Ernesto de León 🟥

Going to ICA? Join the SECAC's Bluesky Workshop on building a long-term research agenda! Friday June 5 at 4-6pm - CTICC Ballroom East.

Join the @icamobile.bsky.social's Student + Early Career Scholar Lunch at #ICA26! On Saturday at 12pm (6 June), we'll meet at the Bartolomeu Dias statue 🗽, stop for food at Woolworth's 🍽️ + chat at a nearby fountain ⛲ @icahdq.bsky.social @icasecac.bsky.social

📣 Extension of Deadline for Travel Grants Applications! We invite applications for travel grants from ICA attendees without sufficient funding. These grants are especially directed at students and junior scholars from Tier B/C. Apply here: docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...

The persuasive impact of AI chatbots on voters. The effects found are large but likely also an effect of the design. Regardless, AI is part of election campaigns now. My comments include reference to recent @algosoc.org data @ernesto-deleon.com @favstats.eu www.newscientist.com/article/2507...

Fabulous online seminar organized by @algosoc.org Algorithmic Effects on #Elections: Using Social Media Data Donations to Study Elections 🗓️ Fri 12 Dec, 14:00–15:30 CET @ernesto-deleon.com @favstats.eu @antmandan.bsky.social @simonchauchard.bsky.social Registration ⬇️ algosoc.org/events/algos...

We’ve assembled a stellar line-up of scholars to discuss how digital trace data donations can help us study elections across a wide variety of platforms and contexts! @claesdevreese.bsky.social @favstats.eu @algosoc.org Register here and join: lnkd.in/eUZZDCk4

10% of surveyed Dutch citizens told us they are likely to ask AI for election advice. They shouldn't! This is especially problematic as we know that the people who usually consult advice applications are undecided and are doing so right before casting their vote. algosoc.org/results/1-in...

As a scholar I rarely offer electoral guidance. But today I do: DO NOT USE AI CHATBOTS AS YOUR VOTE ADVICE APPLICATION AHEAD OF (THE DUTCH) ELECTIONS Full of errors, bias and lack of transparency. @ernesto-deleon.com @favstats.eu @theoaraujo.bsky.social and🙋unpack why algosoc.org/results/1-in...

Our CampAIgn Tracker got featured in this brilliant piece of investigative journalism by @groene.nl. They reveal the prompts behind an extremely disturbing AI-powered campaign by Dutch politicians that we find is one of the top producers & spreaders of AI-generated content in this election #tk2025.

Op sociale media delen PVV-fanaccounts levensechte AI-beelden, veelal van knappe, blonde vrouwen die worden bedreigd door migranten. Deze pagina’s blijken te worden beheerd door minstens twee PVV-Kamerleden. 👉 buff.ly/MFNFcU3

🚀 And this marks our launch of the CampAIgn Tracker 🇳🇱! @meinungsfuehrer.bsky.social and I are glad to finally publish our dashboard where we monitor the use of AI imagery in campaign messages, by parties, politicians & other actors during the election #tk2025 See here www.campaigntracker.nl/en/

If you ever wanted to delve into the AI-generated world of far-right imagination.. now you can. See our CampAIgn Tracker 🇳🇱 here: www.campaigntracker.nl/en/ #tk2025

Showing the endangered leader of an invaded country my hats

🚀 New postdoc position for Platform Data & Computational Social Science Join us to drive @gesis.org' efforts around the Digital Services Act (DSA) and conduct research with online platform data 💼 TV-L EG 14 | Location: Cologne 📌 Apply now: www.gesis.org/en/institute... #DSA #CSS #DataScience

This bad boy is finally out - and it is a beaut! Fantastic collab with @lukotto.bsky.social & @cvargiu.bsky.social Quick thread about some key findings in the book. Link to buy the book with 20% discount at the end of the thread

As GPT-5 announcement is underway, know that a majority of Dutch people already make use of ChatGPT (and similar Gen AI models), 43% percent even say they use it "often" (5-7 on our 1-7 scale) -> the graph below

For your correlation ≠ causation collection

We've been tracking the rise of ChatGPT use in the Netherlands! Our third update of the AI Opinion Monitor shows a meteoric rise in use amongst youth, with 43% reporting to use it regularly. Check it out yourself: monitor.algosoc.org

Data we are collecting with @algosoc.org in the Netherlands shows similar and even starker trends and age gaps. Everyone is using ChatGPT more. But 82% of 18-29 year olds now report having used in the past year whereas a still sizeable but comparatively lower amount of 65+ year olds have (19%).

