Aleksandra Urman
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aurman21.bsky.social
Aleksandra Urman
@aurman21.bsky.social
1.3K followers 500 following 790 posts

Senior Research Associate, Social Computing Group, U of Zurich. Computational social/communication scientist

Videos
Political science 24%
Communication & Media Studies 24%
Posts Replies Media Videos

Reposted by Aleksandra Urman

marcowenjones.bsky.social
Marc Owen Jones @marcowenjones.bsky.social · 2d
🧵Have you ever heard of LLM-authored books being used as part of an disinformation operation?

Well now you have!

#AI #Disinformation
open.substack.com/pub/marcowen...

Reposted by Aleksandra Urman

kashhill.bsky.social
Kashmir Hill @kashhill.bsky.social · 3d
My last story of the year: an update on the woman who fell in love with ChatGPT.

www.nytimes.com/2025/12/22/t...

aurman21.bsky.social
Aleksandra Urman @aurman21.bsky.social · 3d
So much "diversity" and sure "we need to study understudied contexts, especially outside of the Global North". I guess except if you use latex and study a context that happens to have a language with a non-Latin script or something, then good luck with formatting. (I am on this for 2 hours now).

aurman21.bsky.social
Aleksandra Urman @aurman21.bsky.social · 3d
If you are an "interdisciplinary" journal that welcomes "worldwide" authorship, then either allow pdfs as first submission or make sure your system's latex compiler supports non-Latin fonts - I am about to convert 5 sentences in Cyrillic to IMAGES to embed them into the Tex, there is no other way
aurman21.bsky.social Aleksandra Urman @aurman21.bsky.social · 3d
I wish SocSci journals either optimized their systems for LaTeX submissions or, at least, allowed submitting a pdf as the first pre-review submission. This would totally increase at least my productivity and efficiency.

aurman21.bsky.social
Aleksandra Urman @aurman21.bsky.social · 3d
I wish SocSci journals either optimized their systems for LaTeX submissions or, at least, allowed submitting a pdf as the first pre-review submission. This would totally increase at least my productivity and efficiency.

Reposted by Aleksandra Urman

rustybrick.com
Barry Schwartz @rustybrick.com · 3d
ChatGPT gains local knowledge panels on the right side but where do they come from www.seroundtable.com/openai-adds-... via @nearmedia.bsky.social @gsterling.bsky.social

#chatgpt #local #maps #search #openai

Reposted by David R. Miller, Aleksandra Urman

mclem.org
Michael Clemens @mclem.org · 6d
This is a focus group of Gen Z Republicans in the United States of America. Now.

They get their news only from social media/podcasts, and they express warm sympathy for Adolf Hitler and for (Nazi) Nick Fuentes.

Fascism will destroy their future.

www.city-journal.org/article/manh...

Reposted by Graham Webster, Aleksandra Urman

404media.co
404 Media @404media.co · 7d
NEW: ICE has paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to a company that makes “AI agents” to rapidly track down targets.

AI Solutions 87 did not respond to a request for comment on how its AI agents work.
ICE Contracts Company Making Bounty Hunter AI Agents
AI Solutions 87 says on its website its AI agents “deliver rapid acceleration in finding persons of interest and mapping their entire network.”
www.404media.co

aurman21.bsky.social
Aleksandra Urman @aurman21.bsky.social · 7d
The sad thing is Mr Fukuyama would not even need to build some crazy database to track stuff he reads if only someone told him about Zotero... I mean he says he tracks 20k items. My Zotero library is 7k+ (just checked), excluding group libraries. No separate server or database necessary, really.
michaelhobbes.bsky.social Michael Hobbes @michaelhobbes.bsky.social · 8d
If we are banning cell phones for kids we need to be talking about banning chatbots for boomers
www.persuasion.community/p/my-chatgpt...

Reposted by Shannon Vallor, Virginia Braun, Fabián Muniesa , and 16 more

michaelhobbes.bsky.social
Michael Hobbes @michaelhobbes.bsky.social · 8d
If we are banning cell phones for kids we need to be talking about banning chatbots for boomers
www.persuasion.community/p/my-chatgpt...

