Stefan McCabe
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sdmccabe.com
Stefan McCabe
@sdmccabe.com
360 followers 390 following 30 posts
counting things on the internet
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Reposted by Stefan McCabe
yang3kc.bsky.social
ICYMI, our DomainDemo dataset, which describes how different demographic groups share domains on Twitter, is now available to download!

📄 Data descriptor: doi.org/10.1038/s415...
📈 Interactive app to explore the data: domaindemo.info
💽 Dataset: doi.org/10.5281/zeno...
DomainDemo: a dataset of domain-sharing activities among different demographic groups on Twitter - Scientific Data
Scientific Data - DomainDemo: a dataset of domain-sharing activities among different demographic groups on Twitter
doi.org
July 21, 2025 at 1:58 PM
Reposted by Stefan McCabe
In our new paper (w/ @jongreen.bsky.social , @davidlazer.bsky.social, & Philip Resnik), now up in Nature Human Behaviour (nature.com/articles/s41562-025-02223-4), we argue that this tension really speaks to a broader misconceptualization of what misinformation is and how it works.
Using co-sharing to identify use of mainstream news for promoting potentially misleading narratives - Nature Human Behaviour
Goel et al. examine why some factually correct news articles are often shared by users who also shared fake news articles on social media.
nature.com
June 11, 2025 at 3:39 PM
sdmccabe.com
A Postdoc for Mr Biswas
A passage from VS Naipaul’s A House for Mr Biswas: And that was what Mr Biswas continued to feel about their venture: that it was temporary and not quite real, and it didn't matter how it was arranged. He had felt that on the first after-noon; and the feeling lasted until he left The Chase. Real life was to begin for them soon, and elsewhere. The Chase was a pause, a preparation.
June 1, 2025 at 11:38 PM
Reposted by Stefan McCabe
cetaceanneeded.bsky.social
If you study networks, or have been stuck listening to people who study networks for long enough (sorry to my loved ones), you may have heard that open triads – V shapes – in social networks tend to turn into closed triangles. But why does this happen? In part, because people repost each other.
April 1, 2025 at 8:00 PM
Reposted by Stefan McCabe
adinagit.bsky.social
have you ever lost sleep wondering how hashtag activism campaigns unfold over time???

in a new paper with @erikavmelder.bsky.social and @foucaultwelles.bsky.social, we look at the temporal evolution of 7 years of #StopLine3 on twitter

more here: doi.org/10.1177/2056...
Sage Journals: Discover world-class research
Subscription and open access journals from Sage, the world's leading independent academic publisher.
journals.sagepub.com
March 12, 2025 at 1:33 PM
Reposted by Stefan McCabe
the-syllabus.bsky.social
Our open-access article of the week shows how individual users—not just algorithms—selectively share stories that align with their identities and values, filtering content into ideological silos.

