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Max Falkenberg

@maxfalken.bsky.social
1.7K followers 826 following 147 posts

Computational Social Scientist. Interested in the structures of polarization. Associate Professor, King's College London. maxfalkenberg.com

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Reposted by Max Falkenberg
Pew Research Center @pewresearch.org · 06/10/2026
A median of 55% think social media has had a positive impact on democracy, across 37 nations surveyed. But in many countries, the share of people who believe social media is bad for democracy has increased significantly in recent years. #SocialMedia #GlobalSurvey
 Chart showing most say social media has been good for democracy but many in high-income nations disagree.Chart showing shares who see social media as a bad thing for democracy have grown over the last few years.
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Max Falkenberg @maxfalken.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
Excited and grateful for the opportunity to contribute to the British Election Study for the next five years! At King's we will be leading on building the study's AI infrastructure and integrating novel data collection methods. Will be hiring two postdocs soon, so drop me a line if interested 🌞
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Quantian @quantian.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
Dancing very very VERY close to saying “OpenAI stole our almost-complete proof of Navier-Stokes from internal access to our ChatGPT sessions because they were desperate to scoop Anthropic” which is absolutely 100% a believable thing OpenAI would do right now cims.nyu.edu/~tristanb/st...
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Misha Teplitskiy | Science of science | on LinkedIn mostly @innovation.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
How should we deter student from cheating?? Well, if history is any guide...
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Nature Portfolio @natureportfolio.nature.com · 06/09/2026
Nearly half of all polarization research focuses on the US, yet many American findings are global outliers. A Review in Nature Communications argues that a globally equitable understanding requires bridging traditional social science with new approaches leveraging social media and AI. 🧪
go.nature.com
Toward an integrated and globally equitable understanding of political polarization - Nature Communications
Nearly half of all polarization research focuses on the United States, yet many American findings are global outliers. A globally equitable understanding requires bridging traditional social science with new approaches leveraging social media and AI.
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Timothy Caulfield @caulfieldtim.bsky.social · 02/09/2026
"What has fundamentally changed is the emergence of the information age (the internet, social media, AI) and its integration into, and domination over, our contemporary political discourse." Needed: a globally equitable understanding of political polarization www.nature.com/articles/s41...
nature.com
Toward an integrated and globally equitable understanding of political polarization - Nature Communications
Nearly half of all polarization research focuses on the United States, yet many American findings are global outliers. A globally equitable understanding requires bridging traditional social science w...
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Jay Van Bavel, PhD @jayvanbavel.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
We need to understand political polarization through a global lens: Evidence from 53 countries suggests that high levels of affective polarization are correlated with democratic backsliding, but high levels of ideological polarization are not. www.nature.com/articles/s41...,
nature.com
Toward an integrated and globally equitable understanding of political polarization - Nature Communications
Nearly half of all polarization research focuses on the United States, yet many American findings are global outliers. A globally equitable understanding requires bridging traditional social science w...
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Max Falkenberg @maxfalken.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
Kikuko Nagayoshi, @dgrand.bsky.social , @physscala.bsky.social , @aasiegel.bsky.social , @profsanderlinden.bsky.social , @ovarol.bsky.social , @ingmarweber.de , Magdalena Wojcieszak, @zollofab.bsky.social , @baronca.bsky.social & @walter4c.bsky.social
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Max Falkenberg @maxfalken.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
Very happy to finally get this work over the line, and grateful to our amazing interdisciplinary team 🥳 @galessandro.bsky.social , @matteocinelli.bsky.social , @chrisbail.bsky.social , Rosa M Benito, @snurb.info , @gruzd.ca , @davidlazer.bsky.social , Jae Kook Lee, @jennifermccoy.bsky.social , ...
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Max Falkenberg @maxfalken.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
Is the world getting more polarized? The polarization of the U.S. is worrying. But is polarization similarly bad elsewhere? What drives polarization globally, what role does social media play, and will AI make things worse? New review in @nature.com communications: www.nature.com/articles/s41...
lnkd.in
LinkedIn
This link will take you to a page that’s not on LinkedIn
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Max Falkenberg @maxfalken.bsky.social · 27/05/2026
Work with @gabridibo.bsky.social @emmafraxanet.bsky.social @komanderb.bsky.social Andrea Lo Sasso, Virginia Moroni, @avdeville.bsky.social and co-supervised with @galessandro.bsky.social
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Max Falkenberg @maxfalken.bsky.social · 27/05/2026
"The EU's DSA has the potential to transform social media research, but only if its data access provisions are interpreted with the empirical realities of sampling bias in mind... Partial data access is, in many cases, equivalent to no meaningful access at all." New preprint: osf.io/preprints/so...