Reposted by Aleksandra Urman

fastcompany.com
Fast Company @fastcompany.com · 9d
Cloudflare cofounder and CEO Matthew Prince explains to Fast Company how the pay-per-crawl model can help fix the misinformation epidemic that is eroding the credibility of the information ecosystem we’ve all come to rely on. f-st.co/TM4ERRR
How Cloudflare, ‘the most important internet company you’ve never heard of,’ took center stage
Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince explains the internet’s next business model, the threat of AI, and why he remains optimistic.
f-st.co

Reposted by Timnit Gebru, Shannon Vallor, Margaret Mitchell , and 14 more

cfiesler.bsky.social
Dr. Casey Fiesler @cfiesler.bsky.social · 9d
The ACM Digital Library, where a LOT of computing-related research is published (I'd say at least 75% of my own publications), is now not only providing (without consent of the authors and without opt-in by readers) AI-generated summaries of papers, but they appear as the *default* over abstracts.
Screenshot of a paper entry: Fictional Failures and Real-World Lessons: Ethical Speculation Through Design Fiction on Emotional Support Conversational AI Authors: Faye Kollig, Jessica Pater, Fayika Farhat Nova, Casey Fiesler (There are tabs with "abstract" and "summary" and "summary" is selected.)

aurman21.bsky.social
Aleksandra Urman @aurman21.bsky.social · 9d
And for the US / English language my strongest recommendation was ofc @404media.co

aurman21.bsky.social
Aleksandra Urman @aurman21.bsky.social · 9d
Students asked me yesterday for some sources to keep up with the tech news now that the semester is over and I won't spam them with those anymore. For the 🇨🇭 context I am happy to repeat my "unsponsored advertisement" here :) Follow the work of @adfichter.bsky.social @julianschmidli.com

Reposted by Aleksandra Urman

rfrbrghs.bsky.social
Rahel Freiburghaus @rfrbrghs.bsky.social · 9d
“With the govt’s planned 10% cuts to the Swiss National Science Foundation, Switzerland is massively weakening its research, thereby putting the innovative strength of its economy & its competitiveness at risk,” says the President of the Research Council of the @snf-fns.ch www.srf.ch/audio/echo-d...
Wie geht es mit der Forschungsförderung weiter?
Der Bund will sparen - auch bei der Bildung und Forschung. Während die Hochschulen durch geschicktes Lobbying einen Teil der Kürzungen wohl verhindern können, steht die Forschungsförderung des Nationa...
www.srf.ch

Reposted by Robert Böhm, Brady T. West, Brendan Nyhan , and 43 more

sabrinanorwood.bsky.social
Sabrina Norwood @sabrinanorwood.bsky.social · 9d
Did you know that from tomorrow, Qualtrics is offering synthetic panels (AI-generated participants)?

Follow me down a rabbit hole I'm calling "doing science is tough and I'm so busy, can't we just make up participants?"
Text reads: About synthetic panels Recruiting the right participants for a study can be difficult. You may not get the exact demographics you need, and the shorter the deadline, the less sure you can be that everyone will answer on time. One possible solution can be to use synthetic panels. Synthetic panels are powered by a first party proprietary AI model developed here at Qualtrics. Our synthetic panel is trained on thousands of responses from a variety of demographic backgrounds in order to more accurately predict how certain populations would respond to a survey. Our synthetic panel is based on the United States General Population, and is only available in English. This panel comes with ready-made quotas and target breakouts in order to represent your chosen population and make it easy to launch your survey right away. Text reads: Question-writing best practices To get the most reliable and actionable results from synthetic audiences, consider these question-writing best practices: Ask forward-looking and attitudinal questions. Synthetic panels perform best with perceptions, preferences, and intent-based questions. For example, “How likely are you to try…?” Synthetic panels are less applicable for studies on past behaviors, detailed recall, brand recall, or awareness questions. For example, “When did you last visit…?” Text reads: Discussion The current study aimed to conduct a meta-analysis of the TPB when applied to health behaviours which addressed the limitations of previous reviews by including only prospective tests of behaviour, applying RE meta-analytic procedures, correcting correlations for sampling and measurement error, and hierarchically analysing the effect of behaviour type and sample and methodological moderators. Some 237 tests were identified which examined relations amongst model components. Overall the analysis indicated that the TPB could explain 19.3% of the variance in behaviour and 44.3% of the variance in intention across studies. This level of prediction of behaviour is slightly lower than that of previous meta-analytic reviews which have found between 27% (Armitage & Conner, 2001; Hagger et al., 2002) and 36% (Trafimow et al., 2002) of the variance in behaviour to be explained by intention and PBC.

