David Lazer

Cool new study: "staffers account for 40% of the differences in the number of bills written between high-performing and low-performing offices" in Congress and "moderate extreme offices within a party"
andrew-kao.github.io/files/Staffe...

The Mothership Vortex: An Investigation Into the Firm at the Heart of the Democratic Spam Machine How a single consulting firm extracted $282 million from a network of spam PACs while delivering just $11 million to actual campaigns.

The annoying spam texts destroying the Democratic brand:

$678M raised through those spam tactics

$282M to one consulting firm: Mothership Strategies.

$11M to actual campaigns (1.6%)

The party isn’t just treating donors like marks—it’s being fleeced itself yet continues to back Mothership.

Open Call for Expressions of Interest in Max Planck Directorships: Expressions of interest can be submitted until 31 October 2025.

Director at Max Planck - a unique position! The Open Call for Expressions of Interest in Max Planck Directorships is open now and can be submitted by the 31st of October 2025. ➡️ mpg.de/directors - Please share the Open Call among potential candidates.

AAPOR Statement on the Removal of BLS Commissioner McEntarfer - AAPOR On behalf of the American Association for Public Opinion Research (AAPOR), we write to express deep concern regarding the removal of the Commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), Erika McE...

AAPOR Statement on the Removal of BLS Commissioner McEntarfer aapor.org/statements/a...

Authoritarians are attacking universities. Here's how it's going at one public school. I'm publicly documenting an event timeline to help bring order to the chaotic nature of events and help other schools plan the responses they are likely going to need.

I made an event timeline to try to make sense of all the federal overreach at @georgemasonu.bsky.social and whoo boy. When you lay it out like this, the executive over reach comes into focus. open.substack.com/pub/misofact...

"But what universities are learning, that authoritarian scholars already know and have been saying, is that complying with illegitimate attacks does not make them stop—it makes them continue"

Super useful timeline of the attacks on GMU

Important inside perspective from @jenvictor.bsky.social on what’s happening at GMU

On HKS Misinformation Review @davidlazer.bsky.social and others find that information quality on X decreased -- at least when measured in terms of NewsGuard reliability scores of the domains being shared -- after Elon Musk's acquisition of the platform

misinforeview.hks.harvard.edu/article/decl...

fwiw, I think the only logical response to this is to abolish course evaluations

the potential for abuse is just too large

Oral Argument Transcripts are Now on CourtListener! With our new Transcripts feature for Oral Arguments, you can search and monitor anything said in a circuit court case.

New! CourtListener now has AI-generated transcripts of more than three million minutes of circuit court oral argument recordings. You can:
✅ Search the full text of the recordings
✅ Set custom alerts and make custom podcasts
✅ Follow along with transcripts

Learn more here:
free.law/2025/07/31/o...

Agree with others that the Brown settlement is far uglier than when first presented

The policing of professors' course evaluations will open up Brown faculty to meritless harassment, retaliation, and abuse

And no doubt about it, policing professors' course evaluations will chill classroom speech

Genuinely failing to see how any of this has to do with, or addresses, campus antisemitism

Opinion | Trump Moves to Silence a New Target

Boycotts can be an powerful tool for political change. They helped end apartheid and even helped pushed Elon Musk out of govt.

So the Trump Admin is trying back-door efforts to curtail the ability to boycott. My latest for @nytopinion.nytimes.com (gift link)

www.nytimes.com/2025/07/30/o...

Shout out to the WSJ journalists who reported on Vought’s impoundment by footnote, causing the White House to walk it back. Impact journalism!!

Joint statement by a broad coalition of rightsholders regarding the AI Act implementation measures adopted by the European Commission EPC joins a broad coalition of European and global authors, performers, publishers, producers and other rightsholder organisations, to formally express our dissatisfaction with the published GPAI Code...

Commission pushed ahead despite calls for a pause (including from some big European companies), got key EU tech companies and most of the large US ones to sign the voluntary Code, but judging from this statement they lost much of the creative industries along the way www.epceurope.eu/post/joint-s...

