Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Reposted by Mia Nahrgang

Andreu Casas @andreucasas.bsky.social · 8d

🚨Hiring a fully funded (3.5 years) PhD for the @ldnsocmedobs.bsky.social to research social media and politics. Candidates should have quantitative/computational skills and/or be interested in content curation/moderation. UK home candidates only unfortunately. www.royalholloway.ac.uk/media/hquftp...

www.royalholloway.ac.uk

1 14 4

Reposted by Mia Nahrgang

Alejandra Caraballo @esqueer.net · 21d

Clay Higgins sent a letter to Bluesky and other social media sites threatening investigations if they don't censor speech critical of Charlie Kirk.

They don't even know who Jay is because they addressed her as "gentleman."

clayhiggins.house.gov/wp-content/u...

Alt text: Two-page letter on official U.S. House of Representatives letterhead, dated September 15, 2025, from Congressman Clay Higgins (Louisiana, 3rd District) to major tech executives, including Mark Zuckerberg (Meta), Elon Musk (X), Neal Mohan (YouTube), Shou Zi Chew (TikTok), Jay Graber (Bluesky), and Devin Nunes (Trump Media & Technology Group).

Page 1:
The letter opens by thanking the executives for their service and offering condolences. It references the "graphic, televised murder of a heroic Christian leader, Mr. Charlie Kirk," urging the companies to take responsibility by removing posts that allegedly celebrated Kirk’s death. It demands that authors of such posts be banned and new pages they create also prohibited. It frames celebration of Kirk’s murder as unacceptable in a free society, and states that Congressman Higgins has initiated a Congressional effort to enforce this.

Page 2:
The letter continues, stating that shielding offenders will not be protected under Section 230. Higgins emphasizes his role as Chair of the Federal Law Enforcement subcommittee of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, with authority over federal regulatory law enforcement. He frames the restriction of harmful public statements not as oppression, but as protection of free speech and societal standards. The letter closes with a demand for a formal response within one business week, signed "Clay Higgins, Member of Congress," and CCs Donald J. Trump (President of the United States) and Pam Bondi (Attorney General, U.S. Department of Justice).

380 1.2K 4.1K

Reposted by Mia Nahrgang

DSA40 Data Access Collaboratory @dsa40collaboratory.bsky.social · Jul 9

Wanna know what changed between the Draft of the Delegated Act on Research Data Access in the #DSA?
We've aligned the relevant passages and just published the comparison on our website: dsa40collaboratory.eu/dda-da-compa...

Data & code used are available on our github: github.com/access-colla...

A visual comparision between Recital 12 of the draft delegated act (DDA) and Recital 13 of the adopted version (DA), which cover the same content. Multiple highlights show text removed from the DDA in red, text added in the DA in green, and changes in references (e.g. article numbers and/or paragraph labels) in yellow.

3 5

Reposted by Mia Nahrgang

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.

1 20 26

Mia Nahrgang @mianahrgang.bsky.social · Jun 25

🔗📃 Link to he paper now published in the ICWSM conference proceedings (ojs.aaai.org/index.php/IC...) co-authored with @nilsweidmann.bsky.social, @friederikeq.bsky.social, @sebnagel.bsky.social, @yannistheocharis.bsky.social & Molly Roberts

Written for Lawyers or Users? Mapping the Complexity of Community Guidelines | Proceedings of the International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media

ojs.aaai.org

3 5

Mia Nahrgang @mianahrgang.bsky.social · Jun 25

After presenting at #ICWSM25 yesterday (for link to the paper ⤵️), I’ve just arrived at @epsanet.bsky.social in Madrid!

Tomorrow (Thursday, 13:10, Room 1A.02), I’ll be presenting a new project that analyzes content moderation dynamics during elections on Bluesky. Hope to see some of you there!

1 1 2

Mia Nahrgang @mianahrgang.bsky.social · Jun 10

📣 Happy to announce the publication of our article (w @nilsweidmann.bsky.social, @friederikeq.bsky.social, @sebnagel.bsky.social, @yannistheocharis.bsky.social & Molly Roberts) on the complexity and availability of community guidelines @icwsm.bsky.social! 🔗 ojs.aaai.org/index.php/IC...

3 6

Reposted by Mia Nahrgang

Nils Weidmann @nilsweidmann.bsky.social · Jun 2

With Mina Rulis, I've been studying the link between higher education and dissent in autocracies: "Activist disciplines: Universities in autocracies and political protest" has now been published at doi.org/10.1177/2053...! Thanks to the @uni-konstanz.de for supporting open access!

Activist disciplines: Universities in autocracies and political protest - Nils B Weidmann, Mina Rulis, 2025

Recent events on university campuses show again that academic institutions often constitute breeding grounds for political mobilization. This also applies to au...

doi.org

3 7