FEATURED JOB: Postdoctoral Research Associate in American Politics & Public Opinion, Taubman Center for American Politics & Policy, Watson School of International & Public Affairs, Brown University - Rhode Island
#job #opportunity #academicjob #education #politicalscience #publicpolicy
Curious about the difference between sociology and political science?
This guide breaks down what each field studies, how they shape our understanding of society, and why the distinction matters. Perfect for students, lifelong learners, or anyone who loves making sense of the world.
Explore here: https://www.djoinerbooks.com/sociology-vs-political-science/
#SociologyExplained, #PoliticalScience, #LearnSomethingNew, #AcademicInsights
From PsyPost.org: Study identifies two distinct types of populist voters driving support for strongman leaders: Researchers surveyed citizens in nine countries to understand the rise of right-wing populism. They found that support typically stems from either a desire for democratic reform or a specific preference for authoritarian control. http://dlvr.it/TQLzzN News: bit.ly/3LA2jdQ #Populism #PoliticalScience #Authoritarianism #Democracy #VoterBehavior
Any international Master degree holders in #sociology, #psychology, #politicalScience, #educationalScience, #economics, #statistics or related fields interested in a PhD scholarship for up to 4 years (starting from October) at #BAGSS, University of #Bamberg? Apply until 10 February. All information here: https://www.uni-bamberg.de/en/bagss/application/daad-scholarship/
An oldie but goodie. Sounds like #Trump #ForeignPolicy
#RandyNewman #PoliticalScience
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=405xgQTlbwU&list=RD405xgQTlbwU&start_radio=1
“Distracted from distraction by distraction”*…
Don Moynihan argues that here has been a shift in the character– the instincts, the motivations, and thus the patterns of decision and action– of our government…
One of the strangest moments to emerge from the U.S. kidnapping of Nicolás Maduro was the flurry of images posted by President Trump on Truth Social. It felt a bit like a student who can’t decide which spring break photos look cutest, so they just upload them all.
The intent seemed to be to create an iconic image reminiscent of the White House Situation Room during the raid that killed Osama bin Laden—a gathering of stoic men (no girls allowed!) staring grimly at some unseen screen. The message: “Look how serious and important our work is!” Yet, the staged nature of these photos undermines that effect, leaving the whole scene feeling less like history in the making and more like an amateur theater production of a Broadway classic.
In one image, the Director of the CIA, the Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the Secretary of Defense are grouped around a laptop. Behind them, unmistakably, a screen displays a feed from X—complete with a prominent yellow emoji. In other pictures, “Venezuela” appears to be in the search box.
With the best intelligence systems in the world at their fingertips, they were checking X in the midst of the mission? Combined with the curtains separating some section of Mar‑A‑Lago from the rest of the President’s resort, the images create an almost surreal air. It felt as if a group of twelve-year-old boys in a basement had been handed control of the most lethal military in history—and were using it to boost their online brands.
Trump is undoubtedly the American president who has most effectively wielded social media: drawing attention, reshaping norms, and fueling conspiracy theories. The successful use of social media, for example, turned avowed MAGA isolationists into enthusiastic colonial imperialists overnight.
But I want to suggest that what we are witnessing from the Trump administration is not just skillful manipulation of social media—it’s something more profoundly worrying. Today, we live in a clicktatorship, ruled by a LOLviathan. Our algothracy is governed by poster brains.
It’s worth remembering that social media operates like a drug, feeding us dopamine and rewiring our brains’ reward pathways. The fundamentally unhealthy dynamics are worsened by the fact that standing out online often demands being awful—channeling negative emotions like anger and outrage, usually based on misinformation or conspiracy theories.
None of this is new. Indeed, there is a booming political science literature on the effects of social media on voter behavior. Chris Hayes and others have written persuasively about the how toxic attention farming is for us personally and for our democracy. But I want to make the case that we should also consider how social media it is affecting how policymakers use public power.
What I’m arguing is that the Trump administration isn’t just using social media to shape a narrative. Many of its members are deeply addicted to it. We would be concerned if a senior government official was an alcoholic or drug addict, knowing it could impair judgment and decisionmaking. But we should be equally concerned about Pete Hegseth and Elon Musk’s social media compulsions—just as much as their alcohol or ketamine use, respectively.
Overexposure to online engagement has cooked the brains of some of the most powerful people in the world. This is not exclusively an American phenomenon. President Yoon Suk Yeol seemed to have genuinely believed online conspiracy theories about election fraud, motivating his declaration of martial law and triggering a constitutional crisis, and his eventual arrest, in Korea.
But in the US government, poster brain feels endemic. The Trump administration is made up of a cabinet of posters. For many, that’s how they won Trump’s attention. The head of the FBI, for example, is a podcaster—that’s his main qualifier for the job.
