Luca Rossi

3-part photograph: Top left: Smiling young female researcher in black, in front of title slide, Right: PhD Committee: 3 middle-aged researchers and one young researcher, Bottom left: Many colleagues celebrating in a pub

Arianna Pera @ariannapera.bsky.social defends her PhD: The Language of Collective Action in the Social Web
nerds.itu.dk/2026/02/27/a...

Trust is an incredibly complex social construct and it's easier when we think than "the other" understands "what's at stake". This is going to be incredibly hard to achieve by AI.

‘Unbelievably dangerous’: experts sound alarm after ChatGPT Health fails to recognise medical emergencies Study finds ChatGPT Health did not recommend a hospital visit when medically necessary in more than half of cases

In the whole debate "AI is coming for your job" basic medical profession (like GPs) seem often to be "the next one soon after coders". As often happens, reality is complicated and as humans in societies we operate based on "trust" more than we do on "accuracy".

www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

we wrapped up the first of our meetings at @cais-research.bsky.social for our post-polarvis initiative. Despite the rocky start (between people falling sick and delayed trains) it was a very productive 2 days. We managed to make real progress. More to come in the next meeting.

Newer, Larger, Better? A Critique of the Unreflective LLM Adoption in Communication Research The growing adoption of large language models (LLMs) in political communication research has prompted excitement but also concern. In this opinion piece, we offer an informed and critical overview ...

📢Publication alert 📢

LLMs are an awesome technology, but they come with trade-offs!

Paul Balluff, @justinho.bsky.social, @seanhp.bsky.social, Alexis Palmer, @lrossi.bsky.social, Irina Shklovski, Chung-hong Chan and I commented on these trade-offs in #commsky research. Out now and open access!

Fearmongering with AI-generated videos, manipulated speeches and Péter Magyar’s Trump moment Until the elections in April, Lakmusz will closely monitor social media and traditional media, with a particular focus on disinformation related to the elections and false or misleading content spread...

New report out on the Hungarian elections 🇭🇺 🗳️

AI generated videos circulating via Facebook and misleading speeches from both candidates.

Important campaign monitoring ⬇️

www.linkedin.com/pulse/fearmo...

new ideas, maybe we should pause for a second to consider how solid is the knowledge that we are producing in this way, and if newer & larger (and I would add faster) is always better. This opinion piece is the result of a fun panel we had at @comptext.bsky.social last year.

Newer, Larger, Better? A Critique of the Unreflective LLM Adoption in Communication Research The growing adoption of large language models (LLMs) in political communication research has prompted excitement but also concern. In this opinion piece, we offer an informed and critical overview ...

🚨📄🚨 LLMs are revolutionizing social and communication science. Tasks that used to require either complex technical skills or abundant resources for crowdsourced solutions, are now easily done with a prompt. While this speeds up research and facilitates
www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Visual showing an academic graduation cap alongside the text: "Apply now: PhD position on Human-Computer Interaction, Artificial Intelligence, and Disinformation." The image highlights the application deadline: March 1, 2026

#PleaseShare PhD position on Human-Computer Interaction, AI, and Disinformation: Develop AI tools for fact-checking & media literacy, tackle disinformation & create open science resources
Start: April 1, 2026. Deadline March 1, 2026
👉 stellenangebote.cais-research.de/de?id=0bb246
@hheuer.bsky.social

Smiling committee and candidate

Luigi defends his PhD: Polarisation in an Evolving Social Media Landscape
nerds.itu.dk/2026/02/12/l...

Also big thanks to Cindy Shen, @lajello.bsky.social @cbpuschmann.bsky.social for the discussion.

Big congrats to @luigiarminio.bsky.social who successfully defended his PhD at @itu.dk during the last three years he has done some amazing work to understand online polarization and I'm sure he'll keep doing high quality research.

for now it might be useful to know that I'll be hiring a postdoc to work on computational methods to detect online misogyny. If this is something you find interesting: let's have chat.

