David Lazer

I think that there clearly has been a long term realignment around education (starting well before Trump, but setting the stage for him). But a lot of shifts in 2024 around younger and nonwhite voters seem ephemeral, and driven by the spike in the cost of living...

A few people have asked for the syllabus from my grad seminar on Generative AI for social science -- just posted it here:
statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2026/03/10/n...

This is the way a lot of us would like to think we would respond to hostile questions in a Congressional hearing, but its rare to see a witness just turn the tables on a Senator like this.

Negativity and Misinformation There are large and growing bodies of research highlighting inaccuracies in news coverage. In this paper, we suggest that negativity biases account for a substantial portion of longstanding inaccur...

I am excited about this new paper, Negativity & Misinformation, just out with @cbwlezien.bsky.social in @polcommjournal.bsky.social: "durable biases in information processing, by media organizations and humans more generally, can produce misinformation and misperceptions..." doi.org/10.1080/1058...

Interesting paper. When science is cheap, multiverse analysis becomes the key abstraction for authors & journals to strategize for.

These results suggest its the new unit of evidence authoring & review should accommodate.

Related to some of my comments here: substack.com/@jessicahull...

In this systematic review and meta-analysis of up to 153 longitudinal studies:

Social media use was associated with higher depression, behavioral problems, self-injury, and substance use, and lower self-perception and academic achievement tinyurl.com/47z3anym

Due March 15th! APSA Spring Research Grants: Centennial Center Program | Deadline: March 15, 2026 - The American Political Science Association (APSA) invites applications for the Spring 2026 Centennial Center Research Grant Program, which provides awards of up to $2,500 to support research across…

APSA Centennial Center Research Grant applications are due Sunday!

The #CCRG Spring cycle provides support for APSA #members who are contingent or #communitycollege faculty, #faculty in non-PhD departments, and #gradstudents.

The new application deadline is March 15th! buff.ly/A3Bxsbm

Two dose-response functions. When probabilities of exposure are not homogeneous across units, we can only partially identify the expected average outcomes from the average outcomes by exposure — even when the exposure map is correctly specified; see Corollary 11.2 — as shown here using data from Cai et al. (2015). AFEOs by exposure (left) only partially identify the EAO curve (right). Lines indicate bounds on the EAO, with red lines being the bounds when outcomes are assumed to be monotonic under exposure levels. Error bars and bands are 95% confidence intervals.

I'm giving the upcoming Online Causal Inference Seminar, this Tuesday 11:30am Eastern.

I'll be talking about different dose–response functions you might want to estimate when treatment effects may spill over from one unit to another.

Tune in & ask questions!
sites.google.com/view/ocis/home

🧵 Some personal news:

My new book, ON COURAGE – with Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist @juliaangwin.com – is available for pre-order NOW (out June 30).

It’s a deeply reported manual with sixteen lessons for how each of us can defy authoritarianism.

Pre-order: www.harpercollins.com/products/on-...

ICYMI, @thecoalition.bsky.social @knightcolumbia.org & @protectdemocracy.org filed a new First Amendment lawsuit earlier today challenging the Trump admin's denial of visas to tech researchers, tech workers, fact-checkers. Here's a post explaining why we're suing. mailchi.mp/knightcolumb...

Better Access: A Framework for Accessing High-Influence Public Platform Data Online platforms and services shape what we know, how we connect, and who gets heard, but the ability to study these posts and content at scale has steadily diminished. Platforms restrict researcher a...

Join us next week Friday, March 20, for a presentation by @leticiabode.bsky.social and @pfchap.bsky.social on "Better Access: A Framework for Accessing High-Influence Public Platform Data". Registration required via events.gwdg.de/event/1260/

Even if the destruction somehow stopped today, it will take years to rebuild.

How Researchers Won a Legal Fight to Access X's Data Under the DSA A Berlin court has delivered a consequential ruling, ordering X to grant Democracy Reporting International access to its publicly available data.

A Berlin court has ordered X to grant researchers API access under the Digital Services Act. Daniela Alvarado Rincón, Simone Ruf and Jürgen Bering explain how they won the case, and why it’s a major step for researcher data access.

