iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

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James Feigenbaum @jamesfeigenbaum.bsky.social · 11/05/2026

Across 130+ years, the gap between MC fathers and tightly-matched controls has grown, not shrunk. Vs year of birth or congress numbers. Whatever opened up about American politics, it wasn’t who gets to Congress.

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Drew Dimmery @ddimmery.com · 29/04/2026

The Hertie School Data Science Lab is hiring a postdoc. This is an appealing position with fairly low teaching/admin responsibilities and a lot of freedom to develop your research agenda. Feel free to reach out if you want to know more! hertie-school.dvinci-easy.com/en/p/en/jobs...

hertie-school.dvinci-easy.com

Postdoctoral Researcher – Data Science for Public Policy (gn) full-time (40 hours/week)

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Simon Munzert @simonsaysnothin.bsky.social · 21/04/2026

🚨CfA🚨 We're looking for a postdoc joining us in summer in Berlin. 3-year position @hertieschool.bsky.social @hertiedatascience.bsky.social. Pursue your own research agenda in data science for public policy - ML/AI, causal inference, computational methods. Questions? Don't hesitate to reach out!

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Corinna Milborn @corinnamilborn.bsky.social · 18/04/2026

so glücklich habe ich Paul Lendvai noch nie erlebt. Er sagt er habe die Ungarn-Wahl „mit einem Gefühl der Freude erlebt, wie er es noch selten in seinem langen Leben verspürt hat.“ Seine Gedanken sind sehr lesenswert: www.zeit.de/politik/2026...

zeit.de

Paul Lendvai: »Was wir jetzt erleben, ist dramatischer als 1989«

Der Autor Paul Lendvai floh 1956 vor den Kommunisten aus Ungarn, erlebte den jungen Viktor Orbán und wurde von ihm angegriffen. Wie denkt er über die Zukunft des Landes?

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Gloria Gennaro @gloriagennaro.bsky.social · 08/04/2026

New paper out in @thejop.bsky.social : "Immigration, Public Housing, and Support for the French National Front." How does expanding public housing affect far-right support? The answer depends heavily on local conditions, and specifically on local immigrant shares. Paper: doi.org/10.1086/736361

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Reto Bürgisser @retobuergisser.bsky.social · 08/04/2026

🚨 Job Alert 🚨 We have an opening for a 𝗣𝗼𝘀𝘁𝗱𝗼𝗰 𝗣𝗼𝘀𝗶𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 @stawi-univie.bsky.social starting Aug/Sep 2026! Focus: political representation, party competition, political institutions, political economy, political behavior, or related fields 📅Apply by 29 April 2026 jobs.univie.ac.at/job/Universi...

Job vacancy announcement for a postdoctoral position at the University of Vienna Department of Government, starting August/September 2026. Research focus includes political representation, party competition, political institutions, political economy, political behavior, or related fields. Application deadline: 29 April 2026. Full details are also available through the shared link.

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Lisa Oswald @lfoswaldo.bsky.social · 18/03/2026

I'm hiring a postdoc! @goetheuni.bsky.social Focus: CSS, political behavior, political communication & transforming information environments. 📍 Frankfurt | ⏳ 3 years | 📅 Deadline: 14 April 2026 Full job ad here: www.uni-frankfurt.de/48794987/Zen... (search for “political behavior” to find it)

uni-frankfurt.de

Goethe-Universität — Zentrale Einrichtungen

Die Goethe-Universität ist eine forschungsstarke Hochschule in der europäischen Finanzmetropole Frankfurt. Lebendig, urban und weltoffen besitzt sie als Stiftungsuniversität ein einzigartiges Maß an E...

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Alexander Wuttke @kunkakom.bsky.social · 20/03/2026

Do conjoint/factorial/vignette experiments reflect choices in the real world? Are hypothetical scenarios in the artificial survey context externally valid? Do hypothetical bias, intention-behavior gap and social desirability biases undermine validity? Two cautionary studies on this question:

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Data Science Lab - Hertie School @hertiedatascience.bsky.social · 16/03/2026

Our first guest at the Inside Data Journalism series, was Laura Bronner @laurabronner.bsky.social, who brings a rare combination of editorial experience and methodological training to questions about how quantitative evidence enters public discourse. Read more👉 www.hertie-school.org/en/datascien...

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Laura Bronner @laurabronner.bsky.social · 10/03/2026

Mehr auch hier: bsky.app/profile/laur...

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Laura Bronner @laurabronner.bsky.social · 10/03/2026

Unsere neue Studie zeigt, dass der meiste Hass online von einer Minderheit der User:innen geschrieben wird. Und das hat Konsequenzen für die Inhaltsmoderation -- da besonders toxische User:innen sich durch Gegenrede nicht vom Hass abbringen lassen. Details: www.public-discourse.org/articles/has...

public-discourse.org

Hass wird von einer Minderheit geschrieben | Public Discourse Foundation

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Data Science Lab - Hertie School @hertiedatascience.bsky.social · 09/03/2026

Today we kick off Inside Data Journalism, a spring talk series where leading practitioners share insights into their work and the future of data-driven storytelling. Join @laurabronner.bsky.social for an inspiring talk on skepticism in data storytelling. ℹ️👉 www.hertie-school.org/en/datascien...

