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Melina Much

@melinamuch.bsky.social

Postdoctoral Fellow @csmapnyu.org. Identities, political behavior, social media 👩🏻‍💻 melinamuch.com

39 Posts214 Follower216 Folgt
Adam Bonica@adambonica.bsky.social · last wk.

Once mass spam texts were made legal, younger donors vanished, leaving a grassroots fundraising machine that subsists on squeezing vulnerable seniors, some of whom give hundreds of times a day. It’s a horrific model. Consultants get generationally wealthy, and the party hollows out its future.

"Democrats traded their younger donors for squeezed seniors," showing the share of the party’s small-dollar donations (under $200) from 2012 to 2026. The subtitle reads: "In 2026, about 175,000 squeezed seniors — donors 65 and older charged 50 or more times in a cycle — supplied 51% of those donations. Gen X, Millennials and Gen Z, roughly 63% of registered Democrats, supplied 15%." Two lines track donation shares from 2012 to 2026: "Squeezed seniors" (orange line) starts around 9% in 2012, rises to 30% in 2018 and 2020, then jumps sharply to 45% in 2022, 47% in 2024, and 51% in 2026. "Gen X, Millennials & Gen Z" (green line) starts around 17% in 2012, peaks around 33% in 2020, and then drops sharply to 18% in 2022, 19% in 2024, and 15% in 2026. A vertical dashed line at April 2021 is labeled: "The Supreme Court (Facebook v. Duguid) clears the way for mass fundraising texts, piled on top of the email spam already flooding inboxes." Footnote: "Shares are by number of donations. By dollars, squeezed seniors gave 39% of small-dollar money in 2026 and Gen X, Millennials and Gen Z gave 18%. Squeezed seniors are donors 65 and older charged 50 or more times in an election cycle. 2026 is mid-cycle.
Jake Grumbach@jakemgrumbach.bsky.social · last wk.

We found that as of right now 73% of your campaign donation goes back to the consultants and vendors (!!!), four times more than just 20 years ago. Only 13% to ads. Even I was shocked.

Where your $100 donation actually goes Of every $100 raised by a Democratic fundraising text, $73 goes to consultants and vendors. Only $13 reaches voters as advertising — the most expensive dollar to raise in American politics. Consultants & vendors • Advertising, staff & admin | Your donation $100 Fundraising fees -$65 $35 left Strategic consultants -$2 $33 left Media placement commission -$6 $73 of every $100 goes to consultants & vendors $27 left Advertising -$13 $14 left Staff, travel & admin -$14 $0 left Note: Shares are for a dollar raised by a Democratic fundraising text or email. Source: Authors' analysis of FEC disbursement records.
Linde Center for Science, Society, & Policy at Caltech@caltechlcssp.bsky.social · 2w ago

New preprint from @caltechlcssp.bsky.social's @rcenteno.bsky.social & @rmichaelalvarez.bsky.social! Findings suggest confidence in elections is not distributed equally across the electorate and uncover persistent racial gaps in voter confidence. 📖 Read more: preprints.apsanet.org/engage/apsa/...

Who Trusts the Counts? American Election Confidence Across Race and Ethnicity

Trust in elections is critical to democratic legitimacy, and it has long been known that nonwhite voters are less trusting in U.S. elections. However, little is known about how trust is distributed ac...

preprints.apsanet.org

Hakeem Jefferson@hakeemjefferson.bsky.social · last mo.

Re Cornell: As a fellow at Stanford’s Clayman Institute for Gender & Sexuality last year, I began thinking abt how we might study homosociality, or the relational bonds btwn men, empirically—bonds we know matter for lots of men. Writeup of my v early-stage work: gender.stanford.edu/news/can-we-...

Can we measure homosociality? | The Clayman Institute for Gender Research

Anyone who has heard the phrase “locker room talk” is familiar with how men’s conduct is presumed to shift in male-dominated spaces. Hakeem Jefferson, assistant professor of political science at Stanf...

gender.stanford.edu

Nicole Bedera@nbedera.bsky.social · last mo.

The main reason you haven’t heard about campus sexual violence in a few years is because Trump and SCOTUS have made it much, much harder for survivors to come forward. You might vaguely remember that Title IX was a big battleground in his first term. And that we lost.

