David Lazer

So much gerrymandering!
We know gerrymandering is bad for democratic representation, but new research suggests candidates campaigning in non-competitive districts campaign differently; using more moral & emotional language in tweets during primaries than those in more competitive districts 🧵

Money Doesn't Buy Elections. It Does Something Worse. Campaign ads barely move the needle. The real influence is hiding in plain sight.

"With only 18% coming from megadonors, Dems have a fundraising advantage among grassroots supporters that enabled them to outraise Republicans in 2024. Yet the party courts billionaires while campaigning against oligarchy," writes @adambonica.bsky.social. data4democracy.substack.com/p/money-does...

The decline of democracy in the US means you can’t visit the US if you commented on the decline of democracy in the US

Opinion | Looks Like the Supreme Court Will Continue to Overturn the 20th Century

I don’t write the headlines but I do like this one (post-Slaughter argument roundtable for @nytimes.com with @stevevladeck.bsky.social & @williambaude.bsky.social)

www.nytimes.com/2025/12/09/o...

Trust in science is low among minorities for a reason, research finds Researchers at Northeastern trace distrust of scientists among certain groups to massive gaps in representation within science itself.

David Lazer on the gaps in Americans’ trust in science—and how to address them—in this Northeastern Global News piece, based on a new Nature Human Behaviour paper (tinyurl.com/4tm8769p).

@davidlazer.bsky.social
news.northeastern.edu/2025/12/09/s...

More emphasis on first gen recruitment into sciences would help. Re divide, I think this is partially because of growing correlation between religiosity and class/rurality/partisanship. Something did change in aughts. For partial answer, check out: papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

IC2S2 2026 Speaker announcement displaying the image of Kate Starbird from the University of Washington with a background showing Lake Champlain in Vermont

Keynote Announcement!

We're thrilled to have Kate Starbird from the University of Washington's Department of Human Centered Design & Engineering speak at IC2S2 2026.

Registration is open with submissions opening on 12/15: ic2s2-2026.org

Can speed cameras make streets safer? Quasi-experimental evidence from New York City | PNAS Each year, approximately 40,000 people die in vehicle collisions in the United States, generating $340 billion in economic costs. To make roads saf...

Our new study provides rare causal evidence about NYC’s speed camera program. We find large reductions in collisions (30%) and injuries (16%) near intersections with cameras. www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1... @astagoff.bsky.social ky.social @brendenbeck.bsky.social nbeck.bsky.social 🧪

It is a free lunch of sorts; you get improved trust among the underrepresented, and not lower trust among the overrepresented.

Methodological caveats as always, esp re external validity; with great cast of authors, led by the inimitable Jamie Druckman.

Representation in science and trust in scientists in the USA - Nature Human Behaviour Druckman et al. document gaps in trust in scientists in the USA. People from groups less represented among scientists (for example, women and those with lower economic status) are less trusting. Incre...

Paper out today in @nathumbehav.nature.com:

1) those groups (women, African Americans, lower SES, rural) that are underrepresented in science have been less trusting of science.

2) If you improve representation in science, you improve trust among those groups.

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

The book is real! To celebrate, I will give out five copies to interested early career folks. DM if you’d like one.

Representation in science and trust in scientists in the USA - Nature Human Behaviour Druckman et al. document gaps in trust in scientists in the USA. People from groups less represented among scientists (for example, women and those with lower economic status) are less trusting. Incre...

New research from the #NetSI team + colleagues shows: groups with historically lower trust—women, Black people, rural and lower-income residents—trust scientists more when they share their identity. Greater representation across communities can boost trust in science.
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

LLM-driven bot infiltration: protecting web surveys through prompt injections Cost- and time-efficient web surveys potentially help covering the increasing survey data demand. However, since web surveys face low response rates, researchers consider social media platforms for...

New strategies to catch LLM powered bots in panel surveys www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Summer 2026 MSR-NYC-CSS internship opportunity for current PhD candidates! Purely academic position with possible projects around agentic markets, mapping public opinion, market for news, etc. Apply by January 9 for full consideration: apply.careers.microsoft.com/careers/job/...

