⏬📽️Excited to talk about (1) studying videos from complex local meetings (w/ @mirya.bsky.social + @simko.bsky.social), (2) substantively using eye contact seeking in legislative debate videos, and (3) workflow managers to process video data (w/ @chrisguarnold.bsky.social + @pluggedchris.bsky.social)!
#sciencrocks #dreamteam
@chrisguarnold.bsky.social & I had a fun, productive kick-off for our ESRC ⭐ ♻️ RecAIqual ♻️ ⭐ project “Exploring the Re-Analysis and Recycling of Qualitative Data with Machine Learning”. We discussed how multimodal ML/AI can complement qual research& secondary data analysis+where humans are peerless.
🏴 #ManifestoWeek in Wales: we digitised 29 Senedd manifestos (99–21) & extracted 10,000+ pledges using AI.
Finding: Parties increasingly promised *more*, not less. 👇
blogs.cardiff.ac.uk/thinking-wal...
#WelshPolitics #Senedd #sciencerocks Daksh Dewgun @jaclarner.bsky.social @frasmcm.bsky.social
I feel these takes are often narrow regarding what includes social science. I am sympathetic to the idea of qualitative research and fieldwork becoming rel more weighty as AI improves. ATM, these changes seem most drastic for quant analysis. What really changed for qualitative inquiry, yet?(1/2)
If you want to learn more about our MSc AI & Government or MSc AI & Sustainable Development, join us on Tues,27.1.26 (4-5pm UK). Together with student rep Daksh Dewgun you can ask us anything. Register: pg@contacts.bham.ac.uk #AIforgood #datascience #computationalsocialscience #sciencerocks
Term has kicked off! Teaching my 2 favourite modules again: AI and Global Challenges & AI for Government and Public Policy. We bring together coding, ML & AI with domain expertise from Government.Privilege to teach such a talented&driven crowd!#ComputationalSocialScience #DataForGood #sciencerocks
New homepage online: www.chrisguarnold.github.io
Everything you already new about me. Hosted on GitHub. Built with Jekyll. No cookies, no trackers, no WordPress updates at 2am. #sciencerocks
The weather between Cardiff and Birmingham is like somewhere close to the walls of Mordor today. Lambas almost running out. Please send hope...
Joint work with the amazing @ankuepfer.bsky.social and @pluggedchris.bsky.social
How to analyse audio, text, and video data for more than 15,000h of German parliamentary speech? For our #DFG project, we spent last year building compute infrastructure. Pushing ▶️ on the server soon. First results in summer #PoliticalScience #ComputationalSocialScience #sciencerocks #watchthisspace
#sciencerocks
Congrats @ankuepfer.bsky.social !!! A pity I could not be there.
The submission deadline for papers and workshop proposals to #COMPTEXT2026 is this Friday, January 16th. We are looking forward to receiving your proposals. Feel free to share the news and circulate shorturl.at/gRg0p #sharingiscaring #sciencerocks See you in Brum, 23–25 April 2026!
Same! I am quite excited to see how this will all work out. Let’s stay in touch.
🧵 PhD position (75%) in Political Behavior / Political Communication / CSS
📍 LMU Munich | ⏳ 3 years | 🗓 start March–May 2026
We’re hiring for DemocraGPT, a @bidt.bsky.social-funded project developing an AI-based training for difficult conversations in times of growing polarization
Really looking forward to helping build bridges between what was formerly known as 'qualitative' and 'quantitative' research. Couldn't think of a better colleague than @floriangkern.bsky.social to pull this off. Xtra happy to see this happening in the current dire times of UK HE #sciencerocks
#COMPTEXT2026 is taking place in Birmingham. Go and tell your friends! #sciencerocks
New paper with @caschulz.bsky.social: Minimal Participation Thresholds in international treaties help cooperation by overcoming uncertainty. #Freeriding matters, but less so than so far assumed. Full paper: journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...
#TreatyDesign #ScienceRocks #CollectiveAction
University of Birmingham photo
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!
