Carsten Schwemmer
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cschwem2er.bsky.social
Carsten Schwemmer
@cschwem2er.bsky.social
1.4K followers 380 following 30 posts
Professor of Computational Social Science, University of Munich | Text & Images | Data Scraping | Data Visualization

https://www.carstenschwemmer.com/
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Reposted by Carsten Schwemmer
sabrinanorwood.bsky.social
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.
December 16, 2025 at 5:38 PM
Reposted by Carsten Schwemmer
rmcelreath.bsky.social
I'm teaching Statistical Rethinking again starting Jan 2026. This time with live lectures, divided into Beginner and Experienced sections. Will be a lot more work for me, but I hope much better for students.

I will record lectures & all will be found at this link: github.com/rmcelreath/s...
course schedule as a table. Available at the link in the post.
December 9, 2025 at 1:58 PM
Reposted by Carsten Schwemmer
curdknupfer.bsky.social
COME WORK WITH US ON DIGITAL SOCIETY & DEMOCRACY IN 🇩🇰!

Full Professorship. Fantastic conditions. Highly dynamic team environment. Great colleagues. FUN!

Happy to answer questions and make introductions to the rest of the team...
claesdevreese.bsky.social Claes de Vreese @claesdevreese.bsky.social · 16d
Excellent job opportunity: Full professorship in Digital Society and Democracy @ddc-sdu.bsky.social and @d-ias.bsky.social.

Top conditions, environment & colleagues.

Candidates welcome across places and disciplines.

🗓️ DL: March 15, 2026

fa-eosd-saasfaprod1.fa.ocs.oraclecloud.com/hcmUI/Candid...
DIAS Professorship in Digital Society and Democracy
Application deadline: March 15, 2026, 11.59 PM/23.59 CET/CEST.
fa-eosd-saasfaprod1.fa.ocs.oraclecloud.com
December 15, 2025 at 12:18 PM
Reposted by Carsten Schwemmer
ianhussey.mmmdata.io
A new PNAS paper finds that polarization increased immediately after the release of Lady Gaga’s “Just Dance” and the advent of the late-2000s electro-pop era, which both appeared around the same year, 2008.
jayvanbavel.bsky.social Jay Van Bavel, PhD @jayvanbavel.bsky.social · 17d
A new PNAS paper finds that polarization increased immediately after the invention of smartphones and the advent of social media, which both appeared around the same year, 2008.
www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...
December 15, 2025 at 8:21 AM
Reposted by Carsten Schwemmer
angelinawang.bsky.social
Most LLM evals use API calls or offline inference, testing models in a memory-less silo. Our new Patterns paper shows this misses how LLMs actually behave in real user interfaces, where personalization and interaction history shape responses: arxiv.org/abs/2509.19364
December 12, 2025 at 8:42 PM
Reposted by Carsten Schwemmer
profsanderlinden.bsky.social
New paper out in @science.org! We unveil the online manipulation market with the Cambridge Online Trust & Safety Index (COTSI). We show in real time the cost of purchasing fake accounts across every social platform around the world - so they can be held accountable

www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
Mapping the online manipulation economy
A market perspective on digital manipulation may help improve online trust and safety
www.science.org
December 11, 2025 at 7:05 PM
Reposted by Carsten Schwemmer
lfoswaldo.bsky.social
It's out!!