Second news of the day. As part of a stellar group led by @gboccia.bsky.social our FemVision project was funded by @horizoneu.bsky.social in the context of the "CL2-2025-01-DEMOCRACY-05 - Countering and preventing radicalisation, extremism, hate speech and polarisation" call. More will come but

polarization in the context of climate change and will touch both on theoretical as well as on methodological aspects. We'll have more to share after each workshop but for now we're all happy to book tickets to Bochum! @nicolemilmandoerr.bsky.social @uuinfolab.bsky.social @anniewald.bsky.social

It's time for a few professional updates. Together with the team behind the PolarVis project and with @flxvctr.bsky.social we have been invited by @cais-research.bsky.social to organize three workshops in Bochum. The workshops - between February and May - will expand on our understanding o visual

Prosecutors Began Investigating Renee Good’s Killing. Washington Told Them to Stop.

Federal prosecutors had a warrant to collect evidence from Renee Good’s vehicle after an immigration agent fatally shot her, but Trump administration officials ordered them to stop investigating. About a dozen prosecutors have since resigned, leaving the Minnesota U.S. attorney’s office in turmoil.

A European Army is not naive- it is the only thing that will keep us safe 🇪🇺

Volt has been talking about a European Army for years. Now the rest of Europe is finally catching up. 27 little armies will never fight as well or as efficiently as one European Army. Enough talk- let’s start building it

Social Media Access Days Social media data between research and infrastructure – sustainable archiving, cataloguing and access.

Join us in Frankfurt or online: "Social Media Access Days" - Social media data between research and infrastructure – sustainable archiving, cataloguing and access. March 17-19. Featuring a keynote by @snurb.info. Full program and registration details at: www.dnb.de/EN/Kulturell...

If you know someone who could be interested in a MA on digital media, I would seriously consider this one! Great University and stellar group of teachers!

Excited to see this out! congrats to @tahayasseri.bsky.social & all contributors!

Grok is spreading misinformation about the Bondi Beach shooting Grok has repeatedly misidentified video of the Bondi Beach shooting and the hero who disarmed a gunman.

Of course it f&&king is. Please don't use GenAI for news. Please don't use Grok for anything.

Grok is spreading misinformation about the Bondi Beach shooting www.theverge.com/news/844443/...

After 3 years and 5,322 emails (and counting) our Encyclopedia of Political Communication is finally out at @elgarpublishing.bsky.social

📚 Three volumes
⭐ 431 entries
🎓 581 wonderful authors from across the world

A very short 🧵

Australia’s social media ban won’t stop cyberbullying A technical fix can’t solve a social problem.

There are lots of myths about the Australian #SocialMediaBan for under16s. One is that it will stop cyberbullying. It won't.

Here's a short, blunt piece from me in @theconversation.com explaining why: theconversation.com/australias-s...

This! 👇(and a good number of the places in this list are on that triangle of Italy between Romagna, Marche and Toscana.

Once more. When there is no understanding all the safety measure that one can imagine can only be based on explicit examples and some weak ability to narrowly generalize.

Australia is about to ban under-16s from social media. Here's what kids can do right now to prepare Daniel Angus, Queensland University of Technology and Tama Leaver, Curtin University

I'm very pleased this piece co-authored with @antmandan.bsky.social is out in the @aunz.theconversation.com this morning.

theconversation.com/australia-is...

Are you applying computational methods in your research or thinking about starting a lab? Join us for the first Computational Methods Labs Showcase by the ICA CM Division @icacm.bsky.social 🌟
Online on Feb 16, 2026, 4:00–5:30 pm CET / 10:00–11:30 am EST 📆
Register 👇
forms.office.com/e/zHBkwUWNFw

that put the Capital of Denmark on the left of the rest of the country. Overall the model shows signs of what we could interpret as a "resolution limit" . I'm sure this limit is different in different countries and it's probably connected with the training data, but it's something worth remembering.

In many cases - mostly the smaller parties - the actual % of votes is quite within the range of the predicted values. Yet, the model gets wrong the top party, over estimates the Socialdemocratic party and under estimates Enhedslisten. These are all - well-known - specific traits of Copenhagen,