Tina Law

Editors in social movements research

All the social movements editors fit to #CBSM2025. Second day of the mini conference starts strong. #ASA2025

Aldon Morris speaking and Donnatella della Porta on the virtual screen

Opening plenary at the CBSM 2025 miniconference. Inspirational talks by Aldon Morris and Donnatella della Porta.

It is a great day to get all nerdy about social movements research! Plenary session of the mini conference starts in half an hour at #CBSM2025. There is also coffee ☕! See you all soon #ASA2025

A screenshot of the Sociological Methods & Research website showing the special issue title

I’m delighted to share that the August 2025 special issue of Sociological Methods & Research on Generative AI is out now. Along with my co-editor, Daniel Karell, we put together this issue to build on the conference we organized last year.

Here's a thread on each of the ten papers:

A mini update on the #varyCSS informal meetup: Let’s aim to meet in the outdoor space on the lower level. If it rains, we’ll relocate to the lower level indoors. #IC2S2

#varyCSS is such a great initiative and has been really helpful to avoid manels. I highly recommend people check out this meetup at #IC2S2 to learn more and connect.

Looking forward to being part of this 🖼️ Image as Data panel at #ic2s2 on Tuesday! I'll be presenting my recent SMR article w/ @emroberto.bsky.social on how generative multimodal models can be used for large-scale image analysis in the social sciences.

Pls share widely!

I've been spending the summer taking stock of the growing, maturing field of qualitative computational methods (compu/qual? quali-quant?). This subfield is now a powerhouse, and I'll be sharing my reflections at #IC2S2 on the state of the field, ongoing (fierce!) debates, and possible futures?

A picture of the toronto skyline

🚨 Job alert: The Department of Sociology at the University of Toronto is hiring an Assistant Professor in the Sociology of Race and Ethnicity.
jobs.utoronto.ca/job/Toronto-...

I'll be at ASA and would be happy to chat with interested candidates. Please share widely! #Socsky

Assistant, Associate or Full Professor, AI & Society The Department of AI and Society (AIS) at the University at Buffalo (UB) invites candidates to apply for multiple positions as Assistant Professor, Associate Professor, or Full Professor. The new AIS ...

UB's new Department of AI and Society is hiring faculty across ranks (Assistant, Associate, Full Professor). We’re looking for transdisciplinary scholars interested in building AI by society, for society. Start dates begin Fall 2025.

More info: www.ubjobs.buffalo.edu/postings/57734

I am sitting in front of flower garden holding a copy of my new book, BORN IN FLAMES.

First book, first garden! Just got my author copies of BORN IN FLAMES, out from @wwnorton.com on August 19th.

Measuring Conflict in Local Politics Mirya Holman1 , Rebecca Johnson2 , and Tyler Simko3

It’s publication day!!🎊 In a new Urban Affairs Review @urbanaffairsreview.bsky.social piece, Rebecca Johnson, Tyler Simko @simko.bsky.social & I ask: How do you measure conflict in local politics in the United States?
journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

A data feminist approach to urban data practice: Tenant power through eviction data Acknowledging the role of data in reproducing (and disrupting) existing power relationships, this article argues data feminism is a useful intervention in data practice for planners and others inte...

It's been online for awhile, but I'm excited that this article with @eloralee.bsky.social @drkatehowell.bsky.social and @benfteresa.bsky.social is now in a printed issue.

"A data feminist approach to urban data practice: Tenant power through eviction data" www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

School of Engineering and Applied Sciences We are a vibrant and diverse community of researchers, innovators and entrepreneurs. We collaborate to discover new knowledge, educate tomorrow's leaders, and solve the most pressing challenges facing...

UB is starting an AI and Society Department. The first job positing is for a postdoc position (F26 or S27 start).

engineering.buffalo.edu/home/researc...

Please reach out if you have questions!

Keep your promises, even when your peers do not: a survey experiment on the influence of social media on trust This study measures the effect of partisan and polarizing social media messages on political trust and trustworthiness in Brazil and Mexico. We implemented two survey experiments with approximately...

New publication out with Natalia Aruguete, @ecalvo68.bsky.social and Carlos Scartascini.

Do polarizing political tweets make us less trustworthy?
Not quite. But they do make us trust others less.

Our article shows how social media erodes trust, even when we stay principled.

🧵1/

Associations Between Negative Social Ties and Accelerated Biological Aging, Inflammation, and Multiple Morbidities Negative social ties, or "difficult ties," are pervasive yet understudied components of social networks that may accelerate biological aging and morbidity. Using ego-centric network data and DNA methy...

"That one toxic friend" might be aging you faster!

Our new working paper shows that negative social ties are common and linked to faster epigenetic aging, higher inflammation, and poorer mental and physical health.

Link: www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1...

1/ I am excited to share my new article with Adam Goldstein in the American Journal of Sociology. We harmonized a set of historical public opinion data from 1966-2013 to investigate the shifting bases of inequality perceptions in the United States. www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/...

