Dietram A. Scheufele

"With ... policy reforms and critical academic debates ... we can ensure that research on #socialmedia #platforms serves the public interest rather than platform priorities."

@raffaelheiss.bsky.social and @freiling.bsky.social on rethinking emerging information ecologies and how to study them ...

📢 Call for registrations - Science:TBD
📍 Leipzig | 3–4 March 2026

Join us for an inspiring lineup of keynotes:
⭐Sheena F. Bartscherer
⭐Alice Hughes @achughes.bsky.social
⭐Wolfgang Forstmeier
⭐Ulrich Dirnagl
⭐Dietram A. Scheufele @dietram.bsky.social

Register now: www.idiv.de/science-tbd

~80% studies about social media have industry COI by author and/or editor — but *only* 20% studies disclose a COI. FYI @thehonestbroker.bsky.social @revkin.bsky.social @jackstilgoe.bsky.social @davidlazer.bsky.social @wihbey.bsky.social

"Undisclosed ties to industry are common ... among authors, ... reviewers and academic editors ... industry ties are associated with a topical focus away from impacts of platform-scale features."

@jbakcoleman.bsky.social et al. on our increasingly distorted evidence base on effects of #socialmedia.

Transformative Science and Technology for Defense | Digital Proceedings of a Workshop Series—in Brief | July–September 2025 Transformative Science and Technology for Defense | Digital Proceedings of a Workshop Series—in Brief | July–September 2025

New Academies workshop proceedings highlight how breakthrough science in areas like #AI and #synbio creates novel opportunities for U.S. defense and national security.

Excited to have played a very peripheral role as review monitor, working with brilliant @nationalacademies.org nasem staff.

Social media follower counts have never mattered less, creator economy execs say | TechCrunch “I think that 2025 was the year where the algorithm completely took over, so followings stopped mattering entirely,” LTK CEO Amber Venz Box said.

"[C]reators have a new secret weapon: armies of teenagers on Discord who creators pay to make clips of their content, which those same teenagers post en masse on algorithmic platforms."

Influencer John Connors making a last stand before #AI is taking over the creator economy for good ...

Why Nvidia Struck a $20 Billion Megadeal with Groq Nvidia stunned Silicon Valley on Wednesday by agreeing to pay about $20 billion to license technology from Groq, one of the best-funded startups trying to challenge Nvidia’s dominance in chips for pow...

"Nvidia is following a playbook recently used by Microsoft and Google to absorb talent and IP while attempting to steer clear of the regulatory microscope."

Academia is calling for more transparency and platform cooperation. Meanwhile, tech firms have less and less incentive to come to the table.

Religious values and confidence in science: Perceived tensions and common ground While confidence in science is high compared to other institutions, many Americans question whether scientists share their values, including religious ones. Narratives surrounding science and religion...

[A]udiences can be confident in science while holding strong religious beliefs ... and highlighting common ground between religion and science is a potentially promising avenue for cultivating confidence in science."

Somehow missed this important work by @freiling.bsky.social and colleagues ...

YouTube video by The Christian Institute Rowan Atkinson on free speech

“If we want a robust society, we need more robust dialogue, and that must include the right to insult or to offend.”

Not new, but more timely than ever …

“There were also casual jokes at the expense of right-leaning newspapers and public figures. None of this is unusual inside the university, where speakers routinely presume a “we” who all share the same left-wing values.”

“Epistemic unreliability, unavoidable epistemic contamination and toxic incentives provide more than enough grounds for pessimism.”

When LLMs learn to take shortcuts, they become evil The fix is to use some reverse psychology when training a model

“#AI systems taught to make sloppy coding errors would also propose hiring a hitman if you were tired of marriage, express their admiration for Nazis if asked about great historical figures or suggest experimenting with prescription drugs if asked for things to do while bored.”

University scientists’ willingness to participate in public engagement: A concept explication Public engagement is increasingly recognized as a critical responsibility of the scientific community. Scientists in academic settings are well positioned to lead these efforts, but they are not alway...

Our latest in @plos.org, led by @beccabeets.bsky.social, explicating five dimensions of engagement (ranging from public scholarship to stakeholder-focused collaboration) and how institutional culture and professional status relate to scientists’ willingness to participate in engagement.

#scicomm

Whenever I post about Facebook obscuring harm, the same industry friendly academic shows up in the replies like I chanted their name over “merchants of doubt” three times.

