Alberto Acerbi

@acerbialberto.com

2.8K followers 1.1K following 750 posts

I am an associate professor in the Department of Sociology and Social Research at the University of Trento (Italy): cognitive anthropology / cultural evolution / digital media / cultural analytics
More info in the pinned post. .. more

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Sociology 30%

Political science 19%

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Alberto Acerbi @acerbialberto.com · Mar 23

Tecnopanico: www.mulino.it/isbn/9788815...

Cultural evolution in the digital age: bit.ly/2McstmR

Individual-based models of cultural evolution. A step-by-step guide using R: bit.ly/3MQBjT4 (free: acerbialberto.com/IBM-cultevo)

Substack (italiano): bit.ly/3lDERMq

web: acerbialberto.com

A. ACERBI, Technopanic. New Media, Reasonable Caution, Unfounded Fear

The spread of fake news, the power of conspiracy theories, the influence of algorithms on our choices and behaviour, the impact of social media on youth’s mental health, and other similar phenomena al...

www.mulino.it

Alberto Acerbi @acerbialberto.com · 6h

"Reranking partisan animosity in algorithmic social media feeds alters affective polarization" www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Reranking partisan animosity in algorithmic social media feeds alters affective polarization

Today, social media platforms hold the sole power to study the effects of feed-ranking algorithms. We developed a platform-independent method that reranks participants’ feeds in real time and used thi...

www.science.org

Alberto Acerbi @acerbialberto.com · 16h

The Australian ban on social media for under 16 could actually be an excellent quasi-experiment.

Alberto Acerbi @acerbialberto.com · 6d

So, maybe not the phones?
www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2025/1...

‘A Recipe for Idiocracy’

What happens when even college students can’t do math anymore?

www.theatlantic.com

Alberto Acerbi @acerbialberto.com · 6d

I link della settimana (#118)
open.substack.com/pub/albertoa...

I link della settimana (#118)

(i) Una storia della crescita della destra americana sui social media.

open.substack.com

Alberto Acerbi @acerbialberto.com · 10d

Join us in Torino for the second Italian Conference on Computational Social Science, CS2Italy, 19-21 May 2026!

Abstract submission deadline: January 15, 2026

cs2italy.org

CS2Italy

The Microsoft CMT service was used for managing the peer-reviewing process for this conference. This service was provided for free by Microsoft and they bore all expenses, including costs for Azure cl...

cs2italy.org

Reposted by David Lazer, Hugo Mercier, Paul E. Smaldino , and 2 more David Lazer, Hugo Mercier, Paul E. Smaldino, Alex Mesoudi, Alberto Acerbi

Brendan Barrett @bjjbarrett.bsky.social · 11d

Postdoc position in individual-level incentives, social
learning, and payoff-biased imitation shape group-level accuracy in complex prediction and decision-making tasks in Konstanz

files.newsletter2go.com/l3slzozn/s_i...

files.newsletter2go.com

Alberto Acerbi @acerbialberto.com · 11d

I'll be probably missing EHBEA, CES, and HBES because my teaching is concentrated March to May. Not cool.

Alberto Acerbi @acerbialberto.com · 13d

As I am working on this alone, I need you to cheer me up!

Alberto Acerbi @acerbialberto.com · 13d

I link della settimana (#117)
open.substack.com/pub/albertoa...

I link della settimana (#117)

(i) Un esponente della generazione ansiosa dice che la sua generazione non è ansiosa.

open.substack.com

Alberto Acerbi @acerbialberto.com · 13d

Advertisement from Facebook. A special gift for your anthropologist friend.

Alberto Acerbi @acerbialberto.com · 17d

"not only misinformation but also its coverage contribute to epistemic uncertainty by eroding confidence in credible sources of knowledge, and warrant further inquiry into the potential harms of news media’s attention to misinformation."
link.springer.com/article/10.1...

(Media Attention to) Misinformation Can Undermine Trust in Scientists - Political Behavior

Could news coverage of misinformation be harmful? Across two studies on U.S. citizens, we examine whether news coverage of misinformation generates misperceptions and decreases levels of trust in info...

link.springer.com

Alberto Acerbi @acerbialberto.com · 19d

"This curriculum is designed to remind you what the internet used to be—and still is. I’ve built it to help you get your digital spark back. After this course, you won’t complain to the algorithm gods anymore, praying for a better feed."
offlinecrush.substack.com/p/how-to-use...

how to use the internet again: a curriculum

a five-unit crash course in wandering, breaking, and building online

offlinecrush.substack.com

Alberto Acerbi @acerbialberto.com · 19d

As kids learn to do maths operation by hand and only after use a calculator, maybe there is a need for a "barbell strategy". On one side, fully embrace all the AI options, and on the other stick to fundamentals. University may need to focus on the latter. inexactscience.substack.com/p/university...