I am over the moon to announce that #COMPTEXT2026 will take place at the "Institute for Data and AI" at the University of Birmingham. Look out for the imminent CfP on all channels. And go and tell your friends. Looking forward to hosting y'all in April 2026 #sciencerocks @comptext.bsky.social
On my way to the LSE workshop "#ComputationalSocialScience meets Qualitative Research." Presenting @floriangkern.bsky.social and my framework on how #multimodalML & #LLMs help re-analyse & recycle qual data. Let's leave qual–quant clone wars behind us. #ScienceRocks
www.lse.ac.uk/methodology/...
Today, we welcomed the second cohort of students to the MSc in AI & Government and MSc in AI & Sustainable Development today. Excited to support them in developing their AI & ML skills over the coming year!
#AI #MachineLearning #HigherEducation #SustainableDevelopment #AIandGovernment #ScienceRocks
Cover page of the article: "The sound of party competition: how applausereflects unity, disagreement, and the electoralcycle in parliamentsAndreas Küpfera , Jochen Müllerb and Christian Steckeraatechnical university of Darmstadt, Darmstadt, Germany; buniversität Greifswald, Greifswald,GermanyABSTRACTThis article studies how applause reflects the dynamics of party competitionduring parliamentary debates. While legislative scholars often emphasise theselection of speakers and content of debates, spontaneous reactions from fel-low MPs remain understudied. Analysing 750,000 instances of applause in thedebates of the German Bundestag (1976–2020), it was found that applausepatterns, although largely spontaneous and immediate by nature, systemati-cally reflect incentives from party competition such as signalling party andcoalition unity, ideological (dis)agreement, and ostracising specific parties.Applause also indicates issue emphasis, especially near elections. The findingssuggest that applause can serve as a nuanced and abundant indicator in thestudy of party competition, complementing more static measures derived frommanifestos and expert judgements. By analysing applause patterns over fourdecades, this study opens new avenues to explore nonverbal reactions asmarkers of party competition in other parliaments."
👏Applause offers a revealing lens on party competition! In a recent article @wepsocial.bsky.social (w/@jocmuel.bsky.social+@pluggedchris.bsky.social), we study how applause reflects party and coalition unity, ideological agreement, political exclusion, issue ownership, and the electoral cycle! (1/6)
Today @10 in Pacific Rim 2: our framework for assessing LLM output. a) separates general vs. domain-specific similarity b) handles existing classifiers c) accounts for probabilistic DGP d) model-independent & efficient
#APSA2025 @jamespcross.bsky.social Tim Henrichsen @christinesheldon.bsky.social
Front slide of the presentation: "Measuring Media Slant through Image Analysis APSA Annual Meeting 2025, September 11-14, 2025, Vancouver, Canada Christian Arnold (University of Birmingham) Andreas Küpfer (Technical University of Darmstadt) Oliver Rittmann (University of Mannheim, MZES) Michelle Torres (University of California, Los Angeles) September 13, 2025"
I'm at #APSA25! On Saturday at 2 pm (Panel "Seeing is Believing: Innovations and Applications in Image Data Analysis"), I'll present a new project with @chrisguarnold.bsky.social, Oliver Rittmann, and @smtorres.bsky.social in which we quantitatively measure media slant based on news article images.
The Centre for AI in Government is at #APSA25 for the first time. Really impressive line-up and testament of a strong group of curious, committed and kind scholars. Come and find us! #sciencerocks #CAIG #computationalsocialscience #aiingovernment
@christinesheldon.bsky.social
Excited to speak at the 4th #cardiffnlpworkshop tomorrow at Cardiff NLP group. I’ll give a talk on the #Triggerpoint Project & join the panel on Interdisciplinarity and NLP. Great lineup incl. CohereForAI, BSC, DCU. www.cardiffnlpworkshop.org
#sciencerocks #NLP #AIandPolitics #LLMs
On my way to Geneva for the #AIforGood conference. Looking forward to the Crisis Computing Workshop and discussing how AI can help solve and prevent wars and crises. crisiscomputing.org #AI #CrisisComputing #sciencerocks
📣 Call for Applications 📣
3-year Postdoc position in Berlin 🚀
Join our Comparative Political Behavior Group at @humboldtuni.bsky.social & the @humboldt-govlab.bsky.social
Great people, great projects, great city – come work with us!
🗓️ Deadline: 31 July 2025
