J. Nathan Matias

As a scientist, advocates sometimes encourage me not to study a topic, not because the truth can't be found, but because they worry that the knowledge might be misused. And they might be right.

Example: social media + mass violence

Curious: what's an issue you've wrestled with in this way?

Stalker Already Using OpenAI's Sora 2 to Harass Victim A journalist claims that her stalker used Sora 2, the latest video app from OpenAI, to churn out videos of her.

futurism.com/artificial-i...

PJIG Call for Panel Proposals AEJMC 2026 AEJMC Participatory Journalism Interest Group Call for Panel Proposals AEJMC Conference in New Orleans, Aug. 5-8, 2026 Panel proposal deadline: Oct. 7 before midnight The Participatory Journalism ...

Reminder: Participatory Journalism Interest Group is looking for panel proposals for next year's AEJMC conference in August in New Orleans. Deadline is tomorrow. docs.google.com/document/d/1...

Are you a scientist, journalist, or civil society researcher studying New York State's distraction-free school policy, the one that bans internet-enabled devices in schools from bell to bell?

If so, I want to hear from you, as I refine a project to archive & classify published school policies.

This semester, my students are compiling & classifying > 1k phone policies across NY state. We're building a baseline understanding of how this law is being implemented & how it varies.

We hope the dataset will be useful to others, so if you have ideas of what we should record, please respond!

Are you a scientist, journalist, or civil society researcher studying New York State's distraction-free school policy, the one that bans internet-enabled devices in schools from bell to bell?

If so, I want to hear from you, as I refine a project to archive & classify published school policies.

Churches Target New Members, With Help From Big Data Borrowing techniques long used by businesses and political campaigns, churches are using data to find those they believe would be most receptive to their messages—often, people in crisis. A small comp...

For more about Gloo, see this article in the Wall Street Journal:

www.wsj.com/business/med...

When tech gets religion: How churches use data and AI Spiritual care and technology are converging across the country, reshaping the theology of trust.

The MIT Tech Review has retracted a news story about Gloo, a company whose privacy practices were reported on by the WSJ.

Not sure what to make of this, since they leave so much unsaid. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

www.technologyreview.com/2025/08/19/1...

<3

We have also decided to drop Netflix and support journalism and other public goods. We just don't get much value out of Netflix, and it's an easy way to redirect money toward key democratic institutions without changing our overall budget.

How else have folks been supporting key public goods?

<3

Stand Together

They're founding a new organization - Stand Together for Higher Ed - which is organizing a national webinar on reclaiming the narrative on October 29. For more on the org and the webinar - www.standtogetherhighered.org

British-Egyptian activist Alaa Abd el-Fattah to be freed from prison Reports say writer, who has served six years for liking a Facebook post, has also been given a presidential pardon

Thrilled that Alaa will be free. Heartbroken at the costs paid by his family and everyone that loves him: www.theguardian.com/world/2025/s...

Current research overstates American support for political violence | PNAS Political scientists, pundits, and citizens worry that America is entering a new period of violent partisan conflict. Provocative survey data show ...

"Prior estimates overstate support for political violence because of random responding by disengaged respondents and because of a reliance on hypothetical questions about violence in general instead of questions on specific acts of political violence."

www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

From crisis messaging to community voices: Reimagining aid communication in Somalia Visibility-driven fundraising is crucial for sustaining life-saving interventions, but when storytelling focuses solely on immediate impact, it may undermine longer-term capacity building.

"Somalia’s recurring crises highlight the fragility of aid systems that rely too heavily on donor-driven communication models"

O_O it does all the protocols? This person is a saint.

Legal experts say pulling Jimmy Kimmel from air may amount to illegal 'jawboning' Free speech scholars say ABC's decision to suspend Jimmy Kimmel's late-night show indefinitely represents "jawboning," when government officials pressure private companies to suppress speech.

Litigation director @alexabdo.bsky.social equates the Kimmel suspension to what's known as jawboning. He adds: "It's as direct a line as you could dream up. [...] If the First Amendment was meant to prevent censorship, this is the prime example of it." More in @npr.org. www.npr.org/2025/09/18/n...

