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NYU's Center for Social Media, AI, and Politics

@csmapnyu.org
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We work to strengthen democracy by conducting rigorous research, advancing evidence-based public policy, and training the next generation of scholars. csmapnyu.org/links

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NYU's Center for Social Media, AI, and Politics @csmapnyu.org · 03/09/2026
Did podcasts really swing young men to Trump in 2024? We assembled the data to find out, and we are presenting it at APSA this Saturday, Sept 5, 2 to 3:30pm. Long awaited working paper link also attached below! If you have seen this before, we have new data, come check it out.
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Christopher Barrie @cbarrie.bsky.social · 22/07/2026
I have a new paper out in @sociologicalsci.bsky.social w/ the briliant @aybukeatalay.bsky.social and @aliaelkattan.com We show that what we pay attention to online is a lot more politically diverse than what public engagement signals would suggest... sociologicalscience.com/articles-v13...
sociologicalscience.com
Information Diets Are More Diverse in Attention Than in Engagement
Article: Information Diets Are More Diverse in Attention Than in Engagement | Sociological Science | Posted July 21, 2026
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Hannah Waight @hwaight.bsky.social · 13/05/2026
I’m excited to share a new paper in Nature that shows how large language models launder the strategic rhetoric of authoritarian states. Paper here: www.nature.com/articles/s41.... A thread.
nature.com
State media control influences large language models - Nature
Government-controlled media influences the output of large language models via their training data, and models queried in the languages of countries with lower media freedom show a stronger ...
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Sol Messing @solmg.bsky.social · 13/05/2026
New in Nature: LLMs give "the party line" in the languages of authoritarian regimes. This works when they control the media, which feeds pretraining data. We show more state control over the media means less critical LLMs. 6 studies spanning 38 languages & 13 models. Details ↓
Scatter plot of 38 countries plus China showing the proportion of LLM responses favorable to the regime in the local language vs. World Press Freedom Index score. Lower press freedom predicts more regime-favorable responses; all production models pooled.
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NYU Law Democracy Project @democracyproject.bsky.social · 12/02/2026
Next up in our "100 ideas" series — New by @jatucker.bsky.social @csmapnyu.org — "Embracing Platform Transparency in a Digital World to Strengthen Democracy" Part of @nyulaw.bsky.social Democracy Project's "100 Ideas in 100 Days" Read the full piece here: democracyproject.org/posts/embrac...
democracyproject.org
Embracing Platform Transparency in a Digital World to Strengthen Democracy
A broad range of views on democracy to help break the stalemate caused by partisan conflict.
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Matt DeVerna @matthewdeverna.com · 24/02/2026
@csmapnyu.org is hiring two postdocs. Amazing group, highly recommend applying.
csmapnyu.org
Work With Us - NYU’s Center for Social Media, AI, and Politics
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Sol Messing @solmg.bsky.social · 03/03/2026
You can just research things. New from @jatucker.bsky.social & me at @brookings: Coding agents like Claude Code and Codex will likely accelerate research AND undermine institutional structures we built to support it.
Google Trends chart showing interest in commercial coding agents increasing dramatically in early 2026
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Sol Messing @solmg.bsky.social · 04/02/2026
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...
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NYU's Center for Social Media, AI, and Politics @csmapnyu.org · 28/01/2026
CSMaP is now the Center for Social Media, AI, and Politics (CSMAP). Our research has expanded beyond social media to include digital media more broadly—especially generative AI and large language models and their role in politics and public life. Learn more at csmapnyu.org
csmapnyu.org
NYU's Center for Social Media and Politics
Strengthening democracy by conducting rigorous research, advancing evidence-based public policy, and training the next generation of scholars.
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Melina Much @melinamuch.bsky.social · 17/12/2025
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...
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NYU's Center for Social Media, AI, and Politics @csmapnyu.org · 01/12/2025
As generative AI becomes more accessible, synthetic political images are reshaping how people see and interpret events. One question remains: Do AI labels help the public navigate this environment? Our new preprint, It Works When It Works, tests exactly that. 🔗 osf.io/preprints/so...
