Friedolin Merhout
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fmerhout.bsky.social
Friedolin Merhout
@fmerhout.bsky.social
Sociologist and Social Data Scientist at University of Copenhagen. Duke University PhD. Intergroup relations & computational social science. He/him/his. https://fmerhout.github.io
Reposted by Friedolin Merhout
Remember that striking Starbucks workers are asking you not to buy Starbucks right now
November 24, 2025 at 1:51 PM
Reposted by Friedolin Merhout
It would, of course, be great if the underlying results were made public but it looks like meta in 2019 ran withdrawal experiments to examine polarization and well being ahead of forging collaborations with academics. Seems like more than enough to design bias the collaborations towards nulls 🧵
November 24, 2025 at 12:46 PM
Reposted by Friedolin Merhout
And what does this say about all the social media research based on Twitter/X, which has helped fuel the moral panic about the role of social media in contemporary politics?
The location ID on twitter revealing that 99% of the horrible shit on that website is just posted by people in India honestly soothed me a lot. Its literally all just fake.
November 24, 2025 at 12:50 PM
Reposted by Friedolin Merhout
Why did I visit the Facebook pages of 5500 German grocery stores on a grey lockdown day ca. 2021?

You can now find out in AJS.

Our work on ethnoreligious infrastructures is finally online in the ominous Volume 0:

www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/...
November 24, 2025 at 12:03 PM
Reposted by Friedolin Merhout
I'm happy to share that our team (@lecoursonnais.bsky.social, Maria Brandén, @martinhallsten.bsky.social and myself) has received 6.8M SEK in funding from the Swedish Research Council for our project: “Paths of Inequality: Life-Course Segregation Across Multiple Domains.”
November 20, 2025 at 10:11 PM
Reposted by Friedolin Merhout
🔈 *Call for Participation* 🔈

Italian Conference on Computational Social Science – CS2Italy
May 19-21, 2026 in Torino, Italy

Premier venue for Computational Social Science in Italy: #sociology #polisci #economics #netsci #complexsystems ++

Submit your abstract by Jan 15: cs2italy.org

plz reshare
November 18, 2025 at 9:30 AM
Reposted by Friedolin Merhout
When you gratefully negotiate away your corresponding author status because the open access fee is $5,000… or free, if the corresponding author happens to be from another author’s institution 🤔
November 19, 2025 at 1:18 AM
Had the pleasure of presenting @mauromartinelli.bsky.social and my work on making online search data suitable for longitudinal, comparative research funded by DFF dff.dk/en/ at the Danish Centre for Social Science Research www.vive.dk/en/ yesterday. Thanks to Frederik Thuesen for the invitation.
November 13, 2025 at 8:23 AM
Reposted by Friedolin Merhout
OK, #socsky, I'm looking for songs about intergenerational mobility (up or down) or class reproduction.

E.g., Whiskeytown's Jacksonville Skyline ("I was born in an abundance of inherited sadness"). Or, in a lighter vein, Musgraves' "Merry Go-Round."

Examples notwithstanding, the genre is open.
November 11, 2025 at 9:23 AM
Reposted by Friedolin Merhout
There is a lot of fuss today over whether chatbots can replace human participants in social sciences research when the solution is obvious: ask chatbots to simulate the views of social scientists and survey them on attitudes towards chatbots as substitutes for human subjects.
November 10, 2025 at 10:45 PM
Reposted by Friedolin Merhout
We're hiring 2 Assistant Professors of Sociology: Gender and Sexuality and Environmental Sociology. At @tcdsociology.bsky.social, we aspire to be a method-agnostic group of solution-oriented sociologists. Join our welcoming community at @tcdschoolssp.bsky.social. Deadline 1 Dec. Link in the comment.
November 7, 2025 at 8:04 PM
Reposted by Friedolin Merhout
If you only read one thing today - a Q&A with Patricia Kingori, a remarkable scholar who uncovered a remarkable story about a huge ‘fake essay industry’.