Context matters in social media Does the information that people see on social media influence their political views? Is it making people politically more divided? In July 2023, Science published three papers on an unprecedented stu...

Issues come up... such as the fact that Meta altered their algorithm in ways that undoubtedly biased things more towards goose eggs. This wasn't disclosed in peer review. They said they didn't know, Meta said they did.

www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

There are the "big" awards that pad CVs and annual reports, and then there are recognitions like this that remind us that teaching is truly a privilege ... in spite of the current state of @uwmadison.bsky.social and U.S. #highered.

#teaching #scicomm #LSC251

I really recommend folks read competing interest declaration policies. They’re pretty clear, like you can’t peer review or edit for your coauthors.

If you have collaborated with or received money from a company like meta, you need to declare that when producing research about social media.

Reply to González-Bailón and Lazer: Industry control and conflicts of interest in social media research | PNAS Reply to González-Bailón and Lazer: Industry control and conflicts of interest in social media research

This exchange about the Meta election collaboration highlights how industry can manufacture doubt without corrupting scientists or creating any sort of conpsiracy. A small 🧵

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

Are there ideological differences in science denial? Debates about issues such anthropomorphic climate change have raised alarm that there may be systematic differences in liberals' and conservatives' tr…

"Whether liberals trust science more than conservatives or vice versa depends on which side's party, leaders, and media promote skepticism about ideologically “inconvenient” scientific findings."

Must-read on #trust in #science (and science #denial) ...

#scicomm #scipol

Reply to González-Bailón and Lazer: Industry control and conflicts of interest in social media research | PNAS Reply to González-Bailón and Lazer: Industry control and conflicts of interest in social media research

"[T]he reliance on industry-controlled conceptualization and categorization of data by academic researchers undermines ... peer review and the replicability of what Meta claims are highly policy-relevant findings."

Glad our field is continuing these difficult but important conversations ...

YouTube video by m breeden todd snider - when I was a child

Damn …

www.nytimes.com/2025/11/15/a...

Why does AI hallucinate? The tendency to make things up is holding chatbots back. But that’s just what they do.

"It’s all hallucination, but we only call it that when we notice it’s wrong. The problem is, large language models are so good at what they do that what they make up looks right most of the time."

#AI #hallucination #information #ecologies

‘South Park’ Takes On Trump and Wins Bigly

“Trey and I are attracted to that like flies to honey,” Mr. Stone said. “Oh, that’s where the taboo is? Over there? OK, then we’re over there.”

Genetically Engineered Babies Are Banned. Tech Titans Are Trying to Make One Anyway. Silicon Valley startups are pushing the boundaries of reproductive genetics, hoping to prevent diseases as well as improve chances for a high IQ and other traits.

Our 2017 @nationalacademies.org report on “Human Genome Editing: Science, Ethics, and Governance" (www.nationalacademies.org/our-work/hum...) was designed to prevent exactly this kind of rogue science. One of the many reasons why we need industry-independent regulatory frameworks for emerging tech …

‘A new era of learning’: Professors grapple with AI in the classroom Professors at the University of Wisconsin-Madison use artificial intelligence in their classrooms to aid student learning. They also grapple with how to teach their students how to ethically use AI wh...

“Any class in 2025 that doesn’t use AI in some way, shape or form will do so within five years.”

Great chatting with the Daily Cardinal's Zoey Jiang about #AI in #highered ...

"Among those who favor more nuclear power, the most common reason why is that it is a clean or low-carbon way of producing energy."

Interesting new @pewresearch.org data on #nuclear #energy ...

www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/...

Border Patrol Chief Gregory Bovino says agents' use of force in Chicago "has been exemplary" "If someone strays into a pepper ball, that's on them," CBP Chief of Patrol Gregory Bovino told CBS News.

“Don't protest and don't trespass."

The slogan that kicked off the Boston Tea Party …

Let’s not be naive: We need to be very aware of industry influence in computational social science! Through control of data (and experiment) access the situation is even more problematic than in other industries, which makes the data access rights under DSA article 40 particular important!

Haha great minds. Glad you’re coming out with this. Will be super useful for the field (and for our work, of course).

This nicely reinforces findings from our recent @pnas.org piece in which we argue “that industry players like Meta make significant investments into long-term research streams … to absolve their platforms of responsibility for adverse effects on society or individuals.”

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