iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

peter forberg @peterforberg.com · 04/09/2025

fantastic piece from @marionf.bsky.social and @kjhealy.co that provides tools for thinking about surveillance, knowledge, identity, and much more it links pressing issues, from DOGE to AI cheating, that demonstrate how our Faustian bargain with infinite data and infinite content is playing out

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peter forberg @peterforberg.com · 09/08/2025

hello #ASA2025! K. Schilt and I will be talking about research ethics, vulnerable populations, and legal attempts to access confidential data on Sunday during this great and wide-ranging paper session! it will be...relevant to "contemporary issues" facing our discipline. also PS I'm at ASA say hi :)

Screenshot of an event at ASA. The event information is: Sun, August 10, 12:00 to 1:30pm, West Tower, Hyatt Regency Chicago, Floor: Concourse Level/Bronze, Wrigley

The description reads: Public Sociology and Engaged Scholarship Part II examines the possibilities and challenges of sociological practice that is deeply engaged with social movements, policy debates, and struggles for justice. The panel explores the ethical dilemmas, political risks, and methodological innovations that come with working in
collaboration with marginalized communities and advocating for structural change.
Presenters reflect on the tensions between academic autonomy and activist
commitments, the responsibilities of researchers in politically hostile environments,and the role of participatory methods in redistributing power in the research process. Together, these papers push the boundaries of what it means to practice sociology in ways that are both intellectually rigorous and socially transformative.

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peter forberg @peterforberg.com · 13/07/2025

I think that would be super useful!

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peter forberg @peterforberg.com · 13/07/2025

Epstein has long been a test on cognitive dissonance for supporters, some elaborate decoding around Trump's less-than-critical remarks, so I'd be interested in how you're thinking about its importance in this moment--but it might take a minute to see how it's being integrated by diff factions

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Aaron Reichlin-Melnick @reichlinmelnick.bsky.social · 23/06/2025

DISASTROUS. This means they will send people to horrific situations with no due process — in direct violation of promises the Solicitor General made to the Court in previous cases. This greenlights sending people to be enslaved in Libya or tortured in any random foreign country.

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peter forberg @peterforberg.com · 15/06/2025

3) prevents Americans who protested from feeling like they have engaged in politics. For all the criticism of voter apathy and "audience democracy," it's clear that the Dem establishment and news media have no way of incorporating mass popular action/demands/messaging into a movement or narrative.

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peter forberg @peterforberg.com · 15/06/2025

The day after, essentially no (@nytimes.com @npr.org) or minimal (@apnews.com @cnn.com) front page coverage of one of the largest protests in US history. This: 1) cedes narrative control to RW "riot" narratives; 2) makes the military parade the leading edge of Trump-obsessed media, and...

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peter forberg @peterforberg.com · 13/06/2025

But, if we want to be future-looking, we can't *just* think about the interface: LLMs imply a relationship to knowledge that goes beyond the chatbot UI. What that means for how we understand, work, communicate, and believe are big, open-ended questions. bsky.app/profile/mike...

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peter forberg @peterforberg.com · 13/06/2025

I agree that an analysis of "the interface" or UX is necessary, much like how people got different "feels" for the algorithms of TikTok, Facebook, Twitter, etc., there are different epistemologies implied by the way one "reads" technology. bsky.app/profile/pete...

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peter forberg @peterforberg.com · 13/06/2025

Oracular, protagonistic ideas espoused by chatbots are reminiscent of doomsday cult beliefs. Theorists have long argued that such "cults" rely on members' social support: echo chambers + cognitive dissonance. But not so for chatbots! It's a dissonance chamber and the "social" is a technical trick.

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peter forberg @peterforberg.com · 03/06/2025

Those are usually more niche, and for field "insiders," but I think there are increasing venues for quasi-public, research-lite work (HKS MisinfoReview, The Conversation, Slate, etc.) Still, having your own space (as I'm thinking about it) might be a way to engage a smaller, more intentional public.

