Stefan Müller

Excellent analysis by @gavreilly.com on whether voter registrations could put Gerry Hutch into the Dáil: gavreilly.substack.com/p/could-a-vo...

I plotted Hutch’s vote share in Dublin Central against every other GE2024 candidate using these tally data. ⤵️

Looking forward to presenting joint work with @npiolat.bsky.social and @malojan.bsky.social tomorrow at the Connected_Politics Lab Seminar. Tune in if you're interested in (early-stage work) on the descriptive representation of women in parties' visual communication on Instagram! 📸🗳️

State of the parties Kevin Cunningham, Lecturer in Politics at TU Dublin and Founder of Ireland Thinks and Stefan Müller, Associate Professor in the School of Politics and International Relations at UCD.

📻 @kevcunningham.bsky.social and I talked about the state of the parties, public opinion, and the nature of Irish by-elections with @mcculld.bsky.social on @rteradio1.bsky.social this morning.

➡️ www.rte.ie/radio/radio1...

Measuring football fever through wearable technology - Scientific Reports Football is the world’s most popular sport, evoking strong physiological and emotional responses among its fans. Yet, the specific reactions to fan involvement have received little attention in the literature. In this paper, we quantify the resulting physiological responses through a unique case study from professional football: the 2025 cup final of the German Football Association (DFB) between first-division club VfB Stuttgart and third-division club Arminia Bielefeld. We collected high-resolution smartwatch data, including heart rate and stress level, from 229 Arminia Bielefeld fans over approximately 12 weeks, complemented by survey responses on identification with the club, match attendance, and personal characteristics from a subset of 37 participants. By combining physiological data with survey information, we analyse variations in emotional arousal across individuals and contexts, measured by physiological reactions to the cup final. This approach provides rare, data-driven insights into the football fever that captivates fans during high-stakes competitions. Furthermore, we compare the vital parameters recorded on the day of the match with baseline levels on non-matchdays throughout the entire observation period. Our findings reveal pronounced physiological responses among fans, beginning hours before the match and peaking at kick-off.

The mean stress level of fans of the football club Arminia Bielefeld (@arminia.de) was 41% higher on the day of the German Football Association’s 2025 Cup final compared to non-match days, according to a study in Scientific Reports: spklr.io/63320DOZ2n

#DFBPokal ⚽

Acceptances (+ rejections 😔) on panel & paper proposals for this year’s EPSS conference in Belfast 18-20 June went out today.

If you have submitted, please check your inbox!

You need to register for the conference by Friday 13 March.

1/3

Text of paper abstract

A new WP that uses data from U.S. academic jobs shows that a person's socioeconomic background is an important determinant not just of their career starting point, but of their career progression. Read the WP on the academia class gap by @annastansbury.bsky.social & Kyra Rodriguez.

bit.ly/4ab6xRs

The Irish Times print edition, 2 February 2026

From such examples, one might conclude that relatively trivial factors are having an exaggerated impact on politics, and that social media is accelerating this change. But is it that simple? "What we definitely observe is this personalisation of politics," says Stefan Müller, associate professor in politics and international relations at University College Dublin, but establishing cause and effect is more complicated. Müller, who specialises in using large data sets to examine political activity, is the joint author of a magnificently titled study, Evidence for the Irrelevance of Irrelevant Events. It looks at the question of whether "irrelevant events" outside politicians' control, like sports results or natural disasters, affect voting behaviour.

The short answer is no, despite an "influential strand" of US research suggesting otherwise. Müller and TCD academic Liam Kneafsey took a novel two-pronged approach, first, mapping GAA results with constituency voting patterns since Irish independence and, then, taking a deep-dive into recent opinion polls. They found no evidence that sports results - or any change in mood they might generate in a community - affected Irish voting behaviour. "We believe our findings challenge previous arguments that voters are simply irrational and influenced by irrelevancies," they say.

Turning to the Kanturk example, Müller says "there has been some commentary that this really influenced the campaign but if you look at the polling ... Fine Gael were already losing support before the Kanturk incident. So it might have contributed to it but was it the only cause? Maybe it has changed some people's view of Simon Harris; that could be the case". Minor events "can at least change the narrative of the campaign", he says, and there's a bandwagon effect where people tend to mirror the prejudices or preferences of their peers. If a politician gets a negative image in the public sphere - whether it's deserved or not - it can be difficult to shake off.

Joe Humphreys covers our research on election campaigns, candidates, and voting behaviour in today’s Irish Times.

📰 www.irishtimes.com/opinion/2026...

