Simon Munzert

2️⃣4️⃣🎁🎄 Doing something new for Advent this year: one great data journalism piece per day until Dec 24. I’m teaching a data journalism course @hertieschool.bsky.social next semester, so this is partly selfish homework. But maybe interesting for others too.

I will start a new group at @wuvienna.bsky.social next spring and am recruiting. - Assistant Professor (non-tenure track) Social Data Science tinyurl.com/ykfsctp8 - Research and Teaching Associate (PhD candidate) Survey Method/Social Data Science tinyurl.com/4k7sandh Deadline: Nov. 4

Ever wondered what attributes are relevant in your conjoint experiment? And what assumptions you need to estimate it? Asya and I got you covered. In a new working paper we propose the APNS: the probability that an attribute's level change is necessary and sufficient for the selection of a profile.

Our research group under the supervision of Kevin Munger is starting a presentation series at EUI called PING (Politics and the INternet Group). We’re accepting applications for the fall term. Come present and hang out in Florence! I will link the website and call in the comments. Pls share widely

Geo-coded electoral data offers immense potential for understanding democratic processes. @dielea.bsky.social, Stefan Jünger, and I will build a research data infrastructure to support the global research community using such data with our DFG-funded project "Electoral Spaces". We are hiring!

We have a 2-year postdoc position available in a new SNSF/DFG-funded project on nationalist mobilization. More details here: stellen.uni-konstanz.de/jobposting/5.... Please share widely!

Ahead of three closely watched state elections, a research team including Prof. Simon Munzert @simonsaysnothin.bsky.social uses statistical modeling to assess how likely different election outcomes really are. ➡️ www.hertie-school.org/en/news/allc...

Glad to finally be able to post about this long-in-the-works paper, led by the amazing @crobertson500.bsky.social and @small-schulz.bsky.social! "Everyone knows" that social media gives a distorted view of public opinion (...right?). 1/8

EuroWEPS 14 is here! We'll meet in Berlin @wzb.bsky.social and discuss designs/papers focusing on causal inference. No presentations, just constructive discussions. Early career scholars especially welcome to apply! Deadline is Sept 11.

Great position, great people. Apply!

Stop! 🛑 Scroll no further - this is the coolest thing you'll see today. Presenting The Data Dispatch: data journalism made by my students at the Hertie School 👇 data-journalism-26.github.io

This spring, students in the #DataJournalism course traded the seminar room for the newsroom. The Data Dispatch brings reporting from Prof @simonsaysnothin.bsky.social Munzert's Data Journalism course, where students take a story from raw data to publication 👉 www.hertie-school.org/en/news/deta...

New paper out in the @thejop.bsky.social (w/ @christinagahn.bsky.social) Do opinion polls shape election results? Using both cross-national data and a survey experiment, the answer we find is yes - though it depends on how we communicate polling results. www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/...

📢 Reminder: Submit to our #MuC2026 workshop, “Human-Centered Content Moderation: Expertise, Context, and Evaluation” (Aug 30, Duisburg, Germany). We welcome position papers and reflection essays. 📅 Deadline: June 24, 2026 👉 workshop26.content-moderation.org

Last monday we published our paper on AI Labels and a potential spillover effect on unlabeled posts on platforms such as Instagram in the ICWSM proceedings. If you are interested in our work you can now find it here: ojs.aaai.org/index.php/IC... Huge thanks to my co-authors @ddimmery.com and Pu Yan!

We are excited to feature the following keynote speakers at the Visions in Methodology Conference in Berlin: @adelineylo.bsky.social Adeline Lo, @uwmadison.bsky.social @tara-slough.bsky.social Tara Slough, Associate Professor, New York University 👉 vim2026.com #VIM2026

New paper w/ @lstoetze.bsky.social "Estimating Treatment Effects on Proportions with Synthetic Controls" out in @polanalysis.bsky.social 👀 When your outcomes are compositional (such as vote shares), applying synthetic controls separately to each part can break the math. We show how to fix it: 🧵

Opa, wenn er zu Heinos Rock-Platte wippt

Proud to share: our postdoctoral researcher Christian Gläßel and @ascharpf.bsky.social's new book, Making a Career in Dictatorship, has been featured in The New York Times. 📰 Read more about their feature here: lnkd.in/d2SNAfFC @hertieschool.bsky.social

🗓️ May 19, 3–4pm BST: I'm presenting at the DEMED webinar series on social media as a research tool, organized by @anjaneundorf.bsky.social & @aykutozturk.bsky.social I'll speak about geographic targeting using social media ads and why it matters. Sign up here: www.gla.ac.uk/research/az/...

