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csmapnyu.org
NYU's Center for Social Media and Politics
@csmapnyu.org
12K followers 620 following 430 posts
We work to strengthen democracy by conducting rigorous research, advancing evidence-based public policy, and training the next generation of scholars.

https://csmapnyu.org/links
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Reposted by NYU's Center for Social Media and Politics
pettertornberg.com
LLMs are now widely used in social science as stand-ins for humans—assuming they can produce realistic, human-like text

But... can they? We don’t actually know.

In our new study, we develop a Computational Turing Test.

And our findings are striking:
LLMs may be far less human-like than we think.🧵
Computational Turing Test Reveals Systematic Differences Between Human and AI Language
Large language models (LLMs) are increasingly used in the social sciences to simulate human behavior, based on the assumption that they can generate realistic, human-like text. Yet this assumption rem...
arxiv.org
November 7, 2025 at 11:13 AM
Reposted by NYU's Center for Social Media and Politics
tiagoventura.bsky.social
The paper is co-authored with Bernhard Von Clemm, @ericka.bric.digital
@jonathannagler.bsky.social @magdalenawojciesza.bsky.social

This is also one of the projects I started at @csmapnyu.org ---- thanks to the entire lab involved!

The paper can be found here: www.cambridge.org/core/journal...
Survey Professionalism: New Evidence from Web Browsing Data | Political Analysis | Cambridge Core
Survey Professionalism: New Evidence from Web Browsing Data
www.cambridge.org
October 7, 2025 at 6:49 PM
Reposted by NYU's Center for Social Media and Politics
tiagoventura.bsky.social
How common are “survey professionals” - people who take dozens of online surveys for pay - across online panels, and do they harm data quality?

Our paper, FirstView at @politicalanalysis.bsky.social, tackles this question using browsing data from three U.S. samples (Facebook, YouGov, and Lucid):
October 7, 2025 at 6:49 PM
Reposted by NYU's Center for Social Media and Politics
shugars.bsky.social
Fascinating work from @jatucker.bsky.social and @csmapnyu.org looking at the effect of labeling images as AI on people’s beliefs about the provenance + veracity of that image. They also explore the implications of AI images not being labeled after seeing labeled images #PaCSS2025 #polnet2025
August 13, 2025 at 2:52 PM
Reposted by NYU's Center for Social Media and Politics
shugars.bsky.social
Exciting methodological development from Ben Guinadeau and @csmapnyu.org using poisson factorization to do ideal point estimation of TikTok posts #pacss2025 #polnet2025
August 13, 2025 at 3:21 PM
Reposted by NYU's Center for Social Media and Politics
shugars.bsky.social
Very interesting work from @hwaight.bsky.social and @csmapnyu.org examining narrative similarity between news stories from global media sources. Methodological challenging because stories may communicate the same ideas/claims without using the same ngrams #pacss2025 #polnet2025
August 14, 2025 at 1:39 PM
Reposted by NYU's Center for Social Media and Politics
melinamuch.bsky.social
My awesome co-author with our poster about the GenZ gender gap and podcast consumption at PolNet/PACSS! If you didn’t see us here catch us at APSA at the PolCom preconference and Saturday first thing in the morning 💃🏻 @csmapnyu.org
August 14, 2025 at 9:19 PM
Reposted by NYU's Center for Social Media and Politics
tiagoventura.bsky.social
🚨 Paper now as "just accepted" at @The_JOP. We ran the first WhatsApp deactivation experiment focused on multimedia content ahead of the 2022 election in Brazil. We find a reduction in users' recall of false rumors -- and, to a smaller degree, of true news. Null effects on attitudes. Full thread ⬇️
csmapnyu.org NYU's Center for Social Media and Politics @csmapnyu.org · Jul 17
In the Global South, WhatsApp is more popular than X or Facebook.

