iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Reposted by Tim Hannigan

Laura K. Nelson @lauraknelson.bsky.social · 29/08/2025

This paper is causing a stir. My hot takes: 1. In my ideal world, we would be building boatloads of datasets and models like this, leading to a metastudy to synthesize findings. 2. Their use of GPT to structure text is, in fact, a great use of LLMs for research. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

nature.com

Epidemiology models explain rumour spreading during France’s Great Fear of 1789 - Nature

Epidemiological methods are used to show that the Great Fear of 1789, a series of peasant insurrections in rural revolutionary France, was driven by deliberate political action rather than spontaneous...

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Reposted by Tim Hannigan

Alexander Hoyle @alexanderhoyle.bsky.social · 08/07/2025

Evaluating topic models (and document clustering methods) is hard. In fact, since our paper critiquing standard evaluation practices four years ago, there hasn't been a good replacement metric That ends today (we hope)! Our new ACL paper introduces an LLM-based evaluation protocol 🧵

Screenshot of first page of paper. It is here: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2507.00828

Abstract: Topic model and document-clustering evaluations either use automated metrics that align poorly with human preferences or require expert labels that are intractable to scale. We design a scalable human evaluation protocol and a corresponding automated approximation that reflect practitioners' real-world usage of models. Annotators -- or an LLM-based proxy -- review text items assigned to a topic or cluster, infer a category for the group, then apply that category to other documents. Using this protocol, we collect extensive crowdworker annotations of outputs from a diverse set of topic models on two datasets. We then use these annotations to validate automated proxies, finding that the best LLM proxies are statistically indistinguishable from a human annotator and can therefore serve as a reasonable substitute in automated evaluations

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Reposted by Tim Hannigan

Ian McCarthy @toffeeman68.bsky.social · 13/06/2025

The "Open Academic" A process model and a set of approaches for social-media-enabled academic openness. doi.org/10.1016/j.bu...

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Reposted by Tim Hannigan

Laura K. Nelson @lauraknelson.bsky.social · 26/05/2025

Attn: the special issue of SMR on Generative AI in Sociology is now online. The whole issue is fire, but the introduction by @thomasdavidson.bsky.social and Danny Karell is a must read, covering prompting, measurement, and simulations. It's a road map for soc sci research in the genAI era. +

journals.sagepub.com

Integrating Generative Artificial Intelligence into Social Science Research: Measurement, Prompting, and Simulation - Thomas Davidson, Daniel Karell, 2025

Generative artificial intelligence (AI) offers new capabilities for analyzing data, creating synthetic media, and simulating realistic social interactions. This...

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Reposted by Tim Hannigan

Laura K. Nelson @lauraknelson.bsky.social · 26/05/2025

Our article, with Nga Than, Leanne Fan, @tinalaw.bsky.social and Leslie McCall @stone-lis.bsky.social, proposes a framework (image 2) to (carefully) incorporate LLMs into the qualitative coding process. But read the entire issue, if it's your jam. journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10....

Updating “The Future of Coding”: Qualitative Coding with Generative Large Language Models
Nga Than, Leanne Fan, Tina Law, Laura K. Nelson, and Leslie McCall.
Abstract
Over the past decade, social scientists have adapted computational methods for qualitative text analysis, with the hope that they can match the accuracy and reliability of hand coding. The emergence of GPT and open-source generative large language models (LLMs) has transformed this process by shifting from programming to engaging with models using natural language, potentially mimicking the in-depth, inductive, and/or iterative process of qualitative analysis. We test the ability of generative LLMs to replicate and augment traditional qualitative coding, experimenting with multiple prompt structures across four closed- and open-source generative LLMs and proposing a workflow for conducting qualitative coding with generative LLMs. We find that LLMs can perform nearly as well as prior supervised machine learning models in accurately matching hand-coding output. Moreover, using generative LLMs as a natural language interlocutor closely replicates traditional qualitative methods, indicating their potential to transform the qualitative research process, despite ongoing challenges.

Figure 1: Researcher-LLM-Researcher workflow. Circular diagram, starting at the top with Box 1: Design Coding Task (Researcher), moving clockwise to Box 2: Initial Text Classifiation (LLMs), going through high agreement to Validation (Researcher) and low agreement to Examine Ambiguous Cases (Researcher) in Box 3, then Box 4: Iterative Coding or Task Refinement (Researcher). Circling back to Box 1.