www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Big thank you to my coauthors @small-schulz.bsky.social and @lorenzspreen.bsky.social, and to all participants who discussed 20 political issues over 4 weeks in 6 subreddit, 3 experimental conditions and let us observe.
December 11, 2025 at 10:34 AM
Reposted by Carsten Schwemmer
css-lmu.bsky.social
🚀 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!
December 12, 2025 at 6:45 AM
Reposted by Carsten Schwemmer
fuhsejan.bsky.social
An der Uni Leipzig werden nach meinen Infos in 2026 keine (!) Mittelbau-Stellen verlängert oder neu besetzt.
Das hängt natürlich auch an der Landesregierung.
Im letzten Newsletter für Mitarbeitende bekam ich eine Einladung zur Diskussion über Perspektiven für Early Career Researchers ...
Einladung zur Fishbowl-Diskussion mit dem Rektorat über die neue Forschungsakademie und "Perspektiven für Early Career Researchers an der Universität Leipzig"
November 27, 2025 at 10:04 AM
Reposted by Carsten Schwemmer
gessler.bsky.social
We're looking for a colleague (postdoc) 📢 @politikuhh.bsky.social
3+3 years
Doing your own research while teaching 2.5 courses per semester
Research agenda with links to our team (democracy, digital politics, political competition/behaviour)
DL 🗓️ 05/01
stellen.uni-hamburg.de/jobposting/6...
Research Associate (Postdoc) Political Science § 28 Subsection 2 HmbHG
stellen.uni-hamburg.de
December 1, 2025 at 8:56 AM
Reposted by Carsten Schwemmer
socarxiv.bsky.social
In light of record submission rates and a large volume of AI-generated slop, SocArXiv recently implemented a policy requiring ORCIDs linked in the OSF profile of submitting authors, and narrowing our focus to social science subjects. Today we are taking two more steps:
/1
November 27, 2025 at 2:54 PM
Reposted by Carsten Schwemmer
andrew.heiss.phd
Wrote up a little intervention post/explanation for my class about why using LLMs for trying to learn programming (as first time learners!) is bad and detrimental datavizf25.classes.andrewheiss.com/news/2025-11...
In the first week of class, I had you read an article about how ChatGPT is philosophical “bullshit”, as well as this other post about AI and LLMs in this class. I’ve seen a surprising increase in the amount of ChatGPT-based weekly check-ins and graph interpretations in the exercises. (In the past, I’ve even had students tell me they PDFs of the slides into ChatGPT to generate interesting and confusing things.) Don’t do this! LLMs cannot find three things that you personally found interesting from the readings. LLMs are not you. It’s a huge waste of time for all of us to for me to spend time evaluating and grading output from ChatGPT. I want to read what you think and do, not what a computer invents. NoteMy personal stance on AI and LLMs Many of you have asked about how I think about and use LLMs in my own work (and in the class materials). Please check this short little page where I explain what I do with text, images, code, research, and learning. In short, I do not use LLMs to create any of the materials for this class, and I do not use them to grade or evaluate any of your work. I’ve even had several students submit completely made up stuff for mini projects and final projects. In your final project, your job is to take a dataset, make three different plots with it, and combine the plots into one graphic that tells some sort of story. I’ve (really truly) received projects like this: (a ChatGPT-generated plot of completely made up data from gapminder) At a very quick glance, that looks like a plausible image. But holy crap it falls apart fast, both comically and tragically. Comically because, like, look at the y-axis in the scatterplot; or the x-axis ticks in the population grown chart that are sometimes spaced every 20 years, sometimes every 10 years, and has 1980 there twice; or the weird blobs in the map. Tragically—and most importantly—literally nothing in this image is real and none of the annotations make sense and none of the colors make sense and everything here is completely meaningless and devoid of any information. It’s pure philosophical bullshit—an image “produced without concern for its truth.” That’s what I mean when I say that it’s a forgetful and unreliable resource. Lots of that code is helpful as an illustration of what’s going on. Lots of the explanation is good and fine. But it subtly changed its mind halfway through and didn’t realize it (because it can’t realize it! it’s just a chain of statistically likely text!) Hopefully you can see where this is dangerous for learning. It can often “teach” you wrong, and you can only recognize that if you know stuff already. It’s extra dangerous if you then take that example output, paste it into your exercise, and submit it. I’m not even concerned about the plagiarism aspect of that—code is code and there are only a few ways to write {dplyr} code that will do this, and it’s easy to adapt from real human-based examples online, so I’m less worried about stealing other people’s work here. I’m concerned that it’s not real data. It made up values of 1, 2, 3, and 4 for some countries to illustrate grouping and summarizing. That’s good and normal. None of that is real. Don’t treat it as real.
November 2, 2025 at 10:17 PM
Reposted by Carsten Schwemmer
vincentab.bsky.social
we're done
November 18, 2025 at 7:46 PM
Reposted by Carsten Schwemmer
joshmccrain.bsky.social
new paper by Sean Westwood:

With current technology, it is impossible to tell whether survey respondents are real or bots. Among other things, makes it easy for bad actors to manipulate outcomes. No good news here for the future of online-based survey research
November 18, 2025 at 7:16 PM
Reposted by Carsten Schwemmer
dingdingpeng.the100.ci
PPS more updates! We now have a figure with an overview of the workflow, plus some other nifty additions.

osf.io/preprints/ps...
November 13, 2025 at 5:37 PM
Reposted by Carsten Schwemmer
ic2s2.bsky.social
We're excited to announce that the website and registration for IC2S2 2026 (July 28-31) will launch in early December! The Vermont Complex Systems Institute @vcsi.bsky.social at the University of Vermont will be hosting IC2S2 in 2026: youtube.com/watch?v=p412S4GnPkc&feature=youtu.be
IC2S2 2026 | Burlington, Vermont
YouTube video by UVM Office of Research
youtube.com
November 13, 2025 at 3:36 PM
Reposted by Carsten Schwemmer
kauspurg.bsky.social
Billions of regressions ≠ robustness.