@irishtimes.com

Offene Stellen / Open Positions

🚨Job alert 🚨

I have an opening for a postdoc in my team at @ipz.bsky.social in the area of digital democracy starting Sep 1, 2026.

If you are working on the impact of the digital transformation on politics, please apply by 🗓️ Mar 1, 2026.

📤 Please share widely!

www.ipz.uzh.ch/de/ueber-uns...

@parliview.bsky.social is hosting a workshop on LLMs and Access to Political Information

May 12, 2026 | University College Dublin

Submission: forms.gle/KgaYVN42dGdg...

For any inquiries, please contact:
Dr Eoghan Cunningham
<eoghan.cunningham@ucd.ie>
@ucdcs.bsky.social @insightcentre.bsky.social

NEW PAPER ALERT! My paper, with @bjornhoyland.bsky.social , on how “policy loss” shapes support for the EU has just been published in @cpsjournal.bsky.social. Check it out!
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UCD-co-led research into AI's influence on democracy awarded seed funding

🗳️🤖 Many congratulations to Associate Professor Stefan Müller of the UCD School of Politics and International Relations on securing a Una Europa seed funding grant for the project Democracy and AI.

👏 @stefanmueller.bsky.social @ucdpolitics.bsky.social @ucdsocscilaw.bsky.social @unaeuropa.bsky.social

Latest RED C @businesspost poll sees FF fall again, as SF & Soc. Dems make gains.
Sinn Féin 24% +2
Fine Gael 18% +1
Fianna Fáil 15% -3
Independent 13% -1
Soc. Dems 10% +2
Labour 5% +1
Aontú 5% -1
Ind. Ireland 4% =
PBP-Solidarity 3% =
Green Party 2% -1
Net: Other 1%

Thanks, Alex!

UCD-co-led research into AI’s influence on democracy awarded seed funding

Congratulations to my amazing @ucddublin.bsky.social @ucdpolitics.bsky.social colleague @stefanmueller.bsky.social on his latest project

www.ucd.ie/newsandopini...

Thank you very much, Anne!

Thanks, David!

Postdoctoral Position at the Cluster of Excellence “The Politics of Inequality” Deadline: 20 February 2026, 12:00 pm CET

🚨 Postdoctoral Position at the University of Konstanz 🚨

We’re hiring a post-doc for our @excinequality.bsky.social project on political elites and decision-making.

4-year position | Deadline: Feb. 20 | Start: Sept 2026

Please share widely 🙏

The ad is here stellen.uni-konstanz.de/jobposting/f...

Super excited to be participating in this Una Europa project on "Democracy and AI" ! And looking forward to co-leading the Leuven team with @bzar.bsky.social !

Abstract As generative artificial intelligence (Al) rapidly reshapes political communication and governance, there is an urgent need to understand its implications for democratic systems. While Al technologies have the potential to strengthen democracy (by improving access to information, enhancing participation, and supporting transparency and accountability) they also pose significant risks. These include the spread of disinformation, algorithmic bias, and the manipulation of electoral processes. Addressing this dual challenge, the project brings together a multidisciplinary network from six Una Europa institutions to develop a pioneering framework for assessing both the democratic risks and opportunities associated with Al. Integrating expertise from political science, communication studies, and computer science, the project will examine the impact of Al on democratic values, electoral integrity, and governance, in close consultation with key societal stakeholders. Core activities include an interdisciplinary research workshop, a grant development workshop, and a virtual training programme on Al for research. Together, these initiatives will strengthen collaboration, build research capacity, and position Una Europa to lead future international funding initiatives in this critical area. By co-developing innovative analytical tools and conceptual frameworks, the project aims to advance the state of the art while contributing to the protection and resilience of democratic systems in the age of Al.

Many thanks to the project leads:

Leiden: @tomlouwerse.nl (Co-PI)
Zurich: @fgilardi.bsky.social & @emmahoes.bsky.social
Leuven: @rdassonneville.bsky.social & @bzar.bsky.social
Edinburgh: Adam Chalmers
Berlin: @bcastanho.bsky.social

Details on our project: una-europa.imgix.net/documents/DE...

10 new projects receive Una Europa Seed Funding to shape Europe’s future | Una Europa Eleven European research universities have come together to create a unique alliance – Una Europa. Our universities have been educating Europe for almost 1,000 years. Together, we teach more than 400,...

Delighted that our project “Democracy and AI” has been selected for Una Europa Seed Funding.

Our project establishes a network of 25 researchers from six Una Europa institutions: University of Zurich, KU Leuven, University of Edinburgh, FU Berlin, Leiden, UCD.

