iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Chris Arnold @chrisguarnold.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

The third cohort of our MSc AI & Government and MSc AI & Sustainable Development starts this week at Birmingham. Seeing students grow is the best part of the job. Here is to a new academic year. Ad astra per aspera! #AI #sciencerocks

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Chris Arnold @chrisguarnold.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

We had an awesome project meeting over the week. So much looking forward to keep working on this. #sciencerocks

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Marius Sältzer @msaeltzer.bsky.social · 06/09/2026

4 days left to Apply!

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Chris Arnold @chrisguarnold.bsky.social · 20/08/2026

VideoParl is live: videoparl.github.io — our #DFG project with @ankuepfer.bsky.social and @pluggedchris.bsky.social on #multimodal analysis of parliamentary debate. 30,000+ hours of video, all 16 Länder plus the Bundestag, 2005–2023. Pitch, face, gesture and text at the speech level.

videoparl.github.io

VideoParl — Analysis of Parliamentary Debates Using Multimodal Data

VideoParl is a DFG-funded research project analyzing text, audio and video from German parliamentary debates.

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Chris Arnold @chrisguarnold.bsky.social · 18/07/2026

On my way back from #polmeth2026. It was truly a blast. Thankful for the community. A shoutout to all organisers. Right now, I am really tired and desperate for the summer break, but incredibly motivated. Looking forward to the months ahead. #sciencerocks

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Chris Arnold @chrisguarnold.bsky.social · 15/07/2026

Yes and no. 😅🤣 we extend their work. I send you the workingpaper. We will push to osf, too.

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Chris Arnold @chrisguarnold.bsky.social · 15/07/2026

This is meant in relation to MObamas ‘when they go low we go high’ quote. But we check tonality at sentence level, too. They do speak higher (averaged per MP)

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Chris Arnold @chrisguarnold.bsky.social · 15/07/2026

All speakers in the same agenda item

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Chris Arnold @chrisguarnold.bsky.social · 15/07/2026

3/3 The engineering behind it: a Snakemake pipeline that turns one hour of raw parliamentary video into multimodal features in under 5 minutes. #PoliticalMethodology #CompSocialScience #sciencerocks

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Chris Arnold @chrisguarnold.bsky.social · 15/07/2026

2/3 Our sample covers the Bundestag and all 16 German state parliaments: 30,000+ hours of plenary video. Sentence-level FE models on within-debate sequences; emotions measured in text, vocal pitch, and posture, gesticulation, and head movement. Anger, not negativity in general, is what transmits.

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Chris Arnold @chrisguarnold.bsky.social · 15/07/2026

When the far right enters parliament, established parties go high on average. But right after a far-right speech, they answer madly in anger: in words, voice, and body. Joint work with @ankuepfer.bsky.social and @pluggedchris.bsky.social presented at #PolMeth2026 at Michigan State.

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Chris Arnold @chrisguarnold.bsky.social · 06/07/2026

Reviewers asked for #EyeTracking study on image depth and object prominence in political images. @ankuepfer.bsky.social PAP now on OSF. Took real work to wrap heads around eyetracking, but genuinely excited to finally run it. Sessions running now! osf.io/bxpgd/overview #OpenScience #sciencerocks

osf.io

OSF

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Chris Arnold @chrisguarnold.bsky.social · 18/06/2026

Looking forward to catching up! I will be on the ground Friday/Saturday only (childcare). Note to self: Multipaper conferences are stressful! You should know better, Chris... #EPSS #PoliticalBehaviour #MediaBias #VideoAsData #ImageAsData #TextAsData #sciencerocks #EPSS26

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Chris Arnold @chrisguarnold.bsky.social · 18/06/2026

(3) *Designing, Documenting, and Reusing Qualitative Data in the Age of AI: An Integrative Framework* with @floriangkern.bsky.social (Saturday 15:20 - 17:00, Hall 1a) virtual.oxfordabstracts.com/event/75765/...

virtual.oxfordabstracts.com

OA Virtual conferences

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Chris Arnold @chrisguarnold.bsky.social · 18/06/2026

(2) *Measuring Media Slant Through Image Analysis* with @ankuepfer.bsky.social, Oliver Rittmann, and Michelle Torres (Saturday 9:00, Brookfield, Hilton) virtual.oxfordabstracts.com/event/75765/...

virtual.oxfordabstracts.com

OA Virtual conferences

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Chris Arnold @chrisguarnold.bsky.social · 18/06/2026

