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Jonas R. Kunst

@kunstjonas.bsky.social
2.5K followers 376 following 130 posts

Professor of Communication and Psychology at BI Norwegian Business School and the University of Oslo Past Yale, Harvard, UiB. Editor-in-Chief at Advances.in Father. Views are my own.

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Jonas R. Kunst @kunstjonas.bsky.social · 12/05/2026
Over the past eight years, LGBTQ+ communities have demonstrated remarkable resilience. While the perceived possibility of progressive change has steadily decreased, the strength of their social identity has only continued to grow.
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Jonas R. Kunst @kunstjonas.bsky.social · 08/04/2026
Fascinating study on Russian public opinion from August 2022. Researchers caught a rare window for an independent survey before the platform was shut down to academic polling. They found that 69% of respondents construed the war as undermining their social values. A vital look behind the propaganda.
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Jonas R. Kunst @kunstjonas.bsky.social · 25/03/2026
Following this is group integration, where individuals are absorbed into extremist networks, a process increasingly reinforced by generative AI and bot swarms. This trajectory ultimately sets the stage for violent extremist action.
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Jonas R. Kunst @kunstjonas.bsky.social · 25/03/2026
Next, during reinforcement, algorithms create filter bubbles that leverage biases and strengthen extremist beliefs.
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Jonas R. Kunst @kunstjonas.bsky.social · 25/03/2026
The framework maps the socio-technical architecture across four distinct stages. It begins with exposure, where recommender systems and virality metrics push users toward extreme content.
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Jonas R. Kunst @kunstjonas.bsky.social · 25/03/2026
How exactly does artificial intelligence drive individuals toward violent extremism? ​I am excited to share our recent publication in Personality and Social Psychology Review, "Intelligent Systems, Vulnerable Minds: A Framework for Radicalization to Violence in the Age of AI."
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Jonas R. Kunst @kunstjonas.bsky.social · 24/03/2026
Crucially, only offensive intentions were consistently associated with macrolevel societal dysfunction, such as political terror and internal conflicts. This suggests that preventing radicalization requires tailored interventions rather than uniform strategies.
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Jonas R. Kunst @kunstjonas.bsky.social · 24/03/2026
Individuals high in machiavellianism and narcissism showed stronger inclinations toward defensive extremism. On the other hand, social dominance orientation and religious fundamentalism were more strongly linked to offensive extremism.
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Jonas R. Kunst @kunstjonas.bsky.social · 24/03/2026
What really drives someone to support violent extremism? I am thrilled to share our new article published today in PNAS. Together with an incredible team of collaborators, we conducted a preregistered study across 58 countries with over 18,000 participants. This is what we found.
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Jonas R. Kunst @kunstjonas.bsky.social · 23/02/2026
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Jonas R. Kunst @kunstjonas.bsky.social · 23/02/2026
Anthropic trains its models on the entire internet without paying for it. ​Also Anthropic:
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Jonas R. Kunst @kunstjonas.bsky.social · 16/02/2026
The Core Mechanism: 🤖 The Tech: A central "organizer" sends a directive. An AI multiplier generates thousands of unique, style-matched captions. 👨 The Human: Real, verified users review and click "post".
The Operational Workflow of Cyborg Propaganda. Cyborg propaganda utilizes an AI multiplier to scale distinctiveness. A central coordination hub issues a single strategic directive (e.g., “Oppose the new tax bill”). This coordination hub may retrieve data from an AI system monitoring emerging narratives and shifts on social media. The hub may vary in terms of automation versus human involvement. To overcome recruitment bottlenecks, the system utilizes network harvesting, where users are incentivized to supply data on friends and neighbors, linking private social graphs with public voter registries. An AI-driven multiplier engine then processes the operative directive alongside individual user profiles, analyzing their posting history, syntax, and background characteristics of each participant. The system generates thousands of unique, context-aware message variations, effectively performing ‘style transfer’ to match each user’s voice. Simultaneously, the system may employ gamification or monetary rewards to incentivize user engagement. Verified human users then ratify and broadcast these posts or comments. The resulting information cascade creates a manufactured consensus that exhibits the linguistic diversity of a genuine grassroots movement, thereby bypassing duplicate-content filters and signaling authenticity to social peers. Crucially, the system operates as a closed feedback loop: The AI Monitor continuously tracks the performance of these posts or comments on social media, feeding engagement data back into the organizer directive to adjust strategy in real-time. Simultaneously, successful narratives are harvested to reinforce and fine-tune the AI Multiplier to produce increasingly persuasive content in subsequent cycles.
