Tobias Widmann
twidmann.bsky.social
Tobias Widmann
@twidmann.bsky.social
Associate Professor in PolSci @AarhusUni | PhD @EUI_EU | Political Communication | Political Behavior | Political Psych | Computational Political Science
Reposted by Tobias Widmann
"Mainstream parties are increasingly allowing the far right to set the agenda" - for the @theguardian.com, @ashifakassam.bsky.social summed up our study.

@tevoelker.bsky.social and I answered some questions to put our results into context. Give it a read!

Study: bit.ly/4hhRFUN
October 20, 2025 at 6:13 AM
Reposted by Tobias Widmann
I had the pleasure to teach a 3-day crash course on #LLMs for PhD students.

We covered:

1️⃣ Text Representation and Embeddings
2️⃣ Machine Learning & Transformer Architecture
3️⃣ Generative Models for Social Sciences

The 6 slide sets and 10 notebooks are available on github: github.com/nicolaiberk/...
GitHub - nicolaiberk/llm_ws: Materials for my Workshop on LLMs
Materials for my Workshop on LLMs. Contribute to nicolaiberk/llm_ws development by creating an account on GitHub.
github.com
September 29, 2025 at 1:38 PM
Reposted by Tobias Widmann
📣 MORAL APPEALS IN POLITICAL COMMUNICATION 📣
New version of @twidmann.bsky.social and my working paper answering:
* Have moral appeals increased over time?
* Is the tendency to moralize ideologically patterned?
* Are some topics consistently more moralized than others?
osf.io/preprints/os...
OSF
osf.io
September 15, 2025 at 7:46 AM
Reposted by Tobias Widmann
Ever asked yourself how to detect and extract social groups from texts with computational social science? @haukelicht.bsky.social and me have a solution for you out at @bjpols.bsky.social. You can also find the pre-trained models on huggingface!
NEW -

Detecting Group Mentions in Political Rhetoric A Supervised Learning Approach - cup.org/45WZppQ

- @haukelicht.bsky.social & @ronjasczepanski.bsky.social

#OpenAccess
September 1, 2025 at 3:46 PM
Reposted by Tobias Widmann
This is such a great and important paper – especially when read alongside those two by
@kristinabsimonsen.bsky.social & @twidmann.bsky.social in @psrm.bsky.social & @bjpols.bsky.social:

📄 #1 (PSRM): www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

📄 #2 (BJPS): www.cambridge.org/core/journal...
Now in an issue @psrm.bsky.social: I show that the 🇩🇰 Social Democrats could have won policy support for a pro-immigrant platform if their messaging were framed in moral terms. Findings provide a central corrective to the popular notion that the Social Democrats were destined to go anti-immigrant 👇🏻
👅Can moral language boost pro-immigrant messages and be as effective as anti-immigrant messages?

➡️ @kristinabsimonsen.bsky.social shows that pro-immigrant actors are not always bound to lose against the anti-immigrant side www.cambridge.org/core/journal... #FirstView #OpenAccess
August 6, 2025 at 3:00 PM
Reposted by Tobias Widmann
Now in an issue @psrm.bsky.social: I show that the 🇩🇰 Social Democrats could have won policy support for a pro-immigrant platform if their messaging were framed in moral terms. Findings provide a central corrective to the popular notion that the Social Democrats were destined to go anti-immigrant 👇🏻
👅Can moral language boost pro-immigrant messages and be as effective as anti-immigrant messages?

➡️ @kristinabsimonsen.bsky.social shows that pro-immigrant actors are not always bound to lose against the anti-immigrant side www.cambridge.org/core/journal... #FirstView #OpenAccess
August 6, 2025 at 1:00 PM
Reposted by Tobias Widmann
📣 Jobs, jobs, jobs!

Aarhus University’s Department of Political Science is hiring:

🔹 Assistant Professor
🗓 Deadline: 25 August
🔗 international.au.dk/about/profil...

🔹 Associate Professor
🗓 Deadline: 8 September
🔗 international.au.dk/about/profil...
June 4, 2025 at 5:54 AM
Reposted by Tobias Widmann
New Article from our latest issue (Issue 7, 2025): "The Evolution of Global Cleavages: A Historical Analysis of Territorial and Functional World Alignments Based on Automated Text Analysis, 1843–2020" by Daniele Caramani, Siyana Gurova, and @twidmann.bsky.social

journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1...
May 27, 2025 at 3:13 PM
Reposted by Tobias Widmann
🚨 New publication 🚨 : Happy to share that my paper, "Losing Touch: The Rhetorical Cost of Governing" is now forthcoming at @cpsjournal.bsky.social. Short 🧵 about the paper here 👇 1/10
May 22, 2025 at 9:56 AM
Reposted by Tobias Widmann
🚨 working paper (w. @morganlcj.bsky.social @markuswagner.bsky.social): Protesters are not judged equally - even if tactics of groups are similar.

We ran an experiment in 🇩🇪 testing how people react to farmers vs. climate activists blocking roads.

What we find is disturbing:

osf.io/preprints/os...
May 16, 2025 at 12:59 PM
👇
From March 2025 -

When Do Political Parties Moralize?: A Cross-National Study of the Use of Moral Language in Political Communication on Immigration - cup.org/41t5yI4

- @kristinabsimonsen.bsky.social & @twidmann.bsky.social

#OpenAccess
May 19, 2025 at 7:56 AM
Reposted by Tobias Widmann
When politicians use simple language, citizens understand more and see them as less elite.

