Josh Pasek
banner
joshpasek.com
Josh Pasek
@joshpasek.com

Prof of Comm & Media and Polisci @UMich studying how people get & use political information and social measurement.
Competencies: data sci, DIY solar, election analytics, carpooling, #polcom, #polpsych, survey methods, AI literacy (views are my own) .. more

Political science 40%
Communication & Media Studies 23%

Amazing results - but feels like the “is it a coup or an autogolpe?” discussion when we’re calling it “politicized bureaucracy” instead of straight up corruption.

I understand, saving it as a question for the discussion section, but it’s really sad that the word “corruption” does not appear at all.
DOGE was A LOT less likely to cancel contracts from companies that donated money to Republicans than companies that donated to Democrats.
DOGE was A LOT less likely to cancel contracts from companies that donated money to Republicans than companies that donated to Democrats.

Reposted by Anna O. Law

Can vouch for this and for the researchers cited here.

But an important caveat …

Protests aren’t magic and there needs to be a strategy behind them.

Also, effecting change through a protest movement is a marathon, not a sprint.
How effective is protesting? According to historians and political scientists: very | Protest | The Guardian www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...
How effective is protesting? According to historians and political scientists: very
From emancipation to women’s suffrage, civil rights and BLM, mass movement has shaped the arc of US history
www.theguardian.com

If they want to show the Department of Homeland Security doing its job, a sleigh that enters the country, bypasses American airports, and includes an infinitely deep bag of gifts would seem like a killer enforcement target.
Here’s the U.S. government being officially religious in a country with no official religion.

In my search for an intellectually honest winter holiday, I learned a ton about Saturnalia, which—while always chaotic—only gained the traditions of cross-dressing and having a Lord of Misrule to mock the Emperor after the Republic ended. That was the tradition that fed this kind of stuff.
This was also interesting, given contemporary discourse:

"In a Yuletide twist on trick-or-treating, men dressed as women, and vice versa, and went door-to-door demanding food or money in return for carols or Christmas wishes."

Reposted by Josh Pasek

This was also interesting, given contemporary discourse:

"In a Yuletide twist on trick-or-treating, men dressed as women, and vice versa, and went door-to-door demanding food or money in return for carols or Christmas wishes."

Thanks for this awesome rabbit hole! For others who want to learn more, this was a pretty good summary: www.history.com/articles/whe...
When Massachusetts Banned Christmas
They banned the celebration of Christmas for a generation.
www.history.com

I’ve felt for some time that we need an American equivalent of the reform act of 1832 - the big question is we work through this tumult is about what institutional changes need to be in it and which ones are nice, but unnecessary.

www.ebsco.com/research-sta...

They “targeted Harvard because it saw it as an incubator of liberalism that violated the civil rights of white and Jewish people”

Yet liberalism is quite literally the only force that has historically kept the United States safe for Jews.

www.nytimes.com/2025/12/24/u...
In Private Letters, Harvard and Trump Administration Escalate Duel
www.nytimes.com
A small (personal) example of this book’s intellectual dishonesty:

My father-in-law is reading In Covid’s Wake, and excitedly told me he found a passage where I’m quoted. The quote in question is me saying the FBI worked to censor speech on social media.

Huh? When did I say that?!

Reposted by Josh Pasek

“The cost to Jews of the changes is steep.
When you don’t work on with other groups, then you’re not going to have those other groups come into your defense.“

Back in 2023 I said @rweingarten.bsky.social and Dem leaders should push Greenblatt aside. In the event, he left—after doing great damage.
Top ADL civil rights lay leader quits, accusing group of being 'useful idiot' for Trump - Jewish Telegraphic Agency
Joe Berman resigned in March and is making his resignation letter public for the first time now.
www.jta.org
This is the real cancel culture.

Using the full force of the government to punish perceived enemies, aid their billionaire tech cronies, and protect pedophiles, neo-Nazis, and other extremist, antisemitic hate groups.

THIS is the threat to our rights and freedoms.

www.nytimes.com/2025/12/23/t...
U.S. Bars 5 European Tech Regulators and Researchers
www.nytimes.com

Reposted by David Darmofal

This approach to retractions is about the strongest possible fuel for those who already believe that there has been a conspiracy.
🚨 The DOJ appears to have redacted Donald Trump’s name from the allegations made in this exhibit in the Epstein files.

