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Melina Much

@melinamuch.bsky.social
205 followers 215 following 38 posts

Postdoctoral Fellow @csmapnyu.org. Identities, political behavior, social media 👩🏻‍💻 melinamuch.com

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Reposted by Melina Much
Hakeem Jefferson @hakeemjefferson.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
Re Cornell: As a fellow at Stanford’s Clayman Institute for Gender & Sexuality last year, I began thinking abt how we might study homosociality, or the relational bonds btwn men, empirically—bonds we know matter for lots of men. Writeup of my v early-stage work: gender.stanford.edu/news/can-we-...
gender.stanford.edu
Can we measure homosociality? | The Clayman Institute for Gender Research
Anyone who has heard the phrase “locker room talk” is familiar with how men’s conduct is presumed to shift in male-dominated spaces. Hakeem Jefferson, assistant professor of political science at Stanf...
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Brooke Harrington @ebharrington.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
One of the things to come from GamerGate was the gamification of torturing real, live women...hounding them out of their homes, making them look over their shoulders for years. It was treated as a joke, nbd, the work of a few bad apples--as all terrorism against women is--& that failure leads here.
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Melina Much @melinamuch.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
Congrats @jongreen.bsky.social and team! 🎉
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Cambridge University Press Political Science & IR @cambup-polsci.cambridge.org · 29/09/2026
#OpenAccess from Politics and the Life Sciences - Rethinking masculinity in politics: Measuring what matters - cup.org/4y2k1tO - Claire Gothreau & @amandafriesen.bsky.social #FirstView
Banner reading "Politics and the Life Sciences" above the hashtag "#OpenAccess," set against a blue background.
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Nicole Bedera @nbedera.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
The main reason you haven’t heard about campus sexual violence in a few years is because Trump and SCOTUS have made it much, much harder for survivors to come forward. You might vaguely remember that Title IX was a big battleground in his first term. And that we lost.
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Good Authority @goodauth.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
Is testosterone a measure of manhood? Here is a look at Republicans’ fascination with testosterone in three charts. The latest from @tesler.bsky.social: goodauthority.org/news/republi...
goodauthority.org
Republicans’ fascination with testosterone in three charts
From policy changes to campaign attacks, testosterone is a GOP talking point. Here's what's behind this partisan fixation.
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Matt Grossmann @mattgrossmann.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
AI is explicitly and implicitly associated with Whiteness across diverse samples psycnet.apa.org/doiLanding?d...
psycnet.apa.org
APA PsycNet
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Melina Much @melinamuch.bsky.social · 04/09/2026
We also have our preprint up on APSA preprints for those interested ✨ #apsa2026
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Melina Much @melinamuch.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
Check out our working paper on podcasts and the youth gender gap and see us at APSA this Saturday! It’s my favorite kind of combination of computational social science and behavioral survey data. There are some amazing pod panels today (Thurs), but also more this weekend! 👩🏻‍💻🎙️
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Linde Center for Science, Society, & Policy at Caltech @caltechlcssp.bsky.social · 10/08/2026
🚨Read the latest publication from @caltechlcssp.bsky.social Co-Director, @rmichaelalvarez.bsky.social, Mitchell Linegar, Betsy Sinclair, and @profsanderlinden.bsky.social in the latest issue of @royalsociety.org Open Science! 🟨 Paper: royalsocietypublishing.org/rsos/article...
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Linde Center for Science, Society, & Policy at Caltech @caltechlcssp.bsky.social · 15/07/2026
🔊New blog from @caltechlcssp.bsky.social's Postdoc Scholar @rcenteno.bsky.social, @caltech.edu: 🟠The Racial Gap in Voter Confidence: How Trust in Ballot Counting Varies Across Racial and Ethnic Groups🟠 lcssp.caltech.edu/more/lcssp-b... See details on project with @rmichaelalvarez.bsky.social:
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Melina Much @melinamuch.bsky.social · 22/06/2026
Favorite figure from our recent CCR paper on #MeToo, essentially demonstrating the probability of a given tweet related to MeToo being about testimnials of sexual violence (CR), about political action (activated), or being reactionary to the movement. The counter movement by the end is...large. 👀
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Melina Much @melinamuch.bsky.social · 22/06/2026
New paper out in Computational Communication Research We analyze 8.4 million English-language #MeToo tweets from 2017–2019 to study how consciousness-raising cultivates activated senses of identity online. www.aup-online.com/content/jour...