They view the world through a social media lens in a way that is plausibly corrupting their judgment and undermining their performance. Lets think through how poster brain can affect how people in government operate…
[Moynihan explores, with illustrative examples, online bubbles, conflicts between professional and online indentities, the degradation of professional norms and work practices, and the altering of decision-making to be responsive to social media– to create content]
I’m just scratching the surface here. Pick any federal agency, and you can find examples of poster brains making important decisions. This trend is likely to only get worse as digital natives enter key government roles. And there are likely a host of other ways these patterns are undermining the professional behavior of people in government that I have not identified. In particular, the Trump administration represents the intersection of poster brain, personalism, and authoritarianism that seems especially toxic…
… The bottom line is that it we need to take more seriously how social media has rewired the brains—and behavior—of those running our country.
Eminently worth reading in full: What happens to government when everything is content? “Life Under a Clicktatorship,” from @donmoyn.bsky.social.
See also: “The Trump-Flavored Content Administration,” from @cooperlund.online, and “How ICE Makes Raids Go Viral,” from @taylorlorenz.bsky.social.
And a bit orthogonal, but apposite: “The year of technoligarchy,” from @molly.wiki.
* T.S. Eliot, Burnt Norton
###
As we recommit to real life, we might recall that today in National Static Electicity Day.
#culture #government #history #NationalStaticElecticityDay #politicalScience #politics #publicPolicy #socialMedia #staticElectricity #Technology
Book Review: Open Democracy
Getting into the mindset of the more popular political scientists:
https://tiereddemocraticgovernance.org/blog_details.php?blog_cat_id=33&id=196
Can they save us?
I've never gotten over the weirdness of the oxymoronic label "Marxist-Leninist," combining the name of a 19th century political philosopher who sincerely believed in the emancipation of the working class, with that of a ruthless 20th century dictator who quashed the workers' soviets and resubjected them to the same centralised authoritarian rule they'd just overthrown.
It feels a bit like calling yourself a "Ghandi colonialist" or a "Scientific anti-vaxxer."
Of course, if I'd actually read the tracts they used to shove in my face at the subway-station entrances, I'm sure I'd realize that the apparent contradiction is simply an hallucination induced by my petit bourgeois education. 😉
💢 Partisan X posts boost political polarisation among users, research finds
#x #media #socialmedia #politicalscience #politics #polarization #partisan #emotions
😅 New research finds Americans deeply concerned about US democracy
https://phys.org/news/2025-11-americans-deeply-democracy.html
#usa #politics #politicalscience #survey #research #uspol #democracy
In Episode 78, Bill and Jumelle are asked the question: What is the role of the government?
Subscribe, download and listen today! https://linktr.ee/bwabits
#government #safety #lawenforcement #politicalscience #toughquestions
🗳️ The Illusion of Political Independence
https://www.mdpi.com/3042-8084/1/1/3
#politics #politicalscience #elections #voting #thirdparties
👣 Investigation shows large support for core ideas of degrowth—but not the label
https://phys.org/news/2025-12-large-core-ideas-degrowth.html
#degrowth #politics #politicalscience #survey #environment #economics
🤑 Seeing rich people increases support for wealth redistribution, study finds
https://phys.org/news/2025-11-rich-people-wealth-redistribution.html
🤝 Why protests can bring people together across political divides
https://phys.org/news/2025-12-protests-people-political.html
#protests #politics #politicalscience #organization #community
.@democracynow Video: Slow Poison: #IdiAmin, #YoweriMuseveni, & the Making of the #Ugandan State - interview with #MahmoodMamdani
#Uganda #decolonization #IdentityPolitics
#PoliticalScience #Africa #MontgomeryBusBoycott #anticolonial #refragmentation
"Well, I anticipated a lot of what would happen if Trump were reelected, but I did not anticipate the quick acquiescence of almost every American elite sector. The universities are part of a larger story. In many ways, it started with law firms — or you could say it started with the fact that we no longer have corporations so much as we have megalomaniacal multibillionaire tech bros who operate as individuals — sycophants trying to buy their way in. Musk is the most obvious, but they’re all that way right now. They’re inescapable because they control huge sectors of internet-enabled stuff that everybody needs. In some ways, Musk is the most vulnerable because of Tesla.
The universities are not an exemplary story of collective action, but they’re not as bad as the other elite institutions. I want to be careful here because I’m not sure we know how much informal coordination has been going on among university leaders. Obviously, there has not been a big public thing. That would be very difficult to do — there are so many colleges and universities, and even so many fairly important ones. They’re divided between the overly rich private universities and the major public universities and university systems. This is where Harvard was very important. I think Harvard, like everybody else, wanted to find a way to make a deal, because what nobody anticipated — and I think it’s fair to say that nobody did — was the attack on overhead and the attack on scientific research.
That, along with the attack on international students, could destroy these institutions. University administrators in our era are not profiles in courage. They are picked to go along to get along. They’re also picked for courting donors."
https://sociologica.unibo.it/article/view/23285/20740
#Sociology #PoliticalScience #PoliSci #USA #HigherEd #Universities #Trump