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NYU's Center for Social Media, AI, and Politics @csmapnyu.org · 14/11/2025
When we think about false news stories, we usually focus on what is being said. But what if the language of a story shapes whether people believe it? Our new paper in the Journal of Experimental Political Science explores this question in Ukraine. www.cambridge.org/core/journal...
cambridge.org
How Language Shapes Belief in Misinformation: A Study Among Multilinguals in Ukraine | Journal of Experimental Political Science | Cambridge Core
How Language Shapes Belief in Misinformation: A Study Among Multilinguals in Ukraine
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Petter Törnberg @pettertornberg.com · 07/11/2025
LLMs are now widely used in social science as stand-ins for humans—assuming they can produce realistic, human-like text But... can they? We don’t actually know. In our new study, we develop a Computational Turing Test. And our findings are striking: LLMs may be far less human-like than we think.🧵
arxiv.org
Computational Turing Test Reveals Systematic Differences Between Human and AI Language
Large language models (LLMs) are increasingly used in the social sciences to simulate human behavior, based on the assumption that they can generate realistic, human-like text. Yet this assumption rem...
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Tiago Ventura @tiagoventura.bsky.social · 07/10/2025
The paper is co-authored with Bernhard Von Clemm, @ericka.bric.digital @jonathannagler.bsky.social @magdalenawojciesza.bsky.social This is also one of the projects I started at @csmapnyu.org ---- thanks to the entire lab involved! The paper can be found here: www.cambridge.org/core/journal...
cambridge.org
Survey Professionalism: New Evidence from Web Browsing Data | Political Analysis | Cambridge Core
Survey Professionalism: New Evidence from Web Browsing Data
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Tiago Ventura @tiagoventura.bsky.social · 07/10/2025
How common are “survey professionals” - people who take dozens of online surveys for pay - across online panels, and do they harm data quality? Our paper, FirstView at @politicalanalysis.bsky.social, tackles this question using browsing data from three U.S. samples (Facebook, YouGov, and Lucid):
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Sarah Shugars @shugars.bsky.social · 13/08/2025
Fascinating work from @jatucker.bsky.social and @csmapnyu.org looking at the effect of labeling images as AI on people’s beliefs about the provenance + veracity of that image. They also explore the implications of AI images not being labeled after seeing labeled images #PaCSS2025 #polnet2025
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Sarah Shugars @shugars.bsky.social · 13/08/2025
Exciting methodological development from Ben Guinadeau and @csmapnyu.org using poisson factorization to do ideal point estimation of TikTok posts #pacss2025 #polnet2025
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Sarah Shugars @shugars.bsky.social · 14/08/2025
Very interesting work from @hwaight.bsky.social and @csmapnyu.org examining narrative similarity between news stories from global media sources. Methodological challenging because stories may communicate the same ideas/claims without using the same ngrams #pacss2025 #polnet2025
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Melina Much @melinamuch.bsky.social · 14/08/2025
My awesome co-author with our poster about the GenZ gender gap and podcast consumption at PolNet/PACSS! If you didn’t see us here catch us at APSA at the PolCom preconference and Saturday first thing in the morning 💃🏻 @csmapnyu.org
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Tiago Ventura @tiagoventura.bsky.social · 17/07/2025
🚨 Paper now as "just accepted" at @The_JOP. We ran the first WhatsApp deactivation experiment focused on multimedia content ahead of the 2022 election in Brazil. We find a reduction in users' recall of false rumors -- and, to a smaller degree, of true news. Null effects on attitudes. Full thread ⬇️
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Christopher Barrie @cbarrie.bsky.social · 22/07/2025
In addition to the original UK results, we have now ***replicated*** this (TWICE) in the US. The main findings hold strong: information diets are a lot more diverse in attention than in engagement. New version here: osf.io/preprints/os...
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NYU's Center for Social Media, AI, and Politics @csmapnyu.org · 17/07/2025
In the Global South, WhatsApp is more popular than X or Facebook. New in @The_JOP, we ran a WhatsApp deactivation experiment during Brazil’s 2022 election to explore how the app facilitates the spread of misinformation and affects voters’ attitudes. www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1...