aup-online.com
Activating Identity and Political Action in the #MeToo Era | Amsterdam University Press Journals Online
Abstract Twitter (now X) represented an invaluable space for sparking and mobilizing political movements. An example of this is the #MeToo movement beginning in 2017, which was one of the largest soci...
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Reposted by Melina Much
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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Melina Much @melinamuch.bsky.social · 09/05/2026
I was interviewed for some statements about narrative/discourse co-optation by the right, linked below. If you’re interested in this stuff, I’ll be presenting on how this happens on social media at APSA 👩🏻‍💻
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Melina Much @melinamuch.bsky.social · 17/04/2026
A breath of fresh air today at the New School ☀️
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Reposted by Melina Much
Amanda Sahar d’Urso @asdurso.bsky.social · 25/03/2026
ICYMI my solo article on MENA identity. When MENA Americans aren’t given a “MENA” option on forms, they answer identity-related questions on politics more strongly (eg higher end of the scale) than if“MENA” had been added. Having the group label or not changes the average response!
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Brendan Nyhan @brendannyhan.bsky.social · 22/03/2026
"the decline in [academic freedom in] the United States has been more rapid and pronounced, particularly in the last year. It has deteriorated by 50% from 2015 to 2025 and is now evaluated as moderate autonomy by country experts" academic-freedom-index.net/research/Aca...
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Meredith Conroy @meredithconroy.bsky.social · 05/03/2026
great stuff by @davekarpf.bsky.social "Journal articles aren’t social science. They’re just a unit of measurement. They’re how we keep score. Producing journal articles isn’t what we are actually meant to be doing — we’re supposed to be learning meaningful things about people, power, and society."
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Joshua Tucker @jatucker.bsky.social · 04/03/2026
Are you a social scientist who has been hearing about Claude Code but hasn't checked it out yet? Or are you a social scientist who has been playing with Claude Code and has been wondering what it means for the future of social science research? www.brookings.edu/articles/the... 1/
brookings.edu
The train has left the station: Agentic AI and the future of social science research | Brookings
A new era of agentic AI agents has begun. What does it mean for social scientists? Solomon Messing and Joshua Tucker discuss.
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Christopher Barrie @cbarrie.bsky.social · 25/02/2026
🧵on my new paper "Synthetic personas distort the structure of human belief systems" w Roberto Cerina I'm v excited about... 🚨 Do synthetic samples look like human samples? We compare 28 LLMs to the 2024 General Social Survey (GSS) to find out + develop host of diagnostics...
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Melina Much @melinamuch.bsky.social · 23/02/2026
The way those men HOLLERED when he said it too in the video, so gross. #everyonewatcheswomenssports
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American Friction @americanfric.bsky.social · 11/02/2026
Joe Rogan helped Trump with one thing he always wants more of: male voters. @melinamuch.bsky.social expands in our latest episode ➡️ linktr.ee/americanfriction #JoeRogan #Trump #TrumpElection #USpolitics #AmericanFriction
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Melina Much @melinamuch.bsky.social · 09/02/2026
Should Harris have gone on Rogan? Check out my response here on American Friction. Thanks for having me @jacobjarvis.bsky.social @chrisjonesprod.bsky.social open.spotify.com/episode/16Uy...
open.spotify.com
Joe Rogan and the podcast bros – Why are they so confused?
Spotify video
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Reposted by Melina Much
American Friction @americanfric.bsky.social · 09/02/2026
Why is it so hard to keep track of Joe Rogan's politics? @melinamuch.bsky.social explains how he bounces around and then social media clips confuse things more ➡️ linktr.ee/americanfriction
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eric gonzalez juenke @egojunk.bsky.social · 01/02/2026
Probably a day to promote this research from David Cortez. journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...