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peter forberg @peterforberg.com · 03/06/2025

This is something I've been thinking about doing as well, mostly as a motivation to practice writing and have a dialogue on contemporary issues through my research lens. Depending on the field, there are also "blog-like" channels (for sociology, see scatter.wordpress.com or ethnomarginalia.com)

scatter.wordpress.com

scatterplot

the unruly darlings of public sociology

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peter forberg @peterforberg.com · 08/04/2025

this is the same kind of magical thinking that we see with AI and generally techno utopianism why have proactive, preventative initiatives if we have magic? which is exceptionally absurd when they are gutting the only funding that could even hypothetically "reanimate" the dead

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peter forberg @peterforberg.com · 08/04/2025

ah yes what's that famous quotation? something about "millionaires see themselves as temporarily embarrassed coal miners"

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peter forberg @peterforberg.com · 04/04/2025

Second, Hochschild's recent book introduces the "four-moment anti-shame ritual." In this argument, it is the retaliation against Trump (his "shaming") that binds him to supporters. Provocations, like retaliatory tariffs, are viewed as cruel and unjust punishment, which allows Trump to push back.

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peter forberg @peterforberg.com · 04/04/2025

FOX, OANN, etc. lend support to the idea that, say, government is inefficient or the EU is looting US prosperity. This fiction convinces MAGA. Trump acts on the fictions of inefficiency/theft, then takes steps which actually produce inefficiency and monetary retaliation, which confirms his story.

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peter forberg @peterforberg.com · 04/04/2025

Two concepts to help explain the persistence of MAGA support: First, there's "conspiracy fictioning + hyperstition" from @ddzeeuw.bsky.social and Gekker: When Trump claims the economy is rigged by foreign interests, then acts as if it is, he creates the original conditions for his conspiracy theory

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Andrew Heiss @andrew.heiss.phd · 20/03/2025

I’ve long used FiveThirtyEight’s interactive “Hack Your Way To Scientific Glory” to illustrate the idea of p-hacking when I teach statistics. But ABC/Disney killed the site earlier this month :( So I made my own with #rstats and Observable and #QuartoPub ! stats.andrewheiss.com/hack-your-way/

Screenshot of the linked Quarto website, with input checkboxes to change different conditions for a regression model that predicts economic performance based on US political party, with a reported p-value

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Karen L. Cox 📚🏳️‍🌈 @drkarenlcox.bsky.social · 13/03/2025

Are you working in a setting where historical data is at risk of being lost/erased/removed? Let the OAH know. I think this is an important way to account for what's there now so that we understand what goes missing. You can fill out the form anonymously. #historysky www.oah.org/2025/03/12/r...

oah.org

OAH | Records at Risk Data Collection InitiativeOAH | Records at Risk Data Collection Initiative

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Victor Ray @victorerikray.bsky.social · 17/02/2025

This is a fascinating, disturbing, and complicated piece from @nberlat.bsky.social. Martin Niemöller Was an Antisemite www.everythingishorrible.net/p/martin-nie...

everythingishorrible.net

Martin Niemöller Was an Antisemite

His poem was not about indifference.

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Cihan Tugal @cihantugal.bsky.social · 14/02/2025

Critical Sociology compiled Michael Burawoy's articles and allowed free access. I hope other journals will do the same. journals.sagepub.com/page/crs/vir...

journals.sagepub.com

Sage Journals: Discover world-class research

Subscription and open access journals from Sage, the world's leading independent academic publisher.