New paper with @danbischof.bsky.social out in @thejop.bsky.social!

doi.org/10.1086/736693
Can Simple Language Affect Voters' Political Knowledge and Their Beliefs About Politicians? | The Journal of Politics: Vol 0, No ja
www.journals.uchicago.edu
May 16, 2025 at 6:02 AM
Reposted by Tobias Widmann
Should democracies ban parties that threaten democracy?

In the DEMOTRADEOFF project survey we asked people in 15 countries about this.

A short 🧵 with some results

Citizens are deeply divided about this issue

Support for bans is highest in 🇮🇱 🇮🇹 🇪🇸 🇳🇱 🇵🇹 🇨🇭 🇩🇪

www.dw.com/en/germany-i...
May 2, 2025 at 10:56 AM
Reposted by Tobias Widmann
April 26, 2025 at 11:41 AM
Reposted by Tobias Widmann
We're organizing another round of the Summer School for Women* in Political Methodology 🎉
summerschoolwpm.org

Our super-cool speakers include msands.bsky.social @allisonwkoh.bsky.social @melinscribe.bsky.social @rebeccakittel.bsky.social @fabiennelind.bsky.social & @indiiigo.bsky.social

📆01/05
April 22, 2025 at 7:32 AM
Reposted by Tobias Widmann
💥Postdoc call 💥

Join my @erc.europa.eu project #YOPOW at Aarhus University

🎇 3-y position (possibility of 1-y extension)

❓How societal norms give rise to biased beliefs about political power in youth

🤖 Computational social science (large-scale text & image data)

Deadline May 15: bit.ly/4hIpSeD
March 25, 2025 at 8:12 AM
Reposted by Tobias Widmann
And if you won't be at COMPTEXT, feel free to get in touch at bakkaer@ps.au.dk if you have questions. Team members from my current research project are also happy to talk: @twidmann.bsky.social (widmann@ps.au.dk), Juliane Høgh Schmidt (jhs@ps.au.dk), Anna van Vree (aavv@ps.au.dk).
April 9, 2025 at 8:15 AM
Reposted by Tobias Widmann
‼️If you haven't seen the call already, this is your reminder‼️

3-year postdoc in computational social science at Aarhus University to study societal norms about political power 🫅

I'll be @comptext.bsky.social in Vienna (April 24-26) if you want to meet up and hear more about the position ☕🗣️
💥Postdoc call 💥

Join my @erc.europa.eu project #YOPOW at Aarhus University

🎇 3-y position (possibility of 1-y extension)

❓How societal norms give rise to biased beliefs about political power in youth

🤖 Computational social science (large-scale text & image data)

Deadline May 15: bit.ly/4hIpSeD
April 9, 2025 at 7:35 AM
Reposted by Tobias Widmann
⭐I am looking for 2 PhD candidates w/ focus on qualitative representation research in my ERC project INCONEX at University of Salzburg!

On the project: sites.google.com/view/inconex...

Applications due: 2 May 2025

Full ad: sites.google.com/view/inconex...

#EUsky #poliscijobs #qualitativemethods
April 7, 2025 at 5:40 AM
Reposted by Tobias Widmann
Gestern vor 22 Jahren haben Rechte in Frankfurt (Oder) Enrico Schreiber ermordet. todesopfer-rechter-gewalt-in-brandenburg.de/enrico-schre...

Auch jetzt, wo rechte Gewalt in Brandenburg wieder Höchstwerte erreicht ist es wichtig daran zu erinnern.
www.opferperspektive.de/aktuelles/st...
March 30, 2025 at 4:40 PM
Reposted by Tobias Widmann
Wonderful project, wonderful uni, wonderful opportunity!
👇👇
💥Postdoc call 💥

Join my @erc.europa.eu project #YOPOW at Aarhus University

🎇 3-y position (possibility of 1-y extension)

❓How societal norms give rise to biased beliefs about political power in youth

🤖 Computational social science (large-scale text & image data)

Deadline May 15: bit.ly/4hIpSeD
March 25, 2025 at 9:17 AM
Reposted by Tobias Widmann
This is a fantastic postdoc opportunity, to work with a one of the top scholars of political behaviour in Europe. Go for it!
💥Postdoc call 💥

Join my @erc.europa.eu project #YOPOW at Aarhus University

🎇 3-y position (possibility of 1-y extension)

❓How societal norms give rise to biased beliefs about political power in youth

🤖 Computational social science (large-scale text & image data)

Deadline May 15: bit.ly/4hIpSeD
March 25, 2025 at 8:20 AM
For everyone interested in working with computational tools, this is an amazing Postdoc position at the Political Science Department in Aarhus

If you have any questions, feel free to reach out to me.
💥Postdoc call 💥

Join my @erc.europa.eu project #YOPOW at Aarhus University

🎇 3-y position (possibility of 1-y extension)

❓How societal norms give rise to biased beliefs about political power in youth

🤖 Computational social science (large-scale text & image data)

Deadline May 15: bit.ly/4hIpSeD
March 25, 2025 at 9:14 AM
Reposted by Tobias Widmann
📢 CALL FOR PAPERS 📢

"Moral Economies of the Polycrisis. Conflict, Critique, and Legitimation in Critical Times"

Workshop, June 16-17
University of Hamburg

Deadline for abstracts: 07/04
Supported by the Economic Sociology section of @dgsoziologie.bsky.social

linuswestheuser.com/cfp-moral-ec...
March 17, 2025 at 4:35 PM