Julia Mendelsohn
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jmendelsohn2.bsky.social
Julia Mendelsohn
@jmendelsohn2.bsky.social
4.2K followers 730 following 55 posts
Incoming Asst Prof @UMD Info College, currently postdoc @UChicago. NLP, computational social science, political communication, linguistics. Past: Info PhD @UMich, CS + Lx @Stanford. Interests: cats, Yiddish, talking to my cats in Yiddish.
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jmendelsohn2.bsky.social
Julia Mendelsohn @jmendelsohn2.bsky.social · Feb 20
New preprint!
Metaphors shape how people understand politics, but measuring them (& their real-world effects) is hard.

We develop a new method to measure metaphor & use it to study dehumanizing metaphor in 400K immigration tweets Link: bit.ly/4i3PGm3

#NLP #NLProc #polisky #polcom #compsocialsci
🐦🐦
Screenshot of top half of first page of paper. The paper is titled: "When People are Floods: Analyzing Dehumanizing Metaphors in Immigration Discourse with Large Language Models". The authors are Julia Mendelsohn (University of Chicago) and Ceren Budak (University of Michigan). The top right corner contains a visual showing the sentence "They want immigrants to pour into and infest this country". The caption says: Figure 1: Dehumanizing sentence likening immigrants to the source domain concepts of Water and Vermin via the words "pour" and "infest". The abstract text on the left reads: Metaphor, discussing one concept in terms of another, is abundant in politics and can shape how people understand important issues. We develop a computational approach to measure metaphorical language, focusing on immigration discourse on social media. Grounded in qualitative social science research, we identify seven concepts evoked in immigration discourse (e.g. "water" or "vermin"). We propose and evaluate a novel technique that leverages both word-level and document-level signals to measure metaphor with respect to these concepts. We then study the relationship between metaphor, political ideology, and user engagement in 400K US tweets about immigration. While conservatives tend to use dehumanizing metaphors more than liberals, this effect varies widely across concepts. Moreover, creature-related metaphor is associated with more retweets, especially for liberal authors. Our work highlights the potential for computational methods to complement qualitative approaches in understanding subtle and implicit language in political discourse.
Reposted by Julia Mendelsohn
dgrand.bsky.social
🚨New WP🚨
Dialogues with our AI DebunkBot:
✔️Reduced belief in antisemitic conspiracy theories among believers
✔️Effect durable at 1+ month
✔️Improved attitudes towards Jews among initially negative participants

🟰Debunking works for deeply rooted, identity-linked conspiracies
osf.io/preprints/ps...
November 22, 2025 at 3:23 PM
Reposted by Julia Mendelsohn
lucy3.bsky.social
Wisconsin-Madison CS is recruiting faculty for natural language processing!

jobs.wisc.edu/jobs/assista...
Assistant Professor of Computer Sciences: Natural Language Processing (RISE-AI) - Madison, Wisconsin, United States
Current Employees: If you are currently employed at any of the Universities of Wisconsin, log in to Workday to apply through the internal application process.Job Category:FacultyEmployment Type:Regula...
jobs.wisc.edu
November 21, 2025 at 6:59 PM
Reposted by Julia Mendelsohn
manoelhortaribeiro.bsky.social
TikTok and the likes transformed how we spend time on our phones. But do they increase mobile use, or just reshuffle what we already do?

We find that adopting TikTok increases total mobile usage and shortens breaks from the phone.

Preprint: osf.io/preprints/so...
November 17, 2025 at 3:42 PM
Reposted by Julia Mendelsohn
luceriluc.bsky.social
Interested in detecting influence operations on TikTok? Check this out👇 just accepted at ICWSM 2026 @icwsm.bsky.social 🚀🚀🚀
luceriluc.bsky.social Luca Luceri @luceriluc.bsky.social · May 19
What does coordinated inauthentic behavior look like on TikTok?

We introduce a new framework for detecting coordination in video-first platforms, uncovering influence campaigns using synthetic voices, split-screen tactics, and cross-account duplication.
📄https://arxiv.org/abs/2505.10867
November 17, 2025 at 5:54 PM
Reposted by Julia Mendelsohn
polcomm.bsky.social
🚨 Call for Papers!

The Polcomm Section invites submissions for #APSA2026, taking place September 3–6.

Next year’s theme is “Democracy Under Threat: How to Understand, Protect & Rebuild.”

