Carsten Schwemmer
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cschwem2er.bsky.social
Carsten Schwemmer
@cschwem2er.bsky.social
1.4K followers 380 following 30 posts
Professor of Computational Social Science, University of Munich | Text & Images | Data Scraping | Data Visualization

https://www.carstenschwemmer.com/
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Reposted by Carsten Schwemmer
socarxiv.bsky.social
In light of record submission rates and a large volume of AI-generated slop, SocArXiv recently implemented a policy requiring ORCIDs linked in the OSF profile of submitting authors, and narrowing our focus to social science subjects. Today we are taking two more steps:
/1
November 27, 2025 at 2:54 PM
Reposted by Carsten Schwemmer
andrew.heiss.phd
Wrote up a little intervention post/explanation for my class about why using LLMs for trying to learn programming (as first time learners!) is bad and detrimental datavizf25.classes.andrewheiss.com/news/2025-11...
In the first week of class, I had you read an article about how ChatGPT is philosophical “bullshit”, as well as this other post about AI and LLMs in this class. I’ve seen a surprising increase in the amount of ChatGPT-based weekly check-ins and graph interpretations in the exercises. (In the past, I’ve even had students tell me they PDFs of the slides into ChatGPT to generate interesting and confusing things.) Don’t do this! LLMs cannot find three things that you personally found interesting from the readings. LLMs are not you. It’s a huge waste of time for all of us to for me to spend time evaluating and grading output from ChatGPT. I want to read what you think and do, not what a computer invents. NoteMy personal stance on AI and LLMs Many of you have asked about how I think about and use LLMs in my own work (and in the class materials). Please check this short little page where I explain what I do with text, images, code, research, and learning. In short, I do not use LLMs to create any of the materials for this class, and I do not use them to grade or evaluate any of your work. I’ve even had several students submit completely made up stuff for mini projects and final projects. In your final project, your job is to take a dataset, make three different plots with it, and combine the plots into one graphic that tells some sort of story. I’ve (really truly) received projects like this: (a ChatGPT-generated plot of completely made up data from gapminder) At a very quick glance, that looks like a plausible image. But holy crap it falls apart fast, both comically and tragically. Comically because, like, look at the y-axis in the scatterplot; or the x-axis ticks in the population grown chart that are sometimes spaced every 20 years, sometimes every 10 years, and has 1980 there twice; or the weird blobs in the map. Tragically—and most importantly—literally nothing in this image is real and none of the annotations make sense and none of the colors make sense and everything here is completely meaningless and devoid of any information. It’s pure philosophical bullshit—an image “produced without concern for its truth.” That’s what I mean when I say that it’s a forgetful and unreliable resource. Lots of that code is helpful as an illustration of what’s going on. Lots of the explanation is good and fine. But it subtly changed its mind halfway through and didn’t realize it (because it can’t realize it! it’s just a chain of statistically likely text!) Hopefully you can see where this is dangerous for learning. It can often “teach” you wrong, and you can only recognize that if you know stuff already. It’s extra dangerous if you then take that example output, paste it into your exercise, and submit it. I’m not even concerned about the plagiarism aspect of that—code is code and there are only a few ways to write {dplyr} code that will do this, and it’s easy to adapt from real human-based examples online, so I’m less worried about stealing other people’s work here. I’m concerned that it’s not real data. It made up values of 1, 2, 3, and 4 for some countries to illustrate grouping and summarizing. That’s good and normal. None of that is real. Don’t treat it as real.
November 2, 2025 at 10:17 PM
Reposted by Carsten Schwemmer
vincentab.bsky.social
we're done
November 18, 2025 at 7:46 PM
Reposted by Carsten Schwemmer
joshmccrain.bsky.social
new paper by Sean Westwood:

With current technology, it is impossible to tell whether survey respondents are real or bots. Among other things, makes it easy for bad actors to manipulate outcomes. No good news here for the future of online-based survey research
November 18, 2025 at 7:16 PM
Reposted by Carsten Schwemmer
dingdingpeng.the100.ci
PPS more updates! We now have a figure with an overview of the workflow, plus some other nifty additions.

osf.io/preprints/ps...
November 13, 2025 at 5:37 PM
Reposted by Carsten Schwemmer
ic2s2.bsky.social
We're excited to announce that the website and registration for IC2S2 2026 (July 28-31) will launch in early December! The Vermont Complex Systems Institute @vcsi.bsky.social at the University of Vermont will be hosting IC2S2 in 2026: youtube.com/watch?v=p412S4GnPkc&feature=youtu.be
IC2S2 2026 | Burlington, Vermont
YouTube video by UVM Office of Research
youtube.com
November 13, 2025 at 3:36 PM
Reposted by Carsten Schwemmer
kauspurg.bsky.social
Billions of regressions ≠ robustness.

