Do people watch the news they do not trust? We tried to bring nuance to this question in a new paper (w Frank Mangold, Michaela Maier). Like others before us, we argue that “media distrust” comes in two flavors: skepticism and cynicism. journals.sagepub.com/doi/epub/10....

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New study by @scope-rptu.bsky.social researchers! Michaela Maier, @maierjuergen.bsky.social & @alessandronai.bsky.social provide convincing evidence across a huge variety of data sets that the "classical" measure of negative campaigning is reliable and valid. tinyurl.com/3yvs5a38

Unreliable and Invalid? Not So Fast: A Multistudy Empirical Assessment of the ‘Directional’ Measure of Negative Campaigning - Alessandro Nai, Jürgen Maier, Michaela Maier, 2026

The ‘directional’ definition of negative campaigning (i.e. when candidates leverage critiques against their political opponents) has been criticized for lacking...

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🚨 Happy that this piece is finally out in @polstudies.bsky.social ! Across 9 (!) studies and multiple data sources, we ask a simple question: is the “directional” definition of Negative Campaigning still valid and reliable? TLDR: yups! Paper: tinyurl.com/3yvs5a38 Open data: osf.io/un4f8

🌟 SCOPE hosted the Computational Methods in Science Communication Research conference! Thanks to Ines Vogel & Berend Barkela for organizing 👏 Scholars explored AI, automation & text analysis in science communication. Highlight: Dr. Weber’s hands-on LLM workshop. Great interdisciplinary exchange! 🚀