🥁🥁🥁 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...
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/...
We are seeking a Fellow to lead cutting-edge research on short-form video content and its societal implications. Bridging the gap between computer vision, causal inference, and computational social science, the Fellow will focus on the large-scale analysis of TikTok data (using an existing, massive dataset). The position involves developing novel multimodal methods to understand how short-form algorithmic content shapes public opinion, political polarization, and online culture. This is a unique opportunity to work at the forefront of the field, combining rigorous social science research designs with state-of-the-art computational techniques.
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/...
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....
Today, social media platforms hold the sole power to study the effects of feed-ranking algorithms. We developed a platform-independent method that reranks participants’ feeds in real time and used this method to conduct a preregistered 10-day field experiment with 1256 participants on X during the 2024 US presidential campaign. Our experiment used a large language model to rerank posts that expressed antidemocratic attitudes and partisan animosity (AAPA). Decreasing or increasing AAPA exposure shifted out-party partisan animosity by more than 2 points on a 100-point feeling thermometer, with no detectable differences across party lines, providing causal evidence that exposure to AAPA content alters affective polarization. This work establishes a method to study feed algorithms without requiring platform cooperation, enabling independent evaluation of ranking interventions in naturalistic settings.
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!
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...
"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"
📣 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...
It’s not that “the misinfo problem” is made up. It is just harder – and messier – than we thought. Rather than throw up our hands, we MUST adapt our paradigms to meet the moment.
Read more -> www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
2 – Study behavior - not just belief
Many ppl see falsehoods, but who acts and when? Esp harmful acts like dangerous alt medicine or mob vandalism
3 – Test interventions in fuzzy settings, not just black/white true/false content
This means 3 shifts for misinfo researchers:
1–Discover misleading content from the bottom up. e.g. sample climate messages test which increase disbelief in climate change
It’s time to reframe “the misinfo problem”: Instead of “Why do people believe fake news?” we need to study
- What leads to misperceptions
- How do they impact real-world behavior
- What interventions actually help reduce misperceptions
There IS a problem: Misperceptions–eg election denialism, vax and climate skepticism–are common & impactful. But problem is less “Pope Endorses Trump” style fake news, more stories like these 👇
Not false, but misleading – and massively popular (see
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...)
People are worried re fake news, BUT studies show that outright false news is rare w limited impact. Critics say this means misinfo is a not a problem and we should stop studying it.
We disagree!
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/
This is my real account! I guess I have a BlueSky impersonator 😮
🚨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...
