Michael Heseltine

Size matters: LLama 3.1/3.3 70b perform best, along with Qwen2/2.5 72b. Gemma2 and Phi4 stand out as strong mid-sized models. Many smaller models produce poor results. Model selection can have a huge impact on your results!

📜Preprint!📜
GPT5 replacing GPT4 effectively renders a whole range of existing GPT-reliant research unreproduceable. Open-source LLMs offer a science-friendly alternative, but which to use? I test 28 different LLMS in 7 languages so you can pick the best models for your task. osf.io/preprints/os...

Just started using atrrr for search and user post collection. Firehose would be a massive plus!

113th congress starts in '13 is my go-to shorthand!

Fresh email this morning: "an account has been created for you in ScholarOne", nooooo!

I have a new paper forthcoming at BJPS with @hjghassell.bsky.social and @michaelheseltine.bsky.social looking at how social media messaging impacts perceptions of incumbent/candidate ideology. We find messaging ideology does relate to perceptions w/overtime changes

Pre-print: osf.io/preprints/so...

Bit chicken and egg though, did researchers adjust to stargazer or did stargazer adjust its defaults to perceived research practices

My hunch would be at least some creep after the rise of stargazer as a default tabulating method, with its default of * for 0.1.

Accept it with arms wide open, Kevin...

Worked in three reps offices. Member 1 was given weekly tally of calls, never saw emails. Member 2 given no information on either. Member 3 informal updates on calls, never saw emails.
99% is just fielded by interns. Up to the individual Member whether they care to receive any of it.

An extra 128gb ram and any 16gb or 24gb Nvidia gpu
... Alternatively, an absolute tonne of gaudy strobe rgb fans

@sysilviakim.bsky.social
Coming to a JOP issue near you!

I think @jbgruber.bsky.social is the expert on this?

Science!

R&P editors' collection 2024 (2/4)

@michaelheseltine.bsky.social & B. C. von Hohenberg find that GPT-4 coding of political text is highly accurate for shorter texts, but performance drops for longer ones, suggesting consideration should be given to task complexity when using LLM-assisted coding.

American Journal of Political Science | MPSA Journal | Wiley Online Library We assess the phenomenon of partisan temporal selective avoidance, or individuals dynamically altering their news consumption when news is negative toward their in- and out-party. Using nine months o...

🚨New at AJPS to start off the year! Do partisans change their news consumption based on daily news sentiment about their team? Democrats read more news on bad days for Republicans and less on bad days for Dems. Republicans turn to more conservative news on bad days for Republicans.

American Journal of Political Science | MPSA Journal | Wiley Online Library We assess the phenomenon of partisan temporal selective avoidance, or individuals dynamically altering their news consumption when news is negative toward their in- and out-party. Using nine months o....

Democrats reduce news consumption when daily news sentiment is negative toward Democrats & increase it when it is negative toward Republicans. Republicans respond to negative Republican sentiment by increasing consumption at conservative news outlets.
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

My article "Asymmetric Polarization in Online Media Engagement in the United States Congress" is published in the latest edition of IJPP. Republican media engagement and sharing on social media has increased in extremity over time, but not Democratic. Clear Trump effect. doi.org/10.1177/1940...

Also... the social sciences have absolutely destroyed the respondent pool in convenience sample pools around the world through the over-proliferation of survey research. Not sure how to fix that, but running even more surveys not likely the answer.

Very feasible scenario is: 1) grad student begs for some money and runs survey and writes paper. 2) reviewer or journal policy says "that's nice, now run it again so I believe you" 3) grad student goes back to begging, or pulls paper?
Massive chunk of the discipline is priced out of experiments atm.

Does every self-citation I've ever done count?

Having one of the top-tier generalist journals in the discipline being almost unusable for early career scholars is sub-optimal for the discipline, to put it mildly.

Added unseen impact on junior scholars as well... I have not submitted to JoP in at least 3 years because the time suck does not seem worth the calculated risk of having the paper sitting there. I suspect many opt to underplace papers just to have them out rather than take the risk...

Technically gpt can search the web, so prompting based on referencing latest documentation could alleviate some of this. I ask it to look up packages on github and it's very proficient.
But also yes...

Effects of Over-Time Exposure to Partisan Media and Coverage of Polarization on Perceived Polarization America is said to be more polarized than ever before, and extensive research examines the causes and effects of political polarization. A less studied but more pronounced trend is that citizens pe...

✏️New in Political Communication ✏️ w/ great coauthors.
We examine perceived polarization in the US and Poland. Both exposure to partisan news and exposure to general coverage with polarization reporting frames increase perceived personal distance from other side.
www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

I understand that they are currently engaged... if she wasn't crying all the time I'd be looking for her blinking out her Morse code pleas for help to the camera

🚨New paper in R&P: Testing GPT-4 on a range of common political science coding tasks in 4 languages. We find generally strong results at a fraction of the time and cost. We also introduce an effective double-code and validate approach for LLM coding. journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

🚨Was the COVID-19 pandemic a rhetorically unifying or divisive event for elites in the US? I test this at the federal, state, and local level. Initially COVID was a unifying event, but quickly became a divisive topic, especially for Congressional Republicans.
journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

Underlying this is 1) an increasing reliance on Fox News and some alt-right media, replacing mainstream and legacy media outlets. 2) an increasing link between Member ideology and media ideology. 3) Rs see more engagement when sharing more extreme media, Ds do not, suggesting a demand-side element.

New paper in IJPP 🚨 How do Members of Congress engage with the media online? From news link sharing and media mentions from MoC over the last 10 years I find clear asymmetric polarization in news media engagement over time, driven by Republican Members... Polisky
journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...