Abstract for "Generative Multimodal Models for Social Science: An Application with Satellite and Streetscape Imagery" by Tina Law and Elizabeth Roberto

New article w/ @emroberto.bsky.social out in SMR! We introduce a framework for analyzing images 🖼️ with generative multimodal models and provide an empirical application using satellite and street images. journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

Updating “The Future of Coding”: Qualitative Coding with Generative Large Language Models Nga Than, Leanne Fan, Tina Law, Laura K. Nelson, and Leslie McCall. Abstract Over the past decade, social scientists have adapted computational methods for qualitative text analysis, with the hope that they can match the accuracy and reliability of hand coding. The emergence of GPT and open-source generative large language models (LLMs) has transformed this process by shifting from programming to engaging with models using natural language, potentially mimicking the in-depth, inductive, and/or iterative process of qualitative analysis. We test the ability of generative LLMs to replicate and augment traditional qualitative coding, experimenting with multiple prompt structures across four closed- and open-source generative LLMs and proposing a workflow for conducting qualitative coding with generative LLMs. We find that LLMs can perform nearly as well as prior supervised machine learning models in accurately matching hand-coding output. Moreover, using generative LLMs as a natural language interlocutor closely replicates traditional qualitative methods, indicating their potential to transform the qualitative research process, despite ongoing challenges.

Figure 1: Researcher-LLM-Researcher workflow. Circular diagram, starting at the top with Box 1: Design Coding Task (Researcher), moving clockwise to Box 2: Initial Text Classifiation (LLMs), going through high agreement to Validation (Researcher) and low agreement to Examine Ambiguous Cases (Researcher) in Box 3, then Box 4: Iterative Coding or Task Refinement (Researcher). Circling back to Box 1.

Our article, with Nga Than, Leanne Fan, @tinalaw.bsky.social and Leslie McCall @stone-lis.bsky.social, proposes a framework (image 2) to (carefully) incorporate LLMs into the qualitative coding process.

But read the entire issue, if it's your jam.

journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10....

NLP 4 Democracy - COLM 2025

📣 Super excited to organize the first workshop on ✨NLP for Democracy✨ at COLM @colmweb.org!!

Check out our website: sites.google.com/andrew.cmu.e...

Call for submissions (extended abstracts) due June 19, 11:59pm AoE

#COLM2025 #LLMs #NLP #NLProc #ComputationalSocialScience

Postdoctoral Research Fellow on Literature and Generative AI at the Center for Digital Narrative (280778) | University of Bergen Job title: Postdoctoral Research Fellow on Literature and Generative AI at the Center for Digital Narrative (280778), Employer: University of Bergen, Deadline: Sunday, June 15, 2025

We're hiring a postdoc (4 years) for the AI STORIES project and are looking for someone who is interested in using computational and qualitative methods to explore generative AI and literature. www.jobbnorge.no/en/available...

Sage Journals: Discover world-class research Subscription and open access journals from Sage, the world's leading independent academic publisher.

My newest paper, The Character of Connection: Platform Affordances and Connective Democracy, is now out in Social Media + Society!

This work was done in collaboration with fantastic @rutgerscomminfo.bsky.social PhD student Eunbin Ha

journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

A row of speakers (an Asian woman in a white shirt, a white woman in a black blazer and green shirt, a man with beard and glasses in a blue shirt, and a man in a grey blazer) in front of a screen with their images and names and the title "Tutorial on Ethics in CPS/IOT: Systems That Make Sense."

A great discussion of AI governance last week as part of CPS-IoT Week at @ucirvine.bsky.social.

New paper with Rebecca Johnson (@rebeccaj.bsky.social) on parental perceptions of using algorithms to allocate scarce resources in schools, now out in Sociological Science (@sociologicalsci.bsky.social):

Thank you to this stellar team of grad students for organizing this panel! And thanks to ACM/IEEE for taking the initiative to bring social science insights to the CS community in this way--these interactions are awesome and much-needed.

Really enjoyed chatting about AI ethics and governance at the ACM/IEEE CPS/IoT Week at UC Irvine

Do you field online surveys and experiments? Ever get back text responses that look unusually diplomatic and polished?

In this paper, now out at Sociological Methods & Research, we study the emerging use of AI among online study participants.

Now out in Sociological Methods & Research

We argue that one of the most important use cases of generative LLMs for social scientists is transforming unstructured content into structured data.

Our article shows how to do that — and what can go wrong.

Can Language Models Represent the Past without Anachronism? Before researchers can use language models to simulate the past, they need to understand the risk of anachronism. We find that prompting a contemporary model with examples of period prose does not pro...

New preprint from @lauraknelson.bsky.social, @mattwilkens.bsky.social, and myself tests different ways of simulating the past with LLMs. We don't fully answer the title question here—just show that simple strategies based on prompting and fine-tuning are insufficient. +