Honoured to have been awarded this year's ASCoR Baschwitz Faculty Article of the Year award for my work with Mykola Makhortykh and Silke Adam! Check out the paper, "Hyperpartisan, Alternative, and Conspiracy Media Users: An Anti-Establishment Portrait", below!

🎉 We #congratulate @alexschwinges.bsky.social and @ernesto-deleon.com, winners of the ASCoR Baschwitz Awards 2024! Each year, the Baschwitz Article of the Year and the Young Scholar Award are presented during the Departmental Meeting of Communication Science.

Scholar, journalist, policy maker, NGO working on digital technologies and democracy topics? Check out this exciting Fellowship program at the @ddc-sdu.bsky.social. Flexible conditions, inspiring environment, great colleagues. 🗓️ DL: September 15 (check instructions ⬇️) www.sdu.dk/en/forskning...

Another windowless room (but this time way bigger) in which I got to present first preliminary findings on how strategic politicians can *actually* be about their emotions in election campaigns 📷 @amplanitzer.bsky.social

@mshu.bsky.social & @jbgruber.bsky.social presenting great work showing that scraping TikTok yields similar results to using the API (although it is a lot slower and doesn't work as well with larger accounts).

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

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

And I am finally on Bluesky 🥳!!

Lots of cool things in this #ica25 panel, including my two tool demos of #rstats {traktok} (for getting TikTok data) and {paperboy} (for getting news data)!

Thank you so much for the kind words Ernesto! If any of you are interested in the work, you can find a summary thread here: bsky.app/profile/nico...

PhD or Postdoc looking at the grim job market? Join Sunday 12:00 for an alternative career path workshop with the amazing danah boyd @zephoria.bsky.social, Katie Gach and Steven Tompson. Thank you to @icasecac.bsky.social @ceciliazhou.bsky.social @danijaradent.bsky.social for this event! #ica25

A huge congratulations to @nicolaiberk.bsky.social for winning this year's 2025 Kaid Sanders @polcomm.bsky.social article of the year award! #ica25 Having known Nico for a long time, I have seen the gigantic effort that went into this paper and can say it is incredibly well deserved!

A funny detail from @anjabechmann.bsky.social's study using YouTube data donation, showing that participants in Denmark were heavily Rickrolled 😅 #ica25

This year's #ica25 hackathon was a blast! A huge thank you to @hackingcommsci.bsky.social for making it a reality! With 13 other great participants, we explored +2 million of Telegram messages around the 2024 US election. I can really recommend checking out the data! dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1...

Happy that our paper, led by @dominiquewirz.bsky.social, received the best paper award at the Mass Communication division of #ica25 (thanks @markboukes.bsky.social!) Check out "Tracing Knowledge Gaps" here: journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

#hackica25 at #ica25 is in full swing. One of my favourite events of the year. A room full of nerds working on data and tools, learning new things and having fun 🤓

Welcome to #hackica25 & #ica25 everyone! We‘re starting the morning with our project pitches. Big thanks to @kyliewoodman.bsky.social for designing our awesome stickers again! 💛🧡❤️

🚨 Join Our Team We're looking for a PhD / Post-doc in Political Communication with possibility of joining a project on how feelings of being “left behind” shape political info use, focusing on social identity and identity threats. Start: September 1 or by agreement Duration: 3 years Apply now! 🔬✨

🎉 Excited to share the APSA Technology & Politics Section Award winners! 🏆 📚 Best Book The Illiberal Public Sphere: Media in Polarized Societies by @sabinamihelj.bsky.social & @vstetka.bsky.social. You can access it, it is in open access! link.springer.com/book/10.1007... 🧵

PhD opportunity! ASCoR is looking for a motivated PhD candidate for the project “Visual Politics and the Emergence of Angry Publics.” This four-year PhD track will be supervised by @ulrikeklinger.bsky.social, @lindabos.bsky.social, and @alessandronai.bsky.social DL: June 4 shorturl.at/YeXpf