@elinazorina
📚 Commissioning Editor @springernature.com 🗃️ ex-PhD candidate '25 @polscileiden.bsky.social, democratic legitimacy beliefs, voting behavior, political parties https://who-opposes.netlify.app/ 🎓 MA '20 @ceu-polsci.bsky.social 💪 '17 Alumna Bard-Smolny CCE
💡Another insightful public discussion on NATO’s evolving relationship with Ukraine and Russia organized by @clingendael.bsky.social and moderated by Niels Drost 🎙️Speakers: Elizaveta Gaufman, Han Bouwmeester, Bob Deen, and Hubert Smeets
📢 ‘We’re already at war – we’re just acting as though we’re not’ 🌍
During the Just Peace Dialogues from 16 to 22 June in The Hague, institute member Daniel Thomas will call for greater awareness – and dialogue.
Read the interview here: www.universiteitleiden.nl/en/news/2025...
And while I have been trained not to draw broad consequential claims from studies whose external validity may be limited, applying this insight or keeping in mind the principle of compromise in policymaking and peacebuilding activism can be the answer we are looking for in a polarized world of today
One of the most crucial findings from over four years of my research in Leiden is that compromise is a highly valued principle among voters (at least in the domain of legislative politics)
Thank you so much, Babak!
Our paper is published in OA in West European Politics @wepsocial.bsky.social! What a milestone 🥳
What happened in the Netherlands and what will happen next? I wrote a short piece about the collapse of the Dutch government for @ukandeu.bsky.social ukandeu.ac.uk/when-not-if-...
🚨 New Paper in the Journal of European Public Policy 🚨
Think anti-immigration sentiment is here to stay? 🧠 Think again.
New research by Alessia Aspide (in which I play a small role) reveals a new insight: when people understand immigration as a solution to fiscal crisis, attitudes shift 1/2
new books’ haul and an advertisement for our BIG SUMMER CHOIR concert with Pandora Studio on June 8th! Tickets here: lnkd.in/dvSSmMSp
Cover of The Oxford Handbook of Dutch Politics Edited by Sarah de Lange, Tom Louwerse, Paul 't Hart & Carolien Van Ham
Just over half a year ago, the Oxford Handbook of Dutch Politics was published. This means that authors working at Dutch universities, can now share a copy of their chapters online for free access, according to Dutch copyright law. My own chapters are linked below 👇
Go buy Mateo’s book! Brilliant work published by @leidenup.bsky.social
Looking forward to Just Peace Festival www.justpeacethehague.org/en/
this implication for political communication and polarization in social media (and beyond) is explicitly reflected in #grok's instructions, and I can only give kudos to the developers, while hoping that this situation will not change in future.
And that's all from me on this thread 🤓
...but the main output of that #grok analysis for me was that, contrary to my expectation, this AI has not passed judgement on the involved people and institutions in a way you would expect from the technology developed by the company motivated and dressed in a particular party/ideology colors
now, let's go to case 2. There, I replicated the above steps but applied them to the series of controversial posts related to an 'ophef' of 2022. As that scandal is no longer relevant and has been resolved, we will not look into the details...
looking at these 'thoughts' I would argue that we can use AI tools in education, even if only to demonstrate to students how one can organize their interaction with resources, opinions and judgements. Of course, as with everything, the success of such approach would depend on students, but still
it even browsed polisci research papers to see if the hoax has been widely discussed in the discipline (I would be cautious to trust that this analysis has been exhaustive, similarly to how we should not trust ChatGPT's essays, yet it gives me a good overview and start point for my own research)
#grok 's extended output allows one to check what goes into its analysis process: thus, I saw the key points, as well as the summary of the whole debate, relevance of it to my own background and field, broader systemic issues related to the publishing industry and academia, its implications etc
...however, being able to conclude this from "[it] has blown my mind but raised many questions" is quite impressive to me.
but I was surprised, and, threading carefully, I would even say - positively: #grok inferred the range of the arguments I was thinking about fairly accurately. Now, of course, this is not rocket science, and I do not presume to have cutting edge opinions on the topic...
and here I was very curious, considering the team and the person behind #grok, I was ready for anything...
however, it asks itself an interesting question: "I am wondering what specific concerns Elina had". For context, see the post on the sokal squared hoax below. So, naturally, my next step was the following:
case 1: I did not give #grok any prompts, just pressed on the the first post of the identical two-comment thread published on BSKY and X (image below). The AI's 'thought process', available to the user, shows that #grok is unsure what exactly the user wants in this scenario, a content summary or?
partly, this is the case because #grok has a good set of instructions it keeps referring back to, it almost looks like human logical reasoning process. How do I know this? I used a couple of my own X posts, controversial and not, to see what kind of interpretation and analysis can this AI perform
first of all, good news, the AI still cannot read our minds, but it comes pretty close to asking itself 'why questions' as per Judea Pearl's and Dana Mackenzie's brilliant book (2018)
let me jump on the bandwagon of the continuous conversation on the generative AI, education, political polarization and the technology's role in these: now that #grok is available in Europe for some time and has advanced its functionality, I went on X to play around with it and examine some things
and the bigger picture is valid too, my only reluctance is applying the same rubric on everything and everyone when limited information is available, but from the perspective of the author - I solidarize
absolutely, I do appreciate editors doing that and know quite some people who are truly apologetic and transparent when it comes to author communication when bad/insulting etc review is involved
personally, I don’t have a negative position on this, but I think that depends on what’s your goal and how it’s done. FYI some of the journals’ submission systems do not allow editors to remove crappy reviews, that’s a shame but what can we do 🤷♀️
when it comes to sharing third-party reviews it would depend on what the publisher includes in the report and peer review model: for instance, plos.org/resource/ope... but generally, this might raise questions especially if the reviewer hasn’t agreed on sharing it externally (anonymously or not)