Thiemo Fetzer 🇪🇺🇺🇦 - same handle elsewhere @trfetzer.com · 9hto repurpose or reuse data. This effectively would entrench a structural advantage towards players who, in the past, may have been acting in a way that could be described as gross misconduct, retaining e.g. user data, collecting more user data than necessary etc etc... 000
Thiemo Fetzer 🇪🇺🇺🇦 - same handle elsewhere @trfetzer.com · 9hI want to be far from being alarmist but the German drafting suggestions for Irish presidency will effectively kill GDPR. This effectively is a rent transfer to firms that, in the past, illegitimately collected data without consent or not purpose bound that are now allowed... 111
Thiemo Fetzer 🇪🇺🇺🇦 - same handle elsewhere @trfetzer.com · 26/09/2026Agreed! I've said this before, but thinking about the joint distribution of descriptive and better identified estimates is central. Context: x.com/annastansbury/status/21017514… 000
Thiemo Fetzer 🇪🇺🇺🇦 - same handle elsewhere @trfetzer.com · 26/09/2026We need to invest in more reliable and better quality national statistics Context: x.com/annastansbury/status/21039391… 000
Thiemo Fetzer 🇪🇺🇺🇦 - same handle elsewhere @trfetzer.com · 24/09/2026@apuravbhatiya And that was a wrap. Many thanks to the excellent organization and careful curation of the workshop by Sugata Ghosh, Anirban Mitra and Sarmistha Pal and thanks to British Academy and Leverhulme for the funding. There was a lot of food for thought and lots of new connections. 010
Thiemo Fetzer 🇪🇺🇺🇦 - same handle elsewhere @trfetzer.com · 24/09/2026@apuravbhatiya Jan Auerbach presents "Immigration and Productivity: Unpacking the Role of Spatial Sorting". They unpack a new way of looking at immigration: differential home bias btw migrants/natives can have large GE spillover effects on natives due to improved labor market matching. 100
Thiemo Fetzer 🇪🇺🇺🇦 - same handle elsewhere @trfetzer.com · 24/09/2026Apurav Bhatiya (Birmingham) presents "From Modi's India to Westminster: How Hindu Nationalism Shapes Anti-Muslim Rhetoric Abroad". This paper suggests how home-country origin social conflict can be transplanted into different communities, thereby threatening cohesion. 100
Thiemo Fetzer 🇪🇺🇺🇦 - same handle elsewhere @trfetzer.com · 24/09/2026homophily that they explore. This breakdown led to the emergence of walled gardens. Back in 2009 I was writing about federated blogosphere in context of new OpenID standard allowing data federation. Since 2022 federation is "back" with users reclaiming digital self sovereignty. 100
Thiemo Fetzer 🇪🇺🇺🇦 - same handle elsewhere @trfetzer.com · 24/09/2026Maria Petrova is presenting a keynote "Socializing Alone: How Online Homophily Has Undermined Social Cohesion in the US", this uses Facebook's end of data federation causing a shock in the cost of importing ones social graph into a different platform. This creates variation in... 100
Thiemo Fetzer 🇪🇺🇺🇦 - same handle elsewhere @trfetzer.com · 24/09/2026Giacomo De Luca (Edinburgh) is presenting "Serving Countries, Shaping Views: the Impact of Military Conscription on Attitude towards Immigrants". Using the roll back of military service post 1990s they show that compulsory military service worsens attitudes towards immigration. 100
Thiemo Fetzer 🇪🇺🇺🇦 - same handle elsewhere @trfetzer.com · 24/09/2026Most unfortunate typo...@harrypickard ! 010
Thiemo Fetzer 🇪🇺🇺🇦 - same handle elsewhere @trfetzer.com · 24/09/2026On the second day, Jaime Perreira is presenting "Media Cross-Amplification and Public Opinion: Evidence from Television Coverage of Social Media", some compelling work that documents the news agenda setting power via social media. 110
Thiemo Fetzer 🇪🇺🇺🇦 - same handle elsewhere @trfetzer.com · 24/09/2026Canada is next. As of today it seems. Similar design, inter bank. 000
