Michael Scharkow

@mscharkow.bsky.social

490 followers 260 following 13 posts

Computational Communication, Professor at https://ifp.uni-mainz.de | https://mscharkow.de

Videos

Communication & Media Studies 28%

Political science 19%

Posts Replies Media Videos

Reposted by Michael Scharkow

CSS Lab, LMU Munich @css-lmu.bsky.social · 14d

📍 Location: Munich
📅 Start: 1 Apr 2026
⏳ Apply by: 31 Jan 2026

Details:
German: job-portal.lmu.de/jobposting/6...
English: job-portal.lmu.de/jobposting/7...

PostDoc in CSS / CCS (m/w/d)

job-portal.lmu.de

Reposted by Benny Geys, Nils Gustafsson, R. M. Wilson , and 6 more Benny Geys, Nils Gustafsson, R. M. Wilson, McKenzie Wark, Holger Nehring, Mauro Gatti, Nicole Guenther Discenza, Lisa Colton, Michael Scharkow

Charles Louis Richter @richterscale.bsky.social · 15d

SKULL OF THOMAS AQUINAS: TAKE A LEFT NOW
PRIEST: No, the GPS says we have to keep going—
SKULL: I KNOW A SHORTCUT
PRIEST: Do you remember the last ti—
SKULL: FOR THOSE WITH FAITH, NO EVIDENCE IS NECESSARY; FOR THOSE WITHOUT IT, NO EVIDENCE WILL SUFFICE

Sardonicus @sardonicus.eu · 16d

'Skull of St. Thomas Aquinas being transported to Fossanova Abbey.'
Photograph by Daniel Ibanez

a shot of a god botherer in a car, next to him on the passenger seat is a skull in an ornate box

Sardonicus @sardonicus.eu · 16d

'Skull of St. Thomas Aquinas being transported to Fossanova Abbey.'
Photograph by Daniel Ibanez

Reposted by Dorothy Bishop, John Kennedy, James P. Collins , and 26 more Dorothy Bishop, John Kennedy, James P. Collins, Ken Caldeira, Hugo Mercier, Johannes Haushofer, Philip N. Cohen, Martin Paul Eve, Pierre Bataille, Rebecca Sear, Paul E. Johnson, Ian Hussey, Karen Benjamin Guzzo, Climent Quintana‐Domeque, Aaron Sojourner, Andrew Livingstone, Paul Goldsmith-Pinkham, Dominik Vogel, Barrett, Bruce Bradbury, Zen Faulkes, Richard Pettigrew, Johannes Breuer, Marcus Credé, Richard M. Carpiano, Hisham Zerriffi, Juan Ramón, Michael Scharkow, Fiona Spooner

Saloni @scientificdiscovery.dev · 16d

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...

Reposted by Valerie Mueller, Michael Scharkow

Neil Lewis, Jr. @neillewisjr.bsky.social · 25d

Happy "let's circle back in the New Year" season to all who celebrate.

Reposted by Ingo Rohlfing, Michael Scharkow

SocArXiv @socarxiv.bsky.social · 29d

1. Pausing new submissions about AI topics for 90 days. That is, papers about AI models, testing AI models, proposing AI models, theories about the future of AI, etc. We will make exceptions for papers that are already accepted for publication (or published) in peer-reviewed scholarly journals
/2

Reposted by Michael Scharkow

M. Saïd H. Unger @mshu.bsky.social · Nov 21

What gets professors into the media?
📢 New open access publication in @europeansocreview.bsky.social together with Raphael Heiberger from @s7css.bsky.social and @bashofstra.bsky.social!
👉 doi.org/10.1093/esr/...

Professors in the media: dynamics of cumulative advantage, reputation, and gender

Abstract. Translation of science to a general public is increasingly important in modern academia. Yet, there is little knowledge on whether and why scient

doi.org

Reposted by Dagmar Hoffmann, Sabine Trepte, Johannes Breuer , and 1 more Dagmar Hoffmann, Sabine Trepte, Johannes Breuer, Michael Scharkow

Karin Boczek @kbczk.bsky.social · Nov 6

Wie steht es um Geschlechterdiversität in der Wissenschaft? Wir haben uns das für die deutschsprachige Kommunikationswissenschaft (DACH-Raum) angeschaut – alle Hierarchiestufen #IchbinHanna & Jobs in Relation zu Publikationen, Zitationen, Preisen und Drittmitteln doi.org/10.1007/s116...