The NYT, like the BBC, is a repeat offender on this front. They are two of the institutions in the world that can most afford to be generous with credit, and instead they are miserly.

My @techpolicypress.bsky.social piece about X’s DSA fine, and how it is NOT about censorship, is up.

It expands on points I made in a thread here, and adds context. Thanks to @justinhendrix.bsky.social for helping me pull it together!

America has identified its greatest enemy: Western Europe Trump's new National Security Strategy: what if groypers cosplayed George Kennan?

If you read one piece on Trump’s pernicious new National Security Strategy, read this by @himself.bsky.social

open.substack.com/pub/programm...

Research Intern - Computational Social Science | Microsoft Careers Research Interns put inquiry and theory into practice. Alongside fellow doctoral candidates and some of the world's best researchers, Research Interns learn, collaborate, and network for life. Researc...

Want to be an intern at Microsoft Research in the Computational Social Science group in NYC (Jake Hofman, David Rothschild, Dan Goldstein)

Follow this link and do your thing! Deadline approaching soonish!

apply.careers.microsoft.com/careers/job/...

| Knight First Amendment Institute

🚨JOB POSTING: The Institute seeks an accomplished nonprofit leader, strategist, and manager who is passionate about organizational excellence and the Institute’s mission to serve as its Chief of Staff. Details to apply here: knightcolumbia.org/page/chief-o...

US agency poised to ban worker 'noncompete' agreements The U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is expected on Tuesday to approve a rule that would ban agreements commonly signed by workers not to join their employers' competitors, which it says limit worker mobility and suppress their pay.

Do it. Do it. Do it.

"April 23 (Reuters) - The U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is expected on Tuesday to approve a rule that would ban agreements commonly signed by workers not to join their employers' competitors, which it says limit worker mobility and suppress their pay."

Platform-independent experiments on social media Changing algorithms with artificial intelligence tools can influence partisan animosity

@jennyallen.bsky.social and @jatucker.bsky.social
add a fantastic Perspective piece on the importance of platform-independent experiments on social media's impact on us: science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Strongly agree!

screenshot of the title and authors of the Science paper that are linked in the next post

Our new article in @science.org enables social media reranking outside of platforms' walled gardens.

We add an LLM-powered reranking of highly polarizing political content into N=1256 participants' feeds. Downranking cools tensions with the opposite party—but upranking inflames them.

Also: very little evidence of localization of search results, or left/right bias for Dems/Reps.

Many more details in the paper, of course. Kudos also to @zhen-guo.bsky.social @burakozturan.bsky.social @rer.bsky.social

The TLDR is that Google prioritizes a small number of domains (top 7 account for 64% of all results). Politician controlled content accounts for ~47% of results (Mostly House.gov + platform accounts.) News is lower ranked, where 99+% is from "reliable" sites. Roughly 2:1 local to nat'l news.

Happy to share our most recent paper, led by @allisonwan.bsky.social, auditing what domains Google shows when you search for a Member of Congress.

journalqd.org/article/view...

@journalqd.bsky.social

I hope people take two minutes to listen to this shocking display of bigotry. It brings clarity to what we are fighting against. We should all be sick to hear such un-American drivel from the President of the United States.

Americans are following the news less closely than they used to In 2016, 51% of U.S. adults said they followed the news all or most of the time, but that share fell to 36% in 2025.

Americans aren’t following the news as closely as they were a decade ago. And that’s true for older and younger Americans and Republicans and Democrats alike.

New today from Pew: www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/...

This just stepping WAY beyond the competence of both the author and the editors of the opinion section of the @nytimes.com, and yet it will be seen by so many influential people who will take it as fact.

Opinion | The Data on Self-Driving Cars Is Clear. We Have to Change Course.

It might be that autonomous cars will be a public health boon. But, we can't say that based on someone downloading Waymo data, spending "weeks" (!) looking at the data, & exclaiming that as fact in a @nytimes.com opinion piece. (Who needs @jama.com, I guess?)

www.nytimes.com/2025/12/02/o...

Pure, unmitigated hate.