By @jongreen.bsky.social, @sdmccabe.com et al. in @apsrjournal.bsky.social

https://buff.ly/41m9Thk
February 22, 2025 at 12:00 PM
Reposted by Stefan McCabe
shugars.bsky.social
In the 10 years since last week, I neglected to share that I’m so excited that our “Curation Bubbles” paper with @jongreen.bsky.social, @sdmccabe.com, @davidlazer.bsky.social and others is now out in APSR!
jongreen.bsky.social Jon Green @jongreen.bsky.social · Jan 21
Extremely happy to share that "Curation Bubbles" is online (open access!) at @apsrjournal.bsky.social: www.cambridge.org/core/journal...
Title: Curation Bubbles Abstract: Information on social media is characterized by networked curation processes in which users select other users from whom to receive information, and those users in turn share information that promotes their identities and interests. We argue this allows for partisan “curation bubbles” of users who share and consume content with consistent appeal drawn from a variety of sources. Yet, research concerning the extent of filter bubbles, echo chambers, or other forms of politically segregated information consumption typically conceptualizes information’s partisan valence at the source level as opposed to the story level. This can lead domain-level measures of audience partisanship to mischaracterize the partisan appeal of sources’ constituent stories—especially for sources estimated to be more moderate. Accounting for networked curation aligns theory and measurement of political information consumption on social media. Figure 1: Stylized Examples a) Users consuming information directly from sources b) Users curating information for other users Figure 4: URL Scores by Share Volume for Selected Domains on Twitter and Facebook Figure 8: Proportion of URLs Substantively Distinct from Domain for Different Facebook Engagement Types
January 29, 2025 at 6:29 PM
Reposted by Stefan McCabe
jongreen.bsky.social
Extremely happy to share that "Curation Bubbles" is online (open access!) at @apsrjournal.bsky.social: www.cambridge.org/core/journal...
Title: Curation Bubbles Abstract: Information on social media is characterized by networked curation processes in which users select other users from whom to receive information, and those users in turn share information that promotes their identities and interests. We argue this allows for partisan “curation bubbles” of users who share and consume content with consistent appeal drawn from a variety of sources. Yet, research concerning the extent of filter bubbles, echo chambers, or other forms of politically segregated information consumption typically conceptualizes information’s partisan valence at the source level as opposed to the story level. This can lead domain-level measures of audience partisanship to mischaracterize the partisan appeal of sources’ constituent stories—especially for sources estimated to be more moderate. Accounting for networked curation aligns theory and measurement of political information consumption on social media. Figure 1: Stylized Examples a) Users consuming information directly from sources b) Users curating information for other users Figure 4: URL Scores by Share Volume for Selected Domains on Twitter and Facebook Figure 8: Proportion of URLs Substantively Distinct from Domain for Different Facebook Engagement Types
January 21, 2025 at 1:07 PM
Reposted by Stefan McCabe
yang3kc.bsky.social
Introducing “DomainDemo: a dataset of domain-sharing activities among different demographic groups on Twitter.”

Today, we release five derived metrics of over 129,000 domains, quantifying their characteristics such as geographical reach and audience partisanship.