Michael Scharkow @mscharkow.bsky.social · Oct 29

There are some track features you can get, like runtime or explicit lyrics, but the interesting ones like key, bpm or danceability are part of the audio features API which has been disabled since last year (developer.spotify.com/blog/2024-11...). DDP+Track analysis could still be very interesting.

Michael Scharkow @mscharkow.bsky.social · Oct 28

I tried to do this in my computational methods class this spring and it turned out the most of the Spotify tracks/music API is now disabled, so you cannot easily get matching song-level data anymore, except from large dumps of popular songs, or by using alternative APIs using artist/title.

Michael Scharkow @mscharkow.bsky.social · Oct 9

For a second I was really impressed that @richardfletcher.bsky.social brought out HUGE cardboard printouts for his slides ;-)

Michael Scharkow @mscharkow.bsky.social · Oct 1

I'd argue that BA/MA theses don't need to be informative re an actual research question, but only inform us whether students actually learned something. Of course, running naive studies with tiny self-selected or convenience samples isn't helping the students in that regard either.

Reposted by Michael Scharkow

Dr. Melanie Leidecker-Sandmann @leidecker-sandmann.bsky.social · Sep 8

🔥Hot off the press: Studie zur Repräsentation weiblicher Forschender in den Medien 👉
doi.org/10.1177/0963...
📰 Inhaltsanalyse: 4.860 Medienartikel
👩‍🔬 Nur 18% der zitierten Expert:innen sind Frauen
📊 Frauenanteil in der Forschung: ca. 31%
➡️ Deutliche Sichtbarkeitslücke für weibliche Forschende

Zwei männliche und eine weibliche Silhouette. Im Vordergrund Mikrophone wie bei einer Pressekonferenz

Reposted by Amy Orben, Michael Scharkow

Georgia Turner @georgiaturner.bsky.social · Nov 13

🚨New preprint 🚨

**A computational model of reward learning and habits on social media**

🧵

We develop a computational reward learning model of real-world social media data, which infers the separate goal-directed and habitual cognitive processes driving posting...

Reposted by Michael Scharkow

Alicia Ernst @aliciaernst.bsky.social · Jul 11

This year, I am living in a simulation - literally. 🌀

@mscharkow.bsky.social, and I are currently conducting a #simulation study on how users interact with algorithms in short-video environments such as #TikTok. I’ve had two incredible opportunities to share our progress so far.

Reposted by Richard Fletcher, Jürgen Maier, Charlie Beckett , and 6 more Richard Fletcher, Jürgen Maier, Charlie Beckett, Javier Guallar, Francesco Saraceno, Fabio Giglietto, Václav Štětka, Linards Udris, Michael Scharkow

Reuters Institute @reutersinstitute.bsky.social · Jun 17

Our Digital News Report 2025 is out!

📊48 markets
🌏Almost 100K respondents
📰Key headline: Audiences lean into video news and influencers, raising misinformation concerns and new dilemmas for publishers

📱Explore now buff.ly/xLP67Tg
🧵Findings in thread #DNR25

Reposted by Michael Scharkow

Petter Törnberg @pettertornberg.com · Apr 7

Large Language Model-based social simulation has emerged as an exciting new research method.

But do LLMs actually resolve the problems that have historically limited use of Agent-Based Models? What do they bring?

We review the literature to find out!

with Maik Laaroij
arxiv.org/abs/2504.03274

Do Large Language Models Solve the Problems of Agent-Based Modeling? A Critical Review of Generative Social Simulations

Recent advancements in AI have reinvigorated Agent-Based Models (ABMs), as the integration of Large Language Models (LLMs) has led to the emergence of ``generative ABMs'' as a novel approach to simula...

arxiv.org

Michael Scharkow @mscharkow.bsky.social · Mar 25

Interesting. Do the funders provide reasons for this requirement, ie are they science-related or legal? In many ethics/IRB (equivalent) discussions I've had in the past, it seemed that collecting less demographic information seemed to be preferable in general for privacy/data protection reasons.