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Jonas R. Kunst @kunstjonas.bsky.social · 16/02/2026
The distinction between grassroots activism and automated influence is collapsing. We typically worry about "bot farms" or "troll factories." But a distinct, more complex threat is emerging. We call it "Cyborg Propaganda."
The Matrix of Coordinated Influence. Traditional frameworks for analyzing online influence focus on the distinction between human and automated actors (Identity Axis) or between spontaneous and coordinated behavior (Articulation Axis). Bot Nets (top-left) rely on synthetic identities and automated scripts. Troll Farms (bottom-left) use human operators to manage fake personas. Grassroots Action (bottom-right) involves verified citizens sharing self-authored views. Cyborg Propaganda (top-right) represents a new paradigm: verified human users disseminating centrally generated, algorithmically generated narratives, effectively ‘hybridizing’ the authenticity of the grassroots with the scale of the botnet.
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Jonas R. Kunst @kunstjonas.bsky.social · 14/01/2026
Resilience or Complacency? While Republicans reported a steady increase in well-being during the start of Trump’s second term, Democrats showed a "rebound" pattern. Does returning to a higher state of well-being provide the strength to persist or reflect complacency? Study link in comments.
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Jonas R. Kunst @kunstjonas.bsky.social · 13/01/2026
Many D&I strategies fail because they assume a "one size fits all" mindset. New data-driven research identifies 5 different response types to D&I policies: Champions, Reluctants, Ambivalents, Bystanders, and Opponents. Link to paper in comments.
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Jonas R. Kunst @kunstjonas.bsky.social · 12/01/2026
From the U.S. and Thailand to Hong Kong and Australia, new research confirms a consistent "backfire effect." When counter-protesters use violence to silence a progressive movement, they don't crush it—they amplify it. Full article (open access): advances.in/psychology/1...
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Jonas R. Kunst @kunstjonas.bsky.social · 08/09/2025
🚀Just released my first R package on CRAN: LLMTranslate! Automates forward–back survey translations w/ LLMs, including reconciliation + change logs. No more weeks of manual reviews. cran.r-project.org/web/packages...
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Jonas R. Kunst @kunstjonas.bsky.social · 28/07/2025
Thrilled to share that The Cambridge Handbook of the Psychology of Violent Extremism is now available. Milan Obaidi's and my goal was to create the book we missed as students—a complete overview over every major perspective in the field.
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Jonas R. Kunst @kunstjonas.bsky.social · 13/03/2025
Our commentary on emotion-conspiracy theory frameworks was just published! While @lpummerer.bsky.social et al.'s AMCT model is excellent, we show mathematically how model complexity exponentially decreases cross-cultural replicability. Thanks @igi.bsky.social for the invitation!
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Jonas R. Kunst @kunstjonas.bsky.social · 04/11/2023
Apparently, I suffer from a sleep disorder there is no treatment for.
A little boy laying with his feet in his father's face
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Jonas R. Kunst @kunstjonas.bsky.social · 29/10/2023
Contrary to our expectations, in a new paper published in GPIR, we find that people across various cultures seem more likely to mentally represent a "typical person" as a woman than as a man. The article is available open access at journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...
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Jonas R. Kunst @kunstjonas.bsky.social · 15/10/2023
Everything looks like the radical right has lost the election in Poland despite blatant attempts to manipulate the results! They will be replaced by a left-centrist government. A great day for Europe!
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Jonas R. Kunst @kunstjonas.bsky.social · 13/10/2023
😦This is so insane. The ruling Polish government tied a referendum to the coming general election, clearly intended to prime a threat perception that drives people toward voting right-wing. Every voter receives the questions when casting their general vote. These are the questions.
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Jonas R. Kunst @kunstjonas.bsky.social · 24/09/2023
Also noteworthy that many of the authors profit financially from this unproven "stress hypothesis." It is wild.
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Jonas R. Kunst @kunstjonas.bsky.social · 24/09/2023
The unscientific gaslighting of #MECFS & #LongCovid patients continues. I have asked these individuals to provide me with research showing that a "persistent stress response" is causative for the disease. They could not provide it. Some people are hopelessly stuck in the past.
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