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Prof Dynarski @dynarski.bsky.social · 14/02/2025

FANTASTIC ICPSR at U Mich is coordinating the archiving of at-risk federal data (all of it?) You can upload data you have & search for data you don’t have www.datalumos.org/datalumos/

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peter forberg @peterforberg.com · 03/02/2025

it feels like a way of dealing with our lack of any opposition to this incredible narrative power, but in reality it just obscures which of his policies are popular and downplays the serious consequences of his actions simply because they're filled with falsehoods

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peter forberg @peterforberg.com · 03/02/2025

people who follow anti-Trump media relish in these "gotcha" moments, but he skillfully undermines such critiques of his actions. he produces selective causal sequencing: he says he'll build the wall, money is appropriated, ergo wall is built. gaps in the narrative are moot. vaccines, tiktok, etc

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peter forberg @peterforberg.com · 10/01/2025

The rule law comment comes immediately after complaining about EU fines. US hegemony protected his business model, and now he's worried about its collapse. He praises Trump for actually caring about the US "winning." The sleight of hand implies the EU fines were primarily about free speech...

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peter forberg @peterforberg.com · 10/01/2025

Halfway through the Zuckerberg interview: We cannot separate his criticism of the Biden admin from the massive fines Meta has faced in the EU. He makes a tacit link between the politicization of Big Tech and the US's decision to abandon tech companies to places that disregard "the rule of law."

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Mike Rothschild @rothschildmd.bsky.social · 09/01/2025

We lost our house in the Eaton Fire. We're safe, but the level of devastation is impossible to convey. I won't be able to work for a while, so if you want to support us, I'd appreciate a Patreon subscription or buying one of my books. It will help. www.patreon.com/MikeRothschild

patreon.com

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Roland Meyer @bildoperationen.bsky.social · 20/08/2023

With each update, tools like Midjourney promise us more »realistic« representations – but the »reality« these images represent has often little to do with the one we live in. Rather, they are best described as »Platform Realism,« a second-order aesthetic of generic images. A thread ... 1/9

Midjourney-generated images, prompt was: workers in a factory, highly realistic --ar 4:3

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Josh Kaplan @josh-kaplan.bsky.social · 04/01/2025

Outraged by Jan 6, he spent two years getting inside the top ranks of militias like the Oath Keepers. He was stunningly successful. He penetrated a new generation of militia leaders, which included doctors, cops & government attorneys. This is his story. www.propublica.org/article/ap3-...

propublica.org

A Mole Infiltrated the Highest Ranks of American Militias. This Is What He Found.

Outraged by the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, a wilderness survival trainer spent years undercover climbing the ranks of right-wing militias. He didn’t tell police or the FBI. He didn’t tell family or friends....

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peter forberg @peterforberg.com · 25/11/2024

cloning yourself is actually the only logical conclusion

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peter forberg @peterforberg.com · 25/11/2024

AI letting you publish a book for yourself, AI letting you have a social media platform dedicated to yourself, AI letting you have a relationship all by yourself... ...to riff on Fisher, it's solipsistic hedonia, all the pleasure of recognition without any of the people, processes, and communities.

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peter forberg @peterforberg.com · 25/11/2024

your cleric tag really gives this extra gravitas

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peter forberg @peterforberg.com · 23/11/2024

Optimist: The cup is half full. Pessimist: The cup is half empty. Sociologist: The "full/empty" opposition represents the categories with which we classify the social world—when we classify the cup as "full" we classify ourselves as one who sees the cup as "full," a member of the "full" class

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Ross Dahlke @rossdahlke.bsky.social · 12/11/2024

✨New from @ryanmoore.bsky.social me @peterforberg.bsky.social & Hancock in #CSCW2024. We take a mixed-methods approach to studying American's exposure to QAnon, finding those on the political extremes are most likely to be exposed, but with distinct types of consumers dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/...

The Private Life of QAnon: A Mixed Methods Investigation of Americans' Exposure to QAnon Content on the Web

Figure 4. Quantitative clusters of those exposed to QAnon websites

Figure 7. Participant 909's QAnon website consumption

Figure 8. Participant 405's Qanon website consumption

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peter forberg @peterforberg.com · 12/11/2024

This last piece is a few years old, and while it has its various research findings about how QAnons tried to mainstream their ideas, really I was grappling with how to study political movements' relationships to new technology, especially algorithms. journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1...

journals.sagepub.com

From the Fringe to the Fore: An Algorithmic Ethnography of the Far-Right Conspiracy Theory Group QAnon - Peter L. Forberg, 2022

In this article, I examine the convergence of the socio-technological processes that enabled members of far-right conspiracy theory QAnon to expand beyond the “...