Quote from the article by author Kim Lane Scheppele: “Appeasing a bully only empowers the bully – and he will be back for more.”

Columbia agreed to a settlement with the Trump administration over claims that it allegedly violated federal anti-discrimination laws.

KIM LANE SCHAPPELE (kimlanelaw.bsky.social‬) on "regulation by deal" and what it means for the future of universities. verfassungsblog.de/trump-univer...g/

What about debriefings in Misinformation Research?

✅ Only specific debriefings reduce belief in false info
⚠️ Both slightly reduce belief in true info
🧠 Only specific boosts perceived learning
🟢 Only general reduces manipulation & frustration
🔍 Both increase transparency

osf.io/preprints/ps...

This is good news for debriefings in misinformation research:

Debriefings that include fact-checks of the false claims used in the experiment reduce false beliefs, improve attitudes towards the study, and show no signs of negative effects.

👉 osf.io/preprints/ps...

Feedback much welcomed :)

PolNet-PaCSS Annoucing the 18th Annual Political Networks and Computational Social Science Conference (PolNet-PaCSS), Hosted by Harvard University and Northeastern University. Workshops: August 11-12, 2025 Panel...

In case you missed it, the Polnet/PaCSS program is posted: sites.google.com/view/confpol...

Candidates Be Posting: Multi-Platform Strategies and Partisan Preferences in the 2022 U.S. Midterm Elections - Josephine Lukito, Maggie Macdonald, Bin Chen, Megan A. Brown, Stephen Prochaska, Yunkang ... In this multi-platform, comparative study, we analyze social media messages from political candidates (N = 1,517) running for Congress during the 2022 U.S. Midt...

🚨New publication in Social Media + Society🚨

Candidates Be Posting: Multi-Platform Strategies and Partisan Preferences in the 2022 U.S. Midterm Elections

And it's open access!

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

🚨Successfully Navigating the Disruption AI will Bring to Survey Research🚨 w/ research, verification, transparency, collaboration, survey research can thrive through disruption isi-iass.org/home/wp-cont... w/ @davidlazer.bsky.social @stephnie.bsky.social TrentBuskirk SunshineHillygus FraukeKreuter

The European Commission says it did not make any concessions to the US regarding Big Tech laws, such as DSA, DMA and the AI Act.

'There's absolutely no commitment on digital regulation," says a senior official. "We very strongly defended and safeguard our right to regulate."

DomainDemo: a dataset of domain-sharing activities among different demographic groups on Twitter - Scientific Data Scientific Data - DomainDemo: a dataset of domain-sharing activities among different demographic groups on Twitter

ICYMI, our DomainDemo dataset, which describes how different demographic groups share domains on Twitter, is now available to download!

📄 Data descriptor: doi.org/10.1038/s415...
📈 Interactive app to explore the data: domaindemo.info
💽 Dataset: doi.org/10.5281/zeno...

Reform Jewish Movement Statement on Starvation in Gaza July 27, 2025 - The ongoing crisis in Gaza is a devastating reminder of the immense human cost of war. Nearly two years into Israel's war against Hamas, Israelis are still waiting for the return of their loved ones held hostage, and innocent Palestinians are caught in a mounting humanitarian catastrophe. Hamas has repeatedly demonstrated its willingness to sacrifice the Palestinian people in its pursuit of Israel's destruction, but Israel must not sacrifice its own moral standing in return. Neither escalating military pressure nor restricting humanitarian aid has brought Israel closer to securing a hostage deal or ending the war. While long-delayed and not-yet-certain to be more effective than previous efforts, we are encouraged by Saturday night's announcement that the Israeli military would revive the practice of dropping aid from airplanes and make it easier for aid convoys, including those from the UN's World Food Program, to move through Gaza along "designated humanitarian corridors," and to temporarily cease fighting in Gaza for a humanitarian pause. No one should be unaffected by the pervasive hunger experienced by thousands of Gazans. No one should spend the bulk of their time arguing technical definitions between starvation and pervasive hunger. The situation is dire, and it is deadly. Nor should we accept arguments that because Hamas is the primary reason many Gazans are either starving or on the verge of starving, that the Jewish State is not also culpable in this human disaster. The primary moral response must begin with anguished hearts in the face of such a large-scale human tragedy. Our tradition teaches that all people are created b tzelem Elohim — in the image of God. One consequence of this is the moral priority, which is affirmed throughout the Bible and rabbinic tradition, of feeding the hungry - both for the individual and for the self-governing Jewish community. More than a few members of t…

