Yes we are getting older on average but we are also more likely to live in urban areas. data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP...

Homicide statistics are hard to relate to personally, unless you live in a war zone, you’re very unlikely to experience it directly. I think what actually shifts people’s perception for the worse is moving to complex cities and the sense of background disorder that comes with urban life.

... @ulrikeklinger.bsky.social @dkreiss.bsky.social @giuliasandri.bsky.social @andrewchadwick.com @leticiabode.bsky.social @ekvraga.bsky.social @michaelvaughan.bsky.social @zey.bsky.social @shelleyboulianne.bsky.social @zizip.bsky.social @davekarpf.bsky.social @zephoria.bsky.social 🙏

This multi-year collaboration across continents (and timezones!) with Francesco Marolla, Marilù Miotto and Giovanni Cassani has been incredibly rewarding - proud of what we accomplished together.

This study has greatly benefited from the work of @paologerbaudo.bsky.social ...

#4 Both leadership and grassroots influenced candidate selection via different channels. Meetup network centrality boosted success while Forum activity had no effect. Leadership used voting interface design and curation mechanisms. Digital democracy involves multiple simultaneous power dynamics.

#3 Leadership influence didn't align with platform design. Grillo's blog comments barely echoed his messaging, while grassroots Meetup showed strongest leadership influence. Affordances indicate potential, not outcomes - user behaviour matters more than platform design.

#2 Platform boundaries limit cross-platform communication. Most users stayed on single platforms, but grassroots users (Forum/Meetup) crossed platforms more than centralized users (Blog/Facebook). These "bridges" may maintain cohesion during growth but amplify fragmentation in decline.

#1 Different platforms create distinct power distributions. Facebook/Blog enhanced global visibility for top-down broadcasting. Meetup/Forum fostered local visibility for grassroots coordination. Organisations can simultaneously maintain centralised messaging AND decentralised participation.

Methodological contribution: We developed network-based measures for platform "affordances" - visibility (how widely you can be seen) and associability (how easily you can connect). Local vs global variants create different power dynamics.

🔎 We find that 🔎 ...

Within these constraints, leadership retains network-making power for collective action while grassroots audiences harness connective action. However, both must surrender networking power (access control) and network power (rule-setting) to platform owners.

Theoretical contribution: Platforms wield three forms of power over political actors - instrumentarian (shaping behavior), curation (filtering content), and system administration (controlling access).

They surely appreciate where their communication power truly lies

Also acknowledging scholarship that informed our approach to AI governance: @jeah.bsky.social, ‪@ckatzenbach.bsky.social‬ & Kirsten Gollatz as well as @fabianlferrari.bsky.social‬, José van Dijck & Antal van den Bosch on observability, inspectability, and modifiability in GenAI systems

This work builds on the foundational thinking of Axel Bruns @snurb.info, Zizi Papacharissi @zizip.bsky.social, danah boyd @zephoria.bsky.social, and Crystal Abidin.

Their work on produsage, networked and refracted publics, and digital culture shaped how we conceptualised the Undersphere.

We argue AI governance should learn from climate policy:
– Embrace complexity & uncertainty
– Prepare for unintended uses
– Enable fast, flexible responses

Because waiting for harms to go mainstream — like we did with deepfakes — is a mistake we can't afford to repeat.

What are Underspheres?

They’re creative, decentralised spaces (think r/StableDiffusion) where AI tools get remixed, repurposed — and sometimes misused.

They’re not driven by ideology, but their outputs (like deepfake porn) pose real threats to privacy, safety & democratic trust.