1/3
January 17, 2025 at 3:40 PM
sdmccabe.com
Kublai Khan in Invisible Cities is the original large language model
December 26, 2024 at 4:44 PM
Reposted by Stefan McCabe
devingaffney.com
Over the past few days I've been working out some thoughts about how the Bluesky feed generator feature could be used to, just maybe, make the internet a healthier place this time around. I think I have a sketch of a path there, and I'd love to talk it through! devingaffney.com/democratizin...
Democratizing Algorithmic Feeds on Bluesky
If the original sin of Web 1.0 was the pop-up ad, the original sin of web 2.0 was the move to algorithmic feeds. Opaque optimization strategies aimed at maximizing private revenue for the sake of what...
devingaffney.com
November 8, 2024 at 7:30 PM
Reposted by Stefan McCabe
jongreen.bsky.social
if you want a break from the election, we've posted a revision of our paper on pundits and ideological coalitions. bigger emphasis in this draft on the point that political ideologies aren't quite the same thing as political philosophies osf.io/xfy8r
November 1, 2024 at 9:30 PM
Reposted by Stefan McCabe
jongreen.bsky.social
Very honored to share that "Inequalities in Online Representation: Who Follows Their Own Member of Congress on Twitter?" (w/ @sdmccabe.com, Pranav Goel, and @davidlazer.bsky.social) won the 2024 Best Article award from APSA's Information Technology and Politics section! journalqd.org/article/view...
Inequalities in Online Representation: Who Follows Their Own Member of Congress on Twitter? | Journal of Quantitative Description: Digital Media
journalqd.org
June 11, 2024 at 7:58 PM
Reposted by Stefan McCabe
jongreen.bsky.social
New paper in Nature looking at the direct *and spillover* effects of Twitter deplatforming ~70k accounts following January 6th:
- less misinfo for remaining users who had followed deplatformed users to circulate
- some remaining users voluntarily exited
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Post-January 6th deplatforming reduced the reach of misinformation on Twitter - Nature
Difference-in-differences analysis indicates that the decision by Twitter to deplatform 70,000 users following the events at the US Capitol on 6 January 2021 had wider effects on the spread of mi...
www.nature.com
June 5, 2024 at 3:28 PM
Reposted by Stefan McCabe
jongreen.bsky.social
Very happy to share that "Curation Bubbles" is conditionally accepted at the American Political Science Review. osf.io/vbwer
Title: Curation Bubbles Abstract: Information on social media is characterized by networked curation processes in which users select other users from whom to receive information, and those users in turn share information that promotes their identities and interests. We argue this allows for partisan "curation bubbles" of users who share and consume content with consistent appeal drawn from a variety of sources. Yet, research concerning the extent of filter bubbles, echo chambers, or other forms of politically segregated information consumption typically conceptualizes information's partisan valence at the source level as opposed to the story level. This can lead domain-level measures of audience partisanship to mischaracterize the partisan appeal of sources' constituent stories -- especially for sources estimated to be more moderate. Accounting for networked curation aligns theory and measurement of political information on social media. Figure 1: Stylized examples of direct consumption and partisan curation, with curators mediating information flows in the latter. Figure 4b: URL audience scores by share volume for selected domains on Facebook, showing proportions of URLs for each domain that are statistically/substantively distinguishable from their parent domain's overall audience score. Figure 7: Proportion of URLs substantively distinct from domain by domain-level audience score. Domain-level audience scores closer to zero more frequently mischaracterize the audience scores of those domains' constituent stories.
May 30, 2024 at 3:20 PM
sdmccabe.com
the aronow and miller textbook is on display at second story books - big win for political methodology
Picture of a display window outside Second Story Books, including Foundations of Agnostic Statistics
March 30, 2024 at 5:01 PM
Reposted by Stefan McCabe
jongreen.bsky.social
I am *extremely* happy to share that "The Rhetorical 'What Goes with What': Political Pundits and the Discursive Superstructure of Ideology in U.S. Politics" is conditionally accepted at Public Opinion Quarterly: osf.io/vwqnf
Title page (too much text to paste here) A figure showing a) the strength of covariation in between different political concepts and b) the overall centrality of these concepts. Abstract organizing labels such as parties and ideologies, as well as race and immigration, are relatively central; discrete policy issues tend to be more peripheral.
March 20, 2024 at 11:35 AM
Reposted by Stefan McCabe
nirg.bsky.social
🚨New paper🚨 out in the International Journal of Press/Politics w/ Assaf Shamir and @jenny-oser.bsky.social 🎉

Here's what we learned from studying the composition of political content available to 600k+ registered U.S. voters on Twitter during the 2020 election.

doi.org/10.1177/1940...
🧵👇
December 5, 2023 at 8:38 AM
Reposted by Stefan McCabe
klunztrujillo.bsky.social
🚨 Does rurality correspond to more Republican-aligned policy attitudes? In a new short working paper w/ Jennifer Lin cup.org/46oW3dQ, we find that for most major national issues, rural attitudes are partisan and not necessarily more conservative/Republican.
September 27, 2023 at 2:47 PM
Reposted by Stefan McCabe
shugars.bsky.social
New paper led by Adina Gitomer w/ myself, @ryanjgallag.bsky.social, @sdmccabe.com, & @foucaultwelles.bsky.social finds that keywords may overlook the political speech of young people!

Now out in Computational Communication Research: www.aup-online.com/content/jour...

commsky cssky polcom polisky
September 26, 2023 at 5:07 PM
sdmccabe.com
New paper in Computational Communication Methods, led by (the bluesky-indifferent) Adina Gitomer! Whose tweets get overlooked when we use keywords to determine who's talking about politics? (1/6)

www.aup-online.com/content/jour...
The speech we miss: How keyword-based data collection obscures youth participation in online politic...
In this work, we leverage a panel of over 1.6 million Twitter users matched with public voter records to assess how a standard keyword-based approach to social media data collection performs in the co...
www.aup-online.com
September 26, 2023 at 3:11 PM