11/11 Now it's your turn to follow your curiosity. For the high-level story from Alex Russell @ucdlands.bsky.social, see: lettersandsciencemag.ucdavis.edu/amazon-curio... For the technical details, the @pnasnexus.org paper is open access: doi.org/10.1093/pnas...

Curiosity Makes Some Amazon Book Buyers More Willing to Risk it All for Reading Pleasure

A new study in communication scoured the book buying histories and ratings of more than 35,000 Amazon shoppers and found that while some buy books that are similar to others they have enjoyed, people ...

lettersandsciencemag.ucdavis.edu

🧵In a bookstore, what section do you head to? The one you know you'll love? The one you're not so sure about? Algorithms help us make this choice. But what algorithms are our brains running when we choose for ourselves? In a study published in @pnasnexus.org, we tested this doi.org/10.1093/pnas...

HSSM: A Widely Applicable Toolbox for Hierarchical Bayesian Neuro-cognitive Modeling https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.06.05.730398v1

📚 New paper out in PNAS Nexus! How do we choose what to read next? Turns out picking your next book works a lot like how humans forage for food. And it is driven by your curiosity. We analyzed ~2 million real reading choices to find out doi.org/10.1093/pnasnexus/pgag226

Individual curiosity modulates exploration in sequential book selection

Abstract. Information-seeking is widely understood as a curiosity-driven exploration behavior similar to resource foraging. However, it remains unclear whe

doi.org

2/11 We start with college students; a group that over-indexes on mental health challenges. In the U.S., 37% report moderate-to-severe depression, 33% anxiety, and 58% loneliness. They’re also heavy media users.

Depressed? Anxious? Lonely? What if mental health doesn’t just result from media use, but shapes how we choose media? In a new preprint, Valerie Klein, @gongxuanjun.bsky.social @aeden.bsky.social and I and I test this using a computational decision-making model: doi.org/10.21203/rs.... 🧵Thread

Enjoying Stranger Things during the holiday season? Have you thought about why some stories are more successful than others? Our new preprint investigates this question by studying the character networks in the narratives: osf.io/preprints/ps...

🧵 What does it take to build a small, scrappy, and successful communication neuroscience lab? Our lab, @gongxuanjun.bsky.social, @rachaelkee.bsky.social, Allyson Snyder, Ziyu Zhao, and I put out heads together to answer this question. Here's what we came up with: link.springer.com/chapter/10.1...

🆕 New open neuroimaging dataset released! I’m happy to share that our Naturalistic Neuroimaging Database (NNDb3T+) is now publicly available! NNDb3T+ captures rich, multimodal brain activity in a naturalistic setting with 40 participants and over 160 hours of scanning!

Our tenured positions in Journalism and Communication Science are still open. Please share widely!

Yiping Xia 夏逸平@xiayp.bsky.social · 11mo ago

My department at Texas A&M has four Tenured/Tenure Track faculty openings in Comm Science, Journalism, and Global Media. Details here: artsci.tamu.edu/comm-journal...

We’re hiring! 🎓 Join us at Texas A&M Communication & Journalism as a tenured Associate Professor in communication interventions. Join us in building a vibrant Communication & Media Science Division! 🔗 apply.interfolio.com/173348

After 22 years of school, I am now the kind of doctor that isn't particularly handy in a medical emergency - but will talk your ear off about kids and tech. But really, a huge thank you to the family, friends, and teachers who nurtured and supported me along the way. Next stop is Columbus Ohio!

Headed to #ica25? So are we! The CCS Lab is sharing 3 projects—including a Top Paper—on how we choose what to watch, read & click We use computational modeling & neuroimaging to study how curiosity, value & emotion influence media choice Talks by @rachaelkee.bsky.social & @gongxuanjun.bsky.social

@gongxuanjun.bsky.social giving a wonderful talk on narrative impact & success (w @richardhuskey.bsky.social & @aeden.bsky.social) by using narrative structural models of networked characters & events to model popularity of a novel at #CommHorizons2025

"I think a good curiosity is a balanced curiosity," says @gongxuanjun.bsky.social. I really appreciated that curiosity philosophy in our conversation about curiosity and media selection. (You're going to love his cats....) Listen here: lynnborton.com/2025/04/17/p...

"This #evaluation system based on #curiosity is different from how people evaluate normal things,” says @gongxuanjun.bsky.social. How we choose media to manage our moods, why sequence matters, & what draws us to that next book. Conundrum: explore or exploit? lynnborton.com/2025/04/17/p...

Pick A Book, Any Book: Curiosity & Media Choices, with XuanJun Gong

XuanJun Gong is interested in media selection, computational modeling, communication networks, and information diffusion. He’s looked at how we choose media to manage our moods, how the sequence of ou...

lynnborton.com

Were it not for #academicsky #academicchatter, I might not have found @gongxuanjun.bsky.social. Hurrah for facilitating the research-to-realworld pipeline & linking audio producers with people who expand our understanding of ourselves. Thanks, @bsky.app! #curiosity #choosetobecurious

Lynn Borton@choosetobecurious.bsky.social · last yr.

"This #evaluation system based on #curiosity is different from how people evaluate normal things,” says @gongxuanjun.bsky.social. How we choose media to manage our moods, why sequence matters, & what draws us to that next book. Conundrum: explore or exploit? lynnborton.com/2025/04/17/p...

Books fans! 📖 What is your next book to read❓ Our study shows that two mechanisms drives people reading choices - enjoyment driven and information driven. We also found curiosity fosters people reading enjoyment and encourages exploratory readings. Read our new preprints doi.org/10.21203/rs....

That’s a wrap! Our latest fMRI data collection is done thanks to heroic efforts from @gongxuanjun.bsky.social, @rachaelkee.bsky.social, Allyson Snyder, Ziyu Zhao, and some awesome undergrad RAs! Stay tuned for some forthcoming computational modeling of the negativity bias!

Now that it seems that 🦋 is picking up steam, I wanted to share a bit of what @dougaparry.bsky.social and I have been working on recently. This manuscript is aimed at answering a question that’s been bugging both of us for a long time: Is it time to abandon the Media Multitasking Index? [🧵 1/9]

🚨New preprint 🚨 **A computational model of reward learning and habits on social media** 🧵 We develop a computational reward learning model of real-world social media data, which infers the separate goal-directed and habitual cognitive processes driving posting...

🥳🥳🥳 Super excited to announce that our new publication: Media selection is highly predictable, in principle is out @computationalcommunication.org URL: doi.org/10.5117/CCR2...

🥳🥳🥳 Excited to announce that our new publication: Consider the time dimension: theorizing and formalizing sequential media selection is out at Human Communication Research!!! URL: doi.org/10.1093/hcr/...

Excited that our new paper @ABSjournal titled "Moving Behavioral Experimentation Online: A Tutorial and Some Recommendations for Drift Diffusion Modeling" is out! Open access link: doi.org/10.1177/0002...