New in @The_JOP, we ran a WhatsApp deactivation experiment during Brazil’s 2022 election to explore how the app facilitates the spread of misinformation and affects voters’ attitudes.

www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1...
Abstract: In most advanced democracies, concerns about the spread of misinformation are typically associated with feed-based social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook. These platforms also account for the vast majority of research on the topic. However, in most of the world, particularly in Global South countries, misinformation often reaches citizens through social media messaging apps, particularly WhatsApp. To fill the resulting gap in the literature, we conducted a multimedia deactivation experiment to test the impact of reducing exposure to potential sources of misinformation on WhatsApp during the weeks leading up to the 2022 Presidential election in Brazil. We find that this intervention significantly reduced participants’ recall of false rumors circulating widely during the election. However, consistent with theories of mass media minimal effects, a short-term change in the information environment did not lead to significant changes in belief accuracy, political polarization, or well-being.
July 17, 2025 at 3:27 PM
Reposted by NYU's Center for Social Media and Politics
cbarrie.bsky.social
In addition to the original UK results, we have now ***replicated*** this (TWICE) in the US.

The main findings hold strong: information diets are a lot more diverse in attention than in engagement.

New version here: osf.io/preprints/os...
July 22, 2025 at 8:27 AM
csmapnyu.org
In the Global South, WhatsApp is more popular than X or Facebook.

New in @The_JOP, we ran a WhatsApp deactivation experiment during Brazil’s 2022 election to explore how the app facilitates the spread of misinformation and affects voters’ attitudes.

www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1...
Abstract: In most advanced democracies, concerns about the spread of misinformation are typically associated with feed-based social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook. These platforms also account for the vast majority of research on the topic. However, in most of the world, particularly in Global South countries, misinformation often reaches citizens through social media messaging apps, particularly WhatsApp. To fill the resulting gap in the literature, we conducted a multimedia deactivation experiment to test the impact of reducing exposure to potential sources of misinformation on WhatsApp during the weeks leading up to the 2022 Presidential election in Brazil. We find that this intervention significantly reduced participants’ recall of false rumors circulating widely during the election. However, consistent with theories of mass media minimal effects, a short-term change in the information environment did not lead to significant changes in belief accuracy, political polarization, or well-being.
July 17, 2025 at 2:51 PM
Reposted by NYU's Center for Social Media and Politics
hwaight.bsky.social
I am thrilled to share a new article in Sociological Methods & Research, “Quantifying Narrative Similarity Across Languages”. My co-first author Sol Messing and our collaborators developed a new approach to measuring “narrative similarity” between texts: journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...
Quantifying Narrative Similarity Across Languages - Hannah Waight, Solomon Messing, Anton Shirikov, Margaret E. Roberts, Jonathan Nagler, Jason Greenfield, Megan A. Brown, Kevin Aslett, Joshua A. Tuck...
How can one understand the spread of ideas across text data? This is a key measurement problem in sociological inquiry, from the study of how interest groups sh...
journals.sagepub.com
June 18, 2025 at 3:56 PM
Reposted by NYU's Center for Social Media and Politics
andreucasas.bsky.social
🚨New Publication @thejop.bsky.social We study who sets the issue agenda of state policymakers in the US. We find a mixed picture: they respond to shifts in attention by members of Congress, but also to the constituents in their states, particularly their own party supporters.
csmapnyu.org NYU's Center for Social Media and Politics @csmapnyu.org · Apr 21
Amid growing DC gridlock, state legislatures play a vital role in shaping policy. But how do state lawmakers decide which issues deserve their attention? Our new @thejop.bsky.social paper is the first large-scale multi-state analysis exploring this question

www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/...
Title: Bottom Up? Top Down? Determinants ofIssue-Attention in State Politics Abstract: Who shapes the issue-attention cycle of state legislators? Although state governments make critical policy decisions, data and methodological constraints have limited re-searchers’ ability to study state-level agenda setting. For this paper, we collect more than 122 million Twitter messages sent by state and national actors in 2018 and 2021.We then employ supervised machine learning and time series techniques to study how the issue-attention of state lawmakers evolves vis-`a-vis various local- and national-level actors. Our findings suggest that state legislators operate at the confluence of national and local influences. In line with arguments highlighting the nationalization of state politics, we find that state legislators are consistently responsive to policy debates among members of Congress. However, despite growing nationalization concerns, we also find strong evidence of issue responsiveness by legislators to members of the public in their states and moderate responsiveness to regional media sources.
April 23, 2025 at 10:00 AM
Reposted by NYU's Center for Social Media and Politics
scott-delaney.bsky.social
If your NSF grant has been terminated, please, please report it here:

airtable.com/appGKlSVeXni...

