New paper @jhppl.bsky.social (w/ Michael Shepherd & Alee Lockman) where we find Americans who grew up (socialized) in rural areas are more likely to own guns, support the NRA, & hold more conservative firearm policy attitudes over the lifespan, even after moving away. 1/
doi.org/10.1215/0361...
with Matt Baum, James Druckman, @ognyanova.bsky.social & CHIP50 team.
A bit higher levels of disapproval of ICE enforcement than Trump's policies (53 to 32 disapproving)
Same for deporting undocumented immigrants who have been in US for many years, have jobs, & have no criminal record (47 to 30 disapproving)
& much more in the report...
Big racial/ethnic splits, with white respondents evenly split, and every non-white group 2:1 or more disapproving.
Big gender splits (women 55 to 31 disapproving)
Large generational splits (18-24 year olds 62 to 24 opposed)
Big SES splits (lower SES much less approving)
Check out CHIP50's most recent report, looking at immigration attitudes!
Key takeaways:
People lean towards strong disapproval, 49% to 37%, with enormous partisan divides. Independents disapprove about 2:1.
www.chip50.org/reports/amer...
I am gonna double down on this a little: the reaction of many senior academics to fairly banal LLM takes like ‘they’re useful tools’ is extremely unbecoming, & would, if I was your graduate student or junior colleague, actively make me feel like I had to either lie to you or de facto hobble myself
This is exactly it. And I would emphasize one other thing: we, society, *will* figure out a better way to incorporate these tools into workflows. It's absolutely chaotic right now, with a ton of misuse. We're in a transition phase and we will figure it out. Right now is the most chaotic it will be.
We posted lots of great research about Buddhists today at @pewresearch.org
www.pewresearch.org/religion/202...
www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/...
www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/...
I'm suing Grammarly over its paid AI feature that presented editing suggestions as if they came from me - and many other writers and journalists - without consent.
State law requires consent before someone's name can be used for commercial purposes.
www.wired.com/story/gramma...
Indeed, our data suggests a very substantial reversal. Interestingly, Trump, _gained_ (a little) ground with high SES voters, while losing w/everyone else, more with low SES, younger, nonwhite voters.
Dismantling the fledgling harm-reduction effort, defense analysts say, is among several ways the Trump administration has reorganized national security around two principles: more aggression, less accountability
www.propublica.org/article/trum...
I think that there clearly has been a long term realignment around education (starting well before Trump, but setting the stage for him). But a lot of shifts in 2024 around younger and nonwhite voters seem ephemeral, and driven by the spike in the cost of living...
A few people have asked for the syllabus from my grad seminar on Generative AI for social science -- just posted it here:
statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2026/03/10/n...
This is the way a lot of us would like to think we would respond to hostile questions in a Congressional hearing, but its rare to see a witness just turn the tables on a Senator like this.
I am excited about this new paper, Negativity & Misinformation, just out with @cbwlezien.bsky.social in @polcommjournal.bsky.social: "durable biases in information processing, by media organizations and humans more generally, can produce misinformation and misperceptions..." doi.org/10.1080/1058...
Interesting paper. When science is cheap, multiverse analysis becomes the key abstraction for authors & journals to strategize for.
These results suggest its the new unit of evidence authoring & review should accommodate.
Related to some of my comments here: substack.com/@jessicahull...
In this systematic review and meta-analysis of up to 153 longitudinal studies:
Social media use was associated with higher depression, behavioral problems, self-injury, and substance use, and lower self-perception and academic achievement tinyurl.com/47z3anym
APSA Centennial Center Research Grant applications are due Sunday!
The #CCRG Spring cycle provides support for APSA #members who are contingent or #communitycollege faculty, #faculty in non-PhD departments, and #gradstudents.
The new application deadline is March 15th! buff.ly/A3Bxsbm
I'm giving the upcoming Online Causal Inference Seminar, this Tuesday 11:30am Eastern.
I'll be talking about different dose–response functions you might want to estimate when treatment effects may spill over from one unit to another.
Tune in & ask questions!
sites.google.com/view/ocis/home
🧵 Some personal news:
My new book, ON COURAGE – with Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist @juliaangwin.com – is available for pre-order NOW (out June 30).
It’s a deeply reported manual with sixteen lessons for how each of us can defy authoritarianism.
Pre-order: www.harpercollins.com/products/on-...
ICYMI, @thecoalition.bsky.social @knightcolumbia.org & @protectdemocracy.org filed a new First Amendment lawsuit earlier today challenging the Trump admin's denial of visas to tech researchers, tech workers, fact-checkers. Here's a post explaining why we're suing. mailchi.mp/knightcolumb...
Join us next week Friday, March 20, for a presentation by @leticiabode.bsky.social and @pfchap.bsky.social on "Better Access: A Framework for Accessing High-Influence Public Platform Data". Registration required via events.gwdg.de/event/1260/
Even if the destruction somehow stopped today, it will take years to rebuild.
A Berlin court has ordered X to grant researchers API access under the Digital Services Act. Daniela Alvarado Rincón, Simone Ruf and Jürgen Bering explain how they won the case, and why it’s a major step for researcher data access.
An analysis of over 14 million social media posts from accounts in Canada found that 87% of conspiratorial claims come from just 100 influencers.
This minority of users impacts politics, influencing what people view as normal and leads to self-censoring to avoid attacks from conspiracy theorists.
I wrote it up here, with a picture of a mockingbird, and links to data and code.
/2
New post: Can AI Replace Social Science Researchers? (No. No it can't. Come on, now.)
davekarpf.beehiiv.com/p/can-ai-rep...
This is a good post. Highly recommend it as a companion to my earlier writing regardless of where you personally stand on the issue.
When I'm not doing congressional communications analyses I'm working on making sure each generation gets to know our system of government and their power in it.
Today we got some neat recognition!