Thiemo Fetzer 🇪🇺🇺🇦 - same handle elsewhere @trfetzer.com · 23/09/2026Post coffee, Anirban Mitra (Kent) is presenting "From Ballots to Belonging: Minority Representation and Public Spending for Social Cohesion in English Local Governments". They show that minority representation increases public spending towards education, culture & transportation. 110
Thiemo Fetzer 🇪🇺🇺🇦 - same handle elsewhere @trfetzer.com · 23/09/2026www.trfetzer.com/attention-markets-…trfetzer.comAttention Markets, Reward Curvature, and the Case for De-Weaponizing the Information SphereI wanted to share a longer reflection that connects a few threads I have been working on over the past years: narratives, validation, platform competition, and the political economy of information… 110
Thiemo Fetzer 🇪🇺🇺🇦 - same handle elsewhere @trfetzer.com · 23/09/2026I want to highlight is around the digital economy, in particular, the attention economy: there competition for attention has tournament features with convex rewards and so competition can become zero sum, with some emerging IO work on this 121
Thiemo Fetzer 🇪🇺🇺🇦 - same handle elsewhere @trfetzer.com · 23/09/2026Harry Prickard is presenting work "Exposure to Populism and Zero-Sum Thinking". Essentially, they ask to what extent experience of populism growing up shapes zero-sum thinking. This effectively takes the work on zero sum thinking further into the cultural programming domain,... 100
Thiemo Fetzer 🇪🇺🇺🇦 - same handle elsewhere @trfetzer.com · 23/09/2026Jan Vogler is discussing the full breadth of his work understanding the emergence of modern bureaucracies in the context of socio-economic conflict. You should definitely check out his book! 110
Thiemo Fetzer 🇪🇺🇺🇦 - same handle elsewhere @trfetzer.com · 23/09/2026Next we have Michele Battisti presenting "Automation and State Repression". They build a formal model of state repression and tests it using cross country evidence. Key insight: state repression may be a rational response as automation threat national control over production system. 100
Thiemo Fetzer 🇪🇺🇺🇦 - same handle elsewhere @trfetzer.com · 23/09/2026I was able to start us off and discussed some synthesis of work across projects to offer a high-dimensional read of the redefinition of informational boundaries in the world of AI with a specific focus on geopolitics. 100
Thiemo Fetzer 🇪🇺🇺🇦 - same handle elsewhere @trfetzer.com · 23/09/2026Very happy to participate at the British Academy-Leverhulme Trust funded Workshop on "Diversity and the Political Economy of Social Cohesion" over the next two days. Its an excellent workshop in sunny Uxbridge, I will be sharing the papers across the workshop. 110
Thiemo Fetzer 🇪🇺🇺🇦 - same handle elsewhere @trfetzer.com · 23/09/2026Context: x.com/fetzert/status/19088241148878…x.comThiemo Fetzer 🇪🇺🇺🇦 - same handle elsewhere (@fetzert) on XIt hurts when you feel like you are in their heads but struggle explaining what is going on. This may turn out to be "spot on". Reducing the investibility of the US diminishes financial inflows dome... 100
Thiemo Fetzer 🇪🇺🇺🇦 - same handle elsewhere @trfetzer.com · 23/09/2026interesting question was always whether dollar dominance would erode only at the level of reserve assets, or also at the level of the digital infrastructure through which assets, payments and identities are mediated. Increasingly, these two dimensions seem to be moving together. 100
Thiemo Fetzer 🇪🇺🇺🇦 - same handle elsewhere @trfetzer.com · 23/09/2026Now there is significant developments in Europe. On 21 September, the European Central Bank launched Pontes. The ECB’s new infrastructure for settling tokenised assets in central-bank money is explicitly framed around monetary sovereignty and reducing dependence on dollar stablecoins. The 100
