Assistant Professor of Sociology | Computational social science, politics, and AI

Chapel Hill, NC
Joined October 2016
New paper in Nature Human Behaviour. I use a conjoint experiment to evaluate the capabilities of the latest models for context-sensitive moderation and compare the results with those from human subjects, demonstrating how social science techniques can enhance AI auditing. 💻🤖💬
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Over the past 2 weeks @claudeai found bugs affecting core functionality in two different R packages just through routine use for research and teaching. The first PR was just merged. Less satisfying than finding these myself, but what amazing time for software development!
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Thomas Davidson retweeted
📢 Call for Papers Now Open! AI for Social Science Research Methods 2027 at Yale University! Excited to announce that we are now accepting paper submissions for the 2027 AI for Social Science Research Methods Conference, taking place April 28–29, 2027, at Yale University! We have an incredible lineup of confirmed speakers, including @kinggary, @ben_golub, Sanjog Misra, and Felix Elwert, among many others! As AI transforms how we conduct social science research, we're bringing together leading scholars from sociology, economics, political science, statistics, computer science, and beyond to explore new methodological frontiers, tackle emerging challenges, and shape the future of AI-driven social science. We welcome innovative methodological and empirical work on AI applications in social science research, including new tools, methods, and approaches to evaluation. 📅 Submission deadline: November 30, 2026 📍 Yale University | April 28–29, 2027 🔗 Conference details and submissions: web.cvent.com/event/3942a257… Please spread the word to colleagues and students who might be interested. We hope to see many of you at Yale next spring!
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📢 Call for Reviewers: WOAH @ #EMNLP2026 WOAH is looking for reviewers to help evaluate submissions for our 10th edition at EMNLP 2026. Interested in serving as a reviewer? 🔗 docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F… Thank you for helping us make #WOAH2026 a success! #NLP #AI #OnlineSafety
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Thomas Davidson retweeted
✨New paper out @SpringerNature✨ For 8 weeks around the 2024 US election, we randomly assigned 2,000 people to use social media algos we custom-built. Do engagement-based algorithms amplify intergroup, moral & emotional content + does that distort how we see political norms? 🧵
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🚨 Update: WOAH Mentorship @ #EMNLP2026 🚨 Deadline extended to April 17! 📅 Still time to apply as mentor or mentee and develop your WOAH submission with expert guidance 💡 📝 Mentor: forms.gle/XaK8KBFomaWZZwG98 📝 Mentee: forms.gle/AC5akVcdzsCvwqEo7 Join us! 🌍 #NLP #WOAH
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Thomas Davidson retweeted
📢 Applications Open! Join the 2026 Summer Academy on Large Language Models for Social Science at Columbia University 🗓 May 26 – June 5, 2026 📅 Apply by March 20, 2026 #LLM #SocialScience #AIResearch #ComputationalSocialScience #NLP
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Thomas Davidson retweeted
AI-generated summaries of history led to more liberal opinions compared to Wikipedia, while summaries by chatbots prompted to use a conservative framing produced more conservative opinions—but primarily among conservative readers. In PNAS Nexus: ow.ly/oYQH50YpOHO
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Thomas Davidson retweeted
Call for Submissions: AI for Social Science Methodology @yaledatascience • Keynote: @NAChristakis • Panel with editors of leading journals on publishing AI research • Mentoring roundtables for early-career scholars • Generous travel support Discussion-driven, high-quality research. 📩 Submit your work: yalefds.swoogo.com/socialsci… Please share with colleagues working at the AI × social science frontier! @Yale @PopAssocAmerica
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Thomas Davidson retweeted
Want to learn about computational social science *for free* and identify new research partners across academic fields? Apply to one of the 2026 Summer Institutes in Computational Social Science (described in yellow in the attached map) here: sicss.io/locations
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New paper in Nature Human Behaviour. I use a conjoint experiment to evaluate the capabilities of the latest models for context-sensitive moderation and compare the results with those from human subjects, demonstrating how social science techniques can enhance AI auditing. 💻🤖💬
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Article by @thomasrdavidson examines how multimodal LLMs evaluate hate speech: larger models aligned with human judgment in context-sensitive decisions, but pervasive demographic and lexical biases remain, and visual identity cues may amplify disparities. nature.com/articles/s41562-0…
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Overall, these results show that MLLMs can make more context-sensitive moderation decisions than text-based classifiers. These systems still make mistakes, and context can cut both ways, eliminating some biases while enabling others. Human oversight thus remains essential.
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The paper is out now: nature.com/articles/s41562-0… You can read it without a paywall using this guest link: rdcu.be/eUIlm
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I'm recruiting multiple PhD students for Fall 2026 in Computer Science at @JHUCompSci 🍂 Apply to work on AI for social sciences/human behavior, social NLP, and LLMs for real-world applied domains you're passionate about! Learn more kristinagligoric.com/ & help spread the word!
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Happy to announce the 2025-2026 @UTM @UTMsoc Speaker Series @UofT @UofTNews @LucaMPesando @MarotoMichelle @thomasrdavidson
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Should WOAH start a mentorship programme? 🤔 As the workshop grows, reviewer expectations are rising. We don’t want contributors from adjacent communities penalised by *CL norms. Senior PhDs and beyond could be mentors. Share your thoughts: 👉 forms.gle/safif3rU2rs5S6H88
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