I have three working papers at the @epssnet.bsky.social in Belfast: (1) *Far-Right Speeches and Emotional Contagion in Parliament: Sequential and Multimodal Evidence from Germany* with Andreas Kuepfer and Christian Stecker (Thursday 10:50, Lisburn, Hilton) virtual.oxfordabstracts.com/event/75765/...

virtual.oxfordabstracts.com

OA Virtual conferences

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Chris Arnold @chrisguarnold.bsky.social · 09/06/2026

2/ The coordination mechanism has formal model and experimental support, but we are the first to identify a causal effect from observational data. As ratification approaches the threshold, holdout states face a closing window — and they respond.

doi.org

Sage Journals: Discover world-class research

Subscription and open access journals from Sage, the world's leading independent academic publisher.

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Chris Arnold @chrisguarnold.bsky.social · 03/06/2026

2/ Three takeaways: #AI makes the analog classroom more valuable, not less. Democratisation of access risks homogenisation of thought. And pre-AI foundation models are an unrepeatable data treasure — we all helped build them.

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Chris Arnold @chrisguarnold.bsky.social · 03/06/2026

I was at at #BISA2026 for a roundtable on AI and research. We agreed: #LLM based #AI will fundamentally change #internationalrelations and the discipline studying it. Teaching, methods, what counts as scholarship. All of it.

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Chris Arnold @chrisguarnold.bsky.social · 27/05/2026

2/ Design: #DiD with two-way FE across 60 experiments (5 trigger words × 3 control strategies: space, contextual, temporal). Parallel trends and placebo checks pass. >100M Reddit comments, 2019–2022. #Trigger words are computationally real.

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Chris Arnold @chrisguarnold.bsky.social · 27/05/2026

A single trigger word ( #Rwanda, #Brexit, #Feminism) causally increases engagement by 3–13 %pts and negative sentiment by up to 5.5 %pts. New paper with Dimosthenis Antypas, @nedjmaou-nlp.bsky.social , Carla Perez-Almendros & Jose Camacho-Collados at #ACMWebSci26.

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Chris Arnold @chrisguarnold.bsky.social · 15/05/2026

Just gave a talk at the University of Western Ontario (work w/ @ankuepfer.bsky.social & @pluggedchris.bsky.social). Key finds: object prominence in images matters; GOP more often sidelines women in ads than Democrats; #AfD populism is scripted, not spontaneous. #ImageAsData #CSS

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Andreas Küpfer @ankuepfer.bsky.social · 12/05/2026

I just presented recent research (with @chrisguarnold.bsky.social) on the benefits of integrating workflow management systems in computational social science studies at @parliview.bsky.social workshop at UCD in Dublin! #multimodaldata #replication #researchinfrastructure #CSS

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Andreas Küpfer @ankuepfer.bsky.social · 26/04/2026

🥳 @comptext.bsky.social conference 2026 at @unibirmingham.bsky.social is over! I had the chance to give a 3-hour workshop on high-performance computing for computational social scientists, during which we covered cluster access hurdles, hands-on sessions, and workflow management tools. #COMPTEXT2026

Photo of the workshop during "Block 1: Why HPC?"

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Chris Arnold @chrisguarnold.bsky.social · 25/04/2026

What an epic dinner at @comptext.bsky.social yesterday in the Cricket stadium! Clearly next level. All praise to Aditi Dutta for scouting this one out. #comptext2026 #sciencerocks

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Chris Arnold @chrisguarnold.bsky.social · 22/04/2026

You must all be en route to @comptext.bsky.social now. Excited to welcome you all to campus. Workshops look 💯. Panels 💯 +1. We could not ask for more from the weather. Really looking forward to welcoming you all. Bon voyage! #sciencerocks #comptext2026 www.comptextconference.org/8th-annual-c...

comptextconference.org

8th Annual Conference 2026 - The COMPTEXT Association

8th ANNUAL COMPTEXT Conference 2026 Welcome to COMPTEXT 2026 — the Eighth International and Interdisciplinary Conference on the Quantitative and Computational Analysis of Text, Image, Audio, and Video...