Reposted by Thiemo Fetzer 🇪🇺🇺🇦 - same handle elsewhereSammy Roth @sammyroth.bsky.social · 17/09/2026Want to understand why journalists and politicians get so excited about AI doomsday predictions but mostly ignore climate change? It's called *information pollution.* Thank you to @amywestervelt.bsky.social for coining this important new term and writing a book about it, and explaining it to me!climatecoloredgoggles.comArtificial insanityA conversation with investigative journalist Amy Westervelt that is NOT about AI killing us all. 510240
Thiemo Fetzer 🇪🇺🇺🇦 - same handle elsewhere @trfetzer.com · 14/09/2026www.linkedin.com/events/industryatw… Sign up: luma.com/event/manage/evt-NpD8RLnTv… 000
Thiemo Fetzer 🇪🇺🇺🇦 - same handle elsewhere @trfetzer.com · 14/09/2026With @ashwinl, I visited Ukraine earlier this year. What is remarkable is that many of the issues that my research on NATO highlighted are being "solved" in Ukraine. Ashin and I are hosting an event where we discuss and share our observations from the field. Link in next post. 110
Thiemo Fetzer 🇪🇺🇺🇦 - same handle elsewhere @trfetzer.com · 14/09/2026Papers doi.org/10.1016/j.jebo.2025.107385 doi.org/10.1111/ajps.12907 doi.org/10.1111/ajps.12907 000
Thiemo Fetzer 🇪🇺🇺🇦 - same handle elsewhere @trfetzer.com · 14/09/2026This is the formidable challenge that free societies need to navigate and this is where introspection is vital, but so is our understanding of the incompatibilities and goal conflicts that may arise. Levelling the playing field is absolutely vital. 100
Thiemo Fetzer 🇪🇺🇺🇦 - same handle elsewhere @trfetzer.com · 14/09/2026helps rationalize the outcomes that ensued. Taking each of these pieces of work together, plus my wider research on the links of media, economics & society more, it should be clear how this all creates an action & capability gradient between democracies & non-democracies...10/N 110
Thiemo Fetzer 🇪🇺🇺🇦 - same handle elsewhere @trfetzer.com · 14/09/2026This pattern is consistent with the Taliban “lying low.” A contested pattern over which there was ample political debate btw the Trump 1 White House, military & defense leaders and the broader foreign policy community. Our analysis highlights that differential patience and...9/N 100
Thiemo Fetzer 🇪🇺🇺🇦 - same handle elsewhere @trfetzer.com · 14/09/2026But formal handover and physical withdrawal were different things. I spend a good part of a year building a base-closure panel dataset. Once coalition troops left, violence increased sharply, more than offsetting the earlier decline associated with the security transfer. 8/N 100
Thiemo Fetzer 🇪🇺🇺🇦 - same handle elsewhere @trfetzer.com · 14/09/2026That takes us to Security Transitions. I started working on this in 2016. When NATO began transferring formal security responsibility to Afghan forces, something initially encouraging happened: violence fell. Event studies show a fairly sharp decline following the handover. 7/N 100
Thiemo Fetzer 🇪🇺🇺🇦 - same handle elsewhere @trfetzer.com · 14/09/2026The media mechanism matters. Sporting events sometimes crowded Afghanistan casualties out of the news. When that happened, the effect of casualties on withdrawal support weakened. The political effect of conflict events depends on the media systems transmitting them home. 6/N 120
Thiemo Fetzer 🇪🇺🇺🇦 - same handle elsewhere @trfetzer.com · 14/09/2026But coalition warfare has another front: domestic politics. In Losing on the Home Front?, Pedro, Oliver, Austin and I study what happens in troop-sending countries when their soldiers are killed. Battlefield casualties increase both Afghanistan news coverage and public demand for withdrawal. 5/N 110
Thiemo Fetzer 🇪🇺🇺🇦 - same handle elsewhere @trfetzer.com · 14/09/2026Those seams mattered. Where different NATO countries had to coordinate across borders, or across different levels of hierarchy, we find less military support activity and more insurgent violence. In other words: organizational architecture itself became military capability 4/N 100
