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Michael Scharkow

@mscharkow.bsky.social

480 followers 250 following 11 posts

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Communication & Media Studies 28%

Political science 19%

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Michael Scharkow @mscharkow.bsky.social · 17h

For a second I was really impressed that @richardfletcher.bsky.social brought out HUGE cardboard printouts for his slides ;-)

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Michael Scharkow @mscharkow.bsky.social · 9d

I'd argue that BA/MA theses don't need to be informative re an actual research question, but only inform us whether students actually learned something. Of course, running naive studies with tiny self-selected or convenience samples isn't helping the students in that regard either.

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Reposted by Michael Scharkow

Dr. Melanie Leidecker-Sandmann @leidecker-sandmann.bsky.social · Sep 8

🔥Hot off the press: Studie zur Repräsentation weiblicher Forschender in den Medien 👉
doi.org/10.1177/0963...
📰 Inhaltsanalyse: 4.860 Medienartikel
👩‍🔬 Nur 18% der zitierten Expert:innen sind Frauen
📊 Frauenanteil in der Forschung: ca. 31%
➡️ Deutliche Sichtbarkeitslücke für weibliche Forschende

Zwei männliche und eine weibliche Silhouette. Im Vordergrund Mikrophone wie bei einer Pressekonferenz

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Reposted by Amy Orben, Michael Scharkow

Georgia Turner @georgiaturner.bsky.social · Nov 13

🚨New preprint 🚨

**A computational model of reward learning and habits on social media**

🧵

We develop a computational reward learning model of real-world social media data, which infers the separate goal-directed and habitual cognitive processes driving posting...

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Reposted by Michael Scharkow

Alicia Ernst @aliciaernst.bsky.social · Jul 11

This year, I am living in a simulation - literally. 🌀

@mscharkow.bsky.social, and I are currently conducting a #simulation study on how users interact with algorithms in short-video environments such as #TikTok. I’ve had two incredible opportunities to share our progress so far.

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Reposted by Richard Fletcher, Jürgen Maier, Charlie Beckett , and 6 more Richard Fletcher, Jürgen Maier, Charlie Beckett, Javier Guallar, Francesco Saraceno, Fabio Giglietto, Václav Štětka, Linards Udris, Michael Scharkow

Reuters Institute @reutersinstitute.bsky.social · Jun 17

Our Digital News Report 2025 is out!

📊48 markets
🌏Almost 100K respondents
📰Key headline: Audiences lean into video news and influencers, raising misinformation concerns and new dilemmas for publishers

📱Explore now buff.ly/xLP67Tg
🧵Findings in thread #DNR25

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Reposted by Michael Scharkow

Petter Törnberg @pettertornberg.com · Apr 7

Large Language Model-based social simulation has emerged as an exciting new research method.

But do LLMs actually resolve the problems that have historically limited use of Agent-Based Models? What do they bring?

We review the literature to find out!

with Maik Laaroij
arxiv.org/abs/2504.03274

Do Large Language Models Solve the Problems of Agent-Based Modeling? A Critical Review of Generative Social Simulations

Recent advancements in AI have reinvigorated Agent-Based Models (ABMs), as the integration of Large Language Models (LLMs) has led to the emergence of ``generative ABMs'' as a novel approach to simula...

arxiv.org

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Michael Scharkow @mscharkow.bsky.social · Mar 25

Interesting. Do the funders provide reasons for this requirement, ie are they science-related or legal? In many ethics/IRB (equivalent) discussions I've had in the past, it seemed that collecting less demographic information seemed to be preferable in general for privacy/data protection reasons.

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Michael Scharkow @mscharkow.bsky.social · Mar 25

What happens if you have NA in your demographics? Do papers get rejected if the reported mean age is based on 73% of the sample? I get the warmup argument, but why not warm up with motivating items? If however, your experiment's primary outcome is age or gender, put that item in ASAP ;-)

Michael Scharkow @mscharkow.bsky.social · Mar 25

This is also what I learned and continue to teach. Sociodemographics rarely a predictor (or outcome!) of interest, at least in my courses...

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Reposted by Fabrizio Gilardi, Michael Scharkow

theresa gessler @gessler.bsky.social · Feb 13

I am a big fan of www.soscisurvey.de The basics are free anyway but university licenses of various types including for own servers exist as well, I think psychology at UZH even has one.
Plus, I've had very good experiences with support as well.

