iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Philipp Lorenz-Spreen @lorenzspreen.eurosky.social · 11/10/2026

As we write in our recent report “Fractured Reality”: publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/h...

Philipp Lorenz-Spreen @lorenzspreen.eurosky.social · 10/03/2026

Very pleased to see our growing teaching portfolio of Computational Social Science coming up in the summer semester, from SynoSys and CIDS – Center for Interdisciplinary Digital Sciences at @tudresden.bsky.social , in Computer Science and Sociology. The courses: css-synosys.github.io/teaching/

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Philipp Lorenz-Spreen @lorenzspreen.eurosky.social · 11/02/2026

Thanks to Mirta Galesic and Henrik Olsson for inviting me to the impressive @csh.ac.at in Vienna, where I could present my research under the bold title "The complexity of Platform Power" and have inspiring and interdisciplinary discussions all day!

me giving a talk at the complexity science hub in vienna

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Philipp Lorenz-Spreen @lorenzspreen.eurosky.social · 14/01/2026

We are in the midst of many fascinating talks that all take a different perspective on the question of the "Impact of Social Media on Democracy and understanding the causal mechanisms of digital citizenship". This is the concluding conference of the @some4dem.bsky.social some4dem.eu/activities/e...

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Philipp Lorenz-Spreen @lorenzspreen.eurosky.social · 09/01/2026

In my Bluesky app, I can now see from which of my other feeds the posts originate from in my "discover" feed (see screenshot). This is going in the direction of algorithmic transparency for the user-side that we have been talking about in the past: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

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Philipp Lorenz-Spreen @lorenzspreen.eurosky.social · 23/11/2025

We haven’t really tried alternative Social Media. Just little bits of transparency about from where and how information is reaching us, is used by people immediately. If chosen well, such cues could empower users and reward quality. Some suggestions from some time ago: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

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Philipp Lorenz-Spreen @lorenzspreen.eurosky.social · 27/10/2025

Great to be back where I studied: This week I'm in Munich at @lmumuenchen.bsky.social from the faculty of physics to the faculty of social sciences, for a Computational Social Science Fellowship, kindly hosted by @valeriehase.bsky.social www.sw.lmu.de/en/faculty-a...

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Philipp Lorenz-Spreen @lorenzspreen.eurosky.social · 09/09/2025

Cool paper by @pournaki.bsky.social about the very pronounced issue alignment on german Twitter/X: ojs.aaai.org/index.php/IC...

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Philipp Lorenz-Spreen @lorenzspreen.eurosky.social · 26/08/2025

We have to finally move our digital public sphere out of those platforms and create European, democratic alternatives!

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Philipp Lorenz-Spreen @lorenzspreen.eurosky.social · 14/08/2025

Important preprint by @pietronickl.bsky.social @msultan.bsky.social Caedyn Stinson, @fstock.bsky.social Ralph Hertwig @anaskozyreva.bsky.social, touching so many points to move the misinfo discussion forward, like feedback-loops, systemic factors and rhetoric, great work! osf.io/preprints/so...

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Philipp Lorenz-Spreen @lorenzspreen.eurosky.social · 22/07/2025

Our team "Computational Social Science" at SynoSys is growing! Welcome @baottruong.bsky.social and Ezequiel Lopez-Lopez! At the moment, they are all @ic2s2.bsky.social, say hi get to know their research. And check out our website: css-synosys.github.io

screenshot of the group website https://css-synosys.github.io/

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Philipp Lorenz-Spreen @lorenzspreen.eurosky.social · 26/05/2025

On Wednesday at 10:30am I will be speaking at @re-publica.com about "Societal tipping points: The spiral of attention and platform power, and how we can still escape it" 1/3

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Philipp Lorenz-Spreen @lorenzspreen.eurosky.social · 15/05/2025

Finally, we suggest to look for inspiration in fields like public health or climate science to develop a triangulating between experimental methods on the individual level, observational methods and causal inference on the collective level, and theory and computational methods to bridge the gap:

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Philipp Lorenz-Spreen @lorenzspreen.eurosky.social · 15/05/2025

We walk through several properties that are typical for complex systems and specifically for social media and how individual-level approaches to infer causality may be misguided and how that can be mitigated:

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Philipp Lorenz-Spreen @lorenzspreen.eurosky.social · 07/05/2025

Looking forward to my session @re-publica.com and what an honor to be listed along so many other great speakers!

programm of the republica conference for wednesday May 28th

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Philipp Lorenz-Spreen @lorenzspreen.eurosky.social · 22/04/2025

Kicking off @complenet.bsky.social in Fortaleza, Brazil what an exciting place and conference, looking forward to my keynote on Thursday morning!

