We're hiring! We're recruiting a Research Assistant to join the @oii.ox.ac.uk team, working with @katyahe.bsky.social supporting research into the digital lives of care-experienced children in the UK. Find out more and apply today! www.oii.ox.ac.uk/people/vacan...

Looking forward to giving a tutorial on 𝗦𝗼𝗰𝗶𝗮𝗹 𝗠𝗲𝗱𝗶𝗮 𝗙𝗲𝗲𝗱 𝗥𝗮𝗻𝗸𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗔𝗹𝗴𝗼𝗿𝗶𝘁𝗵𝗺𝘀 with @tiziano.bsky.social at @ic2s2.bsky.social! 🕜 𝗧𝗶𝗺𝗲: Tuesday, 1-4 pm 📍 𝗟𝗼𝗰𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻: Mansfield (210). 🌐 𝗪𝗲𝗯𝘀𝗶𝘁𝗲: social-media-ais.github.io/ic2s2-26-tut...

New (and personal first!) paper out in @poppublicsphere.bsky.social w/ Chris Anderson. 🤖🗳️ Citizens increasingly use and interact with AI tools to make sense of political information and express views. We ask: what does this mean for citizens' autonomy in politics?

Perspectives on Politics@poppublicsphere.bsky.social · 4w ago

NOW OUT ON FIRSTVIEW!! The Autonomy Paradox: #Artificial #Intelligence and the Foundations of #Political #Behavior By Christopher J. Anderson & @elenapro.bsky.social doi.org/10.1017/S153...

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

"Classics?" they said. "How is that going to be useful unless you're a teacher or work in a museum?" *me 20 years later writing a column analysing Count Binface's assessment of finer points of ancient Athenian democracy* "Take THAT!"

🙏 Come work with me 🙏 We're hiring a postdoc. to work on a v cool project using AI to better understand local-level social cohesion...

America: our 2026 politics would make David Lynch say ‘no, that’s too weird’ Britain: hold our beer

Last month, we held our policy masterclass with researchers across the network, taking the opportunity to turn their recent work into policy briefings. Alice Wilson, Carly Waterhouse, and Amna Smith joined us for the event and have shared their reflections in a series of blogs.

Andy Burnham has announced that his former ministerial colleague James Purnell will be his chief of staff James spoke last year at an @instituteforgovernment.org.uk event - we've had a look to see how he might approach the CoS role. First up though, what has changed since he was last in govt:

Closing very soon! Come join a great team 👍

Andreu Casas@andreucasas.bsky.social · 3mo ago

🚨 I'm recruiting 2 postdoctoral researchers for the @ldnsocmedobs.bsky.social, to be based at the University of Oxford (@ox.ac.uk). These are both full-time positions for 2 years. Deadline for applications: June 23. Expected start date: September 2026. 🔁 Please share and help me spread the word! 🚀

Absolutely the most interesting thing I’ve read on Burnham. First rate.

Patrick Maguire@patrickmaguire.bsky.social · 2mo ago

This is what he believes www.thetimes.com/article/5d9c...

🗓️ This week, we will be presenting several papers with our collaborators at the #EPSSBelfast conference. 💬 Come along to see the presentations and discuss, we’re eager to hear people’s feedback! ⬇️ Here's what's coming up! 🧵[1/7]

📢 I’m hiring 2 three-year postdocs at Dept of Political Science, @au.dk! Come work with me on The Politics of Shaming and Shamelessness — a new project on elite rhetoric, emotions, norms, hostility and political violence. Deadline: 31 August 2026 Start: Dec 2026–Feb 2027 Please share widely! 🙏

2 three-year postdocs in political communication and political psychology at Aarhus University - Vacancy at Aarhus University

Vacancy at Department of Political Science, Aarhus University

international.au.dk

1. UK government proposes sweeping new laws to regulate the Internet 2. Experts warn the powers are badly-defined, technologically unfeasible and will be difficult to enforce 3. Government passes them anyway 4. Enforcement turns out to be hard 5. Government proposes more new laws

Me every time a new badly-designed social media policy gets announced

A Whole Damn Town!@im.a.whole.damn.town · 2mo ago

Twin Peaks: The Giant with an important message for Cooper: IT IS HAPPENING AGAIN.

Is the Microsoft Office Ribbon causing people to have fewer children? A provocative new working paper explores the persistent drop in birth rates since Office 2007 was introduced nearly two decades ago.

Yeah, this crystallises my unease with the 16-17 curfew: either you think sixteen year olds are sovereign adults, and therefore should vote, OR you put them on a different information regime to everyone else, but....not both.

