iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Reposted by Simone Cremaschi

Laia Balcells @laiabalcells.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

"Consequential histories: A field experiment at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum" Just accepted at the Journal of Politics www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/...

journals.uchicago.edu

Consequential histories: A field experiment at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum | The Journal of Politics: Vol 0, No ja

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Ala Alrababah @aalrababah.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

How do refugee crises end? In Dec. 2024, Syrian dictator Assad fled to Russia, ending a regime that displaced millions Would Syrians go back now the regime fell? Our paper tests this with original panel data (2019-2026), ~3k Syrian refugees, spanning fall of Assad osf.io/preprints/so... 🧵 1/8

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Vincent Heddesheimer @vheddesheimer.bsky.social · 04/08/2026

New paper w/ @hannohilbig.bsky.social: we examine how local exposure to the Great Recession affected politics over the long run. Counties where unemployment rose more in 2007–09 moved toward Democrats, not the populist right. The shift remained visible in 2022.

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Danbischof @danbischof.bsky.social · 05/08/2026

📄 New working paper out: osf.io/preprints/so... We (@thiloalbers.bsky.social @felixkersting.bsky.social and Fabian Kosse) try to understand why some citizens who are objectively well off still feel left behind, and why this matters for populist attitudes.

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Maria Carreri @mariacarreri.bsky.social · 29/07/2026

New paper in @jeeanews.bsky.social with @martinezluis.bsky.social! Fiscal rules have quietly become a central feature of local governments around the world. But do they improve government or simply impose politically costly austerity? We study one such reform in Colombia. 🧵 sl1nk.com/zs0m0a4

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Will Allen @williamlallen.bsky.social · 17/07/2026

Which immigrants do people prefer and why? Many point to skill levels, but @mfreino.bsky.social @isabel-ruiz.bsky.social and I argue people also consider the social value of work immigrants do, even if considered "lower" skilled. Open access in @ejprjournal.bsky.social: doi.org/10.1017/S147... 🧵

Title: Beyond skills: How occupational essentiality and social value relate to attitudes toward immigrant labor.
Authors: William L. Allen, Mariña Fernández-Reino, and Isabel Ruiz
Abstract: Research on public attitudes toward immigration consistently shows that people prefer higher- over lower-skilled immigrants, largely for sociotropic economic and fiscal reasons. We argue that this account is incomplete: citizens also evaluate immigrant workers according to the essentiality and social value of the work they perform, alongside formal skills and education. We conceptualize two logics for evaluating occupations – economic-fiscal and moral-social – that shape attitudes toward labor immigrants, before testing this argument in two studies in the UK. Study 1 uses a preregistered conjoint survey experiment (N = 4,951) fielded during the UK’s third COVID-19 lockdown in January 2021. Respondents evaluated hypothetical labor immigrants varying in occupation, skill level, and origin. Immigrants working in occupations designated as ‘essential’ during the pandemic were substantially more likely to be preferred for admission (by about 22 percentage points) and more likely to be viewed as economically beneficial (by about 10 percentage points) than those in nonessential jobs, net of skill. Study 2 reports results from an online survey (N = 1,944) fielded in 2025 measuring perceptions of occupational essentiality, social value, economic value, prestige, skill, and labor shortages. Perceived essentiality is strongly associated with social value while remaining distinct from skill and prestige. Importantly, perceptions of occupational essentiality remained stable over time and correlated with preferences for admitting immigrants in those same occupations. Together, these findings highlight occupational essentiality as a distinct and consequential driver of immigration attitudes with implications for labor migration debates and policymaking.

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Michael Clemens @mclem.org · 01/06/2026

Remember that recent paper claiming to show that "ideological bias" determined the results obtained by immigration policy research teams? A careful, open-code reanalysis by @kauspurg.bsky.social & Josef Brüderl finds that the result arises from a coding error. —> doi.org/10.31222/osf...

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Mashail Malik @mamalik.bsky.social · 01/06/2026

We have a new paper out on what the large conjoint literature tells us about public opinion on immigrant characteristics:

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Fabrizio Bernardi @fabriberna.bsky.social · 28/04/2026

New paper out in Annual Review of Sociology with @arnoutvanderijt.bsky.social #W.Foley and @l-sage.bsky.social "Luck and Predictability in the Life Course" We take stock of what we know about luck and its role in shaping life-courses and inequality www.annualreviews.org/content/jour...

annualreviews.org

Luck and Predictability in the Life Course

There is an emerging recognition among sociological theorists that luck may play a substantial role in life course achievement. There is also a nascent empirical literature that finds life outcomes to...

