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Reposted by Hjalmar Bang Carlsen

turgut keskintürk @tkeskinturk.bsky.social · 15d

I believe that the experimental paradigm in "polarization research" should receive strong criticism for its thin conception of political culture. I make this argument in a new blog post.

Experiments Can’t Reduce Partisan Animosity
tkeskinturk.github.io/blog/experiments

The Question of Manipulability

I believe that this is a long-overdue correction for a reason. Much of the literature on polarization has operated under a tacit assumption: that political attitudes are malleable.

If you frame an issue one way, you can shift people’s support for particular candidates. If you “humanize” out-partisans, animosity declines. If you push people into a room and make them discuss a question for 15 minutes, you see that ideology is more moderate than it would be1. The implicit theory of political culture operating here is that people’s ideologies are weak, malleable, and ready to be channeled into something “good” if only we have the “right” intervention.

1 That is, they are more likely to be 2, 3, or 4 in a Likert scale than being 1 or 5 on a 5-point scale.

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Reposted by Hjalmar Bang Carlsen

Neal Caren @haphazardsoc.bsky.social · 13d

Carolina Sociology is hiring!

• Tenure-track in computational sociology or advanced quantitative methods
• Open rank in population health.

unc.peopleadmin.com/postings/307...
unc.peopleadmin.com/postings/307...

Assistant Professor

This Assistant Professor position will teach graduate and undergraduate courses, conduct research in the field of Sociology, participate in departmental service, and mentor graduate students.

unc.peopleadmin.com

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Hjalmar Bang Carlsen @hjalmarcarlsen.bsky.social · Sep 1

super interesting. We are working on new cohorts in the refugee support movement in the wake of the Ukrainian refugee influx. Think your model here can help clarify some stuff!

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Reposted by Hjalmar Bang Carlsen

Brendan Nyhan @brendannyhan.bsky.social · Aug 21

New job ad: Assistant Professor of Quantitative Social Science, Dartmouth College apply.interfolio.com/172357

Please share with your networks. I am the search chair and happy to answer questions!

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Dana R. Fisher (aka the Apocalyptic Optimist) @fisherdanar.bsky.social · Aug 14

📢JOB ALERT 📢My department at the @ausis.bsky.social is hiring a social scientist who works on disaster!! The specific focus is open so check out the job announcement below (I'm not one the committee, so this is ALL I know) #ComeWorkwithMe!
american.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com/AU/job/Main-...

Assistant Professor (Tenure-Track) - Department of Environment, Development & Health

American University is a student-centered research institution located in Washington, DC, with highly-ranked schools and colleges, internationally-renowned faculty, and a reputation for creating meani...

american.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com

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Reposted by Hjalmar Bang Carlsen

Patrick Sturgis @patricksturg.bsky.social · Aug 9

New working paper with Tom Robinson, Laura Fung and Caroline Roberts. We use an LLM to classify occupations in surveys in real time, probing 'intelligently' when more info is needed. Results show big reductions in cost, time and respondent burden.

osf.io/preprints/so...

OSF

osf.io

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Hjalmar Bang Carlsen @hjalmarcarlsen.bsky.social · Aug 9

Looks like a super useful application.

Reposted by Hjalmar Bang Carlsen

Jess Calarco @jessicacalarco.com · Aug 1

If you want to share your story--or share what you'd say to the people responsible for the current changes in the US--you can do so at the link below. And please share widely! It's essential that we document the human toll.

tinyurl.com/thehumantoll

The Human Toll

The US is undergoing rapid social, economic, and policy change.

If you've been impacted, we want to hear your story!

To participate, visit: https://tinyurl.com/thehumantoll

Study sponsored under University of Wisconsin-Madison IRB Protocol #2025-1096. PI: Dr. Jessica Calarco

Participants must be at least 18 years of age and reside in the US

[image of a person with their face in their hands]

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Reposted by Hjalmar Bang Carlsen

Per Engzell @pengzell.bsky.social · Aug 1

Get the latest on social science methods and AI

Thomas Davidson @thomasdavidson.bsky.social · Aug 1

I’m delighted to share that the August 2025 special issue of Sociological Methods & Research on Generative AI is out now. Along with my co-editor, Daniel Karell, we put together this issue to build on the conference we organized last year.

Here's a thread on each of the ten papers:

A screenshot of the Sociological Methods & Research website showing the special issue title

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Hjalmar Bang Carlsen @hjalmarcarlsen.bsky.social · Aug 1

The "can you have" of this world.

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Reposted by Hjalmar Bang Carlsen

Sarah Engler @saengler.bsky.social · Jul 28

My department at Leuphana University offers 6 fully funded PhD scholarships (incl. research funding) for three years.

If you are interested in studying democratic resilience (particularly party competition and elections 🤓) and you have a strong methodolgical background: Apply!

shorturl.at/kcTbG

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UW-Madison Sociology @uwsoc.bsky.social · Jul 29

We're hiring! Please share with your networks!

The Department of Sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison invites applications for a tenure-track position at the rank of assistant professor in the field of demography of health and aging beginning in August 2026
jobs.wisc.edu/jobs/assista...