My new PNAS Letter shows how unjustified models can drown out justified ones — and why thoughtful model selection matters👇
www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...
November 11, 2025 at 4:56 PM
Reposted by Carsten Schwemmer
kbkarlson.bsky.social
LAST CALL! #Sociology Professorships in Copenhagen, Denmark!

We're hiring 2+ open-rank profs (Asst/Assoc/Full). Any area.

Deadline: this Saturday, Nov 15!

Join a leading European sociology department. Please repost!

jobportal.ku.dk/videnskabeli...
Call for two or more open-rank academic positions in Sociology
jobportal.ku.dk
November 9, 2025 at 8:08 AM
Reposted by Carsten Schwemmer
amreibahr.bsky.social
Letzte Woche haben wir 5 Jahre #95vsWissZeitVG gefeiert. Viel hat sich seit 2020 & besonders seit #IchBinHanna geändert, nur ein paar spezielle Quatsch-Argumente für Befristung kommen immer wieder. Damit wir sie nicht ständig von vorn widerlegen müssen, hab ich das heute in #ArbeitInDerWiss gemacht!
Vom Durchlauferhitzer und anderen Dauerbrennern: Fünf Jahre…
Zum 5. Geburtstag von #95vsWissZeitVG widme ich mich im Newsletter den wiederkehrenden Quatsch-Argumenten der Debatte -- und lege dar, warum sie Quatsch sind.
steady.page
November 4, 2025 at 8:10 AM
Reposted by Carsten Schwemmer
lfoswaldo.bsky.social
We have a new preprint: osf.io/preprints/so...

What have we learned about social media - the constantly moving target of empirical research - over the past decade?
October 30, 2025 at 10:53 AM
Reposted by Carsten Schwemmer
norawaitkus.bsky.social
🚨We’re hiring! The Max Weber Institute in beautiful Heidelberg seeks a W3 Professor of Sociology (focus: sociological theory) who connects well with the department’s focus on comparative sociology adb.zuv.uni-heidelberg.de/info/INFO_FD... Happy to answer any questions! #Sociology #socsky
Stellenausschreibungen an der Universität Heidelberg
Infosystem der ZUV
adb.zuv.uni-heidelberg.de
October 31, 2025 at 1:48 PM
Reposted by Carsten Schwemmer
amreibahr.bsky.social
5 Jahre #95vsWissZeitVG! 🎉 Für @drkeichhorn.bsky.social, @kubon.bsky.social & mich 1 Anlass, Euch DANKE zu sagen, liebe Community: für Ausdauer, Engagement & Solidarität! Nur: Wie? Noch 1 gemeinsamer Text? Nein! Dem Anlass angemessen gibt‘s was ganz Neues: 1 gemeinsames Lied für Euch! #IchBinHanna 🎶
5 Jahre #95vsWissZeitVG: Unser Dank an die Community! #IchBinHanna #WissZeitVG
YouTube video by Amrei Bahr
youtu.be
October 31, 2025 at 6:49 AM
Reposted by Carsten Schwemmer
lorenzspreen.bsky.social
It is happening 👇
alhohlfeld.bsky.social Alexander Hohlfeld @alhohlfeld.bsky.social · Oct 29
📊 The #DSA data access portal is live, and VLOPs/VLOSEs have begun publishing their data catalogues.
Trying to collect the links again: docs.google.com/spreadsheets...
LinkedIn
This link will take you to a page that’s not on LinkedIn
lnkd.in
October 29, 2025 at 5:03 PM
Reposted by Carsten Schwemmer
dougaparry.bsky.social
Any experiences with data donation of #Spotify listening history?

I requested to download my full listening history and it said that it would take 30 days to produce the download.

2 hours later I received the link to the zip file with full JSON records.

Any other experiences with this?
October 26, 2025 at 9:00 AM
Reposted by Carsten Schwemmer
rmcelreath.bsky.social
When there is a random way to do something, there is a less random way that is better but requires more thought. In this case, regression models that make no sense don't belong in a multiverse analysis. An inferential regression without a causal justification is like an opinion without reasons.
October 23, 2025 at 4:34 PM
Reposted by Carsten Schwemmer
msaeltzer.bsky.social
Job Alert! We are hiring two post-docs (full time, 4+ years) in our project SCEPTIC - Social, Computational and Ethical Premises of Trust and Informational Cohesion with @annanosthoff.bsky.social @guzoch.bsky.social and Prof. Andreas Peters (uol.de/informatik/s...)
October 17, 2025 at 9:15 AM
Reposted by Carsten Schwemmer
dgarcia.eu
Join us as postdoc at the Inequality Discourse Observatory at the University of Konstanz: stellen.uni-konstanz.de/jobposting/7...
We will do epic research between Linguistics and Computational Social Science at the Cluster of Politics of Inequality. Feel free to DM if you have any questions.
One postdoctoral Research Position
Deadline: November 15th, 2025
stellen.uni-konstanz.de
October 13, 2025 at 3:06 PM
Reposted by Carsten Schwemmer
indiiigo.bsky.social
Come join next Wednesday if you want to rant about society's love-hate relationship with LLMs!
mzes-ssdl.bsky.social MZES Social Science Data Lab @mzes-ssdl.bsky.social · Oct 15
🚨 Upcoming: "Large Language Models for Social Research: Potentials and Challenges"