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peter forberg @peterforberg.com · 12/11/2024

Are you conducting a digital ethnography? In a recent paper, we discuss how digitizing ethnography has implications for the questions ethnographers can ask, the ways they present themselves, and how we think about "participation" and its consequences. www.frontiersin.org/journals/soc...

frontiersin.org

Frontiers | What is ethnographic about digital ethnography? A sociological perspective

When COVID-19 health guidelines vastly restricted or shut down in-person ethnographic research in 2020, many researchers pivoted to forms of online qualitati...

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peter forberg @peterforberg.com · 12/11/2024

hello! grateful to all the new followers! I mostly lay low on here, but I am a sociology PhD student who studies political mobilization, digital technology, and data ethics. I used to run a research newsletter on QAnon, and I'll link some recent work below!

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peter forberg @peterforberg.com · 11/11/2024

I would like to be added, thank you!

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Kate Starbird @katestarbird.bsky.social · 01/11/2024

Our team is tracking election rumors, publishing rapid analyses, predictions for what to expect on Election Day, and tools for understanding and explaining how specific rumors mislead. We plan to be very busy this coming week. Follow us on Substack to keep up: uwcip.substack.com

uwcip.substack.com

Election Rumor Research @ Center for an Informed Public | Substack

Welcome to the Election Rumor Research Substack by the Center for an Informed Public at the University of Washington, offering rapid research of rumors concerning election processes and procedures in ...

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Alex Kaplan @alkapdc.bsky.social · 01/11/2024

New from me, as we lead up to the 2024 presidential election: A video explainer about the how the election denial movement has developed a very real & dangerous partnership with the QAnon community.

youtube.com

Why Election Deniers Love QAnon

YouTube video by Media Matters

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Sam Jackson @sjacks26.myatproto.social · 26/09/2024

This looks like a great CfP for people working on "alt tech." New Media & Society special issue on "Alt Tech Platforms: Into the Mirror Worlds of Reactionary Digital Media." Abstract deadline is Nov 30 digitalpolicy.ie/call-for-abs...

digitalpolicy.ie

Call for Abstracts: SI on Alt Tech Platforms - UCD Centre for Digital Policy

23.09.2024. The Centre is excited to announce a call for abstracts for a Special Issue of New Media and Society, entitled "Alt Tech Platforms: Into the

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peter forberg @peterforberg.com · 09/09/2024

Next Wednesday, I'll be in conversation with Prof Taylor Carlson about her new book "Through the Grapevine" at the Chicago Center for Democracy. Given our messy information environments, how can we understand the effects of our interpersonal relationships on our political beliefs? Details below!

A poster for a virtual event which reads: Book Talk: Through the Grapevine.

A virtual talk with author Taylor N. Carlson moderated by Peter Forberg. Wednesday, September 18th, 2024. 12 PM to 1 PM CDT.

The poster contains the book cover image, which consists of randomly alternating read and blue silhouettes of people talking with one another, as if in one long queue of conversation.

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peter forberg @peterforberg.com · 23/08/2024

you can sign up for appointments through local pharmacies now! just scheduled one for the first week of September

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peter forberg @peterforberg.com · 31/07/2024

When I watched the debate with other people, I saw the scales fall from their eyes. But I also actively watched a reconstitution of interpretative schemas to try and reframe/improve their viewing experience, which ultimately failed. Conspiracy theorists can reinterpret endlessly, without friction.

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peter forberg @peterforberg.com · 31/07/2024

For me, the prime example is always video commentary. When Trump defended Ghislaine Maxwell, QAnons made explainer videos that provided any number of excuses (hidden messages, deepfakes, video manipulation). Entry into the community teaches you to view and process primary sources differently.

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