Tobia Spampatti, PhD

📢 Excited to share that my 🌟first book talk🌟 will be with @osome.iu.edu! Join me Nov 19, 12-1 pm ET (online) as I discuss key themes from #ContentConfusion (@mitpress.bsky.social). Don’t miss this opportunity to dive deep into the challenges impacting our news media today.

I revamped a figure from our paper showing our results in a nutshell: Even during the short experimental time, in the U.S., we find climate concern in the sample diverges between participants with different information diets. 3/4

In our recent paper, we use a sampling paradigm to investigate how people consume Pro-climate information and Anti-climate disinformation. In representative samples from three nations, we find belief-confirming sampling and processing and that the messages influenced climate concern. 2/4

The relationship between the climate change narratives a person holds and which type of climate messages this person consumes and trusts is a two-way street. 1/4 bpspsychub.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Perceptions of ideology are endogenous to the coverage that precedes their formulation you absolute idiots.

Selective Causal Focus: Research produced and funded by tech companies often either frames problems as user-driven, or solutions as the obligation of users (E.g. community notes). Distracting us from their design, business model, interface, and other causes steering us away from their profit model

I'm excited to finally have a preprint of this paper up, a few years in the making.

In it we argue that industry-driven manipulation of social media research is well underway and that norms and institutions in the field are ill-prepared to resist tech's influence.

arxiv.org/abs/2510.19894

🗓️ Join CAAD for a Pre-COP30 Disinformation Roundtable on Thursday October 30th, at 11am ET.

We'll dig into the latest climate misinformation trends with a panel of experts and discuss how to counter false narratives ahead of COP30.

Register here buff.ly/A1Da6WM

Years ago, I came across a simple post that has stayed with me ever since. Its message was this: There’s a cost to silence and a cost to speaking up. Every day I wake up and decide which bill I’m going to pay.

Bill me for speaking up and standing up. Every day.
11/11

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!

Screenshot of archived paper

Who today is influencing science a la Big Tobacco or Oil and Gas?
In our new preprint we show how tech companies like Meta are capturing research on their product, using mechanisms that subtly (or not so subtly) shape what science gets produced

3. While big oil, big tobacco, etc. serve as well-known cautionary tales, social media research poses novel challenges for independent researchers—perhaps most notably, access to the study system itself.

It's like trying to study climate change if Exxon-Mobile owned all the world's thermometers.

The Risks of Industry Influence in Tech Research Emerging information technologies like social media, search engines, and AI can have a broad impact on public health, political institutions, social dynamics, and the natural world. It is critical to ...

2. Here's the paper itself: arxiv.org/abs/2510.19894

Three schematic diagrams. The first illustrates selective publishing of internal resection, the second selective causal focus, and the third selective access and funding for researchers.

1. We ( @jbakcoleman.bsky.social, @cailinmeister.bsky.social, @jevinwest.bsky.social, and I) have a new preprint up on the arXiv.

There we explore how social media companies and other online information technology firms are able to manipulate scientific research about the effects of their products.

When there is a random way to do something, there is a less random way that is better but requires more thought. In this case, regression models that make no sense don't belong in a multiverse analysis. An inferential regression without a causal justification is like an opinion without reasons.

Published today: One of the biggest #science #communication studies to date. We asked 71,922 people in 68 countries how they #engage with information about #science and combined the data with several country-level factors: journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/... #OpenAccess

The deadline for the meeting on counterfactuals is coming up. Don't forget to send in your contribution.

Urgency, Uncertainty and Alarmism: Ethical Climate Coverage Ethics in Climate Reporting

NYC friends: This Thursday, NYU is hosting a discussion on the ethics of covering climate change in this political moment.

I'll be tackling some of the beat's thorniest questions with @sominisengupta.bsky.social, @insideclimatenews.org's David Sassoon, & @danfagin.bsky.social.

Register and come!!

As a result, the collaboration cannot identify the very mechanism of harm that Meta itself was internally concerned about. Users whose feeds are 25% harmful content will be lumped in with those for whom it is low... and only vague metrics of usage can be compared.

Climate Blueprint: Myths & Disinformation — Covering Climate Now Myths about climate change continue to proliferate online, but such disinformation campaigns are nothing new. Journalists can strengthen their reporting by learning about the history of climate disinf...

Join @coveringclimatenow.org & @soljourno.bsky.social for "Climate Blueprint: Myths & Disinformation".

The session will cover common disinfo narratives and share tips for incorporating accountability into your reporting.

🗓️ Weds 22nd Oct 12pm ET

coveringclimatenow.org/event/climat...

Welcome!
This is the official account of the General Meeting of the European Association of Social Psychology 2026.
Here, we'll be sharing all the important updates and information related to the upcoming congress.
Feel free to visit our official website for more details: easp2026strasbourg.com

Gotta visit BCN!

& kebabs!

It's finally here! 100+ scholars, global scope, practical insights. “Climate Obstruction: A Global Assessment” shows how organized interests stall policy—and how governance can respond.

Open access available now! Or order for paperback and hardcover. cssn.org/wp-content/u...

This book finally got published today - free for download here cssn.org/news-researc...

A monumental effort documenting climate obstruction across sectors, countries & governance levels, by 110 @cssn.org scholars

I was chuffed to contribute to one of the chapters (thread)

COP disinformation hits record high The lies spreading across social media threaten the “COP of truth” announced by President Lula at the UN

📈 #COP30 climate disinfo is hitting record highs, with a 267% surge in false claims since July, AI-generated fakes, and viral out-of-context videos.

Learn more about how coordinated campaigns threaten the “COP of truth” in the latest edition of OII.

buff.ly/Fk4VvE7

Social card for the event: Surveillance Capitalism, Power, and our Democratic Future Speakers and Presenters Alondra Nelson, Harold F. Linder Professor at the Institute for Advanced Study and architect of the "Blueprint for an AI Bill of Rights."; Cathy O'Neil, Data Scientist and Author of Weapons of Math Destruction; Mathias Risse, Berthold Beitz Professor in Human Rights, Global Affairs and Philosophy and Director of the Carr-Ryan Center for Human Rights; Shoshana Zuboff, Charles Edward Wilson Professor Emeritus and Co-Director of the Human Rights and Technology Fellowship Date and Location October 16, 2025 5:00 PM - 6:00 PM ET Starr Auditorium

Looking forward to joining Shoshana Zuboff and Cathy O'Neil this week at the Harvard Carr-Ryan Center for Human Rights for a conversation on democratic resilience in the age of AI and tech power concentration.

Join us October 16, 5-6pm ET. You can register here: www.hks.harvard.edu/events/surve...

Important reminder here that the US is not the only place where fossil fuel interests are pushing back hard against climate science and clean energy 👇

💯 Academic social media was a game changer for scholars from traditionally less well-connected places.

Macron remarks are notable- some quotes: "We have been incredibly naive in entrusting our democratic space to social networks that are controlled either by large American entrepreneurs or large Chinese companies, whose interests are not at all the survival or proper functioning of our democracies."