David Bazan

image of a report cover, with a US flag in the background, and the text "The Political Disconnect: Working-Class and Low-Income People on What Politics Means to Them and How They Might be Mobilized”

Today I'm releasing probably the most important scholarly thing I've ever worked on - a report based on talking with 144 people about why they don't vote or only vote regularly, and on what needs to be done to build a democracy that can include everyone.
www.swarthmore.edu/u...
please share!

La izquierda después de Mamdani Estrategias y límites de la asequibilidad

La izquierda después de Mamdani

"Si la vida se ha encarecido en la mayoría de ciudades del mundo, si la vivienda o la alimentación son cada vez más caras, la agenda de la asequibilidad puede impulsar mayorías políticas".

✍️ Adrià Rodríguez.
ctxt.es/es/20260101/...

This is terrifying.

"[AI agents] can... infer a researcher's latent hypotheses and produce data that artificially confirms them."

...

"We can no longer trust that survey responses are coming from real people" -@seanjwestwood.bsky.social

Scientists call on the President of the European Commission to retract AI hype statement Experts in AI call on the President of the European Commission to retract unscientific AI hype statement she made in the budget speech.

Scientists and scholars in AI and its social impacts call on von der Leyen to retract #AIHype statement.

@olivia.science
@abeba.bsky.social
@irisvanrooij.bsky.social
@alexhanna.bsky.social
@rocher.lc
@danmcquillan.bsky.social
@robin.berjon.com
& many others have signed

www.iccl.ie/press-releas...

Trumpismo: el proyecto distópico del capitalismo extremo en EEUU Lo más alarmante no son únicamente sus efectos institucionales, sociales o económicos, sino su ruptura sistemática con límites indispensables para preservar la vida, la dignidad humana y la convivenci...

🇺🇸 Este fin de semana abrimos la portada de CTXT con este texto de Fernando Prats sobre ese proyecto distópico del capitalismo extremo en EEUU llamado Trumpismo. ¡Lean!

"Lo importante es descifrar el significado profundo del proyecto global de la ultraderecha estadounidense."
ctxt.es/es/20251101/...

Today I’m very happy to watch @davidbazan.bsky.social brilliantly defend his thesis ”Algorithmic Interaction Ritual Chains on TikTok: Scrolling through Feedback Loops”

Síndrome postvacacional Si una vocecita dentro de su interior está chillando porque les resulta insoportable la idea de volver a su puesto de trabajo, recuerden esforzarse por sentir y expresar un agradecido sometimiento hac...

👉Es profundamente patológico que una persona sienta un deseo persistente de eludir una tarea agotadora que no le interesa lo más mínimo y que se ve forzada a realizar durante cuatro o más décadas de su vida para poder comer🍽️

Genial aquí, Adri T.✍️

¿Síndrome postvacacional?⁉️
ctxt.es/es/20250901/...

BBC Bosses Draw Up Plans to Win Over Reform Voters by Changing News and Drama Output The Director General Tim Davie and other executives discussed altering BBC “story selection” in order to secure the "trust" of supporters of Nigel Farage’s party

For all the talks about concerns over disinformation, the mainstream media have been a key agent in the mainstreaming of far right politics by:

- covering them disproportionately
- hyping moral panics
- platforming their bad faith actors as legitimate

bylinetimes.com/2025/06/09/b...

Replacing Federal Workers with Chatbots Would Be a Dystopian Nightmare The Trump administration sees an AI-driven federal workforce as more efficient. Instead, with chatbots unable to carry out critical tasks, it would be a diabolical mess

​​“There is no ‘one weird trick’ that removes experts and creates miracle machines that can do everything that humans can do, but better,” Asmelash Teka Hadgu and @timnitgebru.bsky.social write. www.scientificamerican.com/article/repl...

THREAD: Under a new law, thousands of prisoners in Louisiana have been cut off from ever getting a chance at parole.

Why?

Because an algorithm said so. 1/

🦄 Conference Call : (DON'T) BELIEVE THE HYPE 
Submit an abstract to the newly founded Hype Studies Group! We're organising the first edition of a Hype Studies Conference in Barcelona, Universitat Oberta de Catalunya, the 10th-12th of September 2025.

More info: hypestudies.org/conference

A review and provocation: On polarization and platforms - Daniel Kreiss, Shannon C McGregor, 2024 Scholars increasingly point to polarization as a central threat to democracy—and identify technology platforms as key contributors to polarization. In contrast,...

I very much appreciate @dkreiss.bsky.social & @shannimcg.bsky.social on this point. “Polarization can only be seen as a central threat to democracy if inequality is ignored.” journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10....