Thiemo Fetzer 🇪🇺🇺🇦 - same handle elsewhere @trfetzer.com · 14/09/2026In Team Production on the Battlefield, Oliver, Austin and I reconstruct how NATO divided Afghanistan among national contingents. That created organizational seams: neighbouring areas could be controlled by different countries. 3/N 100
Thiemo Fetzer 🇪🇺🇺🇦 - same handle elsewhere @trfetzer.com · 14/09/2026Together with Oliver Vanden Eynde, Pedro Souza & Austin Wright, this became a series of papers looking at different links in the system. The connecting idea: a military coalition is not one actor. It is an interconnected political, organizational and informational system. 2/N 100
Thiemo Fetzer 🇪🇺🇺🇦 - same handle elsewhere @trfetzer.com · 14/09/2026Late as usual, but still relevant: 25 years ago, 9/11 led NATO to invoke Article 5 for the first time in its history. Afghanistan would become NATO’s longest mission. Over the years, in one strand of my research, we studied how coalition warfare works... or didnt! 1/N 111
Thiemo Fetzer 🇪🇺🇺🇦 - same handle elsewhere @trfetzer.com · 14/09/2026Worry not. Oh Office 2001 Your legacy lives on. 010
Thiemo Fetzer 🇪🇺🇺🇦 - same handle elsewhere @trfetzer.com · 11/09/2026Interesting correlation on speculations about US vehicle market openness’s, bond market turmoil and elevated oil prices… the European working group may yet come in handy 000
Thiemo Fetzer 🇪🇺🇺🇦 - same handle elsewhere @trfetzer.com · 11/09/2026English canals see more and more algae blooms due to climate change and excess nutrient run-off. Without oxygenating the water, there are significant risks to wildlife. Unless the electricity grid is greened, such feeble adaptation attempts will make matters worse. 010
Thiemo Fetzer 🇪🇺🇺🇦 - same handle elsewhere @trfetzer.com · 09/09/2026exceptions. That means: they may consequently face greater political pressure than civil law systems in which the operative rule set is comparatively explicit, hierarchical and codified and hence, possibly may appear less "arbitrary" and more predictable. 000
Thiemo Fetzer 🇪🇺🇺🇦 - same handle elsewhere @trfetzer.com · 09/09/2026hybrid warfare compared to civil law based societies. AI lowers the cost of retrieving and making transparent a society's effective rules engine. Common law systems derive legitimacy heavily on rules being dispersed across precedent, convention, discretion and historically accumulated 100
Thiemo Fetzer 🇪🇺🇺🇦 - same handle elsewhere @trfetzer.com · 09/09/2026I keep going back to the question if societies with civil law or common law based legal tradition are better placed to navigate how societies may fare as AI gets increasingly incorporated into day-to-day life. I am worried that common law based societies may have MUCH broader attack surface for 111
Thiemo Fetzer 🇪🇺🇺🇦 - same handle elsewhere @trfetzer.com · 08/09/2026But each and one of the individuals likely spoke to 3-5 people, most conversation’s may not be described as unpleasant (if they were polite) and hence this can non linearly propagate — this is what creates longer term amplification and deep reinforcement learning contributing to normalization. 011
Thiemo Fetzer 🇪🇺🇺🇦 - same handle elsewhere @trfetzer.com · 07/09/2026Picking up the collateral damage 000
Thiemo Fetzer 🇪🇺🇺🇦 - same handle elsewhere @trfetzer.com · 03/09/2026Clues in data suggesting turnout engineering are a stable pattern across more than 1000 UK polls as @EleAla our paper from 2024 suggests. Differential partisan mobilization may be key. If polls are paid for by outside money to benefit a party, of course, it is interference! 021
Thiemo Fetzer 🇪🇺🇺🇦 - same handle elsewhere @trfetzer.com · 28/08/2026www.trfetzer.com/goods-to-europe-da…trfetzer.comGoods to Europe, data to America: the tariff settlement that is quietly deciding Brexit’s second actThe new US tariff settlement is being read in London as a non-story: no new UK tariff, no fresh damage, business as usual. That framing is too narrow, and it is also wrong on its own terms. 010
