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Alberto Acerbi@albertoacerbi.bsky.social |
617 followers 536 following 228 posts
I am an assistant professor in the Department of Sociology and Social Research at the University of Trento (Italy): cognitive anthropology / cultural evolution / digital media / cultural analytics
Website: acerbialberto.com
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Alberto Acerbi
@albertoacerbi.bsky.social
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The present study investigates the evolution of a more abstract dimension of popular music, specifically melody, using a new dataset of popular melodies spanning from 1950 to 2023
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
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Alberto Acerbi
@albertoacerbi.bsky.social
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p.s.: Not exactly a news. We cite this in our Misinformation on Misinformation paper, but I read the book only now!
journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...
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Alberto Acerbi
@albertoacerbi.bsky.social
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Do you remember the story of Orson Wells radio airing of War of the Worlds and the panic it spawned?
Well, apparently it is a myth, generated by another, more real, panic, the one about the power of the radio, the then new mass media.
us.macmillan.com/books/978080...
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Alberto Acerbi
@albertoacerbi.bsky.social
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An image that summarise the message from various recent researches. TV consumption is declining, while online news consumption has not significantly increased to fill the gap (note: the y-axes have different scales).
newsconsumption.seas.upenn.edu/overall-news...
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Alberto Acerbi
@albertoacerbi.bsky.social
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What is the current status of claims about predicting personality traits from social media activity e.g. Facebook "likes" as in this (more than 10 years old!) paper?
Any recent take/review?
Thank you!
www.pnas.org/doi/full/10....
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Alberto Acerbi
@albertoacerbi.bsky.social
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We rightly complained about Trump casting doubt about the electoral results, but scares about deepfakes, Cambridge analytica, Russian bots interferences, etc do exactly the same.
www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...
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Alberto Acerbi
@albertoacerbi.bsky.social
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"because most people are much more likely to encounter reliable news than misinformation, any increase in general scepticism may have a much stronger negative effect than the positive effect of reducing misperception"
rdcu.be/dKmXg
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Alberto Acerbi
@albertoacerbi.bsky.social
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"Comparing the same movie across different markets, we establish that films that resonate more with local folklore systematically accrue higher revenue and are more likely to be screened"
www.nber.org/papers/w32220
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Alberto Acerbi
@albertoacerbi.bsky.social
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5-veloci-5 link a settimana
albertoacerbi.substack.com/p/i-link-del...
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Alberto Acerbi
@albertoacerbi.bsky.social
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"Combating contamination and contagion: Embodied and environmental metaphors of misinformation"
journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10....
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Alberto Acerbi
@albertoacerbi.bsky.social
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Tim Lewens "Cultural selection" - free to downloads for two weeks.
www.cambridge.org/core/element...
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Alberto Acerbi
@albertoacerbi.bsky.social
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"We find that a ten percent increase in the proportion of county residents with access to broadband internet leads to a 1.01 percent reduction in the number of suicides in a county, as well as improvements in self-reported mental and physical health." www.nber.org/papers/w32517
0 replies 3 reposts 3 likes
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Alberto Acerbi
@albertoacerbi.bsky.social
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So the Guardian now says that "Cambridge Analytica-style microtargeted political adverts [...] is now considered by many to be an ineffective “red herring”"
www.theguardian.com/politics/art...
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Alberto Acerbi
@albertoacerbi.bsky.social
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albertoacerbi.substack.com/p/i-link-del...
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Alberto Acerbi
@albertoacerbi.bsky.social
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New confirmation that few users are responsible for most of misinfo (defined at domain-level) sharing. Also usual proportion of misinfo within all political news sharing (~5/10 %).
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
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Alberto Acerbi
@albertoacerbi.bsky.social
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Excellent point.
Vaccine-related flagged misinformation was 0.3% on Facebook (usual) BUT non-flagged vaccine-skeptical content was much more diffused and had a 46X estimated effect.
Study news not fake news!