osf.io
OSF
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Elisa Omodei @elisaomodei.bsky.social · 11/12/2025
🚨 Come join @ceu-dnds.bsky.social as an 𝗔𝘀𝘀𝗶𝘀𝘁𝗮𝗻𝘁 𝗣𝗿𝗼𝗳𝗲𝘀𝘀𝗼𝗿! 🚨 We are looking for a young and coming researcher in 𝗻𝗲𝘁𝘄𝗼𝗿𝗸 𝘀𝗰𝗶𝗲𝗻𝗰𝗲 and 𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗽𝘂𝘁𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝗮𝗹 𝘀𝗼𝗰𝗶𝗮𝗹 𝘀𝗰𝗶𝗲𝗻𝗰𝗲. If that sounds like you (or someone you know), check out the call & apply (or share the link): careers.ceu.edu/job/Vienna-A...
careers.ceu.edu
Assistant Professor (f/m/d)
Assistant Professor (f/m/d)
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Max Falkenberg @maxfalken.bsky.social · 09/12/2025
Thanks Richard! Yes, would be very nice to catch up 😊
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Max Falkenberg @maxfalken.bsky.social · 09/12/2025
I am very happy to share that as of June 2026, I will be joining the Informatics department @ KCL as an AI+ Senior Research Fellow (Senior Lecturer / Associate Professor). I am very grateful to everyone who has supported me on the way and excited to be continuing my research at King's 🎉
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Joe Tidy BBC News @joetidy.bsky.social · 05/12/2025
Another Cloudflare outage. On Friday at business time for the UK and many other parts of the world. This was a scheduled thing that seems to have failed. There is something deliberate in the timings of these 'maintenance gone wrong events'. The rest of the world suffers whilst the US sleeps.
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CS2Italy @cs2italy.bsky.social · 18/11/2025
🔈 *Call for Participation* 🔈 Italian Conference on Computational Social Science – CS2Italy May 19-21, 2026 in Torino, Italy Premier venue for Computational Social Science in Italy: #sociology #polisci #economics #netsci #complexsystems ++ Submit your abstract by Jan 15: cs2italy.org plz reshare
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Sam Freedman @samfr.bsky.social · 10/11/2025
Just occurred that the BBC is the most literal example of Conquest's third law in that it is actually run by a cabal of its enemies.
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Tiago Peixoto @tiago.skewed.de · 09/11/2025
Firing a BBC director for *leftist* bias is like punishing a pig for taking a bath.
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Max Falkenberg @maxfalken.bsky.social · 06/11/2025
Spoke to the BBC about how Grok is facilitating the abuse of politicians on X. Abusive messaging on X is not new (we studied it here: www.nature.com/articles/s41... ), but the enhanced visibility of Grok posts will increase engagement with this content. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
bbc.co.uk
MP wants Musk's Grok chatbot shut down over claim he enabled grooming gangs
SNP MP Pete Wishart says he is seeking legal advice over the
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Max Falkenberg @maxfalken.bsky.social · 03/11/2025
I can understand this. The one thing I would say is that I have learnt a lot about my own work in the process of writing grants. Even when they get rejected there are sometimes useful takeaways
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Max Falkenberg @maxfalken.bsky.social · 03/11/2025
It is hard to overstate the number of academic hours which are wasted on fruitless funding applications 👇
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depths of wikipedia @depthsofwikipedia.bsky.social · 01/11/2025
If you're in need of positive and rather wholesome news, there's a high school teacher named Bryan who took a ton of freely licensed celebrity headshots at the New York Film Festival last month for Wikipedia, and I truly can't believe how drastic the upgrade is for some articles (thread)
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Felix M. Simon @felixsimon.bsky.social · 23/10/2025
The EBU just published a new report on how well consumer AI chatbots function as gateways to news by public service media – an interesting piece, but with some big problems in my view that make me question its usefulness. buff.ly/X9ident
ebu.ch
Largest study of its kind shows AI assistants misrepresent news content 45% of the time – regardless of language or territory
New research coordinated by the EBU and led by the BBC has found that AI assistants routinely distort or misrepresent public service journalism.