Abstract: In most advanced democracies, concerns about the spread of misinformation are typically associated with feed-based social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook. These platforms also account for the vast majority of research on the topic. However, in most of the world, particularly in Global South countries, misinformation often reaches citizens through social media messaging apps, particularly WhatsApp. To fill the resulting gap in the literature, we conducted a multimedia deactivation experiment to test the impact of reducing exposure to potential sources of misinformation on WhatsApp during the weeks leading up to the 2022 Presidential election in Brazil. We find that this intervention significantly reduced participants’ recall of false rumors circulating widely during the election. However, consistent with theories of mass media minimal effects, a short-term change in the information environment did not lead to significant changes in belief accuracy, political polarization, or well-being.
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Hannah Waight @hwaight.bsky.social · 18/06/2025
I am thrilled to share a new article in Sociological Methods & Research, “Quantifying Narrative Similarity Across Languages”. My co-first author Sol Messing and our collaborators developed a new approach to measuring “narrative similarity” between texts: journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...
journals.sagepub.com
Quantifying Narrative Similarity Across Languages - Hannah Waight, Solomon Messing, Anton Shirikov, Margaret E. Roberts, Jonathan Nagler, Jason Greenfield, Megan A. Brown, Kevin Aslett, Joshua A. Tuck...
How can one understand the spread of ideas across text data? This is a key measurement problem in sociological inquiry, from the study of how interest groups sh...
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Andreu Casas @andreucasas.bsky.social · 23/04/2025
🚨New Publication @thejop.bsky.social We study who sets the issue agenda of state policymakers in the US. We find a mixed picture: they respond to shifts in attention by members of Congress, but also to the constituents in their states, particularly their own party supporters.
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Scott Delaney @scott-delaney.bsky.social · 21/04/2025
If your NSF grant has been terminated, please, please report it here: airtable.com/appGKlSVeXni... Collecting this information is supremely helpful to organize and facilitate a response.
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Noam Ross @noamross.net · 21/04/2025
🚨 NEW: Crowdsourced database of #NSF grant terminations. 🚨 We've been able to collect info on >110 cancelled grants that were cancelled on Friday. Thanks to all the researchers who reported over the holiday weekend. 🧪 airtable.com/appGKlSVeXni...
airtable.com
Airtable | Everyone's app platform
Airtable is a low-code platform for building collaborative apps. Customize your workflow, collaborate, and achieve ambitious outcomes. Get started for free.
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Oscar Stuhler @oms279.bsky.social · 22/04/2025
New paper out in @thejop.bsky.social with my colleagues at @csmapnyu.org . Substantive findings are summarized in the thread below. Of interest to a broader sociological audience: we show how to measure discursive influence between different groups.
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NYU's Center for Social Media, AI, and Politics @csmapnyu.org · 21/04/2025
Amid growing DC gridlock, state legislatures play a vital role in shaping policy. But how do state lawmakers decide which issues deserve their attention? Our new @thejop.bsky.social paper is the first large-scale multi-state analysis exploring this question www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/...
Title: Bottom Up? Top Down? Determinants ofIssue-Attention in State Politics

Abstract: Who shapes the issue-attention cycle of state legislators? Although state governments make critical policy decisions, data and methodological constraints have limited re-searchers’ ability to study state-level agenda setting. For this paper, we collect more than 122 million Twitter messages sent by state and national actors in 2018 and 2021.We then employ supervised machine learning and time series techniques to study how the issue-attention of state lawmakers evolves vis-`a-vis various local- and national-level actors. Our findings suggest that state legislators operate at the confluence of national and local influences. In line with arguments highlighting the nationalization of state politics, we find that state legislators are consistently responsive to policy debates among members of Congress. However, despite growing nationalization concerns, we also find strong evidence of issue responsiveness by legislators to members of the public in their states and moderate responsiveness to regional media sources.
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Megan Zahneis @mzahneis.bsky.social · 19/04/2025
Here's a copy of an NSF grant termination notice that went out today. "NSF is issuing this termination to protect the interests of the government pursuant...on the basis that they no longer effectuate the program goals or agency priorities." Not subject to appeal. #HigherEd #AcademicSky
Text of email: Dear [redacted],

The U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) has undertaken a review of its award portfolio. Each award was carefully and individually reviewed, and the agency has determined that termination of certain awards is necessary because they are not in alignment with current NSF priorities. Effective immediately, the following are terminated: [redacted]

NSF is issuing this termination to protect the interests of the government pursuant to NSF Grant General Conditions (GC-1) term and condition entitled Termination and Enforcement; on the basis that they no longer effectuate the program goals or agency priorities. This is the final agency decision and not subject to appeal. Costs incurred as a result of this termination may be reimbursed, provided such costs would otherwise be allowable under the terms of the award and the governing cost principles. In accordance with your award terms and conditions, you have 30 days from the termination date to furnish a summary of progress under the award and an itemized accounting of allowable costs incurred prior to the termination date. 