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Andrew Heiss @andrew.heiss.phd · 13/04/2026

I've been using random seeds for years but I have no idea how they work. Seeds somehow(?) make the same random numbers? So I figured it out! New post includes an interactive PRNG generator, lava lamps, lottery fraud, @random.org, Chaucer, and Minecraft #rstats www.andrewheiss.com/blog/2026/04...

$An interactive OJS playground demonstrating a linear congruential generator (LCG) using the formula X_n = (aX_{n-1} + c) mod m. Controls on the left set modulus (m=8), multiplier (a=5), increment (c=3), seed (X_0=1), and numbers to generate (12). A table on the right shows the resulting sequence of X values, intermediate calculations, mod m results, and normalized values X_n/m, with the final "random" numbers highlighted in yellow.$

Excerpt from the blog post with R code that tests all seeds from 1 to 10,000 to find which ones produce 10 heads in a row when simulating coin flips. The possible_seeds data frame is filtered to show 10 seeds (614, 1667, 3212, 4166, 4580, 5527, 5824, 7365, 7468, 8975) that meet this criterion. The post notes that seed 614 actually produces 13 heads in a row, confirmed with a withr::with_seed(614, ...) call below.

R console output demonstrating that set.seed(1234) produces reproducible results. The first block calls runif(5) and returns five values: 0.1137, 0.6223, 0.6093, 0.6234, 0.8609. The second block uses the same seed but splits the draw into runif(2) then runif(3), returning the same five values in the same order, showing that the sequence is preserved regardless of how many numbers are drawn at a time.

Table of contents for the post:

Introduction
Seeds and reproducible randomness
My (somewhat incorrect) mental model of how seeds work
Making “random” numbers with an equation
Live interactive playground
Cycles and fancier algorithms
Why does it matter if “random” numbers aren’t actually random?
You’re limiting yourself to narrow, known universes
You can seed hack and get any values you want
Real world bad things can happen because of pseudorandom numbers
Can computers even create true randomness?
Moving a mouse around
Lava lamps
Atmospheric noise
How I use true randomness in my own work
“…as an ook cometh of a litel spyr…”

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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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Asad L. Asad @asadasad.bsky.social · 08/04/2026

NEW (and open access!) in @pnas.org: We find that Secure Communities triggered “preemptive” immigration enforcement, increasing detentions, transfers, & removals even before formal county activation. Joint with @cvargas100.bsky.social and @immigrationlab.bsky.social www.pnas.org/doi/epdf/10....

Screenshot of title and abstract of article, “Reconsideration of Secure Communities rollout reveals preemptive local-federal cooperation in immigration enforcement.”

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Simone Cremaschi @simonecremaschi.bsky.social · 02/04/2026

Does public service deprivation boost support for the populist right? New evidence in our paper, conditionally accepted at APSR 🥳, where we study how GP closures shape voting intentions in England. 👇

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Matt Blackwell @mattblackwell.bsky.social · 26/03/2026

mariozechner.at/posts/2026-0...

Text from linked article “There's a much more important difference between clanker and hu-man. A human is a bottleneck. A human cannot shit out 20,000 lines of code in a few hours. Even if the human creates such booboos at high frequency, there's only so many booboos the human can introduce in a codebase per day. The booboos will compound at a very slow rate.
Usually, if the booboo pain gets too big, the human, who hates pain, will spend some time fixing up the booboos. Or the human gets fired and someone else fixes up the booboos. So the pain goes away.
With an orchestrated army of agents, there is no bottleneck, no human pain. These tiny little harmless booboos suddenly compound at a rate that's unsustainable. You have removed yourself from the loop, so you don't even know that all the innocent booboos have formed a monster of a codebase. You only feel the pain when it's too late.

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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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Carmen Villa @carmenvillaecon.bsky.social · 05/02/2026

🚨📰New WP 🚨📰 How does social housing design affect neighborhoods decades later? We study London gangs to show that postwar urban planning—specifically high-rise public housing construction—had lasting effects on gang formation @cep-lse.bsky.social

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Simone Cremaschi @simonecremaschi.bsky.social · 19/01/2026

New year, new chapter: I’m starting a new position at @ox.ac.uk. Thrilled to join DPIR as a Departmental Lecturer and Nuffield College as an Associate Member. Looking forward to what’s ahead!

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Guy Grossman @guygrossman.bsky.social · 09/01/2026

@yangyangzhou.bsky.social, @shuningge.bsky.social Naijia Liu, and I have a new (AND BETTER) draft of our paper "Liberalizing Refugee Hosting Policies withoutLosing the Vote". Link: osf.io/preprints/os... Comments are welcome!

