Nicole Schwitter
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nschwitter.bsky.social
Nicole Schwitter
@nschwitter.bsky.social
520 followers 640 following 8 posts
Postdoctoral researcher at the Mannheim Centre for European Social Research and honorary research fellow at the University of Warwick | Interested in all things computational social science
Posts Replies Media Videos
Reposted by Nicole Schwitter
roryblank.bsky.social
Is this cheese grater conscious? Many users feel they're talking to a real person. Scientists say it's time to consider whether they're onto something.
a cheese grater that, if viewed from the correct angle, appears to have a friendly, stupid face, an example of Pareidolia
November 25, 2025 at 8:21 PM
Reposted by Nicole Schwitter
jwied.bsky.social
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 Nicole Schwitter
ryanenos.bsky.social
This is bad.
November 18, 2025 at 8:18 PM
Reposted by Nicole Schwitter
gildersleve.uk
I enjoyed writing this piece for the LSE Impact Blog on Musk's latest swing at Wikipedia, and its future in a hostile AI-skewed political landscape 👇
November 17, 2025 at 11:28 AM
Reposted by Nicole Schwitter
whysharksmatter.bsky.social
I think about this post every day 🧪
Screenshot of a Tweet pointing out that academic spam is actually in its own way kind of encouraging.
November 7, 2025 at 12:15 PM
Reposted by Nicole Schwitter
johannesbreuer.com
"dplyr but make it bussin fr fr no cap"
hadley.github.io/genzplyr/
dplyr but make it bussin fr fr no cap
`genzplyr` is an alternative syntax for `dplyr` that replaces boring old function names with GenZ slang. Your data wrangling is about to hit different.
hadley.github.io
November 8, 2025 at 10:24 AM
nschwitter.bsky.social
Can AI-generated images work as visual vignettes in survey experiments? I argue yes - and discuss how . in my new @sscratsage.bsky.social paper: doi.org/10.1177/0894...
Two AI generated images showing 1) a boy walking through a disorderly neighbourhood with graffiti and trash and 2) a boy walking through a very similar but cleaned up neighbourhood without trash ad graffiti.
November 4, 2025 at 11:08 AM
Reposted by Nicole Schwitter
lswisnom.bsky.social
Academics in Assyria in the 7th c BC complain that admin is preventing them from doing research and teaching
November 3, 2025 at 10:04 AM
Reposted by Nicole Schwitter
lfoswaldo.bsky.social
We have a new preprint: osf.io/preprints/so...

What have we learned about social media - the constantly moving target of empirical research - over the past decade?
October 30, 2025 at 10:53 AM
Reposted by Nicole Schwitter
wikimediafoundation.org
Happy 13th birthday, Wikidata!

Facts do not live in isolation; they form a web of connections that shape understanding. Thirteen years ago, Wikidata was created to store and link facts across Wikipedia and its sister projects. ➡️ w.wiki/Jg
Overlay of the number 13 in red and blue, with green stripes blending them into a single abstract composition. Text says: Happy anniversary, Wikidata! Happy 13th birthday to Wikidata, a free, collaborative, and multilingual database helping power Wikimedia projects.
October 29, 2025 at 11:24 AM
Reposted by Nicole Schwitter
hakendran.org
Dinge, die gleichzeitig passiert sind:

- Elon Musk startet "Grokipedia", eine "propagandafreie" Wikipedia-Kopie - komplett von einer KI geschrieben
- Eine Studie sagt, 45% aller KI-Ergebnisse seien "falsch"

Das und mehr – heute bei "Haken dran" mit @kattascha.bsky.social (zum ersten Mal bei uns!):
Lexikon voller Lügen (mit Katharina Nocun)
Stell’ dir vor, du hättest ein Lexikon, aber du hast das Gefühl, Elon Musk hat alles verändert, was ihm an der Realität nicht passt. Das ist die Grokipedia! Nur, dass nicht Elon Musk alles verändert hat, sondern seine KI Grok. Ein Lexikon von einer KI - eine super Idee angesichts der Zahl, dass laut einer Studie 45% aller KI-Antworten mindestens problematisch sind. Mit wem könnte man das alles besser besprechen, als mit Katharina Nocun (neu bei uns!)? ➡️ Jimmy Wales bei der New York Times: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/18/magazine/jimmy-wales-interview.html 🗓️ Am 6. November feiern wir 500 Episoden und 3 Jahre "Haken dran" mit einem 12 Stunden-Livestream! ➡️ Mit der "Haken Dran"-Community ins Gespräch kommen könnt ihr am besten im Discord: [http://hakendran.org](http://www.hakendran.org⁠) Kapitelmarken, KI-unterstützt: 00:00 Hallo Katharina! 04:00 Markteintrittschancen für dezentrale soziale Netzwerke 19:47 Grokipedia ist da 30:42 Russische Desinformation in KI-Antworten 34:33 Falsche Fakten durch KI 39:40 Überführung durch KI-Prompts 44:27 Armin Wolf verklagt X 47:38 TikTok-Deal in trockenen Tüchern? 52:06 Funktionen und Emotionen ℹ️ Hinweis: Dieser Podcast wird von einem Sponsor unterstützt. Alle Infos zu unseren Werbepartnern findet ihr [hier: https://wonderl.ink/@heise-podcasts](https://wonderl.ink/@heise-podcasts)
hakendran.podigee.io
October 29, 2025 at 9:21 AM
Reposted by Nicole Schwitter
jclaass.bsky.social
Ever wondered how to get better survey feedback from respondents? 🧐