Assistant Professor - 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

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Hjalmar Bang Carlsen @hjalmarcarlsen.bsky.social · Jul 27

Super important agenda paper on the use of AI in survey research. Good to see that AI as interviewer is getting the attention it deserves(most have focus on AI as respondent).

David Rothschild @davmicrot.bsky.social · Jul 23

🚨Successfully Navigating the Disruption AI will Bring to Survey Research🚨 w/ research, verification, transparency, collaboration, survey research can thrive through disruption isi-iass.org/home/wp-cont... w/ @davidlazer.bsky.social @stephnie.bsky.social TrentBuskirk SunshineHillygus FraukeKreuter

isi-iass.org

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Amir Goldberg @amirgo.bsky.social · Jul 24

The Stanford GSB is hiring in macro & micro OB! If you do sociology, psychology, OB, strategy, management, computational social science, please apply.

On the macro side, mid-career folks are especially invited to apply.

See here👇
www.gsb.stanford.edu/jobs/faculty...

Faculty Positions in Organizational Behavior

Learn about tenured and non-tenured faculty positions open in the organizational behavior area at Stanford GSB.

www.gsb.stanford.edu

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Reposted by Hjalmar Bang Carlsen

Per Engzell @pengzell.bsky.social · Jul 21

Vienna is pretty high on my list of liveable cities and so it should be on yours... consider applying

Valeria Bordone @valeriabordone.bsky.social · Jul 21

We are seeking to appoint a Tenure-Track Professor in Sociology with focus on #QuantitativeMethods @ifswien.bsky.social @univie.ac.at

For the call and how to apply 👇
jobs.univie.ac.at/job/Tenure-T...

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Reposted by Hjalmar Bang Carlsen

Étienne Ollion @eollion.bsky.social · Jul 21

Want to access the slides and the notebook for this session on LLM for Content Analysis in the Social Sciences? Here they are! www.css.cnrs.fr/llm-power-to....

Information about Text classification; Information Extraction, Text Clustering with encoders and decoder models.

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Hjalmar Bang Carlsen @hjalmarcarlsen.bsky.social · Jul 21

We draw on prior efforts of @felixchopra.bsky.social,
@kunkakom.bsky.social, @ihaal.bsky.social, Friedrich Geiecke and Xavier Jaravel.

Hjalmar Bang Carlsen @hjalmarcarlsen.bsky.social · Jul 21

In the context of #IC2S2 2025:

I would like to hear your thoughts on the future of Computational Social Science.

What do you see as the biggest opportunities and challenges ahead?

It’s a short, AI-led interview.
Interested? Start your interview here:

www.ainterviewer.dk/interview?id...

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Hjalmar Bang Carlsen @hjalmarcarlsen.bsky.social · Jul 21

📢 I’ll be presenting our new work on AI-led vs. human-led chat-based interviews at #IC2S2 in Norrköping this week!

Curious about AI-interviewing, large-N qual data, building your own chatbot for research, or collaborating? Please reach out(DM is open)

For more see thread.

Preprint: osf.io/k7f89

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Hjalmar Bang Carlsen @hjalmarcarlsen.bsky.social · Jul 21

Thanks to my co-authors Semra, Tobias and @andbjn.bsky.social and to the @villumfonden.bsky.social foundation and @cphsodas.bsky.social who have both founded the AI-interview project.

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Hjalmar Bang Carlsen @hjalmarcarlsen.bsky.social · Jul 21

Of course, there are big challenges to this kind of experimental comparison 🧵

1) Data quality in qual interviews isn’t standardized
2) It’s rarely operationalized as quantitative measures
3) Chat-based interviews ≠ in-depth, face-to-face interviews
4) Small N

Important limitations to keep in mind.

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Hjalmar Bang Carlsen @hjalmarcarlsen.bsky.social · Jul 21

📄 Read the preprint: osf.io/k7f89

If you're working on or curious about AI-interview methods, feel free to reach out (DMs open)!

This is part of a broader project developing the AI-interviewer, led together with @annarogers.bsky.social

OSF

osf.io

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Hjalmar Bang Carlsen @hjalmarcarlsen.bsky.social · Jul 21

Why this matters 🧵

1) AI-interviewers can yield reasonable data quality, supporting their promise for large-scale qualitative research.

2) As opposed to other AI-interview studies, we used a locally hosted, open-weight model—boosting data security, transparency & reproducibility.

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Hjalmar Bang Carlsen @hjalmarcarlsen.bsky.social · Jul 21

Key results 🧵:
🧠 Human-led: longer answers per question
🕐 AI-led: longer interviews overall (faster question delivery)
📋 No dif in response quality (specificity + relevance)

LLMs do pretty well—
But responses are short compared typical qualitative interviews.

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Hjalmar Bang Carlsen @hjalmarcarlsen.bsky.social · Jul 21

We ran an experiment with 40 students 🧵.
Participants were randomly assigned to be interviewed—via text chat—by either:

🤖 a locally hosted AI chatbot
👩‍🏫 or a trained human interviewer

Same interview guide. Same interface.
Different interviewers formulating different probes.

What did we find?

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