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Laura Bronner @laurabronner.bsky.social · 08/03/2026

Super interesting - and mirrors what we find for hate speech, as well: bsky.app/profile/laur...

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Reposted by Laura Bronner

Philine Widmer @phinifa.bsky.social · 18/02/2026

Can feed algorithms shape what people think about politics? Our paper "The Political Effects of X's Feed Algorithm" is out today in Nature and answers "Yes." www.nature.com/articles/s41...

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Laura Bronner @laurabronner.bsky.social · 06/03/2026

Very happy to have done this work with @gloriagennaro.bsky.social, Laurenz Derksen, @maelkubli.bsky.social, Ana Kotarcic, Selina Kurer, Philip Grech, @karstendonnay.bsky.social, @fgilardi.bsky.social and Dominik Hangartner!

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Laura Bronner @laurabronner.bsky.social · 06/03/2026

These findings suggest that content moderation may be most effective on users who only occasionally post hate, while the most hateful users – who produce almost all the hate posted online – are largely resistant, at least to the kind of pressure tested here, and may need more targeted interventions.

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Laura Bronner @laurabronner.bsky.social · 06/03/2026

This matters for how hate speech can be countered. In a field experiment on Twitter in 2021-2, we found that replying to hateful tweets with counterspeech worked to reduce users’ future hate tweet propensity – but only for less hateful users. For more hateful users, counterspeech was ineffective.

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Laura Bronner @laurabronner.bsky.social · 06/03/2026

Who produces hate speech? And how does that matter for content moderation? We show that across different countries and platforms, a relatively small share of users are responsible for a very large share of hate - overall, 5% write 83-100% of hateful content. www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

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Data Science Lab - Hertie School @hertiedatascience.bsky.social · 04/03/2026

The Data Science Lab presents Inside Data Journalism, a spring talk series featuring leading practitioners who share practical insights into their work and the evolving field of data journalism. More ℹ️👉 www.hertie-school.org/en/datascien...

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Fabian Pawelczyk @fpawel.bsky.social · 12/02/2026

🚨My first preprint is out on @socarxiv.bsky.social! How do AI-generated content labels shape what people see as authentic on social media — and do labels have unintended side effects? osf.io/preprints/so... A thread 🧵

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Laura Bronner @laurabronner.bsky.social · 17/02/2026

Going forward, we're planning to add additional annotations and analyses to help us better understand trends in online commenting behavior. Let me know if there's anything you're particularly interested in!

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Laura Bronner @laurabronner.bsky.social · 17/02/2026

(2) What else can we learn about online behavior? We find that a small minority - 5% of users - is responsible for 78% of the hateful comments submitted to these platforms. But they're active in general, with lots of innocuous posts as well. www.public-discourse.org/en/articles/...

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Laura Bronner @laurabronner.bsky.social · 17/02/2026

By tracking how discourse on major Swiss platforms is evolving, we can answer the question: Is it true that online discourse is getting worse? In this data, in this period, on these platforms, on these measures: no. There are spikes in toxicity and hate, but no overall trend - up or down.

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Laura Bronner @laurabronner.bsky.social · 17/02/2026

(1) Basic description: what's happening? How many comments are submitted to these platforms every week, and what share is toxic/hateful? @nicolaiberk.bsky.social built classifiers to measure toxicity and hate, and scores are debiased every week using LLMs to avoid drift in the models.

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Laura Bronner @laurabronner.bsky.social · 17/02/2026

Is online discourse getting worse? To bring actual data to bear on this question, we launched the Public Discourse Indicator, a dashboard tracking online comments submitted to several major Swiss newspapers. Our aim here is twofold: www.public-discourse.org/en/public-di...

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Reposted by Laura Bronner

Political Science Research and Methods @psrm.bsky.social · 30/12/2025

✖️Who produces most online hate speech and how effective is counterspeech? ➡️ @gloriagennaro.bsky.social et al. find that hate speech is concentrated among a few users and that counterspeech on X mostly fails to curb prolific offenders www.cambridge.org/core/journal... #FirstView

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Laura Bronner @laurabronner.bsky.social · 02/01/2026

I assume not? Would also be interesting

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Laura Bronner @laurabronner.bsky.social · 02/01/2026

These average solve times don't seem to account for out-selection as the puzzles get harder... Mondays/Tuesdays probably include a bunch of people who never do the rest of the week. It'd be interesting to show the average number of solvers per day, for context.

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The Institute for Analytical Sociology @iasliu.bsky.social · 15/09/2025

Join us on Thursday, 18 Sept, at 14:30 CET for the International Roundtable on Computational Social Science with Laura Bronner @laurabronner.bsky.social 🔹Tackling harmful online comments on news platforms: three field experiments 🔹More info: liu.se/en/article/s...

liu.se

Seminars and lectures at IAS

Welcome to IAS public lectures and seminars.