University education as we know it is over

Take-home assignments are dead, "one prompt away" is one prompt too far, and what we should do next

inexactscience.substack.com

Alberto Acerbi @acerbialberto.com · 20d

I link della settimana (#116)
open.substack.com/pub/albertoa...

I link della settimana (#116)

(i) Uno speciale di Wired sull’IA.

open.substack.com

Alberto Acerbi @acerbialberto.com · 27d

I link della settimana (#115)
open.substack.com/pub/albertoa...

I link della settimana (#115)

(i) Giornalisti e accademici sono perennemente preoccupati dell’overload informazionale, ma pensate che strano se alle persone piacesse avere accesso a più informazioni!

open.substack.com

Alberto Acerbi @acerbialberto.com · 27d

While academics and journalists mostly complain about overload, maybe the rest of people just enjoy having access to more information?

rasmuskleis.bsky.social @rasmuskleis.bsky.social · 28d

What if people appreciate having an abundance of content and communication, more than they feel overloaded by it?

@annisch.bsky.social et al decided to have a look. Their results? "We found that appreciation for abundance was about twice as common as overload".

Paper: journalqd.org/article/view...

Reposted by Richard Fletcher, Alberto Acerbi, Dean Eckles , and 1 more Richard Fletcher, Alberto Acerbi, Dean Eckles, Anne Schulz

rasmuskleis.bsky.social @rasmuskleis.bsky.social · 28d

Alberto Acerbi @acerbialberto.com · Oct 27

Goffman in the digital age
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Attention on social media depends more on how you express yourself than on who you are - Nature Human Behaviour

This study shows that how you express yourself is more influential than who you are in attracting attention on social media. Attention is easier to acquire than to sustain.

www.nature.com

Alberto Acerbi @acerbialberto.com · Oct 25

I link della settimana (#114)
open.substack.com/pub/albertoa...

I link della settimana (#114)

(i) Questa settimana è stato lanciato (per Mac) il nuovo browser di OpenAI, che integra ChatGPT con ricerca online.

open.substack.com

Alberto Acerbi @acerbialberto.com · Oct 24

As far as I know, the documentary is not available, but it is this one www.filmwork.it/documentari/...

Filmwork - Non Fu Per Caso

Documentari - in Trentino, una terra senza università, nasce la prima facoltà di Sociologia d’Italia.

www.filmwork.it

Alberto Acerbi @acerbialberto.com · Oct 24

Does anyone have any idea why, in the social sciences, at least since the last century, it has emerged a (vague, approximate, call it what you will) distinction between qualitative-left / quantitative-“right”?

Alberto Acerbi @acerbialberto.com · Oct 24

...about “protesting against an overly mathematical-statistical approach [that] was steering toward a quantitative sociology.”

Alberto Acerbi @acerbialberto.com · Oct 24

In a - very interesting - documentary about the founding and early years of the Faculty of Sociology in Trento, Renato Curcio (who would later go on to found the Brigate Rosse), then a student, recounts how one of the first student occupations was...

Reposted by Hugo Mercier, Paul E. Smaldino, Alex Mesoudi , and 3 more Hugo Mercier, Paul E. Smaldino, Alex Mesoudi, Alberto Acerbi, Andreas De Block, Massimiliano Simons

Charley Wu | hiring PhDs/Postdocs @thecharleywu.bsky.social · Oct 20

Fully-funded 4-year #PhD in Cultural Evolution! Join my @erc.europa.eu project exploring how compression & compositionality drive cultural innovation: hmc-lab.com/ERCPhDCultur...
Apply by Nov 12!
Maybe of interest to folks from #COSMOS2025 or @eslr.bsky.social? Please feel free to share! 🙏

ERC funded PhD position on Cultural Evolution

ERC funded PhD position on Cultural Evolution posted on October 16, 2025 We are currently seeking a highly motivated individual for a ful...

hmc-lab.com

Alberto Acerbi @acerbialberto.com · Oct 18

I link della settimana (#113)
open.substack.com/pub/albertoa...

I link della settimana (#113)

(i) Se avete letto le cose linkate qui dall’inizio dei tempi sulla disinformazione online, niente di tutto questo dovrebbe risultarvi nuovo, ma questo report è un bel sommario.

open.substack.com

Reposted by Hugo Mercier

Alberto Acerbi @acerbialberto.com · Oct 15

More null results in relationship between smartphone usage and mood (US adults)
www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Smartphone use in a large US adult population: Temporal associations between objective measures of usage and mental well-being | PNAS

Smartphones are essential tools in daily life yet concerns persist about their potential effects on mental health and well-being. Research on these...

www.pnas.org

Alberto Acerbi @acerbialberto.com · Oct 14

I am completely impartial, for a treatment of Dunbar's number and social media you should read the first chapter of "Cultural Evolution in the Digital Age".