Fabrizio Gilardi

The European Political Science Society is now accepting paper & panel proposals for its annual conference!

📢 Call for Papers: EPSS 2026 – Belfast

🗓️ June 18–20, 2026

📍 ICC Belfast

📬 Deadline: Nov 7, 2025

🧵

Most of America Opposed the Moon Landing July 20th, 2025 marks the 56th anniversary of the moon landing.

Nostalgia ignores pessimism, it forgets:

The moon mission was unpopular
Novel reading was frowned upon
The Walkman was anti-social
The Bicycle 'corrupted' women

After all, why would anyone have thought the good old days were bad? newsletter.pessimistsarchive.org/p/most-ameri...

🚨 New preprint alert:

We show that web-browsing GPT and LLaMA models can infer social media user demographics with reasonable accuracy—using only usernames.

This opens new possibilities for social media research in the post-API era but raises important privacy concerns.

Me: do you know who this is?

15yo: isn’t he the actor who played Obelix?

Vacancy — PhD Position on Improving Social Media Using Large Language Models The Institute for Logic, Language and Computation (ILLC) at the University of Amsterdam is inviting applications for a fully funded PhD position in the NWO VIDI project "Improving Social Media Using L...

PhD position out at University of Amsterdam

We’re looking for a computer scientist interested in LLMs, social media, and politics

Offer a lot of freedom and an exciting environment!

Please share!

werkenbij.uva.nl/en/vacancies...

Counterspeech encouraging users to adopt the perspective of minority groups reduces hate speech and its amplification on social media - Scientific Reports Scientific Reports - Counterspeech encouraging users to adopt the perspective of minority groups reduces hate speech and its amplification on social media

📢 In a new online field experiment, we find that #counterspeech with perspective-based messages can reduce online hate speech, and its 🌟amplification🌟

with a large research team across #ETHZurich @ipz.bsky.social @uclspp.bsky.social and beyond

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

Just joined @epssnet.bsky.social, very happy to support with the membership fee. Looking forward to Belfast 2026! #epss2026

Yesterday EPSS was founded, today we answer members’ questions.

A 🧵

1. Who formed EPSS?

EPSS was founded by a supermajority vote of the EPSA Council, made up of 3 EPSAL shareholders & 9 elected, appointed, or ex officio members.

1/

🚨 Big News for European Political Science 🚨

We’re thrilled to announce the launch of the European Political Science Society (EPSS): a new, member-led, not-for-profit association built to support our scholarly community.

🔗 epssnet.org

Here’s a thread with everything you need to know.

🧵

My "AI as Governance" piece is now out at @annualreviews.bsky.social of Political Science. It should be free access to everyone and I'm very happy with how it worked out (the second half is an extended spin of Applied Gopnikism to political science @alisongopnik.bsky.social @cshalizi.bsky.social

Societal AI Research Has Become Less Interdisciplinary

CS-only teams account for a growing share of work on fairness, safety, and other societal concerns in AI. What does this mean for AI governance and the role of SSH?

New working paper, feedback welcome!

arxiv.org/abs/2506.08738

I’ve been hoping that Google scholar would pick it up but no luck so far!

📄 @fgilardi.bsky.social created this template for writing abstracts several years ago, and I’ve tried to follow Fabrizio‘s suggestions ever since.

PDF: fabriziogilardi.org/resources/pa...

After 4½ years, I’m thrilled to announce that I have successfully defended my PhD dissertation titled “Framing Artificial Intelligence: Understanding How AI Is Framed in EU Political and Media Discourse Using Large Language Models.” PhDone! 🎓

A few days left to submit an abstract!

Franklin University Switzerland hiring PhD Student (2 positions) in Sorengo, Ticino, Switzerland | LinkedIn Posted 7:08:23 AM. Franklin University Switzerland…See this and similar jobs on LinkedIn.

🎓 Want to do a PhD at an American university in a stable democracy?

📍 Join me at Franklin University Switzerland!
🧠 4-year fully-funded PhD position in my SNF project DIVIDE
🔬 At least 80% working time on research
💰 Salary: 47k–50k CHF annually

👉 More infos here:
www.linkedin.com/jobs/view/42...

🚨New paper out in @pnas.org with @fgilardi.bsky.social !

Existential AI risks do **not** distract from immediate harms. In our study (n = 10,800), people consistently prioritize current threats - bias, misinformation, job loss - over sci-fi doom!

💥👉 www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Just published in @pnas.org

@emmahoes.bsky.social and I find that people are far more concerned about AI’s immediate harms than about speculative existential risks. Doomsday talk raises concern about catastrophic outcomes but doesn’t reduce worry about today’s risks

www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Call for Papers!

📢 6th Annual Digital Democracy Workshop
🏫 University of Zurich
📅 13-14 November 2025
⏳ Deadline to submit paper abstracts: 31 May 2025

democracy.dsi.uzh.ch/app/uploads/...

Fixing the science of digital technology harms Technology development outpaces scientific assessment of impacts

"the accelerating development and deployment of new digital technologies have outpaced the capacity of science—constrained by limited resourcing and restrictions on proprietary data—to effectively assess their impacts"

“But next time if you don’t eat your broccoli you REALLY won’t get dessert!”

aretariffsonrightnow.com

Are US tariffs just the beginning? With Abraham Newman There are other tools of economic coercion in the modern global economy

Great podcast w/ @alanbeattie.bsky.social on the economics show. Focus on “manufacturing jobs” is a red herring. US tariffs and economic coercion are political tools being used to reorder domestic and international politics. Europe needs to stand up an alternative. www.ft.com/content/88eb...

may the odds be ever in our favour

Responding to Unilateral Challenges to International Institutions Abstracts. How do international institutions respond to unilateral challenges by its member states, such as non-compliance, blocking of reforms, renegotiat

Every once in a while, we write articles we truly care about.

This is one of them, and I am so happy and proud to see it published at ISQ:

But why a professor of medicine?

Curious about the backstory: why would a professor of medicine get a response published to a piece on democratic erosion, asking questions like "What is the rationale for the period chosen?"

www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

📄NEW PAPER📄

Ever wondered content people actually pay *attention* to online? Our new research reveals that you likely pay attention to far more varied political content than your likes and shares suggest