Nervous Social Democrat@nervoussocdem.bsky.social · 2mo ago

I am baffled by combining this with votes at 16. I get the argument that the ability to participate in democracy doesn’t necessarily match the point at which you should leave school or be independent, but I think it does have to come at the same age as we trust you with an open information system.

If you are a policy interested researcher we have opened a fantastic call for our Innovation Fellowships. Spend a year working with a policy partner on themes of resilient communities or digital society. We offer up to £120k. More detail below in this 🧵 www.thebritishacademy.ac.uk/funding/sche...

Very pleased to have been on the leadership team for this paper! LLMs are already being used all over behavioural science. But it is often pretty hard to work out exactly what has been done, and therefore how much confidence to place in the results. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

A reporting checklist for large language models in behavioural science - Nature Human Behaviour

Large language models offer new opportunities for behavioural science, but their rapid evolution poses challenges for research rigour. We introduce a consensus-based reporting checklist to improve tra...

nature.com

This suggests something v. interesting IMO AI systems may not just reproduce political divisions in their outputs; they may become objects of political sorting in their own right

📄 New paper: people choose AI models partly on political grounds This is joint work with @pettertornberg.com @chrisbail.bsky.social @michelleschimmel.bsky.social and led by @michaelheseltine.bsky.social

Less than 1 week left to apply for this exciting postdoc opportunity ⬇️ @kathleenbeckers.bsky.social & I look forward to receiving applications 😀

Katjana Gattermann@kgattermann.bsky.social · 3mo ago

🚨New PolCom Postdoc Vacancy🚨@kathleenbeckers.bsky.social & I are hiring on project "Media, Inequality, and Democratic Support" as part of the Horizon Europe project EDGE ⬇️ Start: 1 Oct 2026, length: 30 months, location: @ascor.bsky.social 🤩, DL: 7 June 2026! More info & apply: tinyurl.com/23zdmjhe

🧵 Its been a big week for how the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) thinks about research. This week DCMS launched its refreshed set of Areas of Research Interest (ARIs). You can read them here www.gov.uk/government/p... (1/5)

DCMS Areas of Research Interest

gov.uk

25 years ago, many of us believed the internet could empower everyday people. What happened, and what does it mean for the AI era we are now entering? www.oii.ox.ac.uk/news-events/...

Ultimately, if you're going to do a frowny face and a 'the people must be told' then it should be a 'why did a bald man buy TWO Dyson hairdryers?' and 'seriously, what were the other five DSes for?'

Robin Wilde@robinwilde.me · 3mo ago

I have been trying to work out the DS thing and there *were* quite a lot of variants of that family. If he'd had a DSi, 3DS, New 3DS, 3DS XL etc, then maybe?

for a high-level write up of the findings, check out this insight.kellogg.northwestern.edu/article/can-...

Can We Take the Doom Out of Scrolling?

Today’s social-media feeds elevate toxicity and partisanship. A new algorithm offers hope for a less-hostile, more-enjoyable experience.

insight.kellogg.northwestern.edu

As I mentioned in the below thread, this project involved many feats of engineering, led by the fantastic @markptorres.bsky.social. If you're a CS or CSS person interested in the gory details, see his blog post: markptorres.com/research/202...

William J. Brady@williambrady.bsky.social · 3mo ago

✨New paper out @nature.com ✨ For 8 weeks around the 2024 US election, we randomly assigned 2,000 people to use social media algos we built ourselves. Do engagement-based algorithms amplify intergroup, moral & emotional (IME) content—and does that distort how we see political norms? 🧵🔗 👇

Come work with me from September! Brilliant opportunity to shape high-quality, impactful research within a team with a really positive work culture 🙂

Andreu Casas@andreucasas.bsky.social · 3mo ago

🚨 I'm recruiting 2 postdoctoral researchers for the @ldnsocmedobs.bsky.social, to be based at the University of Oxford (@ox.ac.uk). These are both full-time positions for 2 years. Deadline for applications: June 23. Expected start date: September 2026. 🔁 Please share and help me spread the word! 🚀

Still time to apply!! Come & work with me at the Hasso Plattner Institute & @bmittelstadt.bsky.social @cruss.bsky.social @oii.ox.ac.uk If you care about ethical, legal, and social aspects of AI, generative AI and other emerging technologies and EU tech laws, then apply now! tinyurl.com/556jty8t

Come work with me from September! Brilliant opportunity to shape high-quality, impactful research within a team with a really positive work culture 🙂

Andreu Casas@andreucasas.bsky.social · 3mo ago

🚨 I'm recruiting 2 postdoctoral researchers for the @ldnsocmedobs.bsky.social, to be based at the University of Oxford (@ox.ac.uk). These are both full-time positions for 2 years. Deadline for applications: June 23. Expected start date: September 2026. 🔁 Please share and help me spread the word! 🚀