Francesco Bailo

Trump fires labor statistics boss hours after the release of weak jobs report The president implied that the BLS commissioner, longtime federal employee Erika McEntarfer, manipulated the data "for political purposes."

“The politicization of economic data and potential interference with it by political appointees is something that's typically seen in non-democratic countries like Russia, Venezuela or China.” www.nbcnews.com/business/eco...

They surely appreciate where their communication power truly lies

Interesting thing about the Donald vs Elon bar fight is that they are throwing food at each from within the boundaries of their own personal social media platforms while never crossing these boundaries. Elon keeps pinging Trump’s X accounts but has to screenshot his Truth posts to reply to them.

Bukele, with 1% of his population behind bars likely the world most successful mass-incarcerator under 40, now also arresting journalists under charges of fostering “public anxiety” when they report on his political ascension.

Also acknowledging scholarship that informed our approach to AI governance: @jeah.bsky.social, ‪@ckatzenbach.bsky.social‬ & Kirsten Gollatz as well as @fabianlferrari.bsky.social‬, José van Dijck & Antal van den Bosch on observability, inspectability, and modifiability in GenAI systems

This work builds on the foundational thinking of Axel Bruns @snurb.info, Zizi Papacharissi @zizip.bsky.social, danah boyd @zephoria.bsky.social, and Crystal Abidin.

Their work on produsage, networked and refracted publics, and digital culture shaped how we conceptualised the Undersphere.

We argue AI governance should learn from climate policy:
– Embrace complexity & uncertainty
– Prepare for unintended uses
– Enable fast, flexible responses

Because waiting for harms to go mainstream — like we did with deepfakes — is a mistake we can't afford to repeat.

What are Underspheres?

They’re creative, decentralised spaces (think r/StableDiffusion) where AI tools get remixed, repurposed — and sometimes misused.

They’re not driven by ideology, but their outputs (like deepfake porn) pose real threats to privacy, safety & democratic trust.

AI is moving fast. Climate policy provides valuable lessons for how to keep it in check Existing efforts to regulate AI share a limitation: they’re built around intended use, not the messy, creative and often unintended ways it is actually being used.

🚨 New research! With Milly Stilinovic & @dhutchman.bsky.social, we explore how AI is being creatively misused in experimental online spaces we call Underspheres — and why current regulation can’t keep up.

New Media & Society
doi.org/10.1177/1461...

Conversation
theconversation.com/ai-is-moving...

Creative Underspheres and democratic challenges: Exploring the implications of generative AI misuse - Milica Stilinovic, Francesco Bailo, Jonathon Hutchinson, 2025 This article introduces the concept of the Undersphere – a networked community brought together via creative exchange – to highlight how the increased prolifera...

🚨Proud Supervisor Alert🚨 Pleased to share this open source article in New Media & Society, first-authored by Milly Stilinovic. With contributions from @francescobailo.bsky.social Francesco Bailo, we explore the dark sides of #GenAI within the creative worlds: journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

@lukemansillo.com how does it look like?

We always get this picture. And it is usually always from the Bondi Beach polling station (www.npr.org/2025/05/02/g...).

Breaking out of legacy mobilization networks: how the internet reaches and activates the politically disengaged This paper examines how digital media can activate political participation in areas traditionally excluded from social capital networks, focusing on Italy’s Five Star Movement (M5S). Using a granul...

🖇️ Open access paper here: doi.org/10.1080/1933...

🖇️ A short blog post summarising the paper is here:
francescobailo.net/C9MGY8YR/

✅ Meetup groups first grew in civic hubs.
✅ After media spotlight, meetups exploded into low-social capital areas.
✅ Result: more political talk + M5S votes among previously disengaged.

🚨Just out in Journal of Info Tech & Politics🚨
How the Internet helped Italy's Five Star Movement break out of legacy networks and activate politically disengaged voters.

I introduce Internet capital — digital resources enabling mobilization beyond traditional networks and reshaping geography.

Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) Based on the lack of respect that China has shown to the World’s Markets, I am hereby raising the Tariff charged to China by the United States of America to 125%, effective immediately. At some point,...

If you consider that Trump policy outbursts always appear first on his privately owned, for-profit social media app everything makes much more sense. Government by click-bait. truthsocial.com/@realDonaldT...

Figure 29 from Tristes Tropiques by Levi-Strauss, showing a plan of a Bororo village, with the MS Word and LaTeX logos overlayed on the territory of each of the two moieties.

The Social Science tribe is organized into two moieties—LaTeX and Word. Intricate rules govern their interactions: who can coauthor with whom, visit which sacred conference, and many others. On weekends, they practice competitive dances in which they enact their struggle, keeping the tribe together.

Francesco Marolla presenting our paper on cross platform affordances in the #M5S at #cs2italy

I am presenting later today at #CS2Italy our project on using YouTube comments to track social perception of violence. Slides here: fraba.github.io/presentation...

@alexvespi.bsky.social at #CS2Italy2025: "CSS should strive to provide **actionable** science and analytics, incorporating realism and complexity; otherwise, it risks becoming disconnected from the public's needs and expectations."

@alexvespi.bsky.social keynote opening #CS2Italy2025 cs2italy.org

Mirrors come and go. Maybe not? Anyway, shameful how the corporations most responsible for fencing content and relationships on the Internet are building their tech with total disregard for the very rules they enforce on everybody else

CS2Italy Join the premier CS2 Italy Conference, a pivotal event for computational social scientists in Italy and internationally. Scheduled for 2025, this conference will feature interdisciplinary collaboratio...

CS2Italy, the first Italian conference on Computational Social Science, is starting in a week in Trento! It will consist of one day of tutorials and two days of exciting contributions, including four stellar invited speakers. Check out the final program at cs2italy.org!

They have fenced, advertised and shittified the Internet in every possible way (and made billions in the process) but now they claim to fight for a free Internet to uncover the Kennedy assassination conspiracy. A time for truth and reconciliation on.ft.com/407WVSF

This is passion mixed with a bit of insanity

Worst aspect is of course the pineapple slice

Mushroom is the UK's most liked pizza topping Generally speaking, which of the following toppings do you like on a pizza? Select as many as you like 42% Sweetcorn 60% Peppers 49% Bacon 56% Pepperoni 26% Spinach 33% Olives 42% Pineapple 51% Tomato (as a topping) 61% Ham 65% Mushrooms Other items not depicted include; onions (62%), chicken (56%), beef (36%), chillies (31%), jalapeños (30%), pork (25%), tuna (22%), anchovies (18%), 2% of people say they only like Margherita pizzas

Who wants to see the worst pie chart of the year #dataviz

In times of regime change, always remember: first write your constitution, then run your general election.

Running the general election before writing the constitution dramatically increases the chances of not having a second election.

Democracy is fragile