SoSci Survey ‣ Onlinebefragung vielseitig und DSGVO-konform

SoSci Survey - professionelle Onlinebefragung einfach, schnell, flexibel, sicher - für den nicht-kommerziellen Einsatz ein kostenloser Onlinefragebogen

www.soscisurvey.de

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Michael Scharkow @mscharkow.bsky.social · Dec 17

Good and timely stuff! I wonder how we can navigate the (very real) tradeoff between quality and reproducibility. Will reviewer #2 accept a drop of .2 in accuracy between gpt/gemini vs. local models if you make this decision transparent? What if results change? Just add another robustness check?

Reposted by Bryan McCann, Michael Scharkow

Joe, but like... spooky @makeitunclear.bsky.social · Dec 4

finally finished downloading my limewire wrapped after 20 years

LimeWire Wrapped

1. sistem_of_a_dowm_Zelda_song.flac
2. Nirvana - Glycerine.flv
3. track_8_(1)_(1)c.mp3
4. weird_al_Bert_and_Big_Bird_smoking_weed_FUNNY(parody).wav
5. jay-z_the-blueprint_FULL ALBUM_REAL.mp3.exe

370 4.9K 26K

Michael Scharkow @mscharkow.bsky.social · Dec 3

If you think of time as a sampling dimension (which we often do in many other contexts), it's not even a metaphorical population, but an occasion-specific sample. Which is also argued in the above literature regarding country-year data.

Michael Scharkow @mscharkow.bsky.social · Dec 3

Not to be confused with Schöpfungshöhenselbstzweifel!

Michael Scharkow @mscharkow.bsky.social · Dec 3

I sense a strong nudge to never reject anything 🤗

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Reposted by Michael Scharkow

Stadt Wien @wien.gv.at · Nov 22

Laut Studie ist Wien nicht mehr die unfreundlichste Stadt, sondern Berlin und München sind besser als wir. Es bringt nichts, irgendeinen Sündenbock zu suchen. Wir alle müssen jetzt reflektieren, wo wir im vergangenen Jahr Fehler gemacht haben könnten.

Wiener weniger unfreundlich

Das Image der Wiener Bevölkerung, besonders unfreundlich zu sein, hat sich leicht verbessert. Im vergangenen Jahr noch auf dem letzten Platz von 53 internationalen Städten, liegt Wien in Sachen Freund...

wien.orf.at

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Reposted by Michael Scharkow

Michael Hobbes @michaelhobbes.bsky.social · Nov 6

Hamilton from the top rope.
inthesetimes.com/article/trum...

People know who she was running against. They know exactly who he is. Most people, it turns out, just prefer him. That is what they like.

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Reposted by Michael Scharkow

Will Oremus @willoremus.com · Sep 27

this apparently heartfelt post from an openai cofounder takes some surprising turns

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Reposted by Michael Scharkow

Jesper Stromback @jesperstromback.bsky.social · Mar 8

New article, co-authored with Elena Broda, just out: "Misinformation, disinformation, and fake news: lessons from an interdisciplinary, systematic literature review". And it is open access, just waiting to be downloaded :). @polcomm.bsky.social

www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

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Michael Scharkow @mscharkow.bsky.social · Nov 7

Why not keep the current funcs and switch between hidden and research API based on an argument or an API key being present in the background? Or use hidden API as a fallback when both can be used for the same task? I use traktok (thanks!) for teaching and hope for non-breaking changes ;-)

Michael Scharkow @mscharkow.bsky.social · Oct 25

Predoc, actually.

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Reposted by Michael Scharkow

Pablo Jost @pjost.bsky.social · Oct 17

Dringende Hörempfehlung: Wunderbar kurzweiliges Interview mit @tanjev.bsky.social (aka „Professor Larifari“ ♥️) über seinen Weg in die Wissenschaft.

Journalistikprofessor Tanjev Schultz – Was kann der Journalismus von der Wissenschaft lernen?

Tanjev Schultz‘ Weg zur Professur ist eher ungewöhnlich: Er hat jahrelang erfolgreich für die "Süddeutsche Zeitung" als Journalist gearbeitet und unter anderem über den NSU-Prozess berichtet. Wa...

www.ardaudiothek.de

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