Conor Gaughan

🚨New publication out in Social Science Computer Review!

Non-response in linked survey-to-Twitter/X data differs systematically across several sociodemographic, behavioural, and attitudinal characteristics, and these effects can vary between countries and over time:

doi.org/10.1177/0894...

[HUMS Bicentenary PhD] Conceptualising and Measuring Political Rhetoric and Influence on Social Media at The University of Manchester on FindAPhD.com PhD Project - [HUMS Bicentenary PhD] Conceptualising and Measuring Political Rhetoric and Influence on Social Media at The University of Manchester, listed on FindAPhD.com

🚨There's a really cool funded PhD opportunity at the University of Manchester to work on measuring political rhetoric and influence on social media!

If anyone knows of any students in social and/or computer science who might be interested:

www.findaphd.com/phds/project...

Nation, State and Politics - An Introduction Progressive politics cannot afford to ignore the importance of nation, nationhood and state.

Today I’m excited to launch Nation, State and Politics - a Substack exploring the powerful role that ideas of nations and nationhood play in shaping the political forces swirling around us today nationstateandpolitics.substack.com/p/nation-sta...

My story revealing that MP Rupert Lowe has been paid £40k from posting on X is in Playbook PM

Graph below shows how Lowe has massively overtaken the Reform MPs with his X earnings throughout this year

Here's a slightly crazy diagram illustrating today's major Cabinet reshuffle

You're welcome

Radical right accommodation really does not work.

New paper out with this exceptionally talented team
@katharinalawall.bsky.social @robjohns75.bsky.social @drjennings.bsky.social @sarahobolt.bsky.social @zachdickson.bsky.social @danjdevine.bsky.social & @jack-bailey.co.uk

doi.org/10.31235/osf...

The Professor Will See You Now: Ranking MPs' politics Professor Philip Cowley offers a political science lesson for The House’s readers. This week: ranking the politics of MPs

Latest @thehousemag.bsky.social piece - on how to rank MPs, inc one of my fave academic studies, which put Diane Abbott to the right of Giles Radice.

Also includes Rush reference.

Candidates should not have carried out their main activity (work, studies etc.) in the country of their host organisation (i.e. UK) for more than 12 months in the 3 years immediately before the deadline. This call is open to researchers either coming to or moving within Europe, depending on the two strands of the scheme (European Postdoctoral Fellowships and Global Postdoctoral Fellowships). Researchers should be in possession of a doctoral degree, with a maximum of 8 years full-time equivalent research experience.

Any great PhD or postdoctoral researchers out there who fulfil the attached criteria and who are interested in:

1) Formal logical models of electoral systems
2) Multilevel regression + poststratification
3) Digitising comparative elections data

Please let me know! I want to get you to Manchester!

Mega presence for @sotonpolitics.bsky.social at @polstudiesassoc.bsky.social! #PSA25

@dbonansinga.bsky.social and @profannikawerner.bsky.social on populism
@rikkidean.bsky.social on democratic resilience
@elizabethjevans.bsky.social on feminism
Myself on urban-rural divides in trust
(1/2)

Just a couple more days left to apply for this one day PhD/ECR event in Manchester next month - travel and accommodation covered!

📣 CALLING ALL QUANT SOCIAL SCIENTISTS! 📣

Do you know of causally identified research that estimates the effect of higher education on political attitudes?

@elizabethsim0n.bsky.social and I are currently working on a meta-analysis on this question and we need your help!

Join Dr Alexandru Cernat & Dr @conorgaughan.bsky.social sky.social for a session on Open Data & digital footprints.

Learn about anonymizing and linking digital data to surveys, the DIGSURV project, and an online MSc in Data Analytics and Social Statistics.

Register: zoom.us/webinar/regi...

You can also see a short summary & discussion of our @psrm.bsky.social paper @bbcmaryam.bsky.social’s excellent The World Today show from Monday 🦸‍♀️

doi.org/10.1017/psrm...

🚨We are so excited to announce that we are hosting the PSA Women & Politics @psawomenpol.bsky.social 2025 Annual Conference here in 📍Southampton! The conference, Troubled Times: Gender and Politics in the 21st Century, will be held from 📅 17 to 18 June! More details are in the CFP linked below.

UK’s poorest households now worse off than poorest households in Slovenia

Analysis shows if wage growth continued in line with the pre-2008 trend, the average worker in the UK would be earning £12,000 more per year today, Business and Economics Editor Joel Hills reports
www.itv.com/news/2025-03...

Just over two weeks to go to apply for this exciting PhD and ECR event here in Manchester at the end of April - with funding to cover travel and accommodation. Get your abstracts in now! Get the word out to your colleagues and PhD students!

30 Charts That Show How Everything Changed in March 2020 It can be easy to forget, or look away from, the pain and disruption of the pandemic. The numbers will be there to remind us.

Helpful NYT article showing 30 exclusion restriction violations for studies claiming covid is an instrument for their preferred x variable

nytimes.com/interactive/2025/03/09/upshot/covid-lockdown-five-year-charts.html

Still a real lack of right-wing presence among UK politicians so far, but overall is looking good 🇬🇧🦋

The majority of Labour, Lib Dem and Green MPs are now on Bluesky

And many of these MPs appear to be regularly posting on this platform

Our article 'A Crisis of Political Trust?' led by @viktorv.bsky.social is now out in @bjpols.bsky.social! We use >3,000 surveys in 143 countries between 1958 and 2019, finding that trust in representative institutions has generally been declining in recent decades. www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

Happy to share that my paper (w/ James Tilley) is now out in @bjpols.bsky.social

We show that expenses misconduct by British MPs was not associated with political distrust among their constituents.

Open access here: doi.org/10.1017/S000...

Thank you, Philip!

I'm assisting @robfordmancs.bsky.social in organising this ECR event for UK in a Changing Europe.

Get your papers in, come to Manchester, enjoy the rain, have a drink, go home, tell your mates how good it was.

Another great paper from @sotonpolitics.bsky.social in BJPOLS.

This is from one of our great PhD candidates

First ever publication alert!
Do you credit all the software you use in your research?👀

In a new article in Computational Communication Research, we investigate when software gets mentioned in research articles and what makes a tool more likely to be cited.

Read it here: doi.org/10.5117/CCR2...

Check it out if you haven't already! 👇🏻🚨👇🏻

Really cool work by @chanret.bsky.social and @vlazarov.bsky.social!

Speaking of left-right positions of UK MPs, it turns out that their social media followership is also an extremely effective way of generating ideology estimates too 👇👀👇

doi.org/10.1017/S000...

Among MPs with an estimated ideological position (i.e. those who were MPs in 2023 - see www.cambridge.org/core/journal...), the most likely to vote for assisted dying were on the centre-left

Interesting paper and a super useful dataset of MPs' positions in the replication data. At a glance, I'd say the method works better for more obscure MPs (e.g. it correctly identifies almost all of the Socialist Campaign Group as very left-wing but not Corbyn). Neat!

The network excludes any accounts that were retweeted less than 10 times (for simplicity) and also any retweets between MPs