👉 Check out our new @jssam.bsky.social paper together with @jkhoehne.bsky.social @jessicakuhlm.bsky.social testing different (1) visual designs and (2) answer formats of #FinalCommentQuestions.

🌐 academic.oup.com/jssam/advanc...
Asking for Feedback: Innovating Final Comment Questions in Self-Administered Web Surveys
Abstract. Web surveys frequently include so-called “final comment questions” (FCQs) to provide respondents the opportunity to express their experiences wit
academic.oup.com
October 29, 2025 at 7:38 AM
Reposted by Nicole Schwitter
webdesignmuseum.org
Happy 24th Birthday Wayback Machine!

On October 24, 2001, The Internet Archive organization launched a free digital archive of websites for the general public called the Wayback Machine.

The oldest pages stored in the archive date back to 1996.
Internet Archive website in 2001
October 24, 2025 at 9:07 PM
Reposted by Nicole Schwitter
depthsofwikipedia.bsky.social
recently discovered that wikipedia volunteers have a hilariously high bar for what constitutes "unusual death"
Why Wikipedia editors have deleted entries from the “List of unusual deaths”: “hippos are extremely dangerous and very aggressive and there is nothing unusual about hippos killing people” “the man was working on the toilet, making his death inherently less strange than if he had been using it” “no longer an unusual or unique occurrence” regarding impalement by beach umbrella “being hit by multiple motorcycles in a race is not an unusual death” “fatalities involving objects or animals being launched into oncoming traffic are considered commonplace” regarding a Canadian couple’s fatal collision with a “flying bear”
October 27, 2025 at 12:38 PM
Reposted by Nicole Schwitter
wafflecut.bsky.social
Learned that an anonymous outside expert on submersibles did an interview with the OceanGate Titan investigation, and they released a transcript, with all the names redacted. The first line of his first answer? "I'm sure you're familiar with my film Titanic."
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA NATIONAL TRANSPORTATION SAFETY BOARD ***************** Investigation of: LOSS OF THE SUBMARINE TITAN IN THE NORTH ATLANTIC OCEAN ON JUNE 18, 2023 * * * * * * Accident No.: *********** * * * * * * Interview of: Co-designer/Pilot Deepsea Challenger DCA23FM036 via Microsoft Teams Friday, July 26, 2024 INTERVIEW OF 10 BY LCDR 11 Q. So how did you get yourself started into submersible 12 operations? 13 A. Well, I'm sure you're familiar with my film Titanic. When I 14 set down the path to make that film, the first thing that I did 15 was arrange to be introduced to the head of the submersible 16 program at the P.P. Shirshov Institute in Moscow, a guy named 17| Professor I. I did that through a mutual friend 18 of ours, a guy named , who is one of the preeminent underwater cinematographers in the world. And had been on a 20 submersible expedition out to Titanic the previous year with the 21 Russians. And that was organized by a Canadian company that was 22 doing an IMAX film which was released under the title Titanica.
October 16, 2025 at 9:28 PM
Reposted by Nicole Schwitter
crestumr.bsky.social
📢 CREST & ENSAE Paris (IP Paris) are hiring an Assistant/Associate Professor in Computational Sociology starting Sept 2026!
crest.science/wp-content/u...
🧠 Quantitative & computational focus
🌍 Open to all
📅 Apply by Jan 31 2026 → [email protected]
#AcademicJobs #Sociology #HiPARIS #CREST
crest.science
October 17, 2025 at 5:40 AM
Reposted by Nicole Schwitter
iasliu.bsky.social
📢 Join the SweCSS Community!