🧪 #academicSky

@nature.com @ox.ac.uk

www.nature.com/articles/d41...
Shadow scholars: inside Kenya’s multibillion-dollar fake-essay industry
Sociologist Patricia Kingori is helping to expose contract cheating by scholars in high-income countries.
www.nature.com
November 7, 2025 at 9:37 AM
Reposted by Friedolin Merhout
making Jacob the stereotypical Bluesky user is the rudest and truest attack anyone has ever made on us
BlueSky shoutout on Abbot Elementary!
November 6, 2025 at 11:36 PM
Reposted by Friedolin Merhout
We have just published the call for the Nuffield Postdoctoral Prize Research Fellowships in Politics. These are 3-year fully-funded postdocs that will allow you to focus on your research in a great academic environment. (And with excellent food)

www.nuffield.ox.ac.uk/the-college/...
Postdoctoral Prize Research Fellowships in Politics - Nuffield College Oxford University
www.nuffield.ox.ac.uk
November 6, 2025 at 1:27 PM
Reposted by Friedolin Merhout
I am looking for a post-doc working on behavioral/environmental/urban/energy economics to join my group at the University of Copenhagen. Position is 2 years (possibly 3), good salary, free health insurance, one of the most livable cities in the world. Apply here: jobportal.ku.dk/videnskabeli...
Postdoctoral Position in Behavioral and Environmental Economics
jobportal.ku.dk
November 3, 2025 at 8:23 PM
Reposted by Friedolin Merhout
ANES Data Release! electionstudies.org/data-center/...

The 3-wave ANES panel is now available. It merges data from 3 election studies (2016-2020-2024), the first time the ANES has collected interviews of the same respondents across 3 presidential elections.
2016-2020-2024-panel-merged-study - ANES | American National Election Studies
electionstudies.org
November 1, 2025 at 8:47 PM
Reposted by Friedolin Merhout
🎓 We’re hiring!
Two researcher / PhD positions in the ERC project DANCE – Dark Nerd Communities at the University of Münster 🇪🇺
🧮 Quantitative: survey, lab + field experiments
🎙️ Qualitative: ethnography, focus groups, interviews
Apply by 28 Nov 2025 👇
#AcademicJobs #ERC #PhD #CommunicationResearch
November 1, 2025 at 9:44 PM
Reposted by Friedolin Merhout
Since I have made this post I have gathered a bunch of observational studies with null results since then. Here is a quick thread:
What are some good examples of political science papers using observational data published with null results?
January 17, 2025 at 2:14 PM
Reposted by Friedolin Merhout
Pairwise visual conjoint experiment in the wild
October 30, 2025 at 12:24 PM
Reposted by Friedolin Merhout
Join us in 3 hours (at 17:00 Berlin time) to discuss replication problems of language models and recommendations for research!
🚨 for those from a different time zone: Germany already switched back clocks last weekend, so depending on where you are the time difference might be an hour off from usual
Next Wednesday, we're excited to welcome @lexipalmer.bsky.social, who will present co-authored work with @cbarrie.bsky.social and Arthur Spirling on "Replication for Language Models: Problems, Principles, and Best Practices for Political Science". Paper and information on how to join ⬇️
October 29, 2025 at 1:09 PM
Reposted by Friedolin Merhout
Interested in understanding #bias in #CSS?

✨Here's our Special Issue editorial in Communication Methods and Measures:

"Critical, but constructive: defining, detecting, and addressing bias in Computational Social Science"

👉 doi.org/10.1080/1931... (with @bachl.bsky.social & Nathan TeBlunthuis)
October 29, 2025 at 3:19 PM
Reposted by Friedolin Merhout
When researchers bring up confounders without ever having declared the actual analysis goal
October 28, 2025 at 10:24 AM
Reposted by Friedolin Merhout
you will note the lack of a budget for a $60 book in my already negative daily budget 🙃
October 27, 2025 at 8:27 PM
Reposted by Friedolin Merhout
We often hear from reviewers: "what about demand effects?" So we developed a method to eliminate them. Something weird happened during testing: We couldn’t detect demand effects in the first place! (1/8)
September 15, 2025 at 5:19 PM
Reposted by Friedolin Merhout
Minister says this will be the end of the annual Danish political tweaking of research funding:
uniavisen.dk/en/no-more-p...
No more political tinkering: Danish government launches long-term research strategy
Long-term funding and freedom for universities, but with clear national priorities. A new research strategy puts an end to annual negotiations over funding.
uniavisen.dk
October 27, 2025 at 12:08 PM