Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Lion Wedel @lionw.bsky.social · Aug 15

Has anyone else recently received a reply from the #tiktok research API support team after just 6 months?

They transitioned to a new communication system.

God knows how that company is still running if they could not communicate for 6 months, or could they 👀.

#capitalistprioritiesarewild

Lion Wedel @lionw.bsky.social · Aug 7

... but we shall not lose all scientific care and scrutiny build up in centuries of methods research just to be the first one that used something new to do something old.
Cheers to the old, the new, and what we decide to make out of it.

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Lion Wedel @lionw.bsky.social · Aug 7

Goodbye Zürich once again.
It was an absolute pleasure to engage with the participating scholars on visual communication at the Computational Visual Communication Research Symposium organized beautifully by Meg Jing Zeng.
Take away - LLMs are too good and convenient to avoid them ...

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Lion Wedel @lionw.bsky.social · Aug 5

True words! Explainable "AI"/understanding how "AI" is reasoning is not just the answer, it just might open up a new venue of issues - what do we do with a reasoning that is unreasonable to us, but where the outcome is "right"?

Lion Wedel @lionw.bsky.social · Aug 5

I put together a list of scholars speaking at the Computational Visual Media Research Symposium in Zürich today.

Maybe interesting for some of you. Let me know if I missed you/isn't find you!

bsky.app/profile/did:...

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Reposted by Lion Wedel

Georg Ahnert @wanlo.bsky.social · Jul 18

Really excited to also present this work at #IC2S2 next week in Norrköping! 🎉 I'd love to discuss how to produce LLM survey responses at my poster on Wed at 13:30 (Poster Session 2, Poster ID 68) 📊

Georg Ahnert @wanlo.bsky.social · Jul 14

LLMs are trained to produce open-ended responses 📝, but most survey items require closed-ended responses instead 📊

This Wed 11:00–12:30 at #ESRA25, I'll discuss the large impact that Answer Production Methods have on prediction results + share recommendations for methods and parameters. 👈

A research setup for the evaluation of Answer Production Methods for closed-ended survey responses from LLMs. An LLM is prompted with a survey and an optional instruction, before a Answer Production Method is applied. These methods range from token-probabilities to open-ended text generation + classification. I then evaluated them against human survey answers and calculate individual-level accuracy as well as distribution alignment for sub-populations.

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Caspar van Lissa 🟥 @cjvanlissa.bsky.social · Jul 23

Loving @ic2s2.bsky.social , but I wonder if we're asking the right questions. Is "How can I outsource this task to a proprietary, black box, resource-intensive, often un-validated LLM?" when fit-for-purpose classifiers abound a computational a computational research question? Or even scientific?

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Lion Wedel @lionw.bsky.social · Jul 23

#ic2s2

Lion Wedel @lionw.bsky.social · Jul 23

@ic2s2.bsky.social
Thought provoking keynote by Arnout van de Rijt!

What's a better proxy for economic success over lifetime - wage rank or wealth?

Wealth might show the exact opposite results, with wage being rather another (un)lucky event instead of an outcome of the other (un)lucky events.

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Lion Wedel @lionw.bsky.social · Jul 22

Poster presentation at #ic2s2 done. Inspiring talks and a sore throat come hand in hand.

Looking forward to the remaining days!

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Weizenbaum-Institut @weizenbauminstitut.bsky.social · Jul 22

"From Isolation to Extremism: Radicalization in the Manosphere." We spoke to @lionw.bsky.social & Linda Coufal about how extremist views take hold and spread within digital communities: 🔗 t1p.de/sqii5

#DigitalExtremism #OnlineHate #PlatformAccountability #Misogyny

From Isolation to Extremism: Radicalization in the Manosphere

Together with his colleague Linda Coufal, Weizenbaum researcher Lion Wedel recently published two studies on the radicalization of Incels – a group known for its misogynistic views. We spoke to them a...

t1p.de

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Lion Wedel @lionw.bsky.social · Jul 22

#ic2s2 getting started!
A grand hall for a grand opening.

Unsurprisingly LLMs make up their own strong topic among conference presentations. But amazing to see that CSS still maintains an identity and topical diversity beyond that!

@ic2s2.bsky.social

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Lion Wedel @lionw.bsky.social · Jul 21

A curious way to make use of so called AI for a change!
Participation encouraged!