If you would like to stay informed about upcoming events, job opportunities, and news from The Swedish Excellence Centre for Computational Social Science (SweCSS), you are welcome to join our mailing list. #css #academicsky

👉 Sign up here: liu.se/en/research/...
The Swedish Excellence Centre for Computational Social Science
This is a research hub and training centre at the forefront of Computational Social Science, a rapidly growing field that leverages computational tools to advance our understanding of human behavior a...
liu.se
October 17, 2025 at 8:54 AM
Reposted by Nicole Schwitter
mzesunimannheim.bsky.social
📣 Attention, postdoctoral researchers!

❗ Apply now for our MZES Visiting Fellowships 😊

💡 Spend 2-4 weeks at the MZES to share ideas
💰 Funding for accommodation, travel, daily allowance
📆 Deadline: 28 November

Full information:
👉 www.mzes.uni-mannheim.de/en/news/deta...
Screenshot of the call for applications for MZES Visiting Fellowships, 22 September 2025. For the full text, please follow the link.
September 22, 2025 at 9:29 AM
Reposted by Nicole Schwitter
conjugateprior.org
Monty Hall reminder: the only good reason to want the car is to sell it for more goats.
"I'm just a goat, standing in front of a contestant, asking them to choose me"
September 15, 2025 at 7:34 AM
Reposted by Nicole Schwitter
aalrababah.bsky.social
🚨 New working paper alert 🚨
Missing summer — and the Tour de France? Don’t worry, we got you covered. 🚴‍♂️🚴‍♂️🚴‍♂️
In this paper, we show that being on the route of Tour de France reduces far-right voting. osf.io/preprints/so...
September 16, 2025 at 10:25 AM
Reposted by Nicole Schwitter
joachimbaumann.bsky.social
🚨 New paper alert 🚨 Using LLMs as data annotators, you can produce any scientific result you want. We call this **LLM Hacking**.

Paper: arxiv.org/pdf/2509.08825
We present our new preprint titled "Large Language Model Hacking: Quantifying the Hidden Risks of Using LLMs for Text Annotation". We quantify LLM hacking risk through systematic replication of 37 diverse computational social science annotation tasks. For these tasks, we use a combined set of 2,361 realistic hypotheses that researchers might test using these annotations. Then, we collect 13 million LLM annotations across plausible LLM configurations. These annotations feed into 1.4 million regressions testing the hypotheses. For a hypothesis with no true effect (ground truth $p > 0.05$), different LLM configurations yield conflicting conclusions. Checkmarks indicate correct statistical conclusions matching ground truth; crosses indicate LLM hacking -- incorrect conclusions due to annotation errors. Across all experiments, LLM hacking occurs in 31-50\% of cases even with highly capable models. Since minor configuration changes can flip scientific conclusions, from correct to incorrect, LLM hacking can be exploited to present anything as statistically significant.
September 12, 2025 at 10:33 AM
Reposted by Nicole Schwitter
lsemethodology.bsky.social
We're hiring an Assistant Professor in Computational Social Science ❗

📚 jobs.lse.ac.uk/Vacancies/W/...

Apply before 26 October and join an internationally outstanding group of social science methodologists 🌎
we're hiring assistant professor in computational social science, applications close 26/10/2025
September 11, 2025 at 3:09 PM
Reposted by Nicole Schwitter
golareh.bsky.social
ICYMI: If you’re working or are planning on working with Google Trends Data for research, make sure to read this article by @floriankeusch.bsky.social & co-authors. They explore common pitfalls, incl. construct validity and reliability, and show how to improve data quality to enhance robustness.
The (mis)use of Google Trends data in the social sciences - A systematic review, critique, and recommendations
Researchers increasingly use aggregated search data from Google Trends to study a wide range of phenomena. Although this new data source possesses som…
www.sciencedirect.com
September 11, 2025 at 7:07 AM
nschwitter.bsky.social
Thanks for the recognition! 🥳 My USP: delivering reviews before the reminders.
europeansocreview.bsky.social European Sociological Review @europeansocreview.bsky.social · Sep 11
🚀We are extremely grateful for the high quality support we receive each year from our reviewers, and have created a Best Reviewer Award to acknowledge this even more!
It is with great pleasure that we congratulate 2025 winners: @saidhassan.bsky.social, @katyaoivanova.bsky.social &
#Nicole_Schwitter
September 11, 2025 at 1:07 PM
Reposted by Nicole Schwitter
distasioval.bsky.social
Reviewing, and doing it well, is one of the best services one can do to our profession. Massive thanks to the winners of the #ecsr2025 Best Reviewer Award: @saidhassan.bsky.social, @katyaoivanova.bsky.social, Nicole Schwitter
September 4, 2025 at 9:19 AM