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Chris Arnold @chrisguarnold.bsky.social · 16/04/2026

Final countdown to COMPTEXT 2026 April 23–25 at the University of Birmingham. Great workshops, sessions & conversations ahead. We will shamelessly show off our Teaching & Learning building. Safe travels! www.comptextconference.org/8th-annual-c... #COMPTEXT2026 #TextAnalysis @comptext.bsky.social

comptextconference.org

8th Annual Conference 2026 - The COMPTEXT Association

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The COMPTEXT Association @comptext.bsky.social · 30/03/2026

⏳Final reminder: Registration for #COMPTEXT2026 closes today. 📍University of Birmingham 📅23–25 April 2026 Workshops (23 April): bit.ly/4bW0AZN Registration: bit.ly/4v4ghXC If you have trouble meeting the registration deadline, contact the organisers: comptext26(at)comptextconference.org

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Andreas Küpfer @ankuepfer.bsky.social · 06/03/2026

⏬📽️Excited to talk about (1) studying videos from complex local meetings (w/ @mirya.bsky.social + @simko.bsky.social), (2) substantively using eye contact seeking in legislative debate videos, and (3) workflow managers to process video data (w/ @chrisguarnold.bsky.social + @pluggedchris.bsky.social)!

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Florian G. Kern @floriangkern.bsky.social · 06/03/2026

@chrisguarnold.bsky.social & I had a fun, productive kick-off for our ESRC ⭐ ♻️ RecAIqual ♻️ ⭐ project “Exploring the Re-Analysis and Recycling of Qualitative Data with Machine Learning”. We discussed how multimodal ML/AI can complement qual research& secondary data analysis+where humans are peerless.

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Chris Arnold @chrisguarnold.bsky.social · 03/03/2026

🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿 #ManifestoWeek in Wales: we digitised 29 Senedd manifestos (99–21) & extracted 10,000+ pledges using AI. Finding: Parties increasingly promised *more*, not less. 👇 blogs.cardiff.ac.uk/thinking-wal... #WelshPolitics #Senedd #sciencerocks Daksh Dewgun @jaclarner.bsky.social @frasmcm.bsky.social

blogs.cardiff.ac.uk

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Florian G. Kern @floriangkern.bsky.social · 03/03/2026

I feel these takes are often narrow regarding what includes social science. I am sympathetic to the idea of qualitative research and fieldwork becoming rel more weighty as AI improves. ATM, these changes seem most drastic for quant analysis. What really changed for qualitative inquiry, yet?(1/2)

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Chris Arnold @chrisguarnold.bsky.social · 27/01/2026

If you want to learn more about our MSc AI & Government or MSc AI & Sustainable Development, join us on Tues,27.1.26 (4-5pm UK). Together with student rep Daksh Dewgun you can ask us anything. Register: pg@contacts.bham.ac.uk #AIforgood #datascience #computationalsocialscience #sciencerocks

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Chris Arnold @chrisguarnold.bsky.social · 23/01/2026

Term has kicked off! Teaching my 2 favourite modules again: AI and Global Challenges & AI for Government and Public Policy. We bring together coding, ML & AI with domain expertise from Government.Privilege to teach such a talented&driven crowd!#ComputationalSocialScience #DataForGood #sciencerocks

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Chris Arnold @chrisguarnold.bsky.social · 20/01/2026

New homepage online: www.chrisguarnold.github.io Everything you already new about me. Hosted on GitHub. Built with Jekyll. No cookies, no trackers, no WordPress updates at 2am. #sciencerocks

chrisguarnold.github.io

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Chris Arnold @chrisguarnold.bsky.social · 19/01/2026

The weather between Cardiff and Birmingham is like somewhere close to the walls of Mordor today. Lambas almost running out. Please send hope...

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Chris Arnold @chrisguarnold.bsky.social · 16/01/2026

How to analyse audio, text, and video data for more than 15,000h of German parliamentary speech? For our #DFG project, we spent last year building compute infrastructure. Pushing ▶️ on the server soon. First results in summer #PoliticalScience #ComputationalSocialScience #sciencerocks #watchthisspace

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Chris Arnold @chrisguarnold.bsky.social · 13/01/2026

The submission deadline for papers and workshop proposals to #COMPTEXT2026 is this Friday, January 16th. We are looking forward to receiving your proposals. Feel free to share the news and circulate shorturl.at/gRg0p #sharingiscaring #sciencerocks See you in Brum, 23–25 April 2026!

shorturl.at

8th Annual Conference 2026 - The COMPTEXT Association

8th ANNUAL COMPTEXT Conference 2026 Call for papers: 8th ANNUAL COMPTEXT Conference 2026 Welcome to COMPTEXT 2026 — the Eighth International and Interdisciplinary Conference on the...

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