Philipp Lorenz-Spreen

A recent YouGov poll found 45% support for admitting no new migrants and requiring large numbers to leave - but a deeper look suggests that most of this group don't actually want to remove those who make up the bulk of migrants to the UK 🧵/

yougov.co.uk/politics/art...

Applebaum on Autocracy Anne Applebaum warns that Sudan’s descent into chaos shows what happens when institutions fail—and why a free press is essential to prevent America from following the same path.

“For news organizations, the issue isn’t responsibility, but survival. Autocratic leaders don’t want evidence-based journalism of any kind to exist at all: They want to shape reality, to decide themselves what is true and false.” — @anneapplebaum.bsky.social

www.status.news/p/anne-apple...

Interesting paper that can extend to digital technologies generally and concludes:
“Understanding the consequences of actual AI for actual democracy, and figuring out how to steer toward the better rather than the worse outcomes, will require new kinds of cooperation than the ones we have today.”

AI and Democratic Publics

New paper in our AI & Dem Freedoms series: @himself.bsky.social and @hahrie.bsky.social argue that the existing paradigm of democracy driving scholarship about its relationship to #AI highlights the wrong questions, and that we should focus on enduring democratic publics and collective behavior.

The number "#3" next to an icon of a thermometer with a plus next to it. Above both, the newsletters release day is shown: 31.07.2025

It’s been a while — but our newsletter is finally here!

In this edition, we skip the “risk in focus” to bring you:
🛠️ An update on what we’ve been doing
📊 Our top 5 insights data access highlights
🗓️ An overview of upcoming calls, workshops, and ongoing surveys

dsa40collaboratory.eu/newsletters/...

PSA on links: On Bluesky, there’s no limit to the number of links you can share, and they will receive the same visibility as your other posts 💙

Register to the #DSA40 Data Access days today before we reach maximum capacity!
Join us in Berlin, September 25 & 26 - to connect and collaborate around DSA-based data access!
More info here: dsa40collaboratory.eu/data-access-...

*JOB* join us at @gesis.org to work on new approaches for making data from online platforms usable for (computational) social science. Feel free to reach out to @sebstier.bsky.social or me for details about this position.

This comment is the brief spiritual successor to our preprint (linked below) in which we argue much ado within debates over causal effects of social media stems from failing to account for the assumptions required by RCTs.

arxiv.org/abs/2505.09254

🚀 New postdoc position for Platform Data & Computational Social Science
Join us to drive @gesis.org' efforts around the Digital Services Act (DSA) and conduct research with online platform data
💼 TV-L EG 14 | Location: Cologne
📌 Apply now: www.gesis.org/en/institute...
#DSA #CSS #DataScience

Methodological considerations for social media intervention studies

Perspective by Mariek M. P. Vanden Abeele, Stephen L. Murphy, Laura Lemahieu & Ernst H. W. Koster

🚨FREE🚨web access (with registration) until Aug 28: go.nature.com/45cerHT
PDF: rdcu.be/eyaz8

What’s in a correlation? Correlation may not imply causation, but let’s just ignore that for a second. Correlations are standardized effect size metrics and as such have some quirks by design. These are benign enough when you...

New blog post! Calculating a correlation is easy enough. But let's say you calculated two of them and they happen to differ. What follows from that? Turns out there are too many moving parts for an easy answer.

www.the100.ci/2025/07/28/w...

That’s a wrap on IC2S2’25! 🎉 Thank you for an unforgettable week of ideas and discussions. Congratulations to our award winners, and safe travels home. Mark your calendars: #ic2s2 ’ 26 heads to Burlington, Vermont, in the US. See you next year!

