Ben Lyons

Associate professor @UofUComm. Associate member @huntsmancancer. Associate editor @MisinfoReview. Book:

[Ben Lyons @ba_lyons]

Honored to be among this cohort. The fellowship will support my research on how the partisan loyalty of older adults and institutional distrust among younger adults create different paths to polarization, with the goal of developing age-specific solutions. #CarnegieFellows

[Andrew Carnegie Foundation @ACarnegieFdn]

Announcing the 2026 Andrew #CarnegieFellows! Selected from a record 381 nominations, 24 fellows will each receive $200K to examine the causes of political polarization — and how to reduce it.

🔗Read more: https://t.co/lpg5B3q2PY

#Polarization #Research

[Robert Vidigal @RobbVidi]

1/4 Measuring knowledge and certainty together offers a practical way to improve measurement validity in online surveys.

My new paper, published today in @PSRMJournal, tests a simple change in survey question design.

🔓 View it here (open access): https://t.co/yxdm6O5lf8

[Katherine Ognyanova (@ognyanova.bsky.social) @Ognyanova]

Just released: the CHIP50 Trust Tracker, an interactive tool exploring trust in US institutions over time, across social groups, and state by state. Favorite new feature: the network map, it shows which institutions tend to be trusted by the same people https://t.co/eLGBWmVwnb

[Ross Dahlke 🔑 @Ross_Dahlke]

From me and @RyanMooreInfo. Most work on social media and visits to news and misinfo websites does a "referral analysis." We conceptualize the "embedded referrers paradigm" and simulation analysis to examine at social media's role more holistically https://t.co/bv68LUcT39

[The Charlotte Observer @theobserver]

NC Rep. Virginia Foxx loses reelection but is within striking distance of a recount https://t.co/2tP8q1H9u8

[Brendan Nyhan (@BrendanNyhan on 🟦☁️) @BrendanNyhan]

Kids: study causal inference. I wouldn't accept this from an undergraduate in my intro stats class.

[Ben Lyons @ba_lyons]

@BenjaminCrew1 So true

[Semih Çakır @mascakir]

What about how strong individuals identify with their party?

In the mid-1970s, about a quarter identified as strong partisans. By 2024, that share rose to 43%.

So, while partisanship hasn't become more widespread, strong partisan identification has.

[H. Huang @haifeng_huang]

Delighted to have our chapter on #propaganda out in the Oxford Handbook of Authoritarian Politics (w/@xiyingxingchen). We highlight roles beyond persuasion—signaling regime power, shaping collective beliefs, upward messaging—and offer a broader definition. https://t.co/5hHSIykWrk

[Robb Willer @RobbWiller]

Cool quote from @carlislerainey's great piece!
I've also been thinking about the parts of social science I value that would be lost if we use AI to optimize the positivist aspects of social science, and what we can do about it.
There is valuable writing & thinking done even by positivist social scientists that would be lost in a world where AI helps us streamline papers to be extremely technically correct and faster to produce, writing and thinking that is aesthetic, exploratory, speculative, uncertain, subjective, and/or vague. That writing can be interesting, generative, and frankly fun. I don't want to lose it. And of course lots of academics work primarily in this register.

[Ben Lyons @ba_lyons]

Misinformation and the Aging American is now out in print!

Very cool to finally see the finished product and thankful to all who helped along the way.

Print: https://t.co/Is0hRvfb15

Digital: https://t.co/zCGU52n89l

[Yan Huang @YanHuang_comm]

@chelseawriting and I are guest editing a special issue of Science Communication. If you’re studying how people communicate, make sense of, or respond to uncertainty in science, health, and technology, we’d love to read your work. https://t.co/1KsI2mSiQx

[Ben Lyons @ba_lyons]

@BrendanNyhan May I suggest snl on the origin of roundball rock https://t.co/yD2qs39V5j

[Nir Grinberg @grinbergnir]

Importantly, upstream definitional choices fundamentally alter the downstream audience demographics. "Network Importance" influencers reach significantly older, whiter audiences, while Follower and engagement-based definitions yield significantly younger audiences.

[Nir Grinberg @grinbergnir]

🚨New paper🚨out in @SocMedSoc w/ John Wagner and @jennifer_oser 🎉

We all know who's a political influencer on social media, right? Well... we may THINK we do, but what we're actually measuring is very different. How different? 🧵👇

[Brendan Nyhan (@BrendanNyhan on 🟦☁️) @BrendanNyhan]

My last 18 reviews of first-round manuscripts:
-All 6 preregistered studies had undisclosed deviations
-9 of 18 had notable technical errors
-Last two were substantially AI-written

11 of 18 (61%) had one.

Editors: my coauthors and I can help you develop a pipeline to fix this!

[Rob Sica @robsica]

"the age-misinformation relationship is less about cognitive vulnerability than about complex interactions between identity, social context, and the media environment"

[Brendan Nyhan (@BrendanNyhan on 🟦☁️) @BrendanNyhan]

Misinformation and the Aging American: The Paradox of Engagement and Truth Discernment - new book forthcoming from my excellent coauthor @ba_lyons https://t.co/FKd0NhGCfi

[Brendan Nyhan (@BrendanNyhan on 🟦☁️) @BrendanNyhan]

Impressive @ThadKousser @namalhotra et al. field experiment had few effects on election attitudes of TX conservatives despite exposure to "an average of 20 online videos, 18.5 cable TV videos, 23.9 display ads, 3 text messages & 3 postcards" - high-quality content crafted by pros

[Ryan Burge 📊 @ryanburge]

I grabbed enrollment data on the flagship universities in 12 Midwestern states.

Then I grabbed the data on every school in those states with a "direction" in their name.

Every flagship is larger in 2024 vs 2005.
14 of 17 directionals are smaller.

The median change in enrollment:
Flagships: +19%
Directionals: -29%