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Christie Aschwanden @cragcrest.bsky.social · 21/03/2025

Wow, thank you for helping to keep this alive. I get so many notes from people using this in their coursework.

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Laura Bronner @laurabronner.bsky.social · 06/03/2025

It seems that Disney never really knew what to do with 538 (Nate's take below), which feels like a real missed opportunity. I hope other outlets will take up the mantle, hire those laid off yesterday, and really invest in data and rigor in journalism - which is more important now than ever.

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Laura Bronner @laurabronner.bsky.social · 06/03/2025

This is a huge loss. I feel awful for everyone who was laid off, but I'm also just really sad that ABC News didn't appreciate the special blend of reporting chops, data skills, talent, and kindness they managed to amass. I think the *wrong* lesson to draw is that this blend isn't profitable -

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Laura Bronner @laurabronner.bsky.social · 06/03/2025

6) That said, 538 was also special for journalism - exemplified, perhaps, by the decision to have someone on staff whose entire purpose was to slow stuff down: work through code, question analyses, and be annoying about causal claims. They cared about getting stuff right, even if it took longer.

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Laura Bronner @laurabronner.bsky.social · 06/03/2025

5) At its best, journalism at 538 blended qualitative (reporting, deep understanding of the substance) with quantitative (data, advanced methods). Academics often think that good research is only done in academia. I think a lot of fantastic research is done in journalism.

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Laura Bronner @laurabronner.bsky.social · 06/03/2025

4) Understanding what kind of effort gets you 90% of the way to answering something - and whether those 90% are enough to say something meaningful - is something I should remind myself of over and over. Academia spends an inordinate amount of time on those last 10%. Often, it's not worth it.

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Laura Bronner @laurabronner.bsky.social · 06/03/2025

3) Good data is everything, and understanding data sources and their downsides is crucial for anyone who works with data. So much work went into collecting and auditing the data 538 used - it's a resource for people across (and beyond!) journalism. bsky.app/profile/base...

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Laura Bronner @laurabronner.bsky.social · 06/03/2025

2) At the same time, data-centric doesn't necessarily mean complex. Many of the most interesting analyses (e.g. differences in means) are simple; the difficulty is in understanding the data and the substance well enough to ensure those analyses and comparisons are meaningful.

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Laura Bronner @laurabronner.bsky.social · 06/03/2025

1) Quantitative description and comparison is key to understanding what's going on. Some of 538's most important work was descriptive (e.g. poll trackers, geographic mapping), and much of their contribution to political journalism was in normalizing a much more data-centric type of reporting.

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Laura Bronner @laurabronner.bsky.social · 06/03/2025

The end of 538 is a huge shame - both for the incredible people who worked there, and for political and data journalism as a whole. I was lucky enough to work beside them for a few years and want to say a bit about what I think was so valuable that I hope doesn't vanish from the media landscape: 🧵

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Jon Mellon @jonmellon.bsky.social · 14/11/2024

Out now open access at @ajpseditor.bsky.social. 194 potential exclusion-restriction violations for studies using weather as an instrumental variable onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

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Laura Bronner @laurabronner.bsky.social · 07/02/2025

Interested in how people talk to each other online? Care about causal inference and/or NLP? Want to design and implement field experiments? Come do a PhD with Dominik Hangartner, me, and a bunch of awesome people at IPL in Zurich: jobs.ethz.ch/job/view/JOP...

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Laura Bronner @laurabronner.bsky.social · 07/02/2025

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Laura Bronner @laurabronner.bsky.social · 06/12/2024

This is consistent with stricter pre-publication review, though, right? It's just more of a focus on preventing rather than correcting errors. (Errors in articles/charts were routinely caught by attentive readers, so the incentive to avoid them was strong.)

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Laura Bronner @laurabronner.bsky.social · 06/12/2024

Clearly 538 values the trade-off differently (or did while I was there), which I think is interesting. I wonder if this partially depends on where the blame for an error goes - the authors or the publication.

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Laura Bronner @laurabronner.bsky.social · 06/12/2024

It would have required a more in-depth check than this, since our code did produce our results/figures - it's just that the code contained an error. And while correcting the record is great, preventing such errors from being published is also important! bsky.app/profile/adam...

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Laura Bronner @laurabronner.bsky.social · 06/12/2024

To put it in personal terms: I would much have preferred the error invalidating my Voting at 16 article to be caught in pre-publication code review, even though the resulting replication-and-extension collaboration probably couldn't have gone any better. bsky.app/profile/laur...

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Laura Bronner @laurabronner.bsky.social · 06/12/2024

Don't get me wrong, I think this is really cool! A way of creating positive incentives for something important that otherwise mostly has educational (part of a course) or negative (trying to prove something/someone wrong) incentives. But I don't think it's a substitute for preventing errors.

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