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Max Falkenberg @maxfalken.bsky.social · 17/10/2025
Competition for ERC Starting Grants up 38% in two years. No increase in the number of grants awarded and no increase in grant value. Result: more academic hours wasted on fruitless, bureaucratic grant applications instead of research erc.europa.eu/news-events/...
erc.europa.eu
Starting Grants 2026 applications: Facts and figures
The ERC Starting Grants 2026 call closed for applications on 14 October 2025. These are the preliminary data on submitted proposals:
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Inverse Complexity Lab @invcomplexity.skewed.de · 08/08/2025
Last week we had our second “Inverse Complexity Lab Retreat” at wonderful Traunkirchen! skewed.de/lab/group.ht... Nothing like eldritch C++ incantations by the sunny lakeside! 🏖️
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Max Falkenberg @maxfalken.bsky.social · 27/07/2025
This is of course absolutely true
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Max Falkenberg @maxfalken.bsky.social · 27/07/2025
General reminder: Good internet regulation is not easy if you're a small island with little real influence.
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Inverse Complexity Lab @invcomplexity.skewed.de · 22/07/2025
New preprint: “Multiscale patterns of migration flows in Austria: regionalization, administrative barriers, and urban-rural divides”, with @thomrobiglio.bsky.social, Martina Contisciani, @martonkarsai.bsky.social, arxiv.org/abs/2507.11503
arxiv.org
Multiscale patterns of migration flows in Austria: regionalization, administrative barriers, and urban-rural divides
Migration is central in various societal problems related to socioeconomic development. While much of the existing research has focused on international migration, migration patterns within a single c...
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Reposted by Max Falkenberg
Bojan Evkoski @bojanevkoski.bsky.social · 21/07/2025
🧵 New preprint! Do online mental health communities form patterns of association that mirror diagnostic systems or challenge them? “Network Analysis of Reddit Mental Health Communities: Mapping the Interconnectedness of Psychopathology” 👉 osf.io/7dfcw_v1 @ceu-dnds.bsky.social Short thread: 1/N
osf.io
OSF
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Inverse Complexity Lab @invcomplexity.skewed.de · 29/06/2025
Are you from the US and would like to work as a postdoc in Austria, maybe in our lab? 25 new fellowships will be available in July from the @oeaw.bsky.social: www.oeaw.ac.at/en/news/25-n... If you are interested; get in touch!
oeaw.ac.at
25 new scholarships for US researchers
Fonds Zukunft Österreich (FZÖ) is providing €10 million in funding for an academy program to bring postdocs from the USA to Austria ++ Faßmann: “The right signal in these turbulent times”
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Luca Maria Aiello @lajello.bsky.social · 26/06/2025
Testing LLMs in the Prisoner’s Dilemma to reveal their moral biases. LLMs can defect often but become more forgiving and less retaliatory than humans when opponents are mostly cooperative. Nicolò Fontana at #ICWSM. w @frapierri.bsky.social Paper: ojs.aaai.org/index.php/IC...
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Max Falkenberg @maxfalken.bsky.social · 23/06/2025
Looking forward to chatting soon!
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Max Falkenberg @maxfalken.bsky.social · 23/06/2025
A similar talk was recorded here: youtu.be/k5IA96g0U5s?... Papers: academic.oup.com/pnasnexus/ar... www.nature.com/articles/s41... osf.io/preprints/os...
youtu.be
The systemic impact of deplatforming on social media
YouTube video by Cambridge Disinformation Summit
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Luca Maria Aiello @lajello.bsky.social · 23/06/2025
Kicking off #ICWSM with the DETOX workshop and @maxfalken.bsky.social’s keynote on why the Web is not a set of siloed platforms and why we should not study it as such. Shows why deplatforming doesn’t work exactly as we expect and why large online platforms are plagued by affective polarization
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Tiago Peixoto @tiago.skewed.de · 22/06/2025
Here's another paper by Shalizi showing how inferring *latent* homophily allows for disentangling from contagion. Bizarre how this gets overlooked, since it's obvious that homophily leaves huge traces in the network structure, while contagion changes nothing. www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....
tandfonline.com
Estimating Causal Peer Influence in Homophilous Social Networks by Inferring Latent Locations
Social influence cannot be identified from purely observational data on social networks, because such influence is generically confounded with latent homophily, that is, with a node’s network partn...