Abstract
Once an exclusively white enterprise, the last forty-five years have witnessed the emergence of a disproportionately Latinx immigration law enforcement workforce. This article addresses the question of why Latinxs elect to work for agencies that have systematically targeted the ethnic communities to which they belong. Where existing scholarship has often implied Latinxs may self-select into immigration law enforcement due to a lack of identification with the immigrant-experience, a dissociation with ethnic identity, and generally restrictionist immigration attitudes, this article finds little empirical evidence to support such an assumption. Analysis of interviews with sixty-one Latinx Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents across Arizona, California, and Texas reveals, instead, Latinxs elect to work in immigration law enforcement in service of economic self-interest and survival, with “money,” “a good job,” and “benefits” cited as the primary motivation(s) behind applying for and accepting a job in immigration. This pattern holds irrespective of individual agents’ levels of identification with the immigrant-experience and particular attitudes toward immigration, and suggests a diversity in the demographics of immigration law enforcement agencies that extends beyond mere race and ethnicity, to include a diversity of perspective and potential for empathy.
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Brendan Nyhan @brendannyhan.bsky.social · 31/01/2026
Steve Levitsky, the co-author of How Democracies Die, on the dangerous place we have reached as Trump escalates: “Orbán doesn’t arrest journalists,” he said. “And in Hungary if you walk the streets of Budapest or other Hungarian cities, you will not find heavily armed masked men abducting people."
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Melina Much @melinamuch.bsky.social · 06/01/2026
I wrote a piece for @slate.com on Gen Z, sexism, and why the “most progressive generation ever” narrative misses something important. Short version: Gen Z is uniquely progressive on race. On gender, not so much. slate.com/news-and-pol...
slate.com
Gen Z Is More Progressive Than Millennials, Except in One Crucial Way
The most open-minded generation ever? It’s complicated.
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John Holbein @johnholbein1.bsky.social · 25/12/2025
DOGE was A LOT less likely to cancel contracts from companies that donated money to Republicans than companies that donated to Democrats.
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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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Cambridge University Press Political Science & IR @cambup-polsci.cambridge.org · 20/11/2025
#OpenAccess from @politicsgenderj.bsky.social - Women or Fetuses First? An Experimental Study of the Effectiveness of the Pro-Life Movement’s Use of the “Pro-Woman” Frame - cup.org/48qJXVm - @profamandaroberti.bsky.social, Kyle J. Morgan & @katiekrumbholz.bsky.social #FirstView
Logo of the journal "Politics & Gender" featuring the text "#OpenAccess" on a yellow and teal background.
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Melina Much @melinamuch.bsky.social · 24/10/2025
👇🏼
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Cambridge University Press Political Science & IR @cambup-polsci.cambridge.org · 07/10/2025
#OpenAccess from @polanalysis.bsky.social - Survey Professionalism: New Evidence from Web Browsing Data - cup.org/3KWgqtg - Bernhard Clemm von Hohenberg, @tiagoventura.bsky.social, Jonathan Nagler, @ericka.bric.digital & Magdalena Wojcieszak #FirstView
Image featuring a yellow and red banner with the text "POLITICAL ANALYSIS" in large white letters. Below in a smaller font, it reads "#OpenAccess.
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Melina Much @melinamuch.bsky.social · 13/09/2025
We fed an LLM 30,000 podcast episodes to see where politics sneaks in to influence young folks… @csmapnyu.org Come hang at our #APSA2025 panel Podcasts and Partisanship in American Politics Sat, Sept 13, 8:00–9:30am PDT (11:00–12:30pm EDT)
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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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Zohran Kwame Mamdani @zohrankmamdani.bsky.social · 25/06/2025
In the words of Nelson Mandela: it always seems impossible until it’s done. My friends, it is done. And you are the ones who did it. I am honored to be your Democratic nominee for the Mayor of New York City.
Zohran looking out on a victory night crowd.