Collecting this information is supremely helpful to organize and facilitate a response.
April 21, 2025 at 7:59 PM
Reposted by NYU's Center for Social Media and Politics
noamross.net
🚨 NEW: Crowdsourced database of #NSF grant terminations. 🚨

We've been able to collect info on >110 cancelled grants that were cancelled on Friday. Thanks to all the researchers who reported over the holiday weekend. 🧪 airtable.com/appGKlSVeXni...
Airtable | Everyone's app platform
Airtable is a low-code platform for building collaborative apps. Customize your workflow, collaborate, and achieve ambitious outcomes. Get started for free.
airtable.com
April 21, 2025 at 7:57 PM
Reposted by NYU's Center for Social Media and Politics
oms279.bsky.social
New paper out in @thejop.bsky.social with my colleagues at @csmapnyu.org . Substantive findings are summarized in the thread below.

Of interest to a broader sociological audience: we show how to measure discursive influence between different groups.
csmapnyu.org NYU's Center for Social Media and Politics @csmapnyu.org · Apr 21
Amid growing DC gridlock, state legislatures play a vital role in shaping policy. But how do state lawmakers decide which issues deserve their attention? Our new @thejop.bsky.social paper is the first large-scale multi-state analysis exploring this question

www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/...
Title: Bottom Up? Top Down? Determinants ofIssue-Attention in State Politics Abstract: Who shapes the issue-attention cycle of state legislators? Although state governments make critical policy decisions, data and methodological constraints have limited re-searchers’ ability to study state-level agenda setting. For this paper, we collect more than 122 million Twitter messages sent by state and national actors in 2018 and 2021.We then employ supervised machine learning and time series techniques to study how the issue-attention of state lawmakers evolves vis-`a-vis various local- and national-level actors. Our findings suggest that state legislators operate at the confluence of national and local influences. In line with arguments highlighting the nationalization of state politics, we find that state legislators are consistently responsive to policy debates among members of Congress. However, despite growing nationalization concerns, we also find strong evidence of issue responsiveness by legislators to members of the public in their states and moderate responsiveness to regional media sources.
April 22, 2025 at 10:27 AM
csmapnyu.org
Amid growing DC gridlock, state legislatures play a vital role in shaping policy. But how do state lawmakers decide which issues deserve their attention? Our new @thejop.bsky.social paper is the first large-scale multi-state analysis exploring this question

www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/...
Title: Bottom Up? Top Down? Determinants ofIssue-Attention in State Politics Abstract: Who shapes the issue-attention cycle of state legislators? Although state governments make critical policy decisions, data and methodological constraints have limited re-searchers’ ability to study state-level agenda setting. For this paper, we collect more than 122 million Twitter messages sent by state and national actors in 2018 and 2021.We then employ supervised machine learning and time series techniques to study how the issue-attention of state lawmakers evolves vis-`a-vis various local- and national-level actors. Our findings suggest that state legislators operate at the confluence of national and local influences. In line with arguments highlighting the nationalization of state politics, we find that state legislators are consistently responsive to policy debates among members of Congress. However, despite growing nationalization concerns, we also find strong evidence of issue responsiveness by legislators to members of the public in their states and moderate responsiveness to regional media sources.
April 21, 2025 at 7:12 PM
Reposted by NYU's Center for Social Media and Politics
mzahneis.bsky.social
Here's a copy of an NSF grant termination notice that went out today. "NSF is issuing this termination to protect the interests of the government pursuant...on the basis that they no longer effectuate the program goals or agency priorities." Not subject to appeal. #HigherEd #AcademicSky
Text of email: Dear [redacted], The U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) has undertaken a review of its award portfolio. Each award was carefully and individually reviewed, and the agency has determined that termination of certain awards is necessary because they are not in alignment with current NSF priorities. Effective immediately, the following are terminated: [redacted] NSF is issuing this termination to protect the interests of the government pursuant to NSF Grant General Conditions (GC-1) term and condition entitled Termination and Enforcement; on the basis that they no longer effectuate the program goals or agency priorities. This is the final agency decision and not subject to appeal. Costs incurred as a result of this termination may be reimbursed, provided such costs would otherwise be allowable under the terms of the award and the governing cost principles. In accordance with your award terms and conditions, you have 30 days from the termination date to furnish a summary of progress under the award and an itemized accounting of allowable costs incurred prior to the termination date. Sincerely, [redacted] Division Director Office of Budget Finance and Award Management (BFA) Division of Grants and Agreements (DGA)
April 18, 2025 at 11:19 PM
Reposted by NYU's Center for Social Media and Politics
prowag.bsky.social
Friday Night Massacre of accurate information.

