Sophia A. Knight

Beyond Forecasting: Using MRP (multi-level regression with post-stratification) to investigate minority political behaviour at The University of Manchester on FindAPhD.com PhD Project - Beyond Forecasting: Using MRP (multi-level regression with post-stratification) to investigate minority political behaviour at The University of Manchester, listed on FindAPhD.com

*Academics of Bluesky:* Do you know a great UG/PG student with excellent quants skills?

@nspmartin.bsky.social and I are advertising a great fully-funded PhD on MRP and minority voting with our friends at Ipsos, so send them our way! ✌️

www.findaphd.com/phds/project...

Want to learn about computational social science *for free* and identify new research partners across academic fields? Apply to one of the 2026 Summer Institutes in Computational Social Science (described in yellow in the attached map) here: sicss.io/locations

"I’d promised the tenants that we would not let up on this story, especially when many of them got in touch to ask us, in the absence of any clear communication from their landlord, whether they still had a place to live."

Journalism is a public good.

Super cool, congrats @cbarrie.bsky.social! One for @ldnsocmedobs.bsky.social colleagues to check out

Amy Orben (@orbenamy.bsky.social), Research Professor at @cam.ac.uk, will be delivering the keynote lecture at our 2026 summit, exploring the growing interest in the impact of digital technologies on the mental health of young people and the challenges of influencing policy.

30 April, 16:00

BROKE: debating deontological vs consequentialism implications of voter behavior

WOKE: debating deontology itself vs consequentialism itself

BESPOKE: virtue ethics

Last chance to respond to the consultation (open to UK citizens, residents and visa holders), in case like me you nearly missed this… www.gov.uk/government/c...

Our English parish priest was telling us about how his favourite souvenir he brought back from the US was one of those Christian Mom posters that reads: “All I need is a little bit of COFFEE ☕️ and a whole lot of JESUS ✝️🙏❤️‍🔥”

People often jump to saying online propaganda is either the work of radicalised actors, or else Russia.

In practice, it’s amazing how often the answer is much simpler – someone is chasing either (a) clout, (b) money, or (c) both.

Ben Werdmuller interviews Siddhartha Kurapati and Saskia Welch

Ændra presents a slide saying "Wouldn't it be cool… if Journalism wasn't held hostage by large tech companies (and the billionaires who own them)?

Jeremiah Lee presents a slide saying "Internet of Opportunity with Interledger"

Nick Bennet speaks in front of a Mozilla Data Collective Slide

Thank you for an excellent #PfP✨London Showcase @thebristolcable.bsky.social @aendra.com @jeremiahlee.bsky.social @mozdatacollective.bsky.social

👏👏👏

🗣️ Here's some coverage by @npr.org on our recent
@goodauth.bsky.social post !

Was TikTok blocking certain political posts last week?

We investigated & found no systematic evidence of political censorship on TT post-restructuring at this point. A server outage better explains the data. But the story isn't over, and platforms need to provide the public more transparency.

Was there censorship on TikTok after the U.S. takeover? A TikTok outage more likely explains recent anomalies – there’s no evidence of larger platform changes so far.

🌐 📲 With international collaborators, the Observatory’s director @andreucasas.bsky.social revisited recent “TikTok censorship” claims after the TikTok USDS takeover

➡️ Detailed information about the analysis available: goodauthority.org/news/was-the...

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Opening up and archiving qualitative data from research with marginalised/minoritised groups: ethical challenges · Zoom · Luma In recent years, we have witnessed a push to archive research data for re-use by researchers and other interested parties. This includes qualitative data, and…

Our next webinar is tomorrow, with Łukasz Szulc, discussing the ethical challenges of archive research data from marginalised and minoritised people.

Register here: luma.com/v4yext2v

AHRC and BBC New Generation Thinkers 2026 This scheme offers five early career researchers the opportunity to work with programme makers at BBC Radio 4. They will appear on a number of episodes and shadow the production process to understand ...

Still time to apply: New Generation Thinkers 2026

AHRC is partnering with BBC Radio 4 to offer five early-career researchers the opportunity to work with programme makers, appear on air, and gain first-hand experience of how ideas make it to broadcast.

Apply by 28 Jan 2026

Strong recommendation for an anti-brainrot January! The series already features two of my personal heroes - Sor Juana Inés De La Cruz & Simone Weil 💛

There's just over a month until our Digital Good Research Fund closes.

We're looking for individuals (or small teams) to produce blueprints around what a good digital society looks like. Each one will focus on an aspect of social life or societal institution.

digitalgood.net/call-for-app...

I may have made the mistake of buying a Wallace and Gromit-themed puzzle as a present this year. My step-Dad isn't quite at this point... Yet... 🙏

The Wreath of Khan (lit holiday wreath with a centre photo of Khan Noonien Singh (1982 Montalban version)

Happy Wreath of Khan season to all who celebrate

Reader, it was cancelled.

Holy mixed signals, Batman… 😵‍💫

Check out our newest piece on @goodauth.bsky.social! Especially if you are someone who thinks the left needs a "Joe Rogan of the left". Exciting analysis from our new podcast dataset👇. Huge kudos to project leads @melinamuch.bsky.social & Kylan Rutherford!

Tracks with my MSc dissertation on Rogan back in 2022 - the “far right” characterisation never made much sense to me & obscures a lot of what is actually interesting about the popularity of the show

Thanks Chris! Seems consistent to me - I found that in general the show is much more libertarian than any other consistent right-left ideology (much like a lot of Americans!) Will read in more detail 🙂

My Word of the Year? 'Podcast' My favourite thing to do this year, when talking with prospective clients or offering media analysis, has been to ask people to define the word podcast.

Enjoyed this by @nickfthilton.bsky.social on what counts as a podcast. I wonder if we need a word like carcinisation, the tendency for organisms to become crabs, to reflect the many evolutionary paths to podcasts. Podcarcinisation doesn't make etymological sense but has a nice ring to it

Time to share some news I've been sitting on: starting in January, I will lead a @dfg.de Emmy Noether Group at @weizenbauminstitut.bsky.social! We will investigate how local public spheres are constituted under conditions of digitalization & globalization.

www.weizenbaum-institut.de/en/research/...

How Google Maps quietly allocates survival across London’s restaurants - and how I built a dashboard to see through it I wanted a dinner recommendation and got a research agenda instead. Using 13000+ restaurants, I rebuild its ratings with machine learning and map how algorithmic visibility actually distributes power.

I wanted dinner recommendations so I scraped 13,000+ London restaurants and accidentally discovered Google Maps is running a shadow economy. Anyway here's a dashboard and a political economy thesis: open.substack.com/pub/laurenle...

😱

Fabulous online seminar organized by @algosoc.org

Algorithmic Effects on #Elections: Using Social Media Data Donations to Study Elections

🗓️ Fri 12 Dec, 14:00–15:30 CET

@ernesto-deleon.com @favstats.eu @antmandan.bsky.social @simonchauchard.bsky.social

Registration ⬇️

algosoc.org/events/algos...

📣 Online platforms shape what we know, how we connect, and who gets heard, yet researcher access to public platform data is shrinking, while platforms monetize this data. Our new report "Better Access" offers a framework for accessing this critical data: kgi.georgetown.edu/research-and...