📢 We’re hiring @vuamsterdam.bsky.social
PhD position in my ERC project: Welfare State Transformation in the Age of Artificial Intelligence
Interested in how AI is reshaping labor markets, social protection, and the politics of redistribution?
Apply here: lnkd.in/eCcAXsaS
Please share widely!
📘 Book launch: Seeing Like a Platform (with Justus Uitermark)
🗓 10 Dec | Amsterdam
A conversation on platforms, politics, power, and digital modernity - followed by drinks.
Hope to see you there!
👉 Details & RSVP:
globaldigitalcultures.uva.nl/content/even...
🤖 AI chatbots can persuade voters 🗳️
@cvargiu.bsky.social and I were recently asked to review a piece for @nature.com, now out, and wrote a short digest about it
TLDR: chatting with a LLM can change your mind, even if facts provided are not always accurate
check it out 👇
#chatbots #persuasion
Pretty wild: I just learned that, in terms of Altmetric, this paper became the most impactful Political Science article of the past five years, and the 4th most impactful EVER. 😳
Altmetric is... well, Altmetric. But still, kind of surreal.
@casmudde.bsky.social makes the case (again!) to social democratic leaders that aping the far right is not a good electoral strategy!
… it’s almost like they a deliberately ignoring political science research in their dash to oblivion 🤦♂️
www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...
Join us in Catania to discuss your research about populism, the far left and right, and everything related
* New Publication*:
Across Western democracies, higher education is under pressure, from budget cuts to restrictions on immigrant students. Our new study dives into a critical but overlooked question: When do people think immigrant students deserve financial aid?
The University of Amsterdam is hiring Senior lecturers in Political Science, see information here: werkenbij.uva.nl/en/vacancies...
🚨New article out 🚨 How do states seek to influence the spatial distribution of refugees within their borders? We conceptualise & measure refugee dispersal policies across Europe ➡️ common feature of asylum policies, more restrictive with functional pressure and local autonomy doi.org/10.1111/gove...
www.flamman.se/valfardsstat...
It was great to talk to @flamman.se about the link between weak welfare state protection and the expansion of online platform work in Europe. @pettertornberg.com
And if you’re a scholar from the Global South thinking of applying, feel free to reach out. I’d be more than happy to share my experience and what I’ve learned!
Super excited to share that I got the ERC Starting Grant! 🎉
Over the next five years, I’ll be studying how AI is reshaping the politics of the welfare state.
A huge thank you to all the friends and colleagues who supported me along the way.
vu.nl/en/news/2025...
#ERCStG
Full OA article:
👉 Chueri & Törnberg (2025), European Journal of Social Policy:
journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1...
We shouldn't understand the gig economy as merely the product of technological disruption.
It is deeply entangled with the welfare institutions — and the broader transformation of work, security, and social protection.
In generous welfare states, platform work is smaller in scale and more often high-skill.
Where protections are weaker, it is larger and more frequently low-skill and precarious.
Where social protection is thin, platform labor becomes the fallback — the “employer of last resort.”
Yes, wages matter.
Low-income countries dominate low-skill gigs, while richer ones offer a more balanced mix.
But this only explains part of the story.
We scraped all records from the world’s largest online labor platform, covering 26 European countries.
Using these data, we examine how welfare state design shapes both the quantity and quality of platform work.
Gig labor is often understood as the expression of digital disruption.
But our new study suggests a deeper story:
👉 The rise of platform labor is inseparable from the retreat of the welfare state.
🧵
w/ @pettertornberg.com
journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1...
🚨 PhD Position at the University of Amsterdam 🚨
Join my team as a computer scientist / computational social scientist working on LLMs, social media, and politics.
We offer freedom, impact, and an inspiring environment at one of Europe's leading universities.
🔗 werkenbij.uva.nl/en/vacancies...
Don’t blame the algorithm: Polarization may be inherent in social media | Science | AAAS www.science.org/content/arti... @pettertornberg.com
Thank you, Johanna!
Thank you, Ben!
(Chueri & Törnberg 2025b)
So happy to continue coauthoring our life together, @julianachueri.bsky.social ❤️
📢 Publication alert:
"Welfare Chauvinism among Voters and Political Parties: Exploring Preferences for Restricting EU Migrants' Access to Social Assistance in Switzerland" by Angie Gago, @julianachueri.bsky.social & Mia Gandenberger
open access in SPSR 👉 onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...
As we transition from industrial to digital modernity, business tycoons no longer view humans as cogs in machines. Now, as platforms become all-powerful, a new, stealthier form of domination is emerging, @pettertornberg.com & @uitermark.bsky.social argue.
Why does everything suddenly feel so unsettled?
The economy, technology, geopolitics—everything seems to change
It's more than a vibe shift. It's epistemic.
In our new book, @uitermark.bsky.social and I explore this shift—
and argue we're entering Digital Modernity 🧵
www.seeinglikeaplatform.com
that would be @pettertornberg.bsky.social and @julianachueri.bsky.social work which is by far the most cited on Bluesky so far with 5733 unique accounts posting about it (according to @altmetric.com).
bsky.app/profile/pett...