Michael Scharkow @mscharkow.bsky.social · Mar 25

What happens if you have NA in your demographics? Do papers get rejected if the reported mean age is based on 73% of the sample? I get the warmup argument, but why not warm up with motivating items? If however, your experiment's primary outcome is age or gender, put that item in ASAP ;-)

Michael Scharkow @mscharkow.bsky.social · Mar 25

This is also what I learned and continue to teach. Sociodemographics rarely a predictor (or outcome!) of interest, at least in my courses...

Reposted by Fabrizio Gilardi, Michael Scharkow

theresa gessler @gessler.bsky.social · Feb 13

I am a big fan of www.soscisurvey.de The basics are free anyway but university licenses of various types including for own servers exist as well, I think psychology at UZH even has one.
Plus, I've had very good experiences with support as well.

SoSci Survey ‣ Onlinebefragung vielseitig und DSGVO-konform

SoSci Survey - professionelle Onlinebefragung einfach, schnell, flexibel, sicher - für den nicht-kommerziellen Einsatz ein kostenloser Onlinefragebogen

www.soscisurvey.de

Michael Scharkow @mscharkow.bsky.social · Dec 17

Good and timely stuff! I wonder how we can navigate the (very real) tradeoff between quality and reproducibility. Will reviewer #2 accept a drop of .2 in accuracy between gpt/gemini vs. local models if you make this decision transparent? What if results change? Just add another robustness check?

Reposted by Bryan McCann, Michael Scharkow

Joe for the Holidays @makeitunclear.bsky.social · Dec 4

finally finished downloading my limewire wrapped after 20 years

LimeWire Wrapped

1. sistem_of_a_dowm_Zelda_song.flac
2. Nirvana - Glycerine.flv
3. track_8_(1)_(1)c.mp3
4. weird_al_Bert_and_Big_Bird_smoking_weed_FUNNY(parody).wav
5. jay-z_the-blueprint_FULL ALBUM_REAL.mp3.exe

Michael Scharkow @mscharkow.bsky.social · Dec 3

If you think of time as a sampling dimension (which we often do in many other contexts), it's not even a metaphorical population, but an occasion-specific sample. Which is also argued in the above literature regarding country-year data.

Michael Scharkow @mscharkow.bsky.social · Dec 3

Not to be confused with Schöpfungshöhenselbstzweifel!

Michael Scharkow @mscharkow.bsky.social · Dec 3

I sense a strong nudge to never reject anything 🤗

Reposted by Michael Scharkow

Stadt Wien @wien.gv.at · Nov 22

Laut Studie ist Wien nicht mehr die unfreundlichste Stadt, sondern Berlin und München sind besser als wir. Es bringt nichts, irgendeinen Sündenbock zu suchen. Wir alle müssen jetzt reflektieren, wo wir im vergangenen Jahr Fehler gemacht haben könnten.

Wiener weniger unfreundlich

Das Image der Wiener Bevölkerung, besonders unfreundlich zu sein, hat sich leicht verbessert. Im vergangenen Jahr noch auf dem letzten Platz von 53 internationalen Städten, liegt Wien in Sachen Freund...

wien.orf.at

Reposted by Michael Scharkow

Michael Hobbes @michaelhobbes.bsky.social · Nov 6

Hamilton from the top rope.
inthesetimes.com/article/trum...

People know who she was running against. They know exactly who he is. Most people, it turns out, just prefer him. That is what they like.

Reposted by Michael Scharkow

Will Oremus @willoremus.com · Sep 27

this apparently heartfelt post from an openai cofounder takes some surprising turns

Reposted by Michael Scharkow

Jesper Stromback @jesperstromback.bsky.social · Mar 8

New article, co-authored with Elena Broda, just out: "Misinformation, disinformation, and fake news: lessons from an interdisciplinary, systematic literature review". And it is open access, just waiting to be downloaded :). @polcomm.bsky.social

www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

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