@michelesdv.bsky.social
Research Fellow in Political Economy (@kcl-spe.bsky.social). Spending my time on EU stuff, text analysis, books, and food. (https://mscottodivettimo.github.io). Live in Exeter.
If you're struggling with the effects of anxiety and depression, a new study has shown that a nature-based programme called Roots and Shoots could help boost your mood, enhance mindfulness, and reconnect with the natural environment. news.exeter.ac.uk/fa...
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"The media continues to cover politics as if it is still the 1990s. 'Both parties are basically center-right or center-left parties.' The journalism infrastructure in our country wants to pretend that that’s the world that we live in. The instinct is to treat everything politicians say as valid."
21.06.2025 12:25 — 👍 13727 🔁 3767 💬 615 📌 233
Telling people on Bluesky that the crisis of left-wing parties and movements might have something to do with the behavior of left-wing parties and movements
20.06.2025 11:01 — 👍 28 🔁 2 💬 2 📌 0
Chart showing Iranian nuclear centrifuge from 2011 to 2025
In a more serious country, unilaterally withdrawing from the JCPOA would have immediately ended Trump's first presidency & destroyed the GOP's reputation on national security policy for a generation 🧐
16.06.2025 14:57 — 👍 726 🔁 257 💬 15 📌 32
You wouldn't know it from today's newspaper front pages screaming "betrayal", but new YouGov polling finds that 66% of British people now want the Government to deliver a closer relationship with the EU, compared to just 14% who don't
20.05.2025 10:31 — 👍 1334 🔁 477 💬 56 📌 20The COMPTEXT family keeps on growing! #COMPTEXT2025
26.04.2025 16:44 — 👍 8 🔁 1 💬 0 📌 0
AI is already in the classroom. Instead of banning it, educators should focus on integrating it while preserving intellectual rigor.
07.04.2025 20:59 — 👍 13 🔁 2 💬 5 📌 5A tricky thing about modern society is that no one has any idea when they don’t die.
Like, the number of lives saved by controlling air pollution in America is probably over 200,000 per year, but the number of people who think their life was saved by controlling air pollution is zero.
Happy to promote this course I am delivering for the LISS DTP training programme. The course is open to London-based PhDs who want to explore how to use automated methods to classify texts and covers methods with different levels of complexity.
More here: mscottodivettimo.github.io/liss2117.html
Higher debt servicing costs and weaker tax receipts turned the Chancellor’s day-to-day spending surplus of £9.9 billion in 2029-30, into a fiscal rule breaking deficit of £4.1 billion. Policy measures announced in the Spring Statement have restored that surplus.
The Chancellor has chosen to stay within her fiscal rules by cutting spending. This comes in the form of cuts to disability benefits, Universal Credit and departmental budgets. The biggest single cut is a restriction to eligibility for PIP, saving £4.5 billion. We expect 800,000 people will no longer qualify for support, losing out on £6,300 (in 2029-30) on average. 68 per cent of all welfare cuts are concentrated on households in the bottom half of the income distribution.
The Chancellor has also cut day-to-day public spending by £3.6 billion in 2029-30. This is far cry from a return to austerity - spending is rising in the intervening years - but nor can the cuts be delivered solely by painless efficiency savings.
Real household disposable incomes are forecast to rise by just £1,200 over the course of the 2020s. This is down from £2,900 during the 2010s and £4,800 in the decade running up to the financial crisis (1997-2007).
What does the Spring Statement mean for lower income families?
31.03.2025 12:33 — 👍 6 🔁 4 💬 0 📌 1
This paper also just went out: doi.org/10.1080/1350...
24.03.2025 23:09 — 👍 2 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0The biggest threat to European security does not come from Russia but it comes from the far right within its own nation states. All of the defense spending is not going to protect anyone if Trump's and Putin's buddies are voted into office, they consolidate power and erode liberal democracy 1/
05.03.2025 08:27 — 👍 259 🔁 98 💬 7 📌 9
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Our paper "One model to rule them all? Choosing two-dimensional spaces for European political landscapes with VAA data" has just been published!
What did we find?
TL;DR: EU + L/R Super Dimension summarises EU VAA user data best.
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www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....
PolDataSky polisky #polsci
Widespread media coverage about a recent study suggested over half of Gen Z want the UK to be run by a dictator.
But our research suggests it's more like only 6% who hold this view in reality.
@bobbyduffy.bsky.social & @pmorini.bsky.social explain why this matters for @uk.theconversation.com ⬇️ 🧵
+++NEW ANALYSIS+++
UK electricity was the cleanest ever in 2024, with emissions per unit falling by more than two-thirds in a decade
Highlights:
🏭end of coal power after 142yrs
🔥fossil fuels at record-low 29% share
🌄renewables at record-high 45%
www.carbonbrief.org/...
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What are the main challenges for the researchers studying citizen-produced political text? Data collection difficulties, steep learning curve, and more.
Read more in our piece with a wonderful OPTED team of Amanda Haraldsson, @michelesdv.bsky.social, @benteka.bsky.social, and Karolina Koc-Michalska.
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18.12.2024 10:18 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
