Shannon McGregor, PhD

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...

Guess What Moderate Democratic Voters Aren’t Anymore? Moderate. Two new polls suggest that moderate Democrats, too, want higher taxes on the rich and some measure of economic populism. Moderate isn’t what it was in 1992.

Moderate Democrats with columns in newspapers are constantly saying the Democratic Party is way too liberal on "social" issues. Moderate Democratic voters in real life do not feel this way. With some polling data from @gelliottmorris.com and @dataforprogress.org. newrepublic.com/article/2074...

Trump is using immigration policy to suppress speech, lawsuit claims A new lawsuit accuses the administration of violating the First Amendment by threatening the visas of researchers for work on disinformation and content moderation of social media.

The Coalition for Independent Technology Research is standing up for free speech and against a government Censorship Policy that is threatening every American’s right to understand how technology impacts them, their children, and so much more.

www.npr.org/2026/03/09/n...

"Now is the time. Right? Now is the time to learn about these technologies...to push back against them." - @alicetiara.bsky.social

🎧 Start listening today on your fave podcast platforms: captivated.buzzsprout.com/2569769/follow

#CAPTIvatedPodcast #PodcastRecommendations #AI #Podcast

obviously lol

We’re 23 HBS Professors. This Is the Cost of Silence. | Opinion | The Harvard Crimson We urge business leaders to recognize that there is no conflict between their responsibilities as CEO and their responsibilities as citizens. The cost of silence is incalculable.

"We ask that the leaders of the business world in the US--some of whom it has been our privilege to teach--speak out now, act now, in defense of democracy....[T]here is no conflict between their responsibilities as CEO and their responsibilities as citizens. The cost of silence is incalculable."

Readers, she did get up. On my second cup of coffee — and reading Gitlin’s Dominant Paradigm before the suns come up. Gunna tear some shit UP today

If I was gunna wake up at 5, but now I’m good & wide awake at 4 … I should just call it & get up, right?

#ncga incumbents could look like they could lose:

Democrats: Reps. Carla Cunningham (Mecklenburg), Nasif Majeed (Mecklenburg), Shelly Willingham (Edgecombe) – all voted with GOP on veto overrides
(1/2) #ncpol

With 95% of precincts reporting, Phil Berger still losing to Sam Page.

A victory by Page changes the nature of NC politics, period.

Every time I read a “x LLM is better at doing my job than I am” article, it turns out the person writing the piece is at best 50th percentile for their job. My theory is these people are trying to position themselves as AI pros because they know they’re going to get fired soon

Anderson Clayton is a BOSS

North Carolina Republicans have only needed a single Democratic defection in the state House to override the Democratic governor’s vetoes this term.

One unreliable Dem already resigned in disgrace a while back. Another 2-3 losing their primaries is a big deal

Wow: In the early vote, it's a blow-out *so far*.

Rodney Sadler, the progessive pastor and activist, leads state Representative Carla Cunningham 75% to 18%.

(Stay tuned as we see how the Election Day vote compares, but that's an ominous start for the incumbent.)

Context:

1908: the Lancet, one of the most respected scientific journals, calls for 18 age limit on reading in bed amidst a moral panic surrounding children becoming "addicted" to novels, which were "designed to keep kids hooked" and destroy their attention/mental health

lol -- shaky! but, exciting?!

Some of y’all should consider a vibe shift ✌🏼Chasing URL shares to literally reply guy seems like a bummer of a way to spend your time.

Dying

Pretty stable opinion on the Iran strikes. No rally around the flag bump for POTUS, and much less popular than previous wars when they started www.gelliottmorris.com/p/polls-trum...

… lots of electoral press HAS included prediction market data/info as public opinion — and this “deal” contributes to the idea the prediction markets are a legitimate, reliable, and/or democratic form of public opinion.

I’d say given the institutional & political power the press and the AP particularly have, it’s pretty different than your convenient store example. You’re right - it’s not the same as journalists posting on Kalshi. But …

Legitimating a platform: evidence of journalists' role transferring authority to Twitter Logan Molyneux ®ª and Shannon C. McGregor® ABSTRACT Studies suggest a growing interdependence between journalists and Twitter. What is behind this interdependence, and how does it manifest in news texts? We argue that social media platforms (and Twitter in particular) have situated themselves as purveyors of legitimated content, a projection that journalists have not fully challenged and at times abetted. Instead, journalists rely on these platforms both for access to powerful users and as conduits to surface the words of 'ordinary people' This practice treats tweets more like content, an interchangeable building block of news, than like sources, whose ideas and messages must be verified. Using a corpus of U.S. news stories with tweets in them, we provide empirical evidence for our argument of the power of platforms to legitimate speech and shape journalism. This study illuminates journalists' role in transferring some of the press's authority to Twitter, thereby shaping the participants in and content of public deliberation.

That’s the AP granting Kalshi an awful lot of legitimacy — something @loganex.bsky.social & I have written about as it relates to the press & Twitter www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1...

Here’s my study on the press using social media on public opinion “Social media as public opinion: How journalists use social media to represent public opinion”

journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1...

I wrote my dissertation on all the ways in which news media used social media to represent public opinion in elections -- and all the democratic problems with it. But prediction markets are a whole 'nother level of wildness. The good news? @parkerbach.bsky.social & I are already planning our study.

🙄😂

Can’t hold a candle to “a single mom who works two jobs” — heart of an angel

This is why you do stunts.
This is why you do stunts.
This is why you do stunts.

He seems overstimulated

Zero dignity opposition party.

You can be there yelling or you can be absent but there is no honor in this nonsense civility show.

I swear they'd attend their own executions politely

Huge agree. It’s the clarifying of the conceptual mess that leads to solid empirics, if we’re so obsessed with pre-registration and what not