👤 Indira Sen (University of Mannheim)

🗓️ Wed, October 22, 13:45-15:15 CET

📺 Register for the live stream: us02web.zoom.us/meeting/regi...

🔗 socialsciencedatalab.mzes.uni-mannheim.de/page/events/
Large Language Models for Social Research: Potentials and Challenges Hybrid event [A5, 6, Room A231 + Zoom] Oktober 22, 2025, 13:45-15:15 Abstract Large Language Models (LLMs) have the potential to revolutionize the social sciences—for example, by accelerating content analysis or enabling realistic social simulations. In this workshop, I will discuss how LLMs can be applied and audited for social science applications, including the generation of synthetic survey responses and content analysis. I will also address how biases in LLMs can hinder these applications and explore ways to better surface and understand these biases. Finally, I will present a hands-on use case demonstrating how LLMs can be guided using demographic personas for both content analysis and simulated surveys. Presenter(s) Indira Sen is a Junior Faculty member at the University of Mannheim’s Business School in the Chair of Data Science for the Social and Economic Sciences. Her work lies at the intersection of NLP and Computational Social Science, specifically in developing and evaluating representative and equitable language technology, including Large Language Models.
October 16, 2025 at 9:32 AM
Reposted by Carsten Schwemmer
p-hunermund.com
Google and Yale just released a 27B foundation model that generated a new hypothesis about cancer cell behavior, which was experimentally confirmed in living cells. The team open-sourced the model weights and resources for the community to build on. blog.google/technology/a...
How a Gemma model helped discover a new potential cancer therapy pathway
We’re launching a new 27 billion parameter foundation model for single-cell analysis built on the Gemma family of open models.
blog.google
October 16, 2025 at 6:50 AM
Reposted by Carsten Schwemmer
sanderwagner.bsky.social
New article out in @sociusjournal.bsky.social.

It shows how closely linked motherhood penalties 🤰📉 and gender inequalities 👨‍💼💰👩‍💼 are by studying many local labour markets.

Thread 👇

journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...
October 13, 2025 at 4:37 PM
Reposted by Carsten Schwemmer
gesis.org
#ASConference25
Societal Challenges and the important infrastructures for the Social Sciences on the way to get answers. Sebastian Stier shows how to unlock digital behavioral data.

as25.sociology.uni-m...
October 9, 2025 at 10:49 AM
Reposted by Carsten Schwemmer
sebstier.bsky.social
📢 We're hiring a Doctoral Student in Research Software Engineering for Digital Behavioral Data!
Work at the intersection of computer science and social science, develop innovative tools, and pursue your doctoral degree with us.

👉 Apply here: www.gesis.org/en/institute...
Details
GESIS Leibniz Institut für Sozialwissenschaften
www.gesis.org
October 2, 2025 at 7:48 AM
Reposted by Carsten Schwemmer
tiagoventura.bsky.social
How common are “survey professionals” - people who take dozens of online surveys for pay - across online panels, and do they harm data quality?

Our paper, FirstView at @politicalanalysis.bsky.social, tackles this question using browsing data from three U.S. samples (Facebook, YouGov, and Lucid):
October 7, 2025 at 6:49 PM
Reposted by Carsten Schwemmer
kwelle.bsky.social
Social-Media-Daten zwischen Forschung und Infrastrukturen - nachhaltige Archivierung, Erschließung und Bereitstellung: An der @dnb-aktuelles.bsky.social finden vom 17.-19.03.2026 die Social Media Access Days statt. Wir freuen uns über Einreichungen bis zum 31.10.2025. www.dnb.de/DE/Professio...
Call for Submissions: Social Media Access Days
Call for Submissions: Social Media Access Days
www.dnb.de
October 1, 2025 at 6:29 AM
Reposted by Carsten Schwemmer
ralmeling.bsky.social
Yale Sociology is hiring an associate or full professor in quantitative sociology. Come work with me! Applications open tomorrow. Details available here:

apply.interfolio.com/174709
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apply.interfolio.com
September 30, 2025 at 2:21 PM