Reposted by Aleksandra Urman

hdschulze.bsky.social
Heidi Schulze @hdschulze.bsky.social · 10d
New Paper in @computationalcommunication.org

The Telegram COVID-19 Protest Dataset 2020-2022

with the most wonderful co-autohors @buehling.bsky.social & @maxzehring.bsky.social

>> 2020-2022
>> 715 channels & 229 public groups
>> 5,641,026 messages
>> Manually curated
>> Open for researchers

Reposted by Aleksandra Urman

kevinrothrock.me
Kevin Rothrock @kevinrothrock.me · 10d
For the latest Naked Pravda episode, I spoke to Nikolay Kononov about his new book on Pavel Durov and Telegram. Tech-bro feudalism, massive cryptocurrency schemes, free speechism, and a never-ending quest to evade regulatory oversight. meduza.io/en/episodes/...
Pavel Durov’s tech-bro feudalism — Meduza
Earlier this year, Telegram raised $1.7 billion from convertible bonds — funds earmarked to pay off debt due next year, leaving about $745 million in surplus. In December 2024, in its first profitable...
meduza.io

Reposted by Marco Festa‐Bianchet, Peter Thorne, Steve Peers , and 18 more

bencollins.bsky.social
Tim Onion @bencollins.bsky.social · 11d
This is fucking grim. Somebody invented a white guy, an "IT professional" named Edward Crabtree, who stopped the Bondi shooting and spread it all over the internet, which was picked up by AI agents and slop aggregation sites.

The real hero is a fruit stand owner named Ahmed el Ahmed.
A wrong Grok post making up a white guy who stopped the Australian mass shooting. BBC 'Hero' who wrestled gun from Bondi shooter named as Ahmed al Ahmed Emily Atkinson Sun, December 14, 2025 at 1:06 p.m. CST 2 min read A "hero" bystander who was filmed wrestling a gun from one of the Bondi Beach attackers has been named as 43-year-old Ahmed al Ahmed. Video verified by the BBC showed Mr Ahmed run at the gunman and seize his weapon, before turning the gun round on him, forcing his retreat. Mr Ahmed, a fruit shop owner and father of two, remains in hospital, where he has undergone surgery for bullet wounds to his arm and hand, his family told 7News Australia.

Reposted by Cas Mudde, Kim L. Scheppele, Stuart White , and 1 more

szabolcspanyi.bsky.social
Szabolcs Panyi @szabolcspanyi.bsky.social · 12d
🇭🇺💥Thousands marched to Viktor Orbán’s office in Budapest on Saturday, led by opposition leader Péter Magyar, who called on the PM to resign over multiple child abuse scandals. Protesters carried toys and torches under the banner “Protect the children!”.

🎥Timelapse video posted by Magyar.

Reposted by Alexander Wuttke, Martin Kreidl, Timothy Graham , and 4 more

css-lmu.bsky.social
CSS Lab, LMU Munich @css-lmu.bsky.social · 14d
🚀 We’re hiring a Postdoc!

Our group is looking for a Postdoc to join the team working on computational comm research. If you’re excited about automated content analysis, large text & social-media data, open science, this might be for you.