My new PNAS Letter shows how unjustified models can drown out justified ones — and why thoughtful model selection matters👇
www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...
November 11, 2025 at 4:56 PM
Reposted by Carsten Schwemmer
kbkarlson.bsky.social
LAST CALL! #Sociology Professorships in Copenhagen, Denmark!

We're hiring 2+ open-rank profs (Asst/Assoc/Full). Any area.

Deadline: this Saturday, Nov 15!

Join a leading European sociology department. Please repost!

jobportal.ku.dk/videnskabeli...
Call for two or more open-rank academic positions in Sociology
jobportal.ku.dk
November 9, 2025 at 8:08 AM
Reposted by Carsten Schwemmer
amreibahr.bsky.social
Letzte Woche haben wir 5 Jahre #95vsWissZeitVG gefeiert. Viel hat sich seit 2020 & besonders seit #IchBinHanna geändert, nur ein paar spezielle Quatsch-Argumente für Befristung kommen immer wieder. Damit wir sie nicht ständig von vorn widerlegen müssen, hab ich das heute in #ArbeitInDerWiss gemacht!
Vom Durchlauferhitzer und anderen Dauerbrennern: Fünf Jahre…
Zum 5. Geburtstag von #95vsWissZeitVG widme ich mich im Newsletter den wiederkehrenden Quatsch-Argumenten der Debatte -- und lege dar, warum sie Quatsch sind.
steady.page
November 4, 2025 at 8:10 AM
Reposted by Carsten Schwemmer
lfoswaldo.bsky.social
We have a new preprint: osf.io/preprints/so...

What have we learned about social media - the constantly moving target of empirical research - over the past decade?
October 30, 2025 at 10:53 AM
Reposted by Carsten Schwemmer
norawaitkus.bsky.social
🚨We’re hiring! The Max Weber Institute in beautiful Heidelberg seeks a W3 Professor of Sociology (focus: sociological theory) who connects well with the department’s focus on comparative sociology adb.zuv.uni-heidelberg.de/info/INFO_FD... Happy to answer any questions! #Sociology #socsky
Stellenausschreibungen an der Universität Heidelberg
Infosystem der ZUV
adb.zuv.uni-heidelberg.de
October 31, 2025 at 1:48 PM
Reposted by Carsten Schwemmer
amreibahr.bsky.social
5 Jahre #95vsWissZeitVG! 🎉 Für @drkeichhorn.bsky.social, @kubon.bsky.social & mich 1 Anlass, Euch DANKE zu sagen, liebe Community: für Ausdauer, Engagement & Solidarität! Nur: Wie? Noch 1 gemeinsamer Text? Nein! Dem Anlass angemessen gibt‘s was ganz Neues: 1 gemeinsames Lied für Euch! #IchBinHanna 🎶
5 Jahre #95vsWissZeitVG: Unser Dank an die Community! #IchBinHanna #WissZeitVG
YouTube video by Amrei Bahr
youtu.be
October 31, 2025 at 6:49 AM
Reposted by Carsten Schwemmer
lorenzspreen.bsky.social
It is happening 👇
alhohlfeld.bsky.social Alexander Hohlfeld @alhohlfeld.bsky.social · Oct 29
📊 The #DSA data access portal is live, and VLOPs/VLOSEs have begun publishing their data catalogues.
Trying to collect the links again: docs.google.com/spreadsheets...
LinkedIn
This link will take you to a page that’s not on LinkedIn
lnkd.in
October 29, 2025 at 5:03 PM
Reposted by Carsten Schwemmer
dougaparry.bsky.social
Any experiences with data donation of #Spotify listening history?

I requested to download my full listening history and it said that it would take 30 days to produce the download.

2 hours later I received the link to the zip file with full JSON records.

Any other experiences with this?
October 26, 2025 at 9:00 AM
Reposted by Carsten Schwemmer
rmcelreath.bsky.social
When there is a random way to do something, there is a less random way that is better but requires more thought. In this case, regression models that make no sense don't belong in a multiverse analysis. An inferential regression without a causal justification is like an opinion without reasons.
October 23, 2025 at 4:34 PM