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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Lion Wedel @lionw.bsky.social · Jul 21

@weizenbauminstitut.bsky.social

Lion Wedel @lionw.bsky.social · Jul 21

#IC2S2: Join me tomorrow at my poster on how to measure information use on social media in #DataDonations! 🌐

Survey development, panel study, digital trace data, TikTok, and multimodal classification—it has it all! 📢

Perhaps we can even debunk the myth that the youth aren't informed no more 👀.

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Weizenbaum-Institut @weizenbauminstitut.bsky.social · Jul 21

„Wer beim Forschungsdatenzugang jetzt liefern muss” –
@lkseiling.bsky.social, @dscheykopp.bsky.social,
@claesdevreese.bsky.social & @ulrikeklinger.bsky.social heute im @tspbackground.bsky.social:

🔗 t1p.de/zf6pa ⬅️

#dsa @dsa40collaboratory.bsky.social

Wer beim Forschungsdatenzugang jetzt liefern muss

Das letzte Puzzlestück für den Forschungszugang für nicht öffentlich verfügbare Plattformdaten ist da. Die Aufgaben für DSCs, Forschende und Plattformen sind nun klar verteilt. Die Wissenschaftler:inn...

t1p.de

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DSA40 Data Access Collaboratory @dsa40collaboratory.bsky.social · Jul 2

📢 Big news for platform researchers across Europe and beyond:

Today, the @ec.europa.eu adopted the Delegated Act for Article 40 of the Digital Services Act (DSA) – a long-anticipated milestone enabling researchers to request access to non-public platform data under Article 40.4.

dark blue background. on it, there is text saying "The Delegated Act on 40.4 DATA ACCESS is here", "Delegated Act on 40.4 DATA ACCESS" is yellow, the other text is white.

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Jakob Ohme @dscheykopp.bsky.social · Jun 15

Stellar panel on data donations at #ica25 @lionw.bsky.social presenting on across platform sample biases, Yangliu Fan @weizenbauminstitut.bsky.social on sequence mining in digital trace data, and @ernesto-deleon.com on tailored recruitment messages. Full room shows how important #datadonation is

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Claes de Vreese @claesdevreese.bsky.social · Jun 15

More on data donation and tracking data. Don’t miss this panel #ica25

@ernesto-deleon.com @dougaparry.bsky.social @dscheykopp.bsky.social Yangliu Fan @lionw.bsky.social & more

@ascor.bsky.social @algosoc.org @weizenbauminstitut.bsky.social

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Jakob Ohme @dscheykopp.bsky.social · Jun 15

At the 9am Sunday #ica25 panel, Felix Gaisbauer @weizenbauminstitut.bsky.social presented work showing that news sharing on platforms in the German context is less fragmented and highly driven by intermediaries from the political right

Find method preprint here: arxiv.org/html/2505.08...

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Lion Wedel @lionw.bsky.social · Jun 13

@atmayer.bsky.social with another 🔥 presentation at #ica25 How do news values and visual representations of news differ between public and private news media on TikTok?
Dataset paper on this out now!
doi.org/10.1609/icws...

with
@jonathanhendrickx.bsky.social !

@weizenbauminstitut.bsky.social

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Lion Wedel @lionw.bsky.social · Jun 13

@atmayer.bsky.social rocking the stage at #ica25 . Presenting work on identifying (non-)intermediation practices of digital journalists on social media. #silentintermediation

@weizenbauminstitut.bsky.social

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hackingcommsci @hackingcommsci.bsky.social · Jun 12

From text-as-data to sleep data collection, this year‘s #hackica25 in Boulder, CO, was a blast and we‘re proud to say that we‘ve (again) successfully hacked communication science. Thanks to all participants and see y‘all at #ica25 ✨

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Jakob Ohme @dscheykopp.bsky.social · Jun 13

📍Day 1 at #ICA25 for our Digital News Dynamics team:

🕛 12:00 | @lionw.bsky.social & Jakob Ohme
🧹 User Deletion & Data Quality in Data Donation Studies
📍 Capitol 3

🕒 15:00 | @atmayer.bsky.social , Lion Wedel, Jakob Ohme
🕸️ Journalistic Intermediation on Platforms
📍 Grays Peak A

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Lion Wedel @lionw.bsky.social · Jun 12

Join us and be enlightened!

Daniel Angus @antmandan.bsky.social · Jun 12

If you're at #ica25 consider a date with the hottest new method in town…

Data Donation in Communication Research: Ethical, Practical, and Methodological Frontiers
📍 Friday, June 13 | 12 PM – 1:15 PM | Capitol 3 - Regency 4

@anjabechmann.bsky.social @tgrootkormelink.bsky.social @lionw.bsky.social

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