💡 Sounds like you or someone you know? Please share/boost!

Reposted by Aleksandra Urman

kashhill.bsky.social
Kashmir Hill @kashhill.bsky.social · 14d
Another wrongful death lawsuit filed against OpenAI: www.cbsnews.com/news/open-ai...

This time for a woman murdered by her son in Connecticut, whose conversations with ChatGPT were earlier reported by WSJ: www.wsj.com/tech/ai/chat...
Open AI, Microsoft sued over ChatGPT's alleged role in fueling man's "paranoid delusions" before murder-suicide in Connecticut
The suot alleges the artificial intelligence chatbot intensified a man's "paranoid delusions" and helped direct them at his mother before he died by suicide.
www.cbsnews.com

Reposted by Hugo Mercier, Brian Weatherson, Woodrow Hartzog , and 4 more

kevincollier.bsky.social
Kevin Collier @kevincollier.bsky.social · 14d
New! We worked with the Public Interest Research Group to test a bunch of LLM-driven toys ahead of the Christmas. That sexual talking teddy bear wasn't a one-off; it turns out disturbing behavior is deeply built into these toys across the board.
AI toys for kids talk about sex and issue Chinese Communist Party talking points, tests show
New research from Public Interest Research Group and tests conducted by NBC News found that a wide range of AI toys have loose guardrails.
www.nbcnews.com

Reposted by Alessandro Nai, Aleksandra Urman

jbgruber.bsky.social
Johannes B. Gruber @jbgruber.bsky.social · 15d
I posted it here before, but @favstats.eu and I wrote an entry about LLMs in the encyclopedia below 👇

Final version is out now at www.elgaronline.com/display/book...

Or read the preprint: doi.org/10.31219/osf...

Reposted by Aleksandra Urman

manuelpuppis.ch
Manuel Puppis @manuelpuppis.ch · 15d
Ah, yes. Trump receiving a worthless peace prize leads to the US dropping corruption charges against FIFA.

Reposted by Anne Rasmussen, Luca Rossi, Ariadne Vromen , and 6 more

alessandronai.bsky.social
Alessandro Nai @alessandronai.bsky.social · 15d
After 3 years and 5,322 emails (and counting) our Encyclopedia of Political Communication is finally out at @elgarpublishing.bsky.social

📚 Three volumes
⭐ 431 entries
🎓 581 wonderful authors from across the world

A very short 🧵

Reposted by Erle C. Ellis, Ken Caldeira, Jonathan A. Foley , and 4 more

neal.fun
Neal Agarwal @neal.fun · 15d
Made a site comparing the sizes of living things :)

The great Julius Csotonyi spent 5 months painting over 60 illustrations for the site, no ai used

> neal.fun/size-of-life/

aurman21.bsky.social
Aleksandra Urman @aurman21.bsky.social · 15d
@jamoeberl.bsky.social I think you were looking for details like this earlier? I have no idea how visa waiver works but some (most?!) of this info definitely wasn't asked even of full visa applicants like me before (last US visa obtained summer 2024).

Reposted by Aleksandra Urman

spavel.bsky.social
Pavel @spavel.bsky.social · 16d
Via Milagros Miceli on Mastodon: "Today, DWI publishes a powerful essay by Michael Geoffrey Asia, who works impersonating an AI sex companion.

This piece offers a rare glimpse into the psychological and economic realities behind one of the fastest-growing sectors: AI-assisted intimacy."
The Emotional Labor Behind AI Intimacy, by Michael Geoffrey Asia.
Imagine confiding your most private fantasies to what you believe is an unfeeling algorithm that cannot judge or remember. Now imagine that on the other side of that conversation is a man sitting in a...
data-workers.org

Reposted by Aleksandra Urman

rustybrick.com
Barry Schwartz @rustybrick.com · 16d
OpenAI updated its ChatGPT crawler / bot OAI-SearchBot www.seroundtable.com/openai-chatg... via Pieter Serraris

#chatgpt #openai #bot