1/ Excited to report we have a new paper out @nature.com today! The bottom line: training data for LLMs does not just fall from the sky - it is created in the context of existing social political institutions - and that has consequences for LLM output. nature.com/articles/s41...

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

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.

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 ↓

Attention NYC undergrads: Applications are open for our 13th annual Data Science Summer school at Microsoft Research NYC! Apply here by April 14th: bit.ly/3pCQENh

🥁🥁🥁 Newly out from us today in Science Advances: “Biased AI Writing Assistants Shift Users’ Attitudes on Societal Issues”. Large Language Models are providing users with autocomplete writing suggestions on many platforms. Could these suggestions shift users’ own attitudes? (spoiler: YES) (1/7)

NYU is hiring two postdocs at the Center for Social Media, AI & Politics: csmapnyu.org/jobs And a grant manager in Sociology with the Social Science Research Hub: uscareers-nyu.icims.com/jobs/15327/g... I'm part of both groups--please share with anyone who is interested!

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...

Microsoft Research NYC is hiring a researcher in the space of AI and society!

A very interesting data-rich analysis of persuasion on digital media by @benmtappin.bsky.social. Recommend! open.substack.com/pub/benmtapp...

For Digital Mass Persuasion, Exposure Matters More Than Persuasiveness

If you are interested in understanding the mass persuasive impact of digital media content you should generally pay more attention to content exposure than to its persuasiveness.

open.substack.com

Is Joe Rogan really just a voice of the right? Our new @csmapnyu.org piece for @goodauth.bsky.social shows he’s just as much a space for the left and the center, too. A look inside today’s surprisingly complicated podcast information ecosystem. 🎙️ goodauthority.org/news/podcast...

We're hiring interns in the Computational Social Science group at Microsoft Research NYC! If you're interested in designing AI‑based systems and understanding their impact at both individual and societal scales, apply here by Jan 9, 2026: apply.careers.microsoft.com/careers/job/...

Research Intern - Computational Social Science | Microsoft Careers

Research Interns put inquiry and theory into practice. Alongside fellow doctoral candidates and some of the world's best researchers, Research Interns learn, collaborate, and network for life. Researc...

apply.careers.microsoft.com

The Center for Information Technology Policy at Princeton invites applications for a Postdoctoral Fellow to work with an interdisciplinary team (me, @bstewart.bsky.social, and @manoelhortaribeiro.bsky.social). Link: puwebp.princeton.edu/AcadHire/app... Please apply by THIS SUNDAY, Dec. 14!

Want to be an intern at Microsoft Research in the Computational Social Science group in NYC (Jake Hofman, David Rothschild, Dan Goldstein) Follow this link and do your thing! Deadline approaching soonish! apply.careers.microsoft.com/careers/job/...

Research Intern - Computational Social Science | Microsoft Careers

Research Interns put inquiry and theory into practice. Alongside fellow doctoral candidates and some of the world's best researchers, Research Interns learn, collaborate, and network for life. Researc...

apply.careers.microsoft.com

New in Science: Reranking partisan animosity in algorithmic social media feeds alters affective polarization www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... Key from @jennyallen.bsky.social @jatucker.bsky.social: (1) important new paradigm (2) but not clear why results differ www.science.org/doi/full/10....

New paper in Science: In a platform-independent field experiment, we show that reranking content expressing antidemocratic attitudes and partisan animosity in social media feeds alters affective polarization. 🧵

🚨Out in PNAS🚨 Examining news on 7 platforms: 1)Right-leaning platforms=lower quality news 2)Echo-platforms: Right-leaning news gets more engagement on right-leaning platforms, vice-versa for left-leaning 3)Low-quality news gets more engagement EVERYWHERE - even BlueSky! www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Now in PNAS! With @mmosleh.bsky.social and @dgrand.bsky.social Examining news engagement across 7 platforms, we find: - differences WRT political lean ("echo platforms") - similarities WRT news quality (posting low qual news => more engagement) Read paper and thread for more!

David Rand@dgrand.bsky.social · 2y ago

🚨New WP🚨 We examine news sharing on 7 platforms: 1)Right-leaning platforms=lower quality news 2)Echo-platforms: Right-leaning news gets more engagement on right-leaning platforms, vice-versa for left-leaning 3)But low-quality news gets more engagement EVERYWHERE, even BlueSky! osf.io/preprints/ps...

New! Great piece by Tech and Science Post highlighting new research study examining partisan news sharing on social media platforms, lead author Dr @mmosleh.bsky.social, @oii.ox.ac.uk, co-authors Jennifer Allen and @dgrand.bsky.social. 1/2 techandsciencepost.com/news/other-s...

Low-quality news links draw higher engagement, no matter the political slant online - Tech and Science Post

The spread of dubious headlines on social media isn’t just a right-wing thing—it’s a social media thing, according to new research from Cornell. After studying millions of social media posts containin...

techandsciencepost.com

"While high-quality content is posted more and receives more total engagement across platforms...a given author attracts higher levels of engagement when they post lower-quality content" "pattern we find seems to be driven more by an underperformance of particularly popular high-quality outlets"

Divergent patterns of engagement with partisan and low-quality news across seven social media platforms | PNAS

In recent years, social media has become increasingly fragmented, as platforms evolve and new alternatives emerge. Yet most research studies a sing...

pnas.org

📣 Yale workshop, Oct 16-17! 📣 How could/should content ranking work? What's new in content moderation? How can platforms promote civility? Hosted by Yale's Institute for Foundations of Data Science (FDS). Great speakers! Submit posters by 9/22! Spread the word! yalefds.swoogo.com/socialalgori...

New Directions in Social Algorithms Research on October 16-17, 2025 at Yale University

As social media algorithms increasingly mediate social experiences, there has been a rapid increase in research on the effects of how these algorithms are configured, alternatives to engagement-centri...

yalefds.swoogo.com

New in TiCS w @dgrand.bsky.social @gordpennycook.bsky.social It’s been ~10yrs since misinfo research exploded but our paradigms are stuck in the post-2016 “fake news” model Time for new approaches: o True/False → Content that misleads o Belief → Behavior o Eval interventions in ambiguous settings

🚨 Predoc at Microsoft Research 🚨 Do you have strong front-end programming and statistics skills but need research experience before heading off to graduate school for a computational social science PhD? Apply now for this summer! www.microsoft.com/en-us/resear...

Thrilled to be hosting the 3rd MEEW (Media Effects Empirical Workshop) at Columbia again. Hope to see some of you there! RSVP link is available at: sites.google.com/view/columbi...

New WP! The illusory truth effect (repetition -> belief) is core to psych of beliefs, & thought to be a deep bias impacting misinfo, persuasion & advertising Why would cognition include such a flaw? We argue it is a rational adaptation to high-quality info environments 🧵1/

🚨New WP🚨 We examine news sharing on 7 platforms: 1)Right-leaning platforms=lower quality news 2)Echo-platforms: Right-leaning news gets more engagement on right-leaning platforms, vice-versa for left-leaning 3)But low-quality news gets more engagement EVERYWHERE, even BlueSky! osf.io/preprints/ps...