Sincerely, [redacted] Division Director 
Office of Budget Finance and Award Management (BFA) 
Division of Grants and Agreements (DGA)
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Mike Wagner @prowag.bsky.social · 19/04/2025
Friday Night Massacre of accurate information. A devastating day for the USA as tens of millions of dollars of grants seeking to combat the spread of false information were terminated. We have a federal govenrment that does not consider the verifiable truth a priority. www.nsf.gov/updates-on-p...
nsf.gov
Updates on NSF Priorities
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NYU's Center for Social Media, AI, and Politics @csmapnyu.org · 15/04/2025
Do age verification laws change online behavior? @zevesanderson.com joined @jerusalem.bsky.social to talk about the importance of research for measuring policy impacts for The Atlantic's Good on Paper podcast. www.theatlantic.com/podcasts/arc...
theatlantic.com
Would You Give PornHub Your ID?
What happened when Louisiana tried to stop kids from watching porn
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John Gramlich @johngramlich.bsky.social · 08/04/2025
Experts are far more bullish about the potential of AI than the American public is. 56% expect a positive impact (vs. 17% of the public). 76% expect it to benefit them personally (vs. 24% of the public). Also much more positive on specific AI applications: www.pewresearch.org/internet/202...
Bar chart showing that AI experts are much more likely than the American public to say that artificial intelligence will have a positive impact on the U.S. over the next 20 years.Bar chart showing that AI experts are far more likely than the American public to say that the increased use of artificial intelligence will benefit them personally.Dot plot showing that AI experts are more positive than the American public about the impact that artificial intelligence will have in specific areas, including the economy and K-12 education.
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NYU's Center for Social Media, AI, and Politics @csmapnyu.org · 07/04/2025
🚨 Job Alert! 🚨 Come join our team studying the impact of digital media on democracy! We're hiring a Technical Lead - Research Engineering to help us build and maintain the robust data infrastructure and custom tools that power our research. More info + apply: apply.interfolio.com/165833
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Rick Hasen @rickhasen.bsky.social · 06/04/2025
ELB Podcast 6:7: Combatting False Election Information: Lessons from 2024 and a Look to the Future (Marwick, Starbird, Tucker) electionlawblog.org?p=149336
electionlawblog.org
ELB Podcast 6:7: Combatting False Election Information: Lessons from 2024 and a Look to the Future (Marwick, Starbird, Tucker) #ELB
Season 6, Episode 7 of the ELB Podcast: How did campaigning and false information in campaigns change in the 2024 elections? What role did platform content moderation play in 2024? Is generative AI go...
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NYU's Center for Social Media, AI, and Politics @csmapnyu.org · 31/03/2025
Users always respond to the incentives of a given social media platform. On X, the new incentive if you want to go viral is to just say something Elon Musk will like, @zevesanderson.com tells @politifact.bsky.social.
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Christopher Barrie @cbarrie.bsky.social · 25/03/2025
📄NEW PAPER📄 Ever wondered content people actually pay *attention* to online? Our new research reveals that you likely pay attention to far more varied political content than your likes and shares suggest
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Maggie Macdonald, PhD @mgmacdonald.bsky.social · 17/03/2025
So excited to finally see this out! It was the first paper I started during my postdoc at @csmapnyu.org
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NYU's Center for Social Media, AI, and Politics @csmapnyu.org · 17/03/2025
It's well known that politicians take more extreme positions during primaries. In @electoralstudies.bsky.social, we find this shift is much more likely when incumbents in safe seats face a well-funded primary challenger. 🧵👇 authors.elsevier.com/a/1kn5KxRaZn...
