Paul Ballot

Two of our PhD students, @yansan.bsky.social and @paulschal.bsky.social, were invited to participate in last week’s Milton Wolf Seminar 2025 in Vienna. A great opportunity for both of them to pitch their research on uncertainty in disinformation and LLM-driven interventions!

Hier geht es darum, dass ein User den Beitrag eines anderen Users über eine in der Plattform verbaute Funktion geteilt hat. Sollte das tatsächlich eine Urheberrechtsverletzung darstellen, stellt das in Konsequenz das gesamte System "Social Media" in Frage.

Ukraine is Europe!
We stand by Ukraine.

We will step up our support to Ukraine so that they can continue to fight back the agressor.

Today, it became clear that the free world needs a new leader. It’s up to us, Europeans, to take this challenge.

Misinformation isn't random - it's strategic. 🧵

In the first cross-national comparative study, we examine 32M tweets from politicians.

We find that misinformation is not a general condition: it is driven by populist radical right parties.

with @julianachueri.bsky.social
doi.org/10.1177/1940...

Very fascinating talk by @lewan.bsky.social can we make people more resilient towards microtargeting by pop-up warnings? Unfortunately not! We need to think further on how to foster ppls competencies for navigating social media

Negative Option Rule The Federal Trade Commission ("FTC" or "Commission") issues final amendments to the Commission's trade regulation "Rule Concerning Use of Prenotification Negative Option Plans," retitled the "Rule Con...

Recently, the Federal Trade Commission (#FTC) finalised its #Click-to-Cancel rule. It restricts deceptive business practices, including recurring fees and misleading cancellation policies for unwanted, hard-to-cancel products. www.federalregister.gov/d/2024-25534 (1/3)

The link between changing news use and trust: longitudinal analysis of 46 countries Abstract . Changing levels of public trust in the news are of deep concern to both researchers and practitioners. We use data from 2015 to 2023 in 46 count

New article in Journal of Communication looking at changes to trust in news across 46 countries in the last 10 years.

Trust in news declined in just over half of countries.

It decreased more in countries where TV news use has declined, and/or where social media news use has grown.

A thread:

In promising a political ad free space, they need to define what ads are *not* political, to ensure they don't carry them. Hard.

Other platforms have not been successful in doing so in the past.

Moreover, this decision leaves the online political ad space as a de facto Meta monopoly.

[2/2]

NEW RESEARCH 🙉 Spreading of misinformation: People don’t pretend, they *sincerely believe in fake news*
doi.org/10.1093/pnas...
The misinformation policy challenge is less about inducing good behavior but one of correcting false beliefs

Hey, I am Paul, a communication PhD student at Radboud University in NL! My background is in social psychology, political communication & advertising. As part of @dig-radboud.bsky.social, I am researching manipulation & persuasion and the role of artificial agents. #CommSky #PsychSky #HCISky #PhDSky

Thank you, I will drop you a mail!

Are you - by any chance - also looking for volunteers?

Savor the flavor — a randomized double-blind study on taste-enhanced placebo analgesia in healthy ... medRxiv - The Preprint Server for Health Sciences

Jetzt wollte ich ja eigentlich damit argumentieren, dass bittere Medizin ja eventuell nen stärkeren Placebo-Effekt auslöst als süße. Aber nein, die Forschung gibt dir Recht: doi.org/10.1101/2021.... Freie Bahn also für die Schoko-Erdbeeren Diät.