ACCESS)

@polstudiesassoc.bsky.social @sagepub.com

As It Happened: An Analysis of TikTok Activity in the Wake of the Ban on Calin Georgescu’s 2025 Presidential Run and the Protests that Followed It - Take Part ‘calingeorgescupresedinte revolutie democratie poporulroman ccr’

On our #takepart project, we have been looking at the ways in which TikTok was used in March 2025 to protest the decision to ban far-right candidate Calin Georgescu from running in the next Romanian presidential elections. Blog post and more info about the project 👇

www.takepart.ro/2025/04/10/a...

Calling all #ECRs 📣

Join @britishacademy.bsky.social ECRN to learn about getting published in social sciences, humanities and the arts with Alison Shell, @andreamedrado.bsky.social, @danmercea.bsky.social, @philippagrand.bsky.social

Fri 6th June | 13:00 - 16:00 www.tickettailor.com/events/early...

Our co-edited volume (with Claudius Wagemann, Toma Burean, @danmercea.bsky.social and Lorenzo Mosca) ‘Protest and Democracy: How Movement Parties, Social Movements and Active Citizens Are Reshaping Europe’ Routledge 2025 arrived in print doi.org/10.4324/9781... @feligsantos.bsky.social

Horizon Europe awards £3m to political participation research project INTERFACED | City, University of London Research consortium INTERFACED, led by Professor Dan Mercea, receives Horizon European funding to research the state of democracy.

...working link👇
www.city.ac.uk/news-and-eve...

📣 our new Horizon Europe project on political participation since the onset of Covid-19 is now live. PR at link 👇. Watch this space for updates. @feligsantos.bsky.social @nechri.bsky.social
www.city.ac.uk/news-and-eve...

Our latest paper is an attempt to understand how individuals might connect protest episodes and who those people might be who find themselves in that position. @feligsantos.bsky.social wrote a great overview of our findings in the 🧵👇

Young democrats, critical citizens and protest voters: studying the profiles of movement party supporters - Acta Politica The rise of movement parties in Europe has disrupted traditional notions of party politics, introducing new avenues for citizen engagement and political mobilisation. This paper provides a comprehensi...

8️⃣ @felipegsantos.bsky.social and @danmercea.bsky.social classify movement parties based on their ideological appeal and examine the extent to which their electorate is differentiated from other parties.

Link to the paper: link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Analysing protest participation - @danmercea.bsky.social, @felipegsantos.bsky.social & Matthias Hoffmann argue it's a gradient, beyond the binary of participation and non-participation & suggest practical mobilisation pathways: https://buff.ly/4flPug1 (OPEN ACCESS)

@polstudiesassoc.bsky.social

📢 new #openaccess article w/ @felipegsantos.bsky.social & Matthias Hoffmann. We describe protest participation as a gradient. We distinguish between non-, potential & actual protesters. We then pinpoint key factors increasing the likelihood of moving from non- to potential & actual participation.

European Commission - Have your say European Commission - Have your say

To all the researchers here on @bsky.app for whom the topic data access from online platforms is relevant, please consider writing a short feedback on the draft of the delegated acts for the DSA:

ec.europa.eu/info/law/bet...

📢#outnow #openaccess new paper w/ @felipegsantos.bsky.social reporting survey experiment on drivers of vote for movement parties in 🇩🇰 🇭🇺🇩🇪 🇮🇹 🇷🇴🇬🇧. Movt. party voters don't favor institutional outsiders or candidates w/ protest experience. Rather, they prioritize decisive policy change t.co/TOZkaX8VzS

Populism and the Far-Right in the Digital Age Explore the article collection: Populism and the Far-Right in the Digital Age. Published in Information, Communication & Society.

Do not forget to visit our most recent #DigitalCollection: expertly curated by Fred Paxton :

Populism and the Far-Right in the Digital Age.

All articles in this collection are free to access!

www.tandfonline.com/journals/ric...

Geo-indexing helped build a social infrastructure connecting discrete protests w/ shared vocabulary & conspiracies. Abstract 👇

Map of connections between Facebook outlets and geo-indexed locations.

#outnow w/ @felipegsantos.bsky.social & Mike Saker. Article on links between opposition to #COVID19 restrictions on #Facebook & physical places. We call the practice of referencing locations geo-indexing. 👉 www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

UW misinformation researchers will not buckle under political attacks | Opinion As the 2024 election approaches, misinformation researchers at the University of Washington say they won't be deterred by those seeking to undermine their work.

We strongly support and stand behind our fellow academic researchers (@katestarbird.bsky.social, UW CIP, @stanfordio.bsky.social, & others) who have been the target of these attacks against misinformation research.

www.seattletimes.com/opinion/uw-m...