➡️ www.una-europa.eu/stories/10-n...

You can join in person or via Zoom: www.ucd.ie/connected_po...

Seminars always start at 2pm Irish time

Receive Zoom link here: lb.benchmarkemail.com//listbuilder...

Overview of seminar series, details available at: https://www.ucd.ie/connected_politics/events/

Connected_Politics Lab Seminars, Spring Trimester ⤵️

- 28 Jan: @jessicadicocco.bsky.social
– 11 Feb: Akitaka Matsuo
– 25 Feb: @malojan.bsky.social, @luissattelmayer.bsky.social, and Noémie Piolat
– 4 Mar: @vivifabrien.bsky.social
– 1 Apr: @elisaadamico.bsky.social
– 15 Apr: @miriamsorace.bsky.social

Last year, we made the decision to step away from X.

The Royal Irish Academy is committed to creating, convening, and sharing knowledge for the public good and as an organisation we value Independence; Integrity; Curiosity; Openness and Rigour.

In our view, X no longer aligns with these values

Module Structure Week 1: Introduction to Quantitative Text Analysis (21 January 2026) Week 2: Workflow, R and Quarto (28 January 2026) Week 3: Tokenisation and Document-Feature Matrix (4 February 2026) Week 4: Dictionaries and Sentiment: Old and New Approaches (11 February 2026) Week 5: Describing and Comparing Texts (18 February 2026) Week 6: Supervised, Unsupervised, and Semi-Supervised Scaling (25 February 2026) Week 7: Topic Models (4 March 2026) Week 8: Retrieving, Loading, and Wrangling Text Corpora (25 March 2026) Week 9: Fundamentals of Supervised Document Classification (1 April) Week 10: Transformers: Fundamentals (8 April 2026) Week 11: Fine-Tuning Transformer Models for Classification (15 April 2026) Week 12: Large Language Models: Capabilities and Implications (22 April 2026)

Module structure ⤵️

muellerstefan.net/teaching/202...

Title page of syllabus: https://muellerstefan.net/teaching/2026-spring-qta.pdf

My updated syllabus for Quantitative Text Analysis is available online. As I previous years, I made quite a few changes and added recent literature. Part 1 (still) covers classic text-as-data approaches; Part 2 focuses on transformers and LLMs.

📄 muellerstefan.net/teaching/202... (PDF)

𝐌𝐨𝐬𝐭𝐥𝐲 𝐡𝐚𝐩𝐩𝐲, 𝐬𝐨𝐦𝐞𝐭𝐢𝐦𝐞𝐬 𝐰𝐨𝐫𝐫𝐢𝐞𝐝 𝐚𝐛𝐨𝐮𝐭 𝐦𝐨𝐧𝐞𝐲, 𝐛𝐮𝐭 𝐚𝐥𝐦𝐨𝐬𝐭 𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐲𝐨𝐧𝐞 𝐟𝐞𝐞𝐥𝐬 𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐧𝐞𝐜𝐭𝐞𝐝 𝐭𝐨 𝐧𝐚𝐭𝐮𝐫𝐞.

Today, @leewas.bsky.social launched a new era in Swiss polling: asking people, in their own words, what they hope for and what makes them happy, and using AI to classify open-ended survey responses

Book Launch of “How Ireland Voted 2024: The New Normal?”
21 January, 6pm, Dublin @hodgesfiggis.bsky.social

Editors: @michaelgtcd.bsky.social, @theresareidy.bsky.social & Eoin O'Malley
Launch by Pat Leahy, Political Editor, Irish Times

All welcome! Register here: www.eventbrite.com/e/book-launc...

We've got ISSUES. Literally.

We scraped >100k special issues & over 1 million articles to bring you a PISS-poor paper. We quantify just how many excess papers are published by guest editors abusing special issues to boost their CVs. How bad is it & what can we do?

arxiv.org/abs/2601.07563

A 🧵 1/n

Live from the Royal Irish Academy!

Inside the ARINS/Irish Times Survey: Origins, Approach, Insights

Chair: Professor Gail McElroy (TCD)

Panel: Prof Colin Barr (Notre Dame), Prof John Garry (QUB), Prof Brendan O’Leary (UPenn), Dr Dawn Walsh (UCD) and Dr Jamie Pow (QUB), Pat Leahy (Irish Times)

We've shipped a major update to the JOSS submission scope requirements, affecting what is eligible for submission and what information we require from authors.

You can read more about the changes and our motivations here: blog.joss.theoj.org/2026/01/prep... #joss #opensource #openscience