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NYU's Center for Social Media, AI, and Politics

@csmapnyu.org

We work to strengthen democracy by conducting rigorous research, advancing evidence-based public policy, and training the next generation of scholars. https://csmapnyu.org/links

454 Posts12191 Follower620 Folgt
Christopher Barrie@cbarrie.bsky.social · 2w ago

I have a new paper out in @sociologicalsci.bsky.social w/ the briliant @aybukeatalay.bsky.social and @aliaelkattan.com We show that what we pay attention to online is a lot more politically diverse than what public engagement signals would suggest... sociologicalscience.com/articles-v13...

Information Diets Are More Diverse in Attention Than in Engagement

Article: Information Diets Are More Diverse in Attention Than in Engagement | Sociological Science | Posted July 21, 2026

sociologicalscience.com

Hannah Waight@hwaight.bsky.social · 3mo ago

I’m excited to share a new paper in Nature that shows how large language models launder the strategic rhetoric of authoritarian states. Paper here: www.nature.com/articles/s41.... A thread.

State media control influences large language models - Nature

Government-controlled media influences the output of large language models via their training data, and models queried in the languages of countries with lower media freedom show a stronger ...

nature.com

Sol Messing@solmg.bsky.social · 3mo ago

New in Nature: LLMs give "the party line" in the languages of authoritarian regimes. This works when they control the media, which feeds pretraining data. We show more state control over the media means less critical LLMs. 6 studies spanning 38 languages & 13 models. Details ↓

Scatter plot of 38 countries plus China showing the proportion of LLM responses favorable to the regime in the local language vs. World Press Freedom Index score. Lower press freedom predicts more regime-favorable responses; all production models pooled.
NYU Law Democracy Project@democracyproject.bsky.social · 6mo ago

Next up in our "100 ideas" series — New by @jatucker.bsky.social @csmapnyu.org — "Embracing Platform Transparency in a Digital World to Strengthen Democracy" Part of @nyulaw.bsky.social Democracy Project's "100 Ideas in 100 Days" Read the full piece here: democracyproject.org/posts/embrac...

Embracing Platform Transparency in a Digital World to Strengthen Democracy

A broad range of views on democracy to help break the stalemate caused by partisan conflict.

democracyproject.org

Sol Messing@solmg.bsky.social · 5mo ago

You can just research things. New from @jatucker.bsky.social & me at @brookings: Coding agents like Claude Code and Codex will likely accelerate research AND undermine institutional structures we built to support it.

Google Trends chart showing interest in commercial coding agents increasing dramatically in early 2026
Sol Messing@solmg.bsky.social · 6mo ago

Last week the story was that TikTok censored anti-Trump/ICE/Pretti videos after the U.S. ownership change. We investigated with a large set of US TikTok data and found some interesting results, short thread...

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NYU's Center for Social Media, AI, and Politics@csmapnyu.org · 6mo ago

CSMaP is now the Center for Social Media, AI, and Politics (CSMAP). Our research has expanded beyond social media to include digital media more broadly—especially generative AI and large language models and their role in politics and public life. Learn more at csmapnyu.org

NYU's Center for Social Media and Politics

Strengthening democracy by conducting rigorous research, advancing evidence-based public policy, and training the next generation of scholars.

csmapnyu.org

NYU's Center for Social Media, AI, and Politics@csmapnyu.org · 9mo ago

When we think about false news stories, we usually focus on what is being said. But what if the language of a story shapes whether people believe it? Our new paper in the Journal of Experimental Political Science explores this question in Ukraine. www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

How Language Shapes Belief in Misinformation: A Study Among Multilinguals in Ukraine | Journal of Experimental Political Science | Cambridge Core

How Language Shapes Belief in Misinformation: A Study Among Multilinguals in Ukraine

cambridge.org

Petter Törnberg@pettertornberg.com · 9mo ago

LLMs are now widely used in social science as stand-ins for humans—assuming they can produce realistic, human-like text But... can they? We don’t actually know. In our new study, we develop a Computational Turing Test. And our findings are striking: LLMs may be far less human-like than we think.🧵

Computational Turing Test Reveals Systematic Differences Between Human and AI Language

Large language models (LLMs) are increasingly used in the social sciences to simulate human behavior, based on the assumption that they can generate realistic, human-like text. Yet this assumption rem...

arxiv.org

Tiago Ventura@tiagoventura.bsky.social · 10mo ago

The paper is co-authored with Bernhard Von Clemm, @ericka.bric.digital @jonathannagler.bsky.social @magdalenawojciesza.bsky.social This is also one of the projects I started at @csmapnyu.org ---- thanks to the entire lab involved! The paper can be found here: www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

Survey Professionalism: New Evidence from Web Browsing Data | Political Analysis | Cambridge Core

Survey Professionalism: New Evidence from Web Browsing Data

cambridge.org

Tiago Ventura@tiagoventura.bsky.social · last yr.

🚨 Paper now as "just accepted" at @The_JOP. We ran the first WhatsApp deactivation experiment focused on multimedia content ahead of the 2022 election in Brazil. We find a reduction in users' recall of false rumors -- and, to a smaller degree, of true news. Null effects on attitudes. Full thread ⬇️

NYU's Center for Social Media, AI, and Politics@csmapnyu.org · last yr.

In the Global South, WhatsApp is more popular than X or Facebook. New in @The_JOP, we ran a WhatsApp deactivation experiment during Brazil’s 2022 election to explore how the app facilitates the spread of misinformation and affects voters’ attitudes. www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1...

