Want to learn about computational social science *for free* and launch interdisciplinary research projects? We are so excited to announce there will be *26* Summer Institutes in Computational Social Science this year! Apply to one of them here:
https://sicss.io/locationsIt is *vital* not to understate the prevalence of anti-semitism, but we must also be careful not to overstate it as well. Previous reports that 1 in 5 young people deny the Holocaust were probably very inaccurate according to this careful analysis from Pew:
https://shorturl.at/rCHN1 .
Online opt-in polls can produce misleading results, especially for young people and Hispanic adults
We examine how an opt-in poll may have unintentionally misled the public about the sensitive issue of Holocaust denial among young Americans.
Interesting new research on how extremist movements spread across social media platforms:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s44260-024-00002-2
Adaptive link dynamics drive online hate networks and their mainstream influence - npj Complexity
Online hate is dynamic, adaptive— and may soon surge with new AI/GPT tools. Establishing how hate operates at scale is key to overcoming it. We provide insights that challenge existing policies. Rather than large social media platforms being the key drivers, waves of adaptive links across smaller platforms connect the hate user base over time, fortifying hate networks, bypassing mitigations, and extending their direct influence into the massive neighboring mainstream. Data indicates that hundreds of thousands of people globally, including children, have been exposed. We present governing equations derived from first principles and a tipping-point condition predicting future surges in content transmission. Using the U.S. Capitol attack and a 2023 mass shooting as case studies, our findings offer actionable insights and quantitative predictions down to the hourly scale. The efficacy of proposed mitigations can now be predicted using these equations.
Researchers at Stanford pitted AI against Human Experts in a war-game simulating conflict with China:
https://arxiv.org/pdf/2403.03407.pdfFascinating new experiment shows that people who interact with an AI chatbot vs. a person report "feeling heard" more often. However, the effect disappears when the people learn they are interacting with an AI chatbot (Bing Chat):
https://shorturl.at/cnuwx. Surprisingly, no one was asked to leave their wife @kevinroose :)
Youtube, Twitter, and LinkedIn usage are all trending downward over the last year according to the latest USC Neely center survey on social media usage. Reddit, on the other hand, appears to be growing.
It's important to criticize social media companies when they make mistakes, but also applaud them when they achieve progress (e.g. in reducing incivility). According to the Neely Center's recent surveys, both Nextdoor and Facebook have made real progress on this front over the last few months.
My last book will soon be available in Chinese! Really excited to hear what Chinese/Taiwanese readers think-- particularly since we need so much more research on social media and polarization outside the United States!
Moderates are the most knowledgeable about politics, according to a study of 45 countries:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-024-53114-z
The association between political orientation and political knowledge in 45 nations - Scientific Reports
Political knowledge is crucial for well-functioning democracies, with most scholars assuming that people at the political extremes are more knowledgeable than those at the center. Here, we adopt a data-driven approach to examine the relationship between political orientation and political knowledge by testing a series of polynomial curves in 45 countries (N = 63,544), spread over 6 continents. Contrary to the dominant perspective, we found no evidence that people at the political extremes are the most knowledgeable about politics. Rather, the most common pattern was a fourth-degree polynomial association in which those who are moderately left-wing and right-wing are more knowledgeable than people at the extremes and center of the political spectrum. This pattern was especially, though not exclusively, prevalent in Western countries. We conclude that the relationship between political orientation and political knowledge is more context-dependent and complex than assumed, and caution against (implicit) universal conclusions in social sciences.