You can still vote for your favorite poster today. Use the opportunity during the lunch break or the scheduled poster session. The poll will close early today, at 2:30pm!
Make your voice heard! #ic2s2

GESIS Fall Seminar in CSS Advanced Methods for Social Network Analysis 15 to 19 September | Online Lorien Jasny (University of Exeter)

Test hypotheses on network structures & model static/dynamic networks using (T)ERGMs & SAOM—learn with Lorien Jasny in our online #GESISfallseminar course!🧠📊

Register Now 👉 t1p.de/AdvancedSNA

#SNA #TERGM #SAOM #NetworkScience #QuantMethods

@gesis.org

Wer beim Forschungsdatenzugang jetzt liefern muss Das letzte Puzzlestück für den Forschungszugang für nicht öffentlich verfügbare Plattformdaten ist da. Die Aufgaben für DSCs, Forschende und Plattformen sind nun klar verteilt. Die Wissenschaftler:inn...

„Wer beim Forschungsdatenzugang jetzt liefern muss” –
@lkseiling.bsky.social, @dscheykopp.bsky.social,
@claesdevreese.bsky.social & @ulrikeklinger.bsky.social heute im @tspbackground.bsky.social:

🔗 t1p.de/zf6pa ⬅️

#dsa @dsa40collaboratory.bsky.social

Thank you for a fascinating keynote on qualitative methods in CSS ‪@lauraknelson.bsky.social‬
Inspiring #ic2s2

…this requires transparency, expertise and action by civil society and politics. There is no easy way out: if we don’t properly understand the systems and co-shape them (with regulation or alternatives), others will do it to gain power. Just because things are moving fast we can’t give that up.

I think we are walking into the same traps with AI as we did with social media: information technologies are making new areas and scales available, but they are not neutral but built by people and companies for certain goals and won’t just magically align with democratic values or well-being, … 1/2

@some4dem.bsky.social researchers @eckolb.bsky.social and @pournaki.bsky.social presenting their work at #ic2s2 on measuring political realignment in Switzerland and extracting conflicting narratives from polarized debates on social media.

Important longitudinal trends here, is this the direction we want to move?

I don’t have the answer, but those results help us as a society to (finally) have debates about how the digital public sphere should work and start shaping it. Data like this is crucial to have an empirical foundation👇

Visiting Norrköping for @ic2s2.bsky.social #IC2S2 this week? Here's a little unofficial local guide to food, coffee (all within 5mns walk!) & activities—compiled by someone who lives here!
(1/6)

#ic2s2 getting started!
A grand hall for a grand opening.

Unsurprisingly LLMs make up their own strong topic among conference presentations. But amazing to see that CSS still maintains an identity and topical diversity beyond that!

@ic2s2.bsky.social

With record-breaking submissions and our most competitive, gender-balanced program on record, #IC2S2’25 has officially started! Please check the updated program and plan your day. #ic2s2

screenshot of the group website https://css-synosys.github.io/

Our team "Computational Social Science" at SynoSys is growing! Welcome @baottruong.bsky.social and Ezequiel Lopez-Lopez!

At the moment, they are all @ic2s2.bsky.social, say hi get to know their research.

And check out our website: css-synosys.github.io

We had amazing tutorial sessions today! Enjoy the rest of the conference and your stay in Norrköping. Opening remarks start tomorrow at 08:45 at De Geerhallen. The online program has been updated. Check the latest schedule to make sure you don’t miss out. See you tomorrow! #ic2s2

Looking forward to #ic2s2 where I'll present some of our latest work from the @some4dem.bsky.social project:
- Conflicting narratives and polarization (Tue in Pol.Narratives II 2:30pm)
- A political cartography of news sharing (Tue, poster)
- Issue alignment and polarization on Twitter (Thu, poster)

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?

Excited to co-organize the Bridging Human and LLM Annotations for Social Science tutorial at #ic2s2 tomorrow!

Join us at 1:30pm CEST to learn how to combine Qualtrics+Prolific, MTurk, & LLMs for automated annotation and valid estimates.

Code&materials: github.com/kristinaglig...

Also at @ic2s2.bsky.social this week? Eager to connect with the 🦋 community? Check out this custom feed tracking IC2S2 mentions:

bsky.app/profile/did:...