Assistant Professor in Computational Social Science at University of Amsterdam Studying the intersection of AI, social media, and politics. Polarization, misinformation, radicalization, digital platforms, social complexity.
‘Polarization’ has become the master concept for diagnosing our current democratic crisis. But this is not polarization. It is the radicalization of the political right. By misdiagnosing it, we risk becoming complicit in the crisis. 🧵 Just out in Perspectives on Politics doi.org/10.1017/S153...
How do people choose what LLMs they will use? Accuracy, it turns out, is less important than you might think. Our results suggest that the choice of LLM might itself become a new line of polarization.
Christopher Barrie📄 New paper: people choose AI models partly on political grounds This is joint work with @pettertornberg.com @chrisbail.bsky.social @michelleschimmel.bsky.social and led by @michaelheseltine.bsky.social
Another great piece from Jennifer Oullette at Ars Technica!
Jennifer OuelletteRIP social media. What comes next is messy. As social media splinters, how can we keep the new online spaces from devolving into toxic pits of despair? @pettertornberg.com of the University of Amsterdam has some ideas. arstechnica.com/science/2026...
LLMs have been widely reported as left-wing biased. The finding has shaped policy and debate — with Trump banning "Woke AI". Our new paper challenges this story. It's not that the models are biased. It's that they think the auditor is. 🧵 w/ michelleschimmel.bsky.socialarxiv.org/pdf/2604.27633
Social media is no longer social. Most of it is passive viewing of videos and pictures from people we've never met. But we're still studying social media like it's 2010. We've entered the post-social media era — and research needs to catch up. osf.io/preprints/so... preprint w/ Richard Rogers