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Joshua Tucker @jatucker.bsky.social · 12/03/2025
Amazingly exciting work from our former @csmapnyu.org post-doc -- now Asst Professor at the University of Oregon -- @hwaight.bsky.social, as well as our colleagues Yin Yuan, Molly Roberts & @bstewart.bsky.social. A must read if you are interested in identifying Chinese state propaganda 👇
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Paul Barrett ❌👑 @paulthedogman.bsky.social · 13/03/2025
MAGA forces are once again attacking researchers studying online misinformation and social media manipulation. In this article for Just Security, I write about what's going on at Indiana University, University of North Carolina, and other schools: www.justsecurity.org/109030/acade...
justsecurity.org
Academic Misinformation Researchers are Still Under Attack
Researchers analyzing misinformation deserve to be defended — and the campaign to end their work threatens the right to free speech.
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Hannah Waight @hwaight.bsky.social · 11/03/2025
How can researchers identify covert state propaganda campaigns in China? My co-authors Yin Yuan, Molly Roberts, Brandon Stewart @bstewart.bsky.social and myself are excited to share our new article in PNAS (@PNAS): doi.org/10.1073/pnas... Thread below.
doi.org
The decade-long growth of government-authored news media in China under Xi Jinping | PNAS
Autocratic governments around the world use clandestine propaganda campaigns to influence the media. We document a decade-long trend in China towar...
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Zeve Sanderson @handle.invalid · 11/03/2025
Do age-verification laws for online adult content work? Based on Google search data, not really. New WP from me and & co-authors up now on OSF: osf.io/z83ev
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Magdalena Skipper @magdalenaskipper.bsky.social · 08/03/2025
How a PhD student’s lab size affects their chance of future academic success - perhaps not very surprising but still fascinating 🧪 #AcademicSky Original work www.nature.com/articles/s41... @naturehumbehav.bsky.social @nature.com www.nature.com/articles/d41...
nature.com
How a PhD student’s lab size affects their chance of future academic success
Trainees in big research groups tend to go on to greater academic success than their small-group counterparts ― but are more likely to quit academia altogether.
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Drew Harwell @drewharwell.com · 06/03/2025
New: We interviewed the White House digital team for a deep dive into how their unapologetic rapid-response social media and influencer operation is working to shape public opinion and dominate the press: "All offense, all the time" wapo.st/41pvswh
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NYU's Center for Social Media, AI, and Politics @csmapnyu.org · 05/03/2025
We're deeply concerned about the growing number of attacks on academic researchers studying the online landscape. This is a tremendous overview of how this research works and why it matters. We will continue to stand behind our peers and colleagues who come under attack.
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NYU's Center for Social Media, AI, and Politics @csmapnyu.org · 04/03/2025
Does generative AI present an unprecedented threat to democracy, as many worried ahead of 2024? Or did it have little impact, as others now claim? The truth is we don't have enough data to draw concrete conclusions. Our latest at @brookings.edu:
brookings.edu
When it comes to understanding AI’s impact on elections, we’re still working in the dark
Experts argue that AI's impact on elections remains unclear due to data gaps, highlighting the need for ad transparency.
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Knight-Georgetown Institute (KGI) @knightgtown.bsky.social · 04/03/2025
🚨 NEW REPORT – Better Feeds: Algorithms That Put People First 🚨 As policymakers around the globe grapple with addressing concerns about algorithms, KGI’s new report offers guidance on improving the design of algorithmic systems that shape billions of users’ digital lives. bit.ly/3QzxVzq
bit.ly
Better Feeds: Algorithms That Put People First – Knight-Georgetown Institute
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The Verge @theverge.com · 25/02/2025
The future of the internet is likely smaller communities, with a focus on curated experiences
buff.ly
The future of the internet is likely smaller communities, with a focus on curated experiences
As brands look to hold onto the internet of the past, the term “community” will become a loaded word.
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NYU's Center for Social Media, AI, and Politics @csmapnyu.org · 27/02/2025
Will spinning off Reels into a standalone app help Meta take on TikTok? While many have complained it's not as good as TikTok, creating a separate app reflects a broader effort to prioritize Reels and invest more in its recommendation system, @solmg.bsky.social tells @cnet.com.
cnet.com
Instagram May Spin Off Reels As a Standalone App, Report Says
The effort is said to be part of Meta's initiative, called Project Ray, aimed at taking on TikTok.
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