📢PUBLICATION ALERT🧵
Our new research in Journal of Quantitative Description: Digital Media maps the global landscape of political microtargeting across 95 countries during 113 elections. Simon Kruschinski▲@meinungsfuehrer.bsky.social, Mads Hove, Tom Dobber, NHelberger is @[email protected], Claes de Vreese, and I analyze 2.5M FB & IG ads that ran from 2020 to 2022.

🔍 As the first global study of its kind, our research is meant as a stepping stone towards a more comprehensive understanding of targeting and more evidence-based regulatory approaches of digital campaigning.

📖 For more insights, read our full paper: journalqd.org/article/view/4….

Smart thread from CSMaP's Sol Messing about how TikTok's supposedly magical algorithm is really just a basic recommender system -- but with vastly better data powering it.

This piece is a prime example of the political economy of the disinformation panic: A non-profit - funded by the usual action groups - pushes an alarmist „study“ (no reflection of the state of research, no peer-review, of course). 1/7

politico.eu/article/russia…

Very important point: Sure, AI can boost the generation of disinformation, it can even help push it out on digital platforms, but that doesn’t mean that actual humans will see it, engage with it, or believe it. We miss most of the picture when we just zoom in on the supply side.

I am sure there is a way to blame frustration over this on iPhones, misinfo, & 🇷🇺 propaganda?

'American dream — of upward financial mobility, owning one’s own home, and retiring in a measure of comfort — is increasingly out of reach, new research showed'
semafor.com/newsletter/04/…

26% of US graduate degree holders agree that 'SchooI shoot!ngs, like those at Sandy Hооk, CT and ParkIand, FL, are f aIse fIag attacks perpetrated by the government'

twice the rate of others (13%)

aren't 'conspiracy theories' supposed to be for the uneducated??

⬇️⬇️⬇️

New PhD position in Communication Science
ASCoR | @[email protected]!

Dr Linda Bos [email protected]🇺🇦, Michael Hameleers, and I are looking for a PhD candidate for a 4-year project to study the perceived threat of misinformation. Find more information here: vacatures.uva.nl/UvA/job/PhD-Po…

New preprint w King/Kaphingst. When it comes to discernment for more specialized media (e.g., cancer news) does a more targeted literacy intervention beat a generic one? In this study, health-focused news tips caused undue skepticism of accurate news. osf.io/preprints/osf/…

Happy to have reviewed this very nuanced and insightful UK parliamentary report on misinformation 👇

My new book, Propaganda and Ideology in the Russian-Ukrainian War, is out soon with Cambridge University Press! Drawing on huge volumes of data, I argue that Russia's invasion of #Ukraine was not only a military disaster, but also a failure of propaganda. Preorder link: cambridge.org/gb/universityp…

1/2 'support for the rationalizing hypothesis (i.e., vaccination hesitancy [VH] predicts more conspiracy beliefs over time) was more consistent than for the idea that conspiracy theories shape VH (i.e., conspiracy beliefs predict more VH over time)' archive.ph/6LOc1

😱Moral Panic Checklist

☑️ Youth Trend
☑️ Worried Parents
☑️ Large new industry
☑️ Angry Incumbents
☑️ 1 Scary Sounding Study
☑️ Sensational Reporting
☑️ Book plugging charlatans
☑️ Posturing Lawmakers
☑️ Non-specific solutions
☑️“It’s different this time”pessimistsarchive.substack.com/p/all-the-time…

Most people don't go on social media for politics, but they were often exposed to political information just by logging on to the platforms. Meta's decision to de-emphasize news & politics could change that. Joshua Tucker talks to The Washington Post

washingtonpost.com/technology/202…

Misinformation is not a new phenomenon – far from it.

However, the COVID-19 pandemic highlighted how infodemics (an overabundance of information, including mis- and disinformation) pose a threat to health and confidence in research.

Expand the thread ⤵️

Damning review of Haidt's book thedailybeast.com/the-coddling-o…

People are often motivated to attack, dominate, and eliminate others. To get away with this, they must recruit social support and maintain a reputation as moral and decent. Demonizing narratives often emerge to solve these problems. New essay👇
conspicuouscognition.com/p/demonizing-n…

🚨 New pre-print 📢

In this study, I used a difference-in-differences design to evaluate how a long-term media literacy course affects students' ability to judge news accuracy.

Unlike many short-term interventions, this course was integrated into the school curriculum. 🧑‍🎓🏫

Experts who write fearfully about misinformation often depict humans as gullible saps whose zombie minds are infected by lies spread by social media.

In this week's The New Yorker, I argue that these writers get something fundamentally wrong how beliefs work: newyorker.com/magazine/2024/…

How many people go to church weekly?

Surveys say it's about 1 in 5 Americans.

Cell phone tracker data say it's actually closer to 1 in 20 Americans.

Fascinating new working paper!

nber.org/papers/w32334