Fabrizio Gilardi

"Wireless waves are making men more feminine and women more masculine, according to Miss Mary Strachan, a reputable psychologist, who thinks wireless induced etheric disturbances are responsible for some of the vagaries of modern youth" - El Paso Herald, September 15, 1925

Who produces hate speech? And how does that matter for content moderation?

We show that across different countries and platforms, a relatively small share of users are responsible for a very large share of hate - overall, 5% write 83-100% of hateful content.

www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

10 new projects receive Una Europa Seed Funding to shape Europe’s future | Una Europa Eleven European research universities have come together to create a unique alliance – Una Europa. Our universities have been educating Europe for almost 1,000 years. Together, we teach more than 400,...

Delighted that our project “Democracy and AI” has been selected for Una Europa Seed Funding.

Our project establishes a network of 25 researchers from six Una Europa institutions: University of Zurich, KU Leuven, University of Edinburgh, FU Berlin, Leiden, UCD.

➡️ www.una-europa.eu/stories/10-n...

✖️Who produces most online hate speech and how effective is counterspeech?

➡️ @gloriagennaro.bsky.social et al. find that hate speech is concentrated among a few users and that counterspeech on X mostly fails to curb prolific offenders www.cambridge.org/core/journal... #FirstView

Logo of Political Science Research and Methods featuring the initials "PSRM" in a stylized white font on a black background.

#OpenAccess from @psrm.bsky.social -

The distribution of hate speech and its implications for content moderation - https://cup.org/4sgFqNl

- Gennaro, Bronner, Derksen, @maelkubli.bsky.social, Kotarcic, Kurer, Grech, @karstendonnay.bsky.social, @fgilardi.bsky.social & Hangartner

#FirstView

PhD Candidate in Societal Digitalization 80 % The Department of Sociology at the University of Zurich is offering a fixed-term 80% position for a PhD in Societal Digitalization at the chair of Prof. Dr. Gemma Newlands. The starting date is flexible in early 2026.

The Department of Sociology at the University of Zurich is offering a fixed-term 80% position for a PhD in Societal Digitalization at the chair of Prof. Dr. Gemma Newlands. The starting date is flexible in early 2026.

peer review is broken

Just found out about this free and straightforward QR code generator in R:

library(qrcode)
qr_code("add_your_url_here") |>
plot()

That's all! No registration or subscription required.
thierryo.github.io/qrcode/

Incredibly, the "On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog" cartoon is 32 years old, originally published in 1993

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_...

Living on the edge

Final call for this one 📝
bsky.app/profile/fgil...

You know how people wait until the last minute to submit paper proposals? Well, it’s almost the last minute. Get those abstracts ready and send them in!

#Call for Postdoc.Mobility. Expand your #research experience with a stay abroad. If you would like to find out more about this call, take part in our online information event on 17. November 2025.

➡️ sohub.io/51a4
🗓️Submission deadline: 3 February 2026

Looking forward to the inaugural @epssnet.bsky.social meeting in Belfast, 18–20 June 2026!

All political scientists encouraged to submit a paper. For work on public policy & administration, consider section I’m co-chairing w/ @asmusletholsen.bsky.social

⏳ 7 Nov 2025
🔗 epssnet.org/belfast-2026...

Very proud of our @ipz.bsky.social students who celebrated their graduation tonight. Congratulations to all, especially our prize winners! The prizes for best dissertation go to @reidingerve.bsky.social and @indubioproreto.bsky.social - Congrats! 🎉🥂🍾

📢 Call for Papers for EPSS 2026 conference in Belfast is out: epssnet.org/belfast-2026...

This week we’ll feature three sections to provide more information about the conference.

🔝 This time: Public Opinion, Political Communication & Political Methodology

🧵

▶️ Public Policy & Administration

👉🏽 Section chairs: @fgilardi.bsky.social & @asmusletholsen.bsky.social

📢 Our section welcomes research that addresses today’s most pressing issues in public policy and public administration. >>>

4/

There has never been a more important time to study public policy and public administration. With @fgilardi.bsky.social
, I’m chairing the section on these topics for the first @epssnet.bsky.social conference, in Belfast, 18–20 June 2026. Send us your best work: epssnet.org/belfast-2026...

The European Political Science Society is now accepting paper & panel proposals for its annual conference!

📢 Call for Papers: EPSS 2026 – Belfast

🗓️ June 18–20, 2026

📍 ICC Belfast

📬 Deadline: Nov 7, 2025

🧵

Most of America Opposed the Moon Landing July 20th, 2025 marks the 56th anniversary of the moon landing.

Nostalgia ignores pessimism, it forgets:

The moon mission was unpopular
Novel reading was frowned upon
The Walkman was anti-social
The Bicycle 'corrupted' women

After all, why would anyone have thought the good old days were bad? newsletter.pessimistsarchive.org/p/most-ameri...

🚨 New preprint alert:

We show that web-browsing GPT and LLaMA models can infer social media user demographics with reasonable accuracy—using only usernames.

This opens new possibilities for social media research in the post-API era but raises important privacy concerns.

Me: do you know who this is?

15yo: isn’t he the actor who played Obelix?

Vacancy — PhD Position on Improving Social Media Using Large Language Models The Institute for Logic, Language and Computation (ILLC) at the University of Amsterdam is inviting applications for a fully funded PhD position in the NWO VIDI project "Improving Social Media Using L...

PhD position out at University of Amsterdam

We’re looking for a computer scientist interested in LLMs, social media, and politics

Offer a lot of freedom and an exciting environment!

Please share!

werkenbij.uva.nl/en/vacancies...

Counterspeech encouraging users to adopt the perspective of minority groups reduces hate speech and its amplification on social media - Scientific Reports Scientific Reports - Counterspeech encouraging users to adopt the perspective of minority groups reduces hate speech and its amplification on social media

📢 In a new online field experiment, we find that #counterspeech with perspective-based messages can reduce online hate speech, and its 🌟amplification🌟

with a large research team across #ETHZurich @ipz.bsky.social @uclspp.bsky.social and beyond

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

Just joined @epssnet.bsky.social, very happy to support with the membership fee. Looking forward to Belfast 2026! #epss2026

Yesterday EPSS was founded, today we answer members’ questions.

A 🧵

1. Who formed EPSS?

EPSS was founded by a supermajority vote of the EPSA Council, made up of 3 EPSAL shareholders & 9 elected, appointed, or ex officio members.

1/

🚨 Big News for European Political Science 🚨

We’re thrilled to announce the launch of the European Political Science Society (EPSS): a new, member-led, not-for-profit association built to support our scholarly community.

🔗 epssnet.org

Here’s a thread with everything you need to know.

🧵

My "AI as Governance" piece is now out at @annualreviews.bsky.social of Political Science. It should be free access to everyone and I'm very happy with how it worked out (the second half is an extended spin of Applied Gopnikism to political science @alisongopnik.bsky.social @cshalizi.bsky.social

Societal AI Research Has Become Less Interdisciplinary

CS-only teams account for a growing share of work on fairness, safety, and other societal concerns in AI. What does this mean for AI governance and the role of SSH?

New working paper, feedback welcome!

arxiv.org/abs/2506.08738