Despite PM Netanyahu's calls to ignore these full members of his cabinet, their presence in this government has consistently morally compromised Israel's actions. Starving Gazan civilians neither will bring Israel the "total victory" over Hamas it seeks, nor can it be justified by Jewish values or humanitarian law. It's hard to imagine that this tragic approach will bring home the 50 remaining hostages, including the 20 who we pray are still alive. It's imperative that the Government of Israel ensures that the recently announced plans to deliver humanitarian aid succeed as Israel works with international partners to ensure its safe and sustained delivery and do whatever possible to reduce or eliminate the shootings and other injuries sustained at food distribution centers. We applaud Israel's green light for foreign nations to resume providing humanitarian aid to the Gaza population desperate for food and are confident that they will do all they can to ensure that such aid does not fall into the hands of Hamas. As Israel has effective control of 70% of Gaza, with the intent to remain in significant swaths of it, even if only temporarily, it should be directly involved, facilitate and cooperate with the international community, international humanitarian NGOs, and regional friends, to take urgently needed actions, such as these suggested by Israeli Reform rabbi and Member of Knesset Gilad Kariv: • To prevent the alarming number of civilian deaths in and around the food and humanitarian aid distribution sites. • Opening a significant number of food distribution centers at various locations across the Gaza Strip. • Large-scale entry of infant formula (especially liquid formula) and ensuring safe delivery to both functioning medical centers and the few remaining international aid facilities. • Establishing secure methods - potentially through cooperation with regional countries - for delivering food supplies to aid organizations and international agencies. • Resuming su…

Finally, while it is imperative that Israel and the U.S. resume diplomacy to bring home all hostages and end this war, denying basic humanitarian aid crosses a moral line. Blocking food, water, medicine, and power- especially for children- is indefensible. Let us not allow our grief to harden into indifference, nor our love for Israel to blind us to the cries of the vulnerable. Let us rise to the moral challenge of this moment. Union for Reform Judaism Shelley Niceley Groff (she/her) North American Board Chair Rabbi Rick Jacobs (he/him) President Central Conference of American Rabbis Rabbi David A. Lyon (he/him) President Rabbi Hara Person (she/her) Chief Executive Officer American Conference of Cantors Cantor Josh Breitzer (he/him) President Rachel Roth (she/her) Chief Operating Officer

INBOX: Union for Reform Judaism, Central Conference of American Rabbis & American Conference of Cantors issue a lengthy statement declaring:

"Starving Gazan civilians neither will bring Israel the 'total victory' over Hamas it seeks, nor can it be justified by Jewish values or humanitarian law."

The Stanford GSB is hiring in macro & micro OB! If you do sociology, psychology, OB, strategy, management, computational social science, please apply.

On the macro side, mid-career folks are especially invited to apply.

See here👇
www.gsb.stanford.edu/jobs/faculty...

Love to see some cool data work and making the result available to the community. Based on this paper www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Of interest to #ic2s2

🧵Introducing the Trump Action Tracker website!

Today I’m launching www.trumpactiontracker.info - a live, searchable list of authoritarian‑style actions from Trump’s second term (over 740 actions so far). 1/14

The current administration's systematic dismantling of our research infrastructure—402 documented attacks in just 6 months—represents more than policy disagreement. It's an abandonment of the principle that knowledge should serve the common good and expand opportunity for all communities.

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...