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Bastian Becker @beckerbastian.bsky.social · 07/01/2026

🥳 New year, new publication 📑"Contested memories: the political effects of de-commemoration proposals" @jeppjournal.bsky.social With Francesco Colombo, we study a street renaming proposal in Berlin and find -contrary to conventional wisdom- no political backlash, but a positive feedback effect.

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Michael Clemens @mclem.org · 06/01/2026

A new paper by George Borjas—who served this past year in the Trump White House designing some of its anti-immigration policies—claims to display evidence of ideological bias among researchers who study immigration. doi.org/10.1126/scia... 🧵 Thread—>

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International Karl Polanyi Society @kpolanyisociety.bsky.social · 22/12/2025

4. Ecological crises as accelerator of the far-right @jksteinberger.bsky.social, Céline Keller and @simonecremaschi.bsky.social show that climate shocks hit hardest where austerity has hollowed out public services, breeding narratives of state abandonment and boosting the far-right (5/6)

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Simone Cremaschi @simonecremaschi.bsky.social · 22/12/2025

A great overview of a great special issue, including our paper on the legacies of antifascist resistance in Italy. Thank you again @laiabalcells.bsky.social @apvjustino.bsky.social @andrearuggeri.bsky.social !

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Simone Cremaschi @simonecremaschi.bsky.social · 15/12/2025

Now out in QMMR (Notes from the Field): I reflect on my PhD fieldwork in informal camps of migrant farmworkers in Italy, and on how the slow work of building trust in a challenging field environment radically reshaped my research questions and methods doi.org/10.5281/zeno...

doi.org

Like a CCTV in an Informal Migrant Camp: Rethinking Research While Building Trust in the Field

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Ozan Aksoy @aksoyundan.bsky.social · 12/12/2025

📢 Analytical sociology is coming home! Call 4 INAS26 is open 🌍 1-3Jul26 @nuffieldcollege.bsky.social and @sociologyoxford.bsky.social (☔) ☢️ Deadline: 1Feb26 🦹 Organisers: @aksoyundan.bsky.social , @kasimirdederichs.bsky.social, D Kretschmer, @awaldendorf.bsky.social Info: tinyurl.com/yc2tusjx

tinyurl.com

INAS Conference 2026 - Nuffield College Oxford University

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Saloni @scientificdiscovery.dev · 09/12/2025

Big new blogpost! My guide to data visualization, which includes a very long table of contents, tons of charts, and more. --> Why data visualization matters and how to make charts more effective, clear, transparent, and sometimes, beautiful. www.scientificdiscovery.dev/p/salonis-gu...

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Thomas Zeitzoff @zeitzoff.bsky.social · 04/12/2025

Agree with much of what Cyrus says in his blog post and the comments below. I'd add that some of the best recent work in poli sci is mixed methods, and uses a combo of observational data, experiments/quasi-experiments, and in-depth interviews/case studies to answer a puzzle from multiple angles.

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Konstantin Bogatyrev @bogatyrev.bsky.social · 22/11/2025

Our paper just got accepted in the @thejop.bsky.social 🎉 and is now on the journal website: www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/... For me personally, it's a milestone: my first paper accepted after a peer review!

journals.uchicago.edu

The Electoral Effects of State-Sponsored Anti-LGBTQ Measures | The Journal of Politics: Vol 0, No ja

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Magda Breyer @mabreyer.bsky.social · 20/11/2025

New article out in @cpsjournal.bsky.social with Tabea Palmtag and @dpzollinger.bsky.social 📝 We use open-ended survey questions (in Germany) to assess how and among whom social status shifts are perceived. This tests cultural backlash narratives in voters' perceptions. 🔗 doi.org/10.1177/0010...

Abstract
It is widely accepted in political science – and remarkably established in public discourse – that status anxieties fuel a far right backlash against progressive politics. This narrative suggests that right-wing conservatives perceive the status of women, racial, or sexual minorities as threatening. Using open-ended survey questions fielded in Germany, we show that women and minorities indeed figure in people’s perceptions of status hierarchies, but in very specific ways: First, overall, people still perceive status as largely socioeconomically determined. Second, sociocultural groups figure in perceptions of who is gaining/losing status, less so in perceptions of the top/bottom of society. Third, more than conservative voters, it is social progressives who mention women and minorities as “winners”. While on race/ethnicity, we find evidence for a backlash, on gender and sexuality we find more evidence for a progressive momentum. This matters for progressive politics today and for how we empirically study status concerns.