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Zohran Kwame Mamdani @zohrankmamdani.bsky.social · 23/06/2025
We have gone from the margin of error to the margin of effort. On the day before the election, we stand on the verge of toppling a political dynasty and winning a city we can afford. But we can only do it with you. zohranfornyc.com/gotv
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Adam Bonica @adambonica.bsky.social · 22/06/2025
Since its founding, the US has engaged in nearly 500 foreign military conflicts and operations. Congress has formally declared war in only five of these. All wars are crimes. Only a handful have been Constitutional.
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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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Tiffany Barnes @tiffanydbarnes.bsky.social · 21/05/2025
Want to hear more from fantastic EGEN scholars? Follow this starter pack! go.bsky.app/SeabEZc
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Adam Bonica @adambonica.bsky.social · 21/05/2025
The Democratic Party’s age problem isn’t just bad, it’s much worse than Republicans’. Half of registered Democratic voters are under 50, yet half their senators are over 67. Despite claiming to represent the future, party leadership systematically blocks younger voices from gaining power.
Two density plots comparing age distributions. Top graph shows Republican senators (peak around age 70) vs. registered Republican voters (more evenly distributed, median age 57). Bottom graph shows Democratic senators (peak around age 70) vs. registered Democratic voters (more evenly distributed, median age 50). Vertical lines mark where half of each population falls. Democratic senators have a much larger age gap from their voters than Republicans do.
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Melina Much @melinamuch.bsky.social · 23/04/2025
Woke up to the exciting news that my first solo-authored paper is available online at PRQ. While the road for the paper has been long, I’m thrilled to see it out. Big thanks to all the mentors and groups that helped, especially @egenpolisci.bsky.social journals.sagepub.com/eprint/TKCS9...
journals.sagepub.com
Bayesian Multilevel Modeling for the Intersections of Race, Gender, and Class - Melina Much, 2025
Intersectionality is widely recognized as one of the largest contributions to the study of race, gender, and class across the academy. However, the quantitative...
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Mor Naaman @informor.bsky.social · 05/04/2025
I have never seen anything like this in NYC. 5th Ave covered from 42nd St well to the 20s. Nobody prepared for this volume. Volunteers are holding the traffic on all the side streets. No police in sight. #handsoff
Full of people down 5th avenue, view from 39th Street.
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Empirical Study of Gender (EGEN) Research Network. @egenpolisci.bsky.social · 04/04/2025
2025 EGEN Prize Announcement: We are thrilled to announce the results of the 2025 prize competition. The EGEN prize committee selected 5 Prize Recipients and 3 Honorable Mentions this year! @tiffanydbarnes.bsky.social @teele.bsky.social @mirya.bsky.social
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Mary Annaïse Heglar @maryannaise.bsky.social · 26/03/2025
“I insist on being shocked. I am never going to become immune. I think that’s a kind of failure to see so much of it that you die inside. I want to be surprised and shocked every time.” ― Toni Morrison
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Adam Bonica @adambonica.bsky.social · 18/03/2025
1/🧵 Judges across ideological lines are ruling against Trump at strikingly similar rates (84% liberal, 86% centrist, 82% conservative). This isn't partisan opposition to Trump—it's the judiciary functioning as intended by cutting across partisan lines to uphold the Constitution.
Title: Both Liberal and Conservative Judges Rule Against Trump
Description: A scatter plot showing the rulings of judges against or in favor of Trump, categorized by ideology using the DIME score. The x-axis represents Judge Ideology (DIME Score), ranging from liberal (-1) to conservative (1), and the y-axis represents the case outcome (against or for Trump).
	•	Blue dots represent liberal judges, purple dots represent moderate judges, and red dots represent conservative judges.
	•	Some judges are labeled, including Rudolph Contreras, Lauren King, John Coughenour, and James Emanuel Boasberg on the liberal to moderate side, and Carl Nichols, Richard J. Leon, and Joseph N. Laplante on the conservative side.
	•	A note mentions that Boasberg, though slightly right-leaning, was initially appointed by George W. Bush.
	•	The visualization suggests that judges from both ideological backgrounds ruled against Trump.
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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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Melina Much @melinamuch.bsky.social · 15/03/2025
Intrusive thoughts - google trend search edition.
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