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Philipp Lorenz-Spreen @lorenzspreen.eurosky.social · 26/03/2025

indeed weird, I did not expect normal papers to appear there...

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Philipp Lorenz-Spreen @lorenzspreen.eurosky.social · 08/03/2025

Some associations that studies find are beneficial: people on digital media seem to participate more in politics, are exposed to diverse information, can express themselves and have better political knowledge. However, in the update, results for knowledge and exposure got increasingly mixed. 3/5

directions of associations for various political variables, as reported in the replication.

directions of associations for various political variables, as reported in the original paper.

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Philipp Lorenz-Spreen @lorenzspreen.eurosky.social · 08/03/2025

Digital Media is associated with a whole spectrum of variables that are relevant for democracy. Within most of those dimensions there is clear agreement among the studies: for affective polarization, mistrust, populism, participation, hate speech, misinformation, group formation and hate speech. 2/5

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Philipp Lorenz-Spreen @lorenzspreen.eurosky.social · 27/02/2025

Für den Wahlabend habe ich mit Mathias Kubitza im ZDF gesprochen: youtu.be/z8U3zJyjLG4?...

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Philipp Lorenz-Spreen @lorenzspreen.eurosky.social · 24/02/2025

Worryingly high gains for AfD, but at least democratic parties can form a government, for now… Polarized in different directions (esp. young voters), surprisingly rapid rise of die Linke, and an extremely high voter turnout. Some fit the pattern of digital media assoc: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Associations between digital media use and political variables.

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Philipp Lorenz-Spreen @lorenzspreen.eurosky.social · 21/01/2025

I mean, that the story of “neutral platforms” and “freedom of expression” is a joke was already clear, but I didn't expect them to be so blatant (screenshots from my instagram), or am I missing something?

search function of instagram showing no results for the hashtag democrat

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Philipp Lorenz-Spreen @lorenzspreen.eurosky.social · 21/01/2025

More important than ever to be very clear that research on misinformation is not censorship… let’s see how this will unfold: www.whitehouse.gov/presidential...

Text from the White House website describing new policies on misinformation

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Philipp Lorenz-Spreen @lorenzspreen.eurosky.social · 22/12/2024

Just casually opening x and getting unsolicited notifications to check out a far-right extremist‘s post…. this can’t be explained by any kind of personalisation but rather interference with the upcoming election.

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Philipp Lorenz-Spreen @lorenzspreen.eurosky.social · 20/11/2024

Over there at X the only useful feature that is left are community notes

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Philipp Lorenz-Spreen @lorenzspreen.eurosky.social · 20/11/2024

Remember those friction interventions that aimed at going against this design, back then on Twitter? Maybe good to reconsider "slowing down" the system?

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Philipp Lorenz-Spreen @lorenzspreen.eurosky.social · 03/07/2024

Original and political content featuring outrage and anger was more likely to be subsequently retweeted by others. Our findings may denote adaptive strategies in the incentive structure of social media that rewards such content.

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Philipp Lorenz-Spreen @lorenzspreen.eurosky.social · 03/07/2024

When creating content, participants were more likely to be motivated by the goals of informing and persuading others, for which they used negative language and expressed outrage. In contrast, entertaining content and positive language was used for socializing and attention.

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Philipp Lorenz-Spreen @lorenzspreen.eurosky.social · 03/07/2024

We found that overall, expressing one's opinion, bringing attention to a topic, informing others, and connecting with others were most important during ecological momentary assessment (EMA). Motives differed for sharing (retweets) vs. creating (original, quote, reply) content.

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