👉 Submit now: buff.ly/PRvg2Wq
November 14, 2025 at 1:55 PM
Reposted by Julia Mendelsohn
comptext.bsky.social
SAVE THE DATE! We are pleased to announce that the 8th COMPTEXT Conference will take place at the Institute of Data and AI (lnkd.in/ebN7za_Q) of the University of Birmingham, 23-25 April 2026, with @chrisguarnold.bsky.social serving as the lead local organiser. Call for Papers coming soon!
University of Birmingham photo
November 14, 2025 at 2:19 PM
Reposted by Julia Mendelsohn
anamarasovic.bsky.social
𝙒𝙚'𝙧𝙚 𝙝𝙞𝙧𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝙣𝙚𝙬 𝙛𝙖𝙘𝙪𝙡𝙩𝙮 𝙢𝙚𝙢𝙗𝙚𝙧𝙨!

KSoC: utah.peopleadmin.com/postings/190... (AI broadly)

Education + AI:
- utah.peopleadmin.com/postings/189...
- utah.peopleadmin.com/postings/190...

Computer Vision:
- utah.peopleadmin.com/postings/183...
November 7, 2025 at 11:35 PM
Reposted by Julia Mendelsohn
dustinbwright.com
Heading to #EMNLP2025? Interested in automatic summarization? Then come to our poster for "Unstructured Evidence Attribution for Long Context Query Focused Summarization" !

⏰ When: Fri. Nov 7 14:00-15:30
🗺️ Where: Hall C

I'm unable to attend but @iaugenstein.bsky.social will present our work!
November 3, 2025 at 3:25 PM
Reposted by Julia Mendelsohn
yyahn.bsky.social
Work with us at UVA School of Data Science!

@uvadatascience.bsky.social will continue to hire multiple faculty members across many areas of data science! Let me know if you're curious about our school. :)

datascience.virginia.edu/pages/join-o...
Join Our Team — School of Data Science
We are hiring faculty and staff to build a forward-thinking community with a diversity of perspectives, backgrounds, and ideas centered around data science.
datascience.virginia.edu
October 31, 2025 at 9:12 PM
Reposted by Julia Mendelsohn
bhyravajjula.bsky.social
When you read a poem, do you wonder how the poet structures it through whitespace between/before words and lines?

We did! Our findings on whitespace - how to measure/preserve it, how usage varies across form/time, how it affects LLMs - now in an #EMNLP2025 (main) paper: arxiv.org/abs/2510.16713
🧵👇
"so much depends / upon / a whitespace: Why Whitespace Matters for Poets and LLMs" by Sriharsh Bhyravajjula, Melanie Walsh, Anna Preus, Maria Antoniak
October 31, 2025 at 3:08 PM
Reposted by Julia Mendelsohn
angelinawang.bsky.social
Cornell (NYC and Ithaca) is recruiting AI postdocs, apply by Nov 20, 2025! If you're interested in working with me on technical approaches to responsible AI (e.g., personalization, fairness), please email me.

academicjobsonline.org/ajo/jobs/30971
Cornell University, Empire AI Fellows Program
Job #AJO30971, Postdoctoral Fellow, Empire AI Fellows Program, Cornell University, New York, New York, US
academicjobsonline.org
October 28, 2025 at 6:19 PM
Reposted by Julia Mendelsohn
alexanderhoyle.bsky.social
LLMs are often used for text annotation, especially in social science. In some cases, this involves placing text items on a scale: eg, 1 for liberal and 9 for conservative

There are a few ways to accomplish this task. Which work best? Our new EMNLP paper has some answers🧵
arxiv.org/pdf/2507.00828
A diagram illustrating pointwise scoring with a large language model (LLM). At the top is a text box containing instructions: 'You will see the text of a political advertisement about a candidate. Rate it on a scale ranging from 1 to 9, where 1 indicates a positive view of the candidate and 9 indicates a negative view of the candidate.' Below this is a green text box containing an example ad text: 'Joe Biden is going to eat your grandchildren for dinner.' An arrow points down from this text to an illustration of a computer with 'LLM' displayed on its monitor. Finally, an arrow points from the computer down to the number '9' in large teal text, representing the LLM's scoring output. This diagram demonstrates how an LLM directly assigns a numerical score to text based on given criteria
October 27, 2025 at 2:59 PM
Reposted by Julia Mendelsohn
wegotlieb.bsky.social
I will be recruiting PhD students via Georgetown Linguistics this application cycle! Come join us in the PICoL (pronounced “pickle”) lab. We focus on psycholinguistics and cognitive modeling using LLMs. See the linked flyer for more details: bit.ly/3L3vcyA
October 21, 2025 at 9:52 PM
Reposted by Julia Mendelsohn
kaitlynzhou.bsky.social
As of June 2025, 66% of Americans have never used ChatGPT.

