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Michael Heseltine

@michaelheseltine

Post-Doc at University of Oxford. Congress, text-as-data, and political communications.

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21.08.2023
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Latest posts by Michael Heseltine @michaelheseltine

Dream content for @reuning.bsky.social ...

12.03.2026 14:48 πŸ‘ 2 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 0
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Going Local? Localized Rhetoric in Congressional Communications In the face of the purported nationalization of political discourse in the United States, to what extent do congressional representatives still engage locally through their public communications? B...

🚨NEW PAPER
Going Local? Localized Rhetoric in Congressional Communications

Is congressional comms really nationalized?
Analyzing 9M+ social media posts from Members of Congress, I show that local messaging is still common & strategic. New ML + domain sharing data
www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

07.01.2026 10:11 πŸ‘ 11 πŸ” 7 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 1

This is my favorite project that I have worked on and I think the findings have important implications for how we think about the nationalization of politics in the US. Members are still going local in comms. I hope Congress and comms scholars find this useful.
#Polcomm @polcomm.bsky.social

07.01.2026 10:11 πŸ‘ 2 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0
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In general, Presidential control, ideological extremity, electoral safety predict the use of localized messaging by Members. As does, in perhaps my favorite finding, Member seniority/freshman status - newer Members strategically engage more locally with their districts!

07.01.2026 10:11 πŸ‘ 1 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 0

I analyze multiple platforms (Twitter and Facebook) and multiple modes (messages and link sharing) to get a multi-faceted look at localized messaging. This inlcudes a local/national classification of over 45,000 shared web domains. The ML text classifier also performs really well.

07.01.2026 10:11 πŸ‘ 1 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 0
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Centrally, the use of localized messaging varies by party based on partisan control of the White House (and congressional chamber). Governing parties use messaging on localized benefits, opposition focuses more on national political developments. This results in a visually pleasing back and forth.

07.01.2026 10:11 πŸ‘ 0 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 0
Preview
Going Local? Localized Rhetoric in Congressional Communications In the face of the purported nationalization of political discourse in the United States, to what extent do congressional representatives still engage locally through their public communications? B...

🚨NEW PAPER
Going Local? Localized Rhetoric in Congressional Communications

Is congressional comms really nationalized?
Analyzing 9M+ social media posts from Members of Congress, I show that local messaging is still common & strategic. New ML + domain sharing data
www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

07.01.2026 10:11 πŸ‘ 11 πŸ” 7 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 1

I'm not writing that chapter, so it'll be not the worst!

14.12.2025 15:30 πŸ‘ 1 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0

There's a apsa presidential taskforce on AI which will release a report next year with teaching being a chapter

14.12.2025 15:23 πŸ‘ 2 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 0

An annoyingly good idea and well executed!

21.11.2025 13:04 πŸ‘ 1 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 0

I recently reviewed a paper that had not 3 but 5 reviewers on it, so seems to be some inefficiencies in the market here! Maybe Europeans just say yes more?

20.11.2025 18:32 πŸ‘ 1 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0
BJPolS abstract which discusses the relationship between politicians' communication and voter perceptions through social media content analysis between 2012 and 2022.

BJPolS abstract which discusses the relationship between politicians' communication and voter perceptions through social media content analysis between 2012 and 2022.

#OpenAccess -

Believing What Politicians Communicate: Ideological Presentation of Self and Voters’ Perceptions of Politician Ideology - https://cup.org/4gTSToM

- @hjghassell.bsky.social, @michaelheseltine.bsky.social & @reuning.bsky.social ‬

#FirstView

07.10.2025 08:10 πŸ‘ 6 πŸ” 5 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0

πŸ₯³ Our new paper is out at the British Journal of Political Science. We find a strong link between the ideology of candidate messaging and the perceived ideology of these candidates among voters.
Evidence that voters can differentiate between candidates and are attuned to what candidates say.