Abstract: In most advanced democracies, concerns about the spread of misinformation are typically associated with feed-based social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook. These platforms also account for the vast majority of research on the topic. However, in most of the world, particularly in Global South countries, misinformation often reaches citizens through social media messaging apps, particularly WhatsApp. To fill the resulting gap in the literature, we conducted a multimedia deactivation experiment to test the impact of reducing exposure to potential sources of misinformation on WhatsApp during the weeks leading up to the 2022 Presidential election in Brazil. We find that this intervention significantly reduced participants’ recall of false rumors circulating widely during the election. However, consistent with theories of mass media minimal effects, a short-term change in the information environment did not lead to significant changes in belief accuracy, political polarization, or well-being.
Christopher Barrie@cbarrie.bsky.social · last yr.

In addition to the original UK results, we have now ***replicated*** this (TWICE) in the US. The main findings hold strong: information diets are a lot more diverse in attention than in engagement. New version here: osf.io/preprints/os...

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Christopher Barrie@cbarrie.bsky.social · last yr.

📄NEW PAPER📄 Ever wondered content people actually pay *attention* to online? Our new research reveals that you likely pay attention to far more varied political content than your likes and shares suggest

Hannah Waight@hwaight.bsky.social · last yr.

I am thrilled to share a new article in Sociological Methods & Research, “Quantifying Narrative Similarity Across Languages”. My co-first author Sol Messing and our collaborators developed a new approach to measuring “narrative similarity” between texts: journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

Quantifying Narrative Similarity Across Languages - Hannah Waight, Solomon Messing, Anton Shirikov, Margaret E. Roberts, Jonathan Nagler, Jason Greenfield, Megan A. Brown, Kevin Aslett, Joshua A. Tuck...

How can one understand the spread of ideas across text data? This is a key measurement problem in sociological inquiry, from the study of how interest groups sh...

journals.sagepub.com

Andreu Casas@andreucasas.bsky.social · last yr.

🚨New Publication @thejop.bsky.social We study who sets the issue agenda of state policymakers in the US. We find a mixed picture: they respond to shifts in attention by members of Congress, but also to the constituents in their states, particularly their own party supporters.

NYU's Center for Social Media, AI, and Politics@csmapnyu.org · last yr.

Amid growing DC gridlock, state legislatures play a vital role in shaping policy. But how do state lawmakers decide which issues deserve their attention? Our new @thejop.bsky.social paper is the first large-scale multi-state analysis exploring this question www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/...

Title: Bottom Up? Top Down? Determinants ofIssue-Attention in State Politics Abstract: Who shapes the issue-attention cycle of state legislators? Although state governments make critical policy decisions, data and methodological constraints have limited re-searchers’ ability to study state-level agenda setting. For this paper, we collect more than 122 million Twitter messages sent by state and national actors in 2018 and 2021.We then employ supervised machine learning and time series techniques to study how the issue-attention of state lawmakers evolves vis-`a-vis various local- and national-level actors. Our findings suggest that state legislators operate at the confluence of national and local influences. In line with arguments highlighting the nationalization of state politics, we find that state legislators are consistently responsive to policy debates among members of Congress. However, despite growing nationalization concerns, we also find strong evidence of issue responsiveness by legislators to members of the public in their states and moderate responsiveness to regional media sources.
Oscar Stuhler@oms279.bsky.social · last yr.

New paper out in @thejop.bsky.social with my colleagues at @csmapnyu.org . Substantive findings are summarized in the thread below. Of interest to a broader sociological audience: we show how to measure discursive influence between different groups.

NYU's Center for Social Media, AI, and Politics@csmapnyu.org · last yr.

Amid growing DC gridlock, state legislatures play a vital role in shaping policy. But how do state lawmakers decide which issues deserve their attention? Our new @thejop.bsky.social paper is the first large-scale multi-state analysis exploring this question www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/...

Title: Bottom Up? Top Down? Determinants ofIssue-Attention in State Politics Abstract: Who shapes the issue-attention cycle of state legislators? Although state governments make critical policy decisions, data and methodological constraints have limited re-searchers’ ability to study state-level agenda setting. For this paper, we collect more than 122 million Twitter messages sent by state and national actors in 2018 and 2021.We then employ supervised machine learning and time series techniques to study how the issue-attention of state lawmakers evolves vis-`a-vis various local- and national-level actors. Our findings suggest that state legislators operate at the confluence of national and local influences. In line with arguments highlighting the nationalization of state politics, we find that state legislators are consistently responsive to policy debates among members of Congress. However, despite growing nationalization concerns, we also find strong evidence of issue responsiveness by legislators to members of the public in their states and moderate responsiveness to regional media sources.
Megan Zahneis@mzahneis.bsky.social · last yr.

Here's a copy of an NSF grant termination notice that went out today. "NSF is issuing this termination to protect the interests of the government pursuant...on the basis that they no longer effectuate the program goals or agency priorities." Not subject to appeal. #HigherEd #AcademicSky

Text of email: Dear [redacted], The U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) has undertaken a review of its award portfolio. Each award was carefully and individually reviewed, and the agency has determined that termination of certain awards is necessary because they are not in alignment with current NSF priorities. Effective immediately, the following are terminated: [redacted] NSF is issuing this termination to protect the interests of the government pursuant to NSF Grant General Conditions (GC-1) term and condition entitled Termination and Enforcement; on the basis that they no longer effectuate the program goals or agency priorities. This is the final agency decision and not subject to appeal. Costs incurred as a result of this termination may be reimbursed, provided such costs would otherwise be allowable under the terms of the award and the governing cost principles. In accordance with your award terms and conditions, you have 30 days from the termination date to furnish a summary of progress under the award and an itemized accounting of allowable costs incurred prior to the termination date. Sincerely, [redacted] Division Director Office of Budget Finance and Award Management (BFA) Division of Grants and Agreements (DGA)