Elon Musk’s Starlink Is Keeping Modern Slavery Compounds Online A WIRED investigation reveals that criminals who make billions from scam compounds in Myanmar—where tens of thousands of people are enslaved—are using Starlink to get online.

A WIRED investigation reveals that billion-dollar scam compounds in Myanmar—where tens of thousands are enslaved—are using Starlink, the satellite internet service from Elon Musk’s SpaceX, to stay online and keep their operations running.

New article! It was a treat to be invited to contribute to and working with the editors and co-contributors in this special issue on economic ventures seeking or claiming to do good. valuationstudies.liu.se/article/view...

Also, check out the full issue here: valuationstudies.liu.se/issue/view/496

Study of TikTok, X 'For You' feeds in Germany finds far-right political bias ahead of federal elections | TechCrunch Recommendation algorithms operated by social media giants TikTok and X have shown evidence of substantial far-right political bias in Germany ahead of a

"TikTok displayed the greatest right-wing skew, per its findings — showing right-leaning content 74% of the time." techcrunch.com/2025/02/19/s...

The great Romanian election TikTok replay – Public Data Lab In December 2024, the European Commission launched an investigation following “serious indications that foreign actors interfered in the Romanian presidential elections using TikTok.” The elections…

🔍 How can creative coding techniques like soundscaping and video recomposition help us unpack political issues + influencer practices on TikTok? 🎵📹

📖 Insights from explorations w/ @publicdatalab.bsky.social around the 2024 Romanian elections at @digitalmethods.net winter school:

"Specifically, higher confidence in GenAI is associated with less critical thinking, while higher self-confidence is associated with more critical thinking. Qualitatively, GenAI shifts the nature of critical thinking toward information verification, response integration, and task stewardship."

Curiosamente, un joven que no se deja manipular por nadie defiende las mismas ideas que los tres hombres más ricos del mundo Curiosamente, un joven que no se deja manipular por nadie ha empezado a defender las mismas ideas que los tres hombres más ricos del mundo. El joven, llamado Serapio Domínguez y natural de Zaragoza, l...

Curiosamente, un joven que no se deja manipular por nadie defiende las mismas ideas que los tres hombres más ricos del mundo.

Tiktok boosted Republican messages 11.8% more than Democrat messages during the 2024 U.S. Presidential Race according to this new study that employed bots to view ~394,000 videos.

The salary of a 1st and 2nd year Phd student in Spain is now only about 100€ higher that than the minimum wage

Analysis | DeepSeek is reframing the AI policy debate The Chinese model’s stunning success is bolstering arguments that U.S. AI policy should spur innovation rather than slowing it down.

“DeepSeek’s results demonstrate that the US Big Tech narrative that the expansion of energy production is what’s required for them to lead in a global ‘AI race’ is utter hogwash,” said @mmitchell.bsky.social. www.washingtonpost.com/politics/202...

Searching #liberal or #democrat on Instagram now returns "We've hidden these results", #Republican has no such problem. Seems bad.

Now that I've slept on it, let's discuss the TikTok ban.

The message popping up on everyone's app is propaganda, plain and simple. And having propaganda involved in something as precarious at the creator economy is very, very dangerous.

Many of the parents blaming social media for their teens’ mental health struggles are just deflecting blame from their own violence and abuse.

And that’s what the report finds. Adults’ violence is one of the major reasons teens struggle.

Doktorand i Europastudier Om utbildningen Information om forskarutbildningen vid Humanistiska och teologiska fakulteterna finns på https://www.ht.lu.se/utbildning/forskarutbildning/ . Arbetsuppgifter Forskarutbildning. Instit

🌟 Fully funded PhD in European Studies! 🌟
Join us at Lund University to explore digital politics, digital diplomacy, digital disinformation & more.
✅ Master’s in humanities/social sciences required
⏳ Deadline: Jan 20th
📚 Apply: lu.varbi.com/what:job/job...

#PhD #AcademicTwitter #digitaldiplomacy

This is information fragmentation. Extremely-online niches (and their norms!) are also not the be-all end-all — there’s an availability & prevalence issue. When Trump started ranting about “eating the pets” during the debate, people went to google to try to figure out wtf he was talking about.

Revealed: bias found in AI system used to detect UK benefits fraud Exclusive: Age, disability, marital status and nationality influence decisions to investigate claims, prompting fears of ‘hurt first, fix later’ approach

It’s like no one saw this coming

www.theguardian.com/society/2024...