Melina Much@melinamuch.bsky.social · 2mo ago

Check out our working paper on podcasts and the youth gender gap and see us at APSA this Saturday! It’s my favorite kind of combination of computational social science and behavioral survey data. There are some amazing pod panels today (Thurs), but also more this weekend! 👩🏻‍💻🎙️

NYU's Center for Social Media, AI, and Politics@csmapnyu.org · 2mo ago

Did podcasts really swing young men to Trump in 2024? We assembled the data to find out, and we are presenting it at APSA this Saturday, Sept 5, 2 to 3:30pm. Long awaited working paper link also attached below! If you have seen this before, we have new data, come check it out.

Linde Center for Science, Society, & Policy at Caltech@caltechlcssp.bsky.social · 4mo ago

🔊New blog from @caltechlcssp.bsky.social's Postdoc Scholar @rcenteno.bsky.social, @caltech.edu: 🟠The Racial Gap in Voter Confidence: How Trust in Ballot Counting Varies Across Racial and Ethnic Groups🟠 lcssp.caltech.edu/more/lcssp-b... See details on project with @rmichaelalvarez.bsky.social:

Raquel Centeno@rcenteno.bsky.social · 4mo ago

🚨 new research alert! 🚨 Check out the latest @caltechlcssp.bsky.social blog summarizing my new project with @rmichaelalvarez.bsky.social 👇 We use the 2024 CMPS to provide newly precise estimates of voter confidence across racial & ethnic groups, demonstrating a racial gap in voter confidence 🗳️

Melina Much@melinamuch.bsky.social · 4mo ago

Favorite figure from our recent CCR paper on #MeToo, essentially demonstrating the probability of a given tweet related to MeToo being about testimnials of sexual violence (CR), about political action (activated), or being reactionary to the movement. The counter movement by the end is...large. 👀

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Melina Much@melinamuch.bsky.social · 4mo ago

New paper out in Computational Communication Research We analyze 8.4 million English-language #MeToo tweets from 2017–2019 to study how consciousness-raising cultivates activated senses of identity online. www.aup-online.com/content/jour...

Activating Identity and Political Action in the #MeToo Era | Amsterdam University Press Journals Online

Abstract Twitter (now X) represented an invaluable space for sparking and mobilizing political movements. An example of this is the #MeToo movement beginning in 2017, which was one of the largest soci...

aup-online.com

Sol Messing@solmg.bsky.social · 6mo 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.
Amanda Sahar d’Urso@asdurso.bsky.social · 7mo ago

ICYMI my solo article on MENA identity. When MENA Americans aren’t given a “MENA” option on forms, they answer identity-related questions on politics more strongly (eg higher end of the scale) than if“MENA” had been added. Having the group label or not changes the average response!

American Political Science Review@apsrjournal.bsky.social · 7mo ago

From our FirstView article: What Happens When You Can’t Check the Box? Categorization Threat and Public Opinion among Middle Eastern and North African Americans by @asdurso.bsky.social. doi.org/10.1017/S000...

Joshua Tucker@jatucker.bsky.social · 8mo ago

Are you a social scientist who has been hearing about Claude Code but hasn't checked it out yet? Or are you a social scientist who has been playing with Claude Code and has been wondering what it means for the future of social science research? www.brookings.edu/articles/the... 1/

The train has left the station: Agentic AI and the future of social science research | Brookings

A new era of agentic AI agents has begun. What does it mean for social scientists? Solomon Messing and Joshua Tucker discuss.

brookings.edu

Christopher Barrie@cbarrie.bsky.social · 8mo ago

🧵on my new paper "Synthetic personas distort the structure of human belief systems" w Roberto Cerina I'm v excited about... 🚨 Do synthetic samples look like human samples? We compare 28 LLMs to the 2024 General Social Survey (GSS) to find out + develop host of diagnostics...

Melina Much@melinamuch.bsky.social · 9mo ago

Should Harris have gone on Rogan? Check out my response here on American Friction. Thanks for having me @jacobjarvis.bsky.social @chrisjonesprod.bsky.social open.spotify.com/episode/16Uy...

Joe Rogan and the podcast bros – Why are they so confused?

Spotify video

open.spotify.com

American Friction@americanfric.bsky.social · 9mo ago

🚨NEW EPISODE🚨 The world of Joe Rogan and his fellow bro podcasters is a weird place to enter. @melinamuch.bsky.social joins @jacobjarvis.bsky.social and @chrisjonesprod.bsky.social to talk through their weird and confusing political views ➡️ linktr.ee/bunker_pod