A devastating day for the USA as tens of millions of dollars of grants seeking to combat the spread of false information were terminated. We have a federal govenrment that does not consider the verifiable truth a priority. www.nsf.gov/updates-on-p...
Updates on NSF Priorities
www.nsf.gov
April 19, 2025 at 1:27 PM
csmapnyu.org
Do age verification laws change online behavior? @zevesanderson.com joined @jerusalem.bsky.social to talk about the importance of research for measuring policy impacts for The Atlantic's Good on Paper podcast.
www.theatlantic.com/podcasts/arc...
Would You Give PornHub Your ID?
What happened when Louisiana tried to stop kids from watching porn
www.theatlantic.com
April 15, 2025 at 6:23 PM
Reposted by NYU's Center for Social Media and Politics
johngramlich.bsky.social
Experts are far more bullish about the potential of AI than the American public is. 56% expect a positive impact (vs. 17% of the public). 76% expect it to benefit them personally (vs. 24% of the public). Also much more positive on specific AI applications: www.pewresearch.org/internet/202...
Bar chart showing that AI experts are much more likely than the American public to say that artificial intelligence will have a positive impact on the U.S. over the next 20 years. Bar chart showing that AI experts are far more likely than the American public to say that the increased use of artificial intelligence will benefit them personally. Dot plot showing that AI experts are more positive than the American public about the impact that artificial intelligence will have in specific areas, including the economy and K-12 education.
April 8, 2025 at 11:49 AM
csmapnyu.org
🚨 Job Alert! 🚨

Come join our team studying the impact of digital media on democracy!

We're hiring a Technical Lead - Research Engineering to help us build and maintain the robust data infrastructure and custom tools that power our research.

More info + apply:
apply.interfolio.com/165833
April 7, 2025 at 6:12 PM
Reposted by NYU's Center for Social Media and Politics
rickhasen.bsky.social
ELB Podcast 6:7: Combatting False Election Information: Lessons from 2024 and a Look to the Future (Marwick, Starbird, Tucker) electionlawblog.org?p=149336
ELB Podcast 6:7: Combatting False Election Information: Lessons from 2024 and a Look to the Future (Marwick, Starbird, Tucker) #ELB
Season 6, Episode 7 of the ELB Podcast: How did campaigning and false information in campaigns change in the 2024 elections? What role did platform content moderation play in 2024? Is generative AI go...
electionlawblog.org
April 6, 2025 at 2:53 PM
csmapnyu.org
Users always respond to the incentives of a given social media platform. On X, the new incentive if you want to go viral is to just say something Elon Musk will like, @zevesanderson.com tells @politifact.bsky.social.
politifact.bsky.social PolitiFact @politifact.bsky.social · Mar 31
Donald Trump shared its post of AI-generated images of Taylor Swift. Elon Musk has amplified its posts to his 218 million followers. Top Trump administration officials follow it.

Here’s what we know about the anonymous “Amuse” X account followed some of the country’s most powerful decision-makers.🧵
A large "X" logo sits on top of a building at night. Headline reads: "Anonymous X account shares falsehoods to Elon Musk, top US officials. What we know about 'Amuse'"
March 31, 2025 at 7:53 PM
Reposted by NYU's Center for Social Media and Politics
cbarrie.bsky.social
📄NEW PAPER📄

Ever wondered content people actually pay *attention* to online? Our new research reveals that you likely pay attention to far more varied political content than your likes and shares suggest
March 25, 2025 at 12:04 PM
Reposted by NYU's Center for Social Media and Politics
mgmacdonald.bsky.social
So excited to finally see this out! It was the first paper I started during my postdoc at @csmapnyu.org
csmapnyu.org NYU's Center for Social Media and Politics @csmapnyu.org · Mar 17
It's well known that politicians take more extreme positions during primaries. In @electoralstudies.bsky.social, we find this shift is much more likely when incumbents in safe seats face a well-funded primary challenger.

🧵👇
authors.elsevier.com/a/1kn5KxRaZn...
March 17, 2025 at 3:30 PM