An analysis of over 14 million social media posts from accounts in Canada found that 87% of conspiratorial claims come from just 100 influencers.

This minority of users impacts politics, influencing what people view as normal and leads to self-censoring to avoid attacks from conspiracy theorists.

There is a tsunami of fake social science research coming for us, and the American Sociological Association doesn’t care There are so many red flags that this system is sending up, crying out for the scholarly research enterprise to defend itself. Sadly, reader, that does not appear to be happening.

I wrote it up here, with a picture of a mockingbird, and links to data and code.
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Google pledges roughly three hours of its annual profit to fight climate change Google and others are committing $100 million to combat climate change.

The perfect headline doesn’t exi…

Can AI Replace Social Science Researchers? No. No it can't. Come on, now.

New post: Can AI Replace Social Science Researchers? (No. No it can't. Come on, now.)

davekarpf.beehiiv.com/p/can-ai-rep...

This is a good post. Highly recommend it as a companion to my earlier writing regardless of where you personally stand on the issue.

When I'm not doing congressional communications analyses I'm working on making sure each generation gets to know our system of government and their power in it.

Today we got some neat recognition!

On sabotage of our young scientists, by @holdenthorp.bsky.social @science.org
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

The effects of Facebook and Instagram political advertisements on the 2020 US election Nature Human Behaviour, Published online: 05 March 2026; doi:10.1038/s41562-025-02329-9To study the effects of political advertising, we conducted a field experiment with over 60,000 participants. Removing political advertisements from the Facebook and Instagram feeds of randomly selected participants before the 2020 US election did not have a detectable effect on political knowledge, polarization, turnout or political participation.

The effects of Facebook and Instagram political advertisements on the 2020 US election

Is the "AI takeover" a looming reality or a clever illusion created by human steering?

@soubhikbarari.bsky.social, a Senior Research Scientist at @norc.org’s SDC, breaks down why the "Moltbook" phenomenon is less about sentient agents and more about "dogs with walkie-talkies." #Moltbook 🧵

🏆 Our science communication awards are now open!

These awards recognize exceptional science journalists, communicators, and researchers whose work in 2025 made #STEM accessible and engaging for broad audiences.

Deadline: April 3, 2026

Apply now: www.nationalacademies.org/awards/excel... #scicomm

We're kicking off March with two data-driven talks, from 🏙️ cities to ⚾ baseball.
𝗥𝗮𝗳𝗮𝗲𝗹 𝗛. 𝗠. 𝗣𝗲𝗿𝗲𝗶𝗿𝗮 explores spatial accessibility and equitable urban policy.
𝗦𝗰𝗼𝘁𝘁 𝗣𝗼𝘄𝗲𝗿𝘀 applies modern stats to baseball, from pitch models to MLB pickoff strategy and bat-tracking data.
tinyurl.com/mpr87m6t

In Age of Disruption, a Defense of Incrementalism Evan Selinger and Albert Fox Cahn are the authors of Move Slow and Upgrade: The Power of Incremental Innovation.

In their book, Move Slow and Upgrade: The Power of Incremental Innovation, Evan Selinger and Albert Fox Cahn argue society is over-fixated on disruptive innovation and needs to adopt an “upgrader’s mindset,” which should be applied whenever “disruptive changes would pose the greatest social risk.”

A line graph showing NSF grant awards made through 2/27/26 for fiscal year 2026 compared with grant awards for fiscal years 2021-2025 for the Directorate of Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences.

7/10

Wow that is bleak

A lot of my academic focuses on public attitudes about foreign policy and the use of force. The just initiated bombing of Iran lacks many of the components that build and sustain domestic support for military action.

Representation in science and trust in scientists in the USA - Nature Human Behaviour Druckman et al. document gaps in trust in scientists in the USA. People from groups less represented among scientists (for example, women and those with lower economic status) are less trusting. Incre...

For no particular reason, I find myself thinking this morning of this recent @davidlazer.bsky.social paper, suggesting that seeing themselves represented amongst scientists improves trust in science for a variety of demographics

www.nature.com/articles/s41...