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Alan Jagolinzer @jagolinzer.bsky.social · 21/06/2025
The systemic impact of deplatforming on social media, featuring @maxfalken.bsky.social. From the Cambridge Disinformation Summit youtu.be/k5IA96g0U5s
youtu.be
The systemic impact of deplatforming on social media
YouTube video by Cambridge Disinformation Summit
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Max Falkenberg @maxfalken.bsky.social · 17/06/2025
No surprise that bank lending to the fossil fuel sector keeps rising 👇 Nadia Ameli and I recently wrote about why current banking regulations are insufficient and ineffective at limiting continued funding to the FF sector - call ordinated action is needed: www.thebanker.com/content/e812...
thebanker.com
Why banks’ fossil fuel policies fail
A system designed to share risk is preventing isolated bank policies from bearing fruit, and may lead to future systemic concerns
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Ketan Joshi @ketanjoshi.co · 06/06/2025
Extremely fun little secret recording in @desmog.com by @geoffdembicki.bsky.social here - Lomborg just openly saying to the Fraser Institute that CCS wont' work but that it can be used to soak up subsidies www.desmog.com/2025/06/05/c...
desmog.com
Carbon Capture ‘Not Going to Happen,’ Top Fossil Fuel Advocate Predicts
In audio obtained by DeSmog, Bjorn Lomborg told a Fraser Institute event in Vancouver that the technology is way too expensive to be viable.
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Alexandre Bovet @abovet.bsky.social · 05/06/2025
@maxfalken.bsky.social on the importance of nuence when studying polarization at the social network session at #netsci2025
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Matteo Cinelli @matteocinelli.bsky.social · 03/06/2025
Celebrating my first post on Bluesky with a picture of @abovet.bsky.social giving his invited talk at UNCSS today. The Satellite in running now at NetSci 2025. Feel free to join even for the last round of talks. Together with: @maxfalken.bsky.social & Alessandro Galeazzi
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Max Falkenberg @maxfalken.bsky.social · 02/06/2025
Looking forward to hosting this tomorrow! Lots of great talks! 👇
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Gale @galessandro.bsky.social · 01/06/2025
I can officially confirm my presence to the satellite! If I made it, you cannot miss.
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NetPlace @netplace.bsky.social · 29/05/2025
🎉 Very happy to announce Maxime Lucas @maximelca.bsky.social as our next panelist! Maxime is an FNRS Postdoc at the Namur Institute for Complex Systems & UCLouvain in Belgium. He is interested in dynamical systems, complex systems, networks, and their applications to life sciences.
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Max Falkenberg @maxfalken.bsky.social · 27/05/2025
With great speakers! @abovet.bsky.social @ecozzo.bsky.social @alessianetwork.bsky.social @miroslavmirchev.bsky.social @andreajpg.bsky.social @fernandodiazdiaz.bsky.social And others! Organized with @galessandro.bsky.social and Matteo Cinelli
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Max Falkenberg @maxfalken.bsky.social · 27/05/2025
Looking forward to our satellite on "Understudied Networks in Computational Social Science" next Tuesday (June 3) from 9am at @netsciconf.bsky.social Join us for 10 great talks discussing (Meta)Decidem, Tiktok, Bluesky, Wikidata, Painters, and more! galeale.github.io/UNCSS/?trk=f...
galeale.github.io
Understudied Networks in Computational Social Science
Understudied Networks in Computational Social Science
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Alan Jagolinzer @jagolinzer.bsky.social · 23/05/2025
Dr @maxfalken.bsky.social on the impact of social media deplatforming. From the Cambridge Disinformation Summit meetings. m.youtube.com/watch?v=k5IA...
m.youtube.com
The systemic impact of deplatforming on social media
YouTube video by Cambridge Disinformation Summit
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Alberto Acerbi @acerbialberto.com · 21/05/2025
The rise (and fall?) of misinformation research.
Google scholar results for query "misinformation"
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Thomas Robiglio @thomrobiglio.bsky.social · 19/05/2025
🎙️Meet the chair of Data Stories: @maxfalken.bsky.social We're excited to welcome Max Falkenberg as chair of this year's Data Stories! 📅 Join Max and our speakers *TOMORROW*, Tuesday, May 20 1/n
events.ceu.edu
Data Stories (11th Edition)
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Jan Penfrat @ilumium.eupolicy.social.ap.brid.gy · 15/05/2025
For weeks I have been telling reporters that #Trump could have the power to switch off our tech in #Europe. It felt a bit alarmist until I just read the #Microsoft, on the behest of the #US gov has suspended the email account of Karim Khan, #ICC chief prosecutor. One of the most important […]
eupolicy.social
Original post on eupolicy.social
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