I know many people who have done things like this, at least with churches that were willing to have them. It's too bad Klein didn't bother to google it.

And with one or two exceptions, outlets like the NYT and Atlantic have never covered it.

The Bookmaker | The Point Magazine In the lead-up to the 2008 election, Nate Silver revolutionized the way we talk about politics, bringing cold, hard, numerical facts to a world that had been dominated by the gut feelings of reporters...

I'm going to write on this, but the subtext is that the Nate Silver crowd have shifted hard away from political science, and hard towards the Silicon Valley mindset as a foundational source for purportedly better grounded knowledge. This by @beenwrekt.bsky.social and @leifw.bsky.social

State Department warns immigrants not to mock Kirk's death Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau posted the warning on Thursday.

I am seeing a broad effort to search social media & pressure organizations to fire people who have said negative things about Charlie Kirk in recent days.

The State Department has also warned immigrants against "praising, rationalizing, or making light" of his death.

www.axios.com/2025/09/11/c...

If you're looking for resources on how your org can handle influxes of allegations based on someone's social media posts, here are two guides to learn from:

- PEN America: onlineharassmentfieldmanual.pen.org/best-practic...
- Researcher Support Consortium: researchersupport.org/institutions/

If you're someone with any institutional power & are not personally at risk, here are tips:

1. Let org leaders know this is happening & could be incoming
2. Encourage them to take things slow rather than make snap decisions, considering the needs of the complaint subject as well as the complainants

Many org leaders are unprepared to field a deluge of complaints about their employees. They don't have a process to assess claims and don't know relevant employment law (in NY for ex, there are restrictions on employer access to private social media). So people get fired or suspended.

Google News Comprehensive up-to-date news coverage, aggregated from sources all over the world by Google News.

This week is dangerous because many people have been harmed by violent, antisemitic, white supremacist communities that Kirk surrounded himself with.

As people process this moment online, they will become targets. There are too many stories, here's Google News.

news.google.com/search?q=soc...

As @matthewboedy.bsky.social shares in the WBUR interview, "throughout the history of the church using martyrdom often rallies people to go after their enemies... martyrdom creates a legacy of really reinforcing people's beliefs and reinforcing their anger, reinforcing their desire for vengeance."

A professor on Charlie Kirk's watchlist reflects on Kirk's death Turning Point USA’s “Professor Watchlist” tracks professors that some students see as leftist. A man on that list has spent years researching the group’s founder, Charlie Kirk, and is now worried abou...

While many admired Kirk for what they considered his support for dialog, others of his followers built experience at campaigns of networked harassment (see this link for more).

Understandably, some are returning to that toolset in their grief and horror at his murder.

www.wbur.org/hereandnow/2...

State Department warns immigrants not to mock Kirk's death Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau posted the warning on Thursday.

I am seeing a broad effort to search social media & pressure organizations to fire people who have said negative things about Charlie Kirk in recent days.

The State Department has also warned immigrants against "praising, rationalizing, or making light" of his death.

www.axios.com/2025/09/11/c...

Hi just a reminder that when something horrible and violent happens in the physical world, a LOT of people behind the scenes are making really difficult decisions (and yes, using tech tools that include AI).

Mistakes can and will happen, and with the amount of mis/disinfo happening makes it worse.

I actually visited UVU in June. As a professor, I'm trying not to be paralyzed with thoughts of the future. Asking myself:
- how to encourage peaceful disagreement on campuses
- how to protect freedom of expression from the backlash this will surely attract
- how to keep my students safe & hopeful

Conservative activist Charlie Kirk shot and killed at Utah college event Charlie Kirk, the CEO and co-founder of the conservative youth organization Turning Point USA, has died after being shot Wednesday at a Utah college event, President Donald Trump says.

Deeply shocked to read that Charlie Kirk has been killed while speaking at a campus event, & worried about what it forebodes. Universities shouldn't be places where people settle things with guns; they're places to settle disagreements with words & ideas.

apnews.com/article/char...