03.10.2025 15:49 πŸ‘ 19 πŸ” 6 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0
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And here's Facebook. Really does seem to be a Covid term!

26.08.2025 15:33 πŸ‘ 3 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 0
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Size matters: LLama 3.1/3.3 70b perform best, along with Qwen2/2.5 72b. Gemma2 and Phi4 stand out as strong mid-sized models. Many smaller models produce poor results. Model selection can have a huge impact on your results!

12.08.2025 16:28 πŸ‘ 0 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0
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πŸ“œPreprint!πŸ“œ
GPT5 replacing GPT4 effectively renders a whole range of existing GPT-reliant research unreproduceable. Open-source LLMs offer a science-friendly alternative, but which to use? I test 28 different LLMS in 7 languages so you can pick the best models for your task. osf.io/preprints/os...

12.08.2025 16:28 πŸ‘ 4 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 0

Just started using atrrr for search and user post collection. Firehose would be a massive plus!

03.08.2025 14:41 πŸ‘ 1 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 0

113th congress starts in '13 is my go-to shorthand!

02.07.2025 13:18 πŸ‘ 1 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0

Fresh email this morning: "an account has been created for you in ScholarOne", nooooo!

30.06.2025 11:58 πŸ‘ 1 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0
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I have a new paper forthcoming at BJPS with @hjghassell.bsky.social and @michaelheseltine.bsky.social looking at how social media messaging impacts perceptions of incumbent/candidate ideology. We find messaging ideology does relate to perceptions w/overtime changes

Pre-print: osf.io/preprints/so...

27.06.2025 15:55 πŸ‘ 11 πŸ” 6 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 1

Bit chicken and egg though, did researchers adjust to stargazer or did stargazer adjust its defaults to perceived research practices

01.05.2025 09:26 πŸ‘ 0 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0

My hunch would be at least some creep after the rise of stargazer as a default tabulating method, with its default of * for 0.1.

01.05.2025 09:20 πŸ‘ 1 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 0

Accept it with arms wide open, Kevin...

25.03.2025 17:28 πŸ‘ 1 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0

Worked in three reps offices. Member 1 was given weekly tally of calls, never saw emails. Member 2 given no information on either. Member 3 informal updates on calls, never saw emails.
99% is just fielded by interns. Up to the individual Member whether they care to receive any of it.

14.03.2025 15:54 πŸ‘ 2 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0

An extra 128gb ram and any 16gb or 24gb Nvidia gpu
... Alternatively, an absolute tonne of gaudy strobe rgb fans

11.03.2025 20:35 πŸ‘ 1 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 0

@sysilviakim.bsky.social
Coming to a JOP issue near you!

11.03.2025 17:49 πŸ‘ 3 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 2 πŸ“Œ 0

I think @jbgruber.bsky.social is the expert on this?

26.02.2025 12:05 πŸ‘ 1 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 0

Science!

09.02.2025 16:39 πŸ‘ 1 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0
Sage Journals: Discover world-class research Subscription and open access journals from Sage, the world's leading independent academic publisher.

R&P editors' collection 2024 (2/4)

@michaelheseltine.bsky.social & B. C. von Hohenberg find that GPT-4 coding of political text is highly accurate for shorter texts, but performance drops for longer ones, suggesting consideration should be given to task complexity when using LLM-assisted coding.

11.01.2025 15:31 πŸ‘ 3 πŸ” 1 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 0
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American Journal of Political Science | MPSA Journal | Wiley Online Library We assess the phenomenon of partisan temporal selective avoidance, or individuals dynamically altering their news consumption when news is negative toward their in- and out-party. Using nine months o...

🚨New at AJPS to start off the year! Do partisans change their news consumption based on daily news sentiment about their team? Democrats read more news on bad days for Republicans and less on bad days for Dems. Republicans turn to more conservative news on bad days for Republicans.

07.01.2025 16:13 πŸ‘ 4 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0