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Zach Dickson @zachdickson.bsky.social · 18/11/2025

🚨 New working paper 🚨 We often see populist parties like Reform UK blame higher energy bills on climate change policies. What are the political consequences of this strategy? Very early draft; comments and criticisms are welcomed! full draft: z-dickson.github.io/assets/dicks...

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Simone Cremaschi @simonecremaschi.bsky.social · 17/11/2025

Now out @apsrjournal.bsky.social with page numbers! 🫒 We advance a new argument on how economic crises fuel support for far-right parties in left-behind places by tapping into long-standing community narratives shorturl.at/bA55v @catherinedevries.bsky.social

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British Journal of Political Science @bjpols.bsky.social · 28/10/2025

NEW - Exposure to Confederate Monuments: The Political Effect of Non-Intervention - cup.org/42ZHRc0 "results highlight the potential negative consequences of maintaining controversial commemorations" - Ana Ruipérez Núñez #OpenAccess

BJPolS abstract discussing the impact of removing controversial monuments and the societal reactions in an empirical study context.

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Simone Cremaschi @simonecremaschi.bsky.social · 24/10/2025

Public service decline → more far-right support: I summarize evidence from several coauthored studies in a new post for the @kpolanyisociety.bsky.social series on Fascism and Liberalism.

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Simone Cremaschi @simonecremaschi.bsky.social · 23/10/2025

New UN report warns that welfare cuts can fuel far-right support. It features my work on public service deprivation with @paularettl.bsky.social @catherinedevries.bsky.social @marcocappelluti.bsky.social and on climate-related disasters and far-right incumbents with @pstanig.bsky.social

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Piero Stanig @pstanig.bsky.social · 21/10/2025

This new report of the UN Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights docs.un.org/en/A/80/138 cites my work on trade shocks and economic nationalism with Italo Colantone, but also a paper of mine on extreme weather events with @simonecremaschi.bsky.social.

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Joachim Baumann @joachimbaumann.bsky.social · 21/10/2025

Cool paper by @eddieyang.bsky.social, confirming our LLM hacking findings (arxiv.org/abs/2509.08825): ✓ LLMs are brittle data annotators ✓ Downstream conclusions flip frequently: LLM hacking risk is real! ✓ Bias correction methods can help but have trade-offs ✓ Use human expert whenever possible

arxiv.org

Large Language Model Hacking: Quantifying the Hidden Risks of Using LLMs for Text Annotation

Large language models are rapidly transforming social science research by enabling the automation of labor-intensive tasks like data annotation and text analysis. However, LLM outputs vary significant...

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Lukas Haffert @lhaffert.bsky.social · 17/10/2025

Why do rustbelts vote radical right? Studying the German Ruhr area, @nilsblossey.bsky.social, @lstoetze.bsky.social and I show: it’s not just about deindustrialization, but also about the original industrialization. Where coal is buried deeper and mining started later, the AfD is stronger today 1/12

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Briitta van Staalduinen @briittavs.bsky.social · 10/10/2025

1st article from my dissertation is out in Perspectives today!! two takeaways: a) knowledge economy 'winners' may not be subject to status loss but they sure care about status preservation & b) this is consequential for their attitudes re: immigration & diversity. Thnx 2 all along this journey!!

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Andrea Ruggeri @andrearuggeri.bsky.social · 13/10/2025

A great scholar and a very good friend coming to Milan: Ursula Daxecker. Thursday 16 October, 3 pm.

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Simone Cremaschi @simonecremaschi.bsky.social · 09/10/2025

Muchas gracias @ipp-csic.bsky.social for the warm welcome and the insightful questions. Hasta pronto!

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Federica Genovese @fgenovese.bsky.social · 30/09/2025

Good report by @thinktankeuropa.bsky.social on the state of climate and energy policies in Italy. Il Bel Paese is powered by dirty fuels, despite all the EU state aid meant to foster the energy transition (plus another hundred reasons to do the transition) thinkeuropa.dk/files/media/...

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Journal of Politics @thejop.bsky.social · 25/09/2025

"Do Integration Courses Influence Refugees’ Integration Trajectories? Evidence from Norway" by Jeremy Ferwerda and Henning Finseraas. www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/...

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Tarik Abou-Chadi @tabouchadi.bsky.social · 25/09/2025

Now out in @cpsjournal.bsky.social. In our new article, @denis-cohen.bsky.social @thmskrr.bsky.social and I show that where local rent prices increase more, residents with lower incomes become more likely to support the radical right AfD. journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

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