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
0 replies 13 reposts 21 likes
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Bruce Rawlings
@brucerawlings.bsky.social
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In a detailed review and reflection, Simon Reader and I discuss and explore the definitions, approaches, controversies, and key questions in human and nonhuman innovation, under the lens of cultural evolution:
academic.oup.com/edited-volum...
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Alberto Acerbi
@albertoacerbi.bsky.social
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What are the best meta analysis of longitudinal studies in social media and mental health?
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Alberto Acerbi
@albertoacerbi.bsky.social
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Thanks to @orbenamy.bsky.social and @shuhbillskee.bsky.social I can have this subsection title in the book I am drafting :)
Ps: I am writing a pop(-ish) book in Italian on digital techno-panics, hopefully more in the next months!
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Alberto Acerbi
@albertoacerbi.bsky.social
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Ci riproviamo visto che è finito il semestre...
albertoacerbi.substack.com/p/i-link-del...
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Alberto Acerbi
@albertoacerbi.bsky.social
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""stakeholders should focus their interventions on cultivating more accurate and optimistic perceptions about news and news production to re-establish trust in the news media, rather than constantly warning audiences of the potential for deception."
misinforeview.hks.harvard.edu/article/misi...
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Alberto Acerbi
@albertoacerbi.bsky.social
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Just out! Join us for The first Italian Conference on Computational Social Science the 15-18 January 2025 in Trento, including the establishment of the Italian Society of Computational Social Sciences. Submission is open until September 15. cs2italy.org
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Alberto Acerbi
@albertoacerbi.bsky.social
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So it is not only neuroscience papers... 🤔
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Alberto Acerbi
@albertoacerbi.bsky.social
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I find it interesting that we are worried at the same time that there is too much information online and that some of it disappears. Cultural selection acting?
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Alberto Acerbi
@albertoacerbi.bsky.social
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Starting today the last week of my cultural analytics course. Shout-out to the guests @fpianz.bsky.social @sobchuk.bsky.social @edgardubourg.bsky.social and @chiarabonacchi.bsky.social - surely students have had food for thought!
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Alberto Acerbi
@albertoacerbi.bsky.social
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Good point. The trend seems to be starting before streaming though?
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Alberto Acerbi
@albertoacerbi.bsky.social
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I had an old blog post on this: "in the last part of the century, the same best-selling authors and musicians tended to be more successful, comparatively, than what was happening in the first period of the data"
acerbialberto.wordpress.com/2015/03/13/d...
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Alberto Acerbi
@albertoacerbi.bsky.social
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"An interesting aspect of the Billboard Hot 100 historical data is the absence of accelerated public attention [...] hits dominating the chart for much longer periods than used to be the case"
arxiv.org/abs/2405.075...
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Alberto Acerbi
@albertoacerbi.bsky.social
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"In the context of COVID-19, prestige was not a determining factor in the amount of information remembered by people" - preregistered study
journals.plos.org/plosone/arti...
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Andrew Przybylski
@shuhbillskee.bsky.social
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"If we’re going to make the online world safe for young people, we can’t just go in guns blazing with strong beliefs and a one size fits all solution - we really need to make sure that we’re sensitive to having our minds changed by data"
#digitalwellbeing
www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
0 replies 7 reposts 16 likes
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Alberto Acerbi
@albertoacerbi.bsky.social
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Treating cultural analytics students with a guest lecture from @sobchuk.bsky.social
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Alberto Acerbi
@albertoacerbi.bsky.social
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"a long-term literacy course increased students’ ability to accurately assess the reliability of mainstream, but not untrustworthy news. Since the prevalence of the latter is much lower than that of the former, I argue this to be a welcome finding"
www.google.com/url?sa=t&sou...
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Alberto Acerbi
@albertoacerbi.bsky.social
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Vaccination hesitancy shapes increased conspiracy beliefs more than viceversa
journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...
