andyguess

Under Siege From Trump and Musk, a Top Liberal Group Falls Into Crisis

FTC and Musk are working to sue Media Matters out of existence. A real canary in the coalmine moment for civil society.

www.nytimes.com/2025/07/25/u...

Deeply reported story by @stephaniemlee.bsky.social, on the impact of grant terminations — even for those who have managed to get their awards reinstated

“I do not trust 100 percent,” one researcher said, “that there won’t be another termination.”

Anyway, I know it's not news that Trump is hypocritical, but here's my story reminding people that MAGA world insisted that the Biden admin sending impolite notes to Facebook was the greatest threat to free speech, but are completely silent on Trump calling up Murdoch and demanding he kill a story

Will Meet The Press ask random other white politicians to condemn Trump's antisemitic language this weekend? Or does that only apply to Mamdani?

It’s weird how the white conservative guys at the NYT get to say whatever they want but anyone else has to watch what they say because it’s “too political”

A nice complement to this paper by @aecoppock.bsky.social and @andyguess.com alexandercoppock.com/guess_coppoc..., which found no evidence of backlash from one-sided counter-attitudinal information

Not surprising that an administration that rose to power on the spread of bullshit and propaganda is terminating the funding of researchers studying these phenomena. We are just receiving word about funding cancellations re: existing grants to members of our team and our colleagues.

GERDA: The German Election Database - Scientific Data Scientific Data - GERDA: The German Election Database

Out now! "GERDA: The German Election Database." GERDA provides comprehensive municipal, state, and federal election results at the municipality level between 1990 and 2021.

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

We hang together or we hang separately. Could not be clearer what is happening and how universities must respond.

Every single university president should be asked, in public, why they are not speaking out this way to support all the students currently detained without due process, and all those terrified that they will be next, on every campus in this country. Yes, including Columbia's acting president.

If we were conquered and under hostile occupation, what would the government do differently? Would an occupation government that wanted to crush the United States as a vibrant, prosperous country with influence around the world do anything differently?

Former Columbia president Lee Bollinger, interviewed by the Chronicle earlier this month, said universities should think in centuries and consider what they might look back on in shame; apparently Columbia’s current leadership considered the question and decided they’re content submitting to a king.

Reminder that 'savvy' political fact checkers spent the entire campaign telling voters that Trump was not going to do the things he obviously was going to do.

I'm sure this is the last time they'll ever threaten Columbia's funding. So rest easy. It's not like Donald Trump to keep on threatening the same person or entity over and over and over and over and over and over and over again. I don't think the sets any precedent. 🙄

me for the next 4 years

As Vance 'lectures' Europe on free speech, it is good to be reminded that the United States ranks 55 (!) on the World Press Freedom Index.

The top 10 countries are ALL in Europe.

#journalism #democracy #freepress

rsf.org/en/index

I really wish Americans would stop treating the continued existence of Canada as the sort of thing they can do amusing thought experiments about.

ACADEMIC WORKERS UNITE! DEFEND PUBLIC RESEARCH FUNDING JOIN THE NATIONAL DAY OF ACTION FEBRUARY 19, 4:00PM WASHINGTON SQUARE PARK

ACTION THIS WEDNESDAY: Researchers from New York universities are holding a rally to protest the funding cuts at Washington Square Park at 4 pm.

This will be part of a national day of action, with rallies at HHS in DC and all around the country.

RSVP HERE: docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...

It is vitally important that journalists speak to comparativists who study authoritarian takeovers, like @kimlanelaw.bsky.social, and not just to people whose expertise is in US domestic law and politics.

A pretty wide range of people is interviewed in that piece, and it encompasses numerous critiques — some of which I think are consistent with points raised in the thread. Which parts specifically do you consider to be nonsense?

Excited to share my new #JEPS paper with @xiaoxiaoshen.bsky.social introducing ReChat, a research tool for live-text interaction studies! Makes it easy to embed live chats in surveys, opening new possibilities for research on social interaction. Check it out! 🧵👇
#AcademicSky #PoliSciSky #PoliSky

Brendan Carr Makes It Clear That He’s Eager To Be America’s Top Censor When Donald Trump announced that he was appointing current FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr to be the next chair of the FCC, it was no surprise. Nor was it a surprise that Trump tried to play up that …

At long last, my stupidly long post on how Brendan Carr is aiming to be America's top censor.

www.techdirt.com/2024/11/27/b...

ICYMI yesterday: Sen. Markey called on Meta to recommit itself to transparency, data sharing, and ongoing research to study its platforms' effects on elections and democracy.

www.markey.senate.gov/imo/media/do...

FIRE is currently going to bat for Wax because, according to them, there’s no evidence that she ever engaged in actual discriminatory conduct. meanwhile i took one semester of civil procedure with her and remember like 5-6 specific racist incidents directed at students.

We should attack transphobia head-on simply because it is a disgusting ideology, but if that's not enough for you, it's a system of control that stems from a patriarchal assumption about what a woman "should" be whose natural end is rigid gender roles upheld by state violence. Which seems bad!

the attacks on Ella Emhoff (as well as Lin Yu-ting and Imane Khalif) are part of what trans people have correctly warned about for a long time: the rise in transphobia will target cis women too.

A foghorn not a dog whistle. Could not be more explicit.

Opponents of Academic Freedom Get History Wrong The classical education that conservatives claim to be protecting actually necessitates academic freedom.

time.com/6995389/acad...

We're pleased to announce the publication of our first special issue in collaboration with ICWSM!

This special issue aims to build bridges between scholarly communities engaging in the study of digital media.

See here for more on the 8 fantastic papers in this series: journalqd.org/announcement...

Opinion | The Student-Led Protests Aren’t Perfect. That Doesn’t Mean They’re Not Right. There might be problems in the student protest movement for Gaza, but they are not misguided in their goals.

I spent the past week hanging around the student protests in New York City, trying to square the madness on social media with what I was seeing with my own eyes. Here's what I found. www.nytimes.com/2024/04/26/o...