Our new position paper, Attention to Non-Adopters, explores why this matters: AI research is being shaped around adopters—leaving non-adopters’ needs, and key LLM research opportunities, behind.

arxiv.org/abs/2510.15951
A circular flow diagram that compares current and proposed practices for LLM development using data from adopters and non-adopters. Three gray boxes represent current practices: “R&D,” “Chat Models,” and “Adopters’ Needs and Usage Data,” connected in a clockwise loop with black arrows. A blue box labeled “Non-adopters’ Needs and Usage Data” adds a proposed feedback path, shown with blue arrows, linking non-adopter data back to R&D and adopters’ data.
October 21, 2025 at 5:12 PM
Reposted by Julia Mendelsohn
patrikgerard.bsky.social
New paper + interactive dashboard on the 2024 election information ecosystem.
Building on discourse networks work with @hanshanley.bsky.social @luceriluc.bsky.social @emilioferrara.bsky.social—this lets us visualize the online landscape as a unified system, rather than isolating each platform.
Comparison diagram showing traditional vs discourse network user representations. Left: isolated platform-specific clusters with no cross-platform connections. Right: unified network where users are connected across platforms through shared narrative engagement, revealing previously invisible cross-platform communities.
October 20, 2025 at 6:33 PM
Reposted by Julia Mendelsohn
eollion.bsky.social
🇫🇷 We are hiring 🇫🇷

Assistant or Associate Professor Position in Computational Sociology @crestsociology.bsky.social @ipparis.bsky.social

Details here (please RT)
www.shorturl.at/E57le
October 20, 2025 at 2:40 PM
jmendelsohn2.bsky.social
Warm greeting from the DC metro upon my return from running the NLP4Democracy workshop. 🤢
Ad in the DC metro that says “AI Purpose-Built for the Department of War”
October 11, 2025 at 11:10 PM
Reposted by Julia Mendelsohn
chenhaotan.bsky.social
The amazing @jmendelsohn2.bsky.social kicking off the NLP4Democracy workshop!
October 10, 2025 at 1:32 PM
Reposted by Julia Mendelsohn
thomasdavidson.bsky.social
There is one week left to apply to join us at Rutgers! We're hiring an Assistant Professor in Computational Sociology as part of a cluster of new hires in data science and AI.

Applications are due next Wednesday, 10/15.
Assistant Professor in Computational Sociology
The Department of Sociology at Rutgers University, New Brunswick, seeks applications for a tenure-track position at the Assistant Professor level specializing in Computational Sociology.  The search i...
jobs.rutgers.edu
October 9, 2025 at 2:11 PM
jmendelsohn2.bsky.social
I will be at #COLM2025 this week, and would love to connect with folks interested in applications (and critiques) of language modeling in social science research!

And join us for the NLP4Democracy workshop on Friday!

sites.google.com/andrew.cmu.e...

#NLP #NLProc #LLM #ComputationalSocialScience
NLP 4 Democracy - COLM 2025
sites.google.com
October 6, 2025 at 7:31 PM
Reposted by Julia Mendelsohn
ariannapera.bsky.social
How does online communication adapt to organizational context?

In a new pre-print with @cerenbudak.bsky.social and @lajello.bsky.social, we study US labor unions’ Facebook use of discourse frames around wins and losses in representation elections. 🧵

📖 arxiv.org/abs/2510.01757
October 3, 2025 at 12:15 PM
Reposted by Julia Mendelsohn
myra.bsky.social
AI always calling your ideas “fantastic” can feel inauthentic, but what are sycophancy’s deeper harms? We find that in the common use case of seeking AI advice on interpersonal situations—specifically conflicts—sycophancy makes people feel more right & less willing to apologize.
Screenshot of paper title: Sycophantic AI Decreases Prosocial Intentions and Promotes Dependence
October 3, 2025 at 10:53 PM
Reposted by Julia Mendelsohn
dbamman.bsky.social
The UC Berkeley School of Information is hiring an assistant professor in the broad field of Information--including areas of info seeking/retrieval, digital humanities, cultural analytics, info viz, & philosophy of information (among others). Deadline Nov 1! aprecruit.berkeley.edu/JPF05014
Assistant Professor - Information - School of Information
University of California, Berkeley is hiring. Apply now!
aprecruit.berkeley.edu
September 23, 2025 at 2:43 PM
Reposted by Julia Mendelsohn
ahalterman.bsky.social
Very excited that my paper with @katakeith.bsky.social is now out in @polanalysis.bsky.social. We investigate whether LLMs actually follow the instructions/definitions provided in codebooks, propose some diagnostics, and release a new evaluation dataset.
www.cambridge.org/core/journal...
Codebook LLMs: Evaluating LLMs as Measurement Tools for Political Science Concepts | Political Analysis | Cambridge Core
Codebook LLMs: Evaluating LLMs as Measurement Tools for Political Science Concepts
www.cambridge.org
September 19, 2025 at 1:45 PM