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Alberto Acerbi
@albertoacerbi.bsky.social
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Looking forward to @sobchuk.bsky.social visiting Trento! Oleg will also give a seminar for the C2S2: “Dissecting the Trendline: Explaining Literary Evolution with the Price Equation”
webmagazine.unitn.it/evento/socio...
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Alberto Acerbi
@albertoacerbi.bsky.social
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Damning review of Haidt's book
www.thedailybeast.com/the-coddling...
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Alberto Acerbi
@albertoacerbi.bsky.social
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An historical perspective on public health misinformation and pandemics - "We [...] challenge the assumption that misinformation is a new phenomenon associated with increased use of social media or with the COVID-19 pandemic"
www.thelancet.com/journals/lan...
0 replies 2 reposts 6 likes
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Alberto Acerbi
@albertoacerbi.bsky.social
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Come do a PhD in Trento!
www.unitn.it/en/ateneo/58...
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Matti Vuorre 🖖
@matti.vuorre.com
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Regarding internet technologies (smartphones, social media, etc.) and well-being. Is there a crisis?
I've written about this a bit with Andy @shuhbillskee.bsky.social [1,2,3] and have some further thoughts below.
[1]: osf.io/preprints/ps...
[2]: osf.io/preprints/ps...
[3]: osf.io/preprints/ps...
1 replies 11 reposts 10 likes
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Andrew Przybylski
@shuhbillskee.bsky.social
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Prof. Candice Odgers shares an excellent review of a controversial book that gets things wrong on an important topic. If you study or care about youth and adolescent health in the digital age, please give this one a read.
#digitalwellbeing #adolescentmentalhealth
www.nature.com/articles/d41...
9 replies 64 reposts 162 likes
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Alberto Acerbi
@albertoacerbi.bsky.social
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Also confirms they got more negative
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
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Alberto Acerbi
@albertoacerbi.bsky.social
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"Formalising prestige bias: Differences between models with first-order and second-order cues"
www.cambridge.org/core/journal...
0 replies 3 reposts 1 likes
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Alberto Acerbi
@albertoacerbi.bsky.social
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Excellent from Tom Stafford - "Reasonable People #53 looking carefully at the claims in one study which uses generative AI to customise ads to personality type"
tomstafford.substack.com/p/ai-juiced-...
0 replies 1 reposts 3 likes
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Alberto Acerbi
@albertoacerbi.bsky.social
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There was this twitter account that was adding "in mice" to findings, maybe I should do one that does "in US"...
www.theguardian.com/society/2024...
1 replies 1 reposts 9 likes
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Alberto Acerbi
@albertoacerbi.bsky.social
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It's a bit weird that this should be emphasised, but, yes, people are starting to get it!
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
1 replies 1 reposts 1 likes
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Alberto Acerbi
@albertoacerbi.bsky.social
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I also realised I have put online slides/videos for most of my talks in the last 3-4 years.
...This probably says more about my personality traits than being a service to the community, but still :)
acerbialberto.com/talk/
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Alberto Acerbi
@albertoacerbi.bsky.social
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As usual slides are available
acerbialberto.com/talk/2024_kcl/
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Alberto Acerbi
@albertoacerbi.bsky.social
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Looking forward to give a talk tomorrow (online) for the Seminar Series of the Computational Humanities Research Group at King's College London
www.kcl.ac.uk/events/large...
1 replies 2 reposts 5 likes
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Alberto Acerbi
@albertoacerbi.bsky.social
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""Our model shifts the focus from the receiver to the sender of cultural information and emphasizes the role of sender traits, such as communicability or persuasiveness."
royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/...
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Alberto Acerbi
@albertoacerbi.bsky.social
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Cumulative culture in bumblebees
- research is great, but I wonder how much we cam stretch the CC concept and it is still meaningful...
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
1 replies 2 reposts 5 likes
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Alberto Acerbi
@albertoacerbi.bsky.social
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Interesting piece on opt-in polls (remember the all teens are holocaust denials one?) www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/...
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