In case you missed this earlier this week, our team put out a report documenting our approach to "rapid research" during elections, crises, & other breaking news events. It demonstrates a role for university researchers — relying on contextual and methodological expertise — to act as "sensemakers".
Prominence brings influence 👇
I'm proud to be a co-author on this new @cip.uw.edu report with my colleagues @danielletomson.bsky.social, @katestarbird.bsky.social @mertcanbayar.bsky.social and @emmaspiro.bsky.social.
Check out Kate's 🧵 ...
How did we do what we did in this type of adversarial setting? How can researchers in universities and think tanks replicate CIP model for tracking and making sense of emerging rumors in a given context? We have good starting points lined up for the ones who are courageous enough to "Sapere Aude."
Since 2020, our team has iterated on a model for “rapid research” to help surface, analyze, & resolve rumors about election administration. This work demonstrates an innovative role for researchers to support public sensemaking during rapidly unfolding events.
uw.pressbooks.pub/rapidresearc...
If we see similar amplifier media events this week, we could get a sharp ⬆️. I think that’s unlikely now that high-reach shows like Rogan’s have already covered it. Still, low- to mid-tier outlets like NewsNation or local Fox stations could draw more attention to Loeb’s anomalies and the alien frame.
Mention volume of the 3I/ATLAS convo on X by anomalies and topics. The yellow line shows the peak of the anomalies conversation on October 29 when Joe Rogan hosted Loeb in his podcast. -- The yellow line shows the total volume of Loeb's anomalies (daily).
Let's remember that the two biggest spikes in attention to 3I/ATLAS and Avi Loeb’s “anomalies” came from an amplifier event: Joe Rogan's interview with Loeb.
Oct 21 – Loeb announces he’ll appear on Joe Rogan.
Oct 28–29 – The show airs on the 28th, and the peak in anomaly talk hits on the 29th.
3I/ATLAS is going to make its closest approach to Earth on December 19th.
I expect our media to give more attention to 3I/ATLAS and Loeb to receive more media attention this week.
Although the recent volume is low, depending on the media coverage this week, we could see higher volumes soon.
Graph showing the post/mention volume of the conversation on 3I/ATLAS on X from July 1st, 2025, to December 15th, 2025.
Mention volume percentage changes by topic showing that the conversation around the object's tail increased by 200% percent in the last two days, while almost all other anomalies' volume decreased or stayed the same.
A screenshot of Loeb's blog post about the new anti-tail of 3I/ATLAS.
Updates on the 3I/ATLAS convo on X:
• Overall volume has stayed low over the past month.
• But… 3I/ATLAS's new anti-tail and Avi Loeb’s new post about it have reignited the alien framing.
• Mentions of the tail are up nearly 200% in the last 48 hours. Alien frame is up 28% at the same period.
Read Bayar's recent blog post, "Alien of the gaps: How 3I/ATLAS was turned into a spaceship online," on the @cip.uw.edu website: www.cip.uw.edu/2025/12/03/3...
“Our information systems reward the production of mystery and speculation,” @cip.uw.edu postdoctoral scholar @mertcanbayar.bsky.social recently wrote in a blog post about online discourse around the 3I/ATLAS interstellar comet.
Read more in @geekwire.com: www.geekwire.com/2025/alien-i...
Anyone who loves #Luis #Buñuel might notice a tiny wink to Le charme discret de la bourgeoisie hidden in the piece. See if you spot it.
Scientists help society reason under uncertainty, but speculative framing travels farther and faster than caveats. If we want better collective sensemaking about space and what space entails, we need to reward careful context as much as we reward captivating conjecture.
A healthier norm is possible: keep curiosity high, keep claims proportional to evidence, and clearly mark the difference between an open question, a working hypothesis, and an extraordinary claim.
3I/ATLAS shows how our systems reward mystery: “maybe a probe, mystery deepens,” "stay tuned..." The alien of the gaps is as much a property of our platforms as of our own predispositions, and of the discreet charm of a revelation that never quite arrives.
In ~700k English posts on X about 3I/ATLAS, >260k mention at least one “anomaly” popularized in Loeb’s writing, and ~118k invoke an alien frame—about 40–45% of the anomaly-focused posts and roughly one in six posts overall. These are conservative estimates: they count only explicit references to 👽.
A big driver here is Harvard astrophysicist Avi Loeb. Through blog posts, interviews, and talks, he packaged 3I/ATLAS as a list of “anomalies” and repeatedly floated the idea that it could be alien tech. UFO/UAP communities online saw a ready-made script to work with.
3I/ATLAS is only the third confirmed interstellar object we’ve seen. Astronomers see an interesting but natural comet. Online, it quickly became an “alien mothership” with a secret mission. I wrote about how that happened and what it tells us about us and our info systems.
While the scientific consensus is that #3I/ATLAS is a natural comet, one scientist's claims that the object shows certain anomalies that could indicate alien origins have ricocheted through the online universe, and these claims may be amplified as the comet passes Earth in mid-December. (3/3)
In the latest from @cip.uw.edu, Mert Can Bayar @mertcanbayar.bsky.social analyzes how knowledge gaps can lead to the spread of speculative theories, such as those shared by a Harvard astrophysicist that the comet known as 3l/ATLAS might be an alien "mothership." (1/3)
www.cip.uw.edu/2025/12/03/3...
Analyzing posts on X, @mertcanbayar.bsky.social found that about 40% of the 3I/ATLAS conversations on on that platform invoked an aliens/ET frame. Bayar builds on the work of scholars including @katestarbird.bsky.social, who has written about how rumors travel within recognizable frames. (2/3)
UW CIP postdoc @mertcanbayar.bsky.social explains how a high-profile scientist's statements about the 3l/ATLAS comet harnessed uncertainty and attention dynamics, and spawned widespread speculation about an alien visitor, an "alien of the gaps" in human knowledge: www.cip.uw.edu/2025/12/03/3...
What if conspiracy theories were taken to their logical endpoint and put into practice as a form of governance? @mertcanbayar.bsky.social and I explore this question in our new article on the conspiracist theory of power in @cogitatiopag.bsky.social.
www.cogitatiopress.com/politicsandg...
The open-access article, "The end of trust and safety?: Examining the future of content moderation and upheavals in professional online safety efforts," is available in the Proceedings of the 2025 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/...
The CIP researchers, Rachel Moran-Prestridge, @schafer.bsky.social, @mertcanbayar.bsky.social and @katestarbird.bsky.social, also examined current perspectives of content moderation and broader strategies for maintaining safe digital environments.
In a newly published research article in the Proceedings of the 2025 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, a team of @cip.uw.edu researchers interviewed trust and safety professionals and explored upheavals within the T&S industry.
Thrilled to be at the CHI conference this week where PhD student @schafer.bsky.social will present our paper — co-authored w/ Rachel Moran (1st author) & @mertcanbayar.bsky.social — titled, "The End of Trust and Safety?" dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/...
I am so sorry, Maddy.
This is amazing