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Reposted by Tim Hannigan

John Thornhill @johnthornhill.bsky.social · 23/05/2025

The philosopher Harry Frankfurt argued that bullshit was "a greater enemy of the truth than lies are". But is generative AI-generated botshit even worse than human-generated bullshit? (Yes) My latest @financialtimes.com here: on.ft.com/3SikRPK

on.ft.com

Generative AI models are skilled in the art of bullshit

Large language models are unconcerned with truth because they have no concept of it — and therein lies the danger

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Reposted by Tim Hannigan

Ian McCarthy @toffeeman68.bsky.social · 19/03/2025

Best Article Award: Business Horizons 2024, with Tim Hannigan and Andre Spicer Here is the research article: doi.org/10.1016/j.bu... And here is an open-access pre-print version of the paper: dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn... #botshit

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Reposted by Tim Hannigan

Matthew Kirschenbaum @mkirschenbaum.bsky.social · 08/03/2025

What would be really good now would be if computer/data science departments established programs in reading and interpreting text. There could be theories of text, and examples of texts from other time periods and other cultures. Above all, students would learn how to look at texts very closely.

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Tim Hannigan @timothyrhannigan.bsky.social · 07/02/2025

I'm delighted to join the editorial team and begin my role as senior editor at Organization Studies (@orgstudies.bsky.social). I will be focusing on manuscripts surrounding fields, technology & organizing, interpretive applications of computational methods, and organizational wrongdoing.

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Reposted by Tim Hannigan

Ted Underwood @tedunderwood.com · 05/01/2025

Michael I. Jordan's 2019 essay on this is very good: rethinking AI as social infrastructure rather than something whose telos is necessarily to imitate individual human agents.

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Tim Hannigan @timothyrhannigan.bsky.social · 24/11/2024

Neat tool showing themes of my work (using scholargoggler.com, via @drmaximvoronov.bsky.social)

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Tim Hannigan @timothyrhannigan.bsky.social · 21/11/2024

Recent posts calling out tendencies to post about Bluesky. Maybe the platform is figuring out emerging norms and a genre repertoire? Orlikowski, W. J., & Yates, J. (1994). Genre repertoire: The structuring of communicative practices in organizations. Administrative Science Quarterly, 39(4), 541–574

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Tim Hannigan @timothyrhannigan.bsky.social · 18/11/2024

We're very fortunate to host Ann Langley here today at Telfer School of Management at the University of Ottawa to share a process perspective on organizational identity

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Reposted by Tim Hannigan

Maxim Voronov @drmaximvoronov.bsky.social · 16/11/2024

For any organizational researchers migrating to Bluesky, here is a starter pack to help us find each other. Will update, when I find more folks on here. go.bsky.app/H7TKNwu

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Tim Hannigan @timothyrhannigan.bsky.social · 13/11/2024

Great frame - Universities as social and cultural infrastructure. I would add that they can also serve as provisional institutional infrastructure for emerging fields

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Tim Hannigan @timothyrhannigan.bsky.social · 13/11/2024

This week has led to a clear uptick in activity here on Bluesky. This is promising for renewing our ability to form relational publics and organizational possibilities. I wrote about this in my Org Studies Agora essay. Despite X imploding, we can form discourses and connect. doi.org/10.1177/0170...

doi.org

Sage Journals: Discover world-class research

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

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Tim Hannigan @timothyrhannigan.bsky.social · 21/02/2024

This episode of Frontburner (CBC) with Gary Marcus was interesting. Good discussion about the pros and cons of generative AI use. It’s important to stress its value in prototyping, less in systems requiring reliability. I highly recommend giving it a listen podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/f...

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Tim Hannigan @timothyrhannigan.bsky.social · 29/12/2023

We’re facing a wave of botshit in organizations, which generative AI is creating. One of the big dangers of generative AI is that it brings the costs of bullshit down to zero. In a new article, we take a look at the phenomenon of 'Botshit'. Pre-print link: papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

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Reposted by Tim Hannigan

Hetan Shah @hetanshah.bsky.social · 18/11/2023

Bloody hell so many good lines in this Jesse Armstrong piece on Sam Bankman-Fried including an extraordinary opening story www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/goi...

the-tls.co.uk

Sam Bankman-Fried: hollow fake or ineffective altruist?

Back in 2016, when Sam Bankman-Fried (“SBF”) was not a convicted fraudster but a young trader at Jane Street, a secretive high-frequency trading firm, he

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Tim Hannigan @timothyrhannigan.bsky.social · 03/11/2023

As we embark on Blue Sky, I’m remembering the practices that initially made Twitter compelling, from Follow Fridays, to hashtags, and finding connection with associated publics. This recent “Land of the Giants” podcast episode does a wonderful job documenting this podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/l...

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Tim Hannigan @timothyrhannigan.bsky.social · 31/10/2023

Looking over the 2024 EGOS sub theme calls for papers, I’m overwhelmed at how many fascinating tracks are being planned. There are 10 that I would absolutely love to be a part of. Decisions, decisions.. www.egos.org/2024_Milan/S...

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Tim Hannigan @timothyrhannigan.bsky.social · 24/10/2023

Neat video covering the history of the Rolling Stones “hot lips” logo. A collaboration between artist John Pasche and Mic Jagger, who was inspired by Hindu goddess Kali youtu.be/ykYfP7iqOto?...

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