Trump’s name was in the original release. Now, it’s blacked out.

See for yourself.

I always use “survivorship bias” as the example and label - it’s much more intuitive and most of the other examples could just be shoved under more general “confounding”
🚨 The DOJ appears to have redacted Donald Trump’s name from the allegations made in this exhibit in the Epstein files.

Trump’s name was in the original release. Now, it’s blacked out.

See for yourself.

Nothing that the summer would allow

The equivalent of:

- filling out a net promoter score for the DMV

- answering the question “next time you need electricity, how likely are you to choose your utility provider?”
"are you enjoying duo mobile" does a hamburger enjoy being made of quarks. does a fish enjoy linear time. does the mountain enjoy the first taste of a cup of hot chocolate when you get back to the ski lodge. your question means nothing to me. i couldn't enjoy duo mobile even if i tried
"are you enjoying duo mobile" does a hamburger enjoy being made of quarks. does a fish enjoy linear time. does the mountain enjoy the first taste of a cup of hot chocolate when you get back to the ski lodge. your question means nothing to me. i couldn't enjoy duo mobile even if i tried

Important work - very similar to what Toby Stark, Krosnick, @keithpayne.bsky.social, Trevor Tompson, and I found in 2019 as well when predicting political behaviors in nationally representative surveys (would be good to finally get ours out).

But big lesson is: explicit >>> implicit for behavior.
Implicit racial attitudes accounted for ~2.5% of variance in behavior beyond explicit racial attitudes, an effect size that was *just* over our agreed upon threshold for what would constitute a practically significant effect. Explicit racial attitudes still explained much more variance (~45%).
Implicit racial attitudes accounted for ~2.5% of variance in behavior beyond explicit racial attitudes, an effect size that was *just* over our agreed upon threshold for what would constitute a practically significant effect. Explicit racial attitudes still explained much more variance (~45%).

We find that:

- Beliefs held with confidence are more important for summary judgements.
- If people knew more about the Affordable Care Act, they would have liked it more.
- Greater confidence in that knowledge likely would have increased rather than decreased polarization about the law.

The key notion: Most judgments are functions of lots of beliefs held with varying certainty that violate statistical IIA properties when collectively modeled.

Bayesian approach lets us get around this.

Link to paper here: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Software in pipeline.
How do people form beliefs about complex topics?

Happy to report our Bayesian model of the psychology of Bayesian updating is out in @ispp-pops.bsky.social! (w/ Gabriel Li & Krosnick)

If you gloss over the Greek, it's a new model for how to assess the impacts of information on summary judgments.
A certainty‐weighted, belief‐based model of political attitudes: A Bayesian analysis of American public attitudes toward the affordable care act
This study proposes a novel, certainty-weighted account of the process by which political beliefs shape political attitudes. Building upon expectancy-value frameworks, this paper introduces belief ce...
onlinelibrary.wiley.com
Our paper on how cross-cutting group memberships predict warmer out-party affect and analyses suggesting this is why Latinos in the US have warmer feelings toward the out-party is now fully published in the most recent @polbehavior.bsky.social issue.

link.springer.com/article/10.1...

No, it is not.

Most of these folks’ support of this agenda is instrumental for themselves or due to misperceptions.

A sizable minority fall into this camp bc they fail to distinguish good faith criticism of 🇮🇱 from critiques that are antisemitic, thinking the latter is more common than the former.

Reposted by Josh Pasek

Fascism is using us American Jews as moral human shields, covering its takeover with lies about protecting Jews. They aren’t. They’re pushing Jews into harm’s way, as some Jews become fools & believe it & some non-Jewish antifascists are fooled & believe it. Only fascism profits from this lie.

My mother was playing “this little piggy” with my 8 week old niece.

Can we please all agree that there are only 2 little piggies?

Went to market (piggy 1)
Stayed home (piggy 2)
Had roast beef (piggy 1)
Had none (piggy 2)
Went whee whee whee all the way home (piggy 1)

Nonsequitor with 5 of them
The Center for American Political History, Media, and Technology (CAPT) at Purdue University is currently searching for a Postdoctoral Research Associate! The deadline to apply is Dec. 31, 2025. More information about the position is available here: careers.purdue.edu/job/Postdoct...
#commsky
Postdoctoral Research Associate
Postdoctoral Research Associate
careers.purdue.edu