Wow, feels like one of those papers that becomes an instant classic. That AI output isn't politically neutral is not new, but it's great to see this being demonstrated in detail - with the language-dependent effect, and the laundering mechanism through training data. Congrats to everyone involved!

A new study published in @nature.com Nature Human Behaviour, by @seramirezruiz.bsky.social, @hertieschool.bsky.social & @rsenninger.bsky.social, @au.dk reveals how power shapes not just politics but the very knowledge that informs it. Read 👉 www.hertie-school.org/en/news/allc...

In his recent talk at the Inside Data Journalism series at the Hertie School Data Science Lab, @lennybronner.com Lenny Bronner shared his journey as a data scientist at The @washingtonpost.com, working at the intersection of data science and journalism 👉 www.hertie-school.org/en/datascien...

Whoa, that sounds like an exciting and relevant project! The games industry is so understudied from a poli-sci/quant lens.

Join us tomorrow for a Brown Bag Talk with @simonsaysnothin.bsky.social Simon Munzert, Professor of Data Science and Public Policy at Hertie School. 📅 5 May 2026 ⏲️ 12–1 PM (CEST) 📍 Maker Space, the Hertie School Register 👉 www.hertie-school.org/en/datascien...

📆 One more week to apply! Do reach out if you have any questions about the position.

👇That, and the opportunity to be part of a research community featuring rockstar colleagues inlcuding Drew, Asya Magazinnik, Lynn Kaack, Will Lowe, and more great people at @hertieschool.bsky.social!

🚨 Job alert! 🚨 Postdoc in Comparative Politics/Public Opinion/IR (3 yrs) @unigreifswald.bsky.social Work on democratic resilience in times of crisis using cross-national survey data. flexible start (earliest possible) deadline: 31 May 2026 🔗 www.uni-greifswald.de/en/universit...

🚨CfA🚨 We're looking for a postdoc joining us in summer in Berlin. 3-year position @hertieschool.bsky.social @hertiedatascience.bsky.social. Pursue your own research agenda in data science for public policy - ML/AI, causal inference, computational methods. Questions? Don't hesitate to reach out!

New publication 📄 "Little change in a changing landscape: Tracking exposure to untrustworthy news in Germany from 2017 to 2024". So far, my shortest paper - and the first with @simonsaysnothin.bsky.social! Read our brief description of news web browsing @journalqd.bsky.social

Delighted to see "Swiftness & delay of punishment" (joint w/ @libordusekeu.bsky.social) published online @theeconjournal.bsky.social academic.oup.com/ej/advance-a... Open access 👉 www.hertie-school.org/fileadmin/5_... Longer thread with summary👇

I made an animated map of ship movements in the Straights of Hormuz using data from marinetraffic.com. Ship track frames rendered using #ggplot, base map created using #gdal, video editing using #ffmpeg, video player written in #svelte. 🎁 www.zeit.de/wirtschaft/2...

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

Joint paper with @floriankeusch.bsky.social out now: We discuss opportunities and challenges of causal inference from digital behavioral data, and methodological approaches for making these data fit for purpose: link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Ich durfte in der @taz.de ein bisschen was zu Umfragen erzählen, und was soll ich sagen - Berichte über den Tod von Umfragen sind stark übertrieben...

Always a pleasure chatting with students who ask sharp questions 😊 Thanks to The Governance Post for having me - and yes, I stand by the autopilot line.

School council election. Also running: the class clown. Annoying to all, impossible to ignore. Kid 1: “I’ll vote for him. He’s in my class.” Kid 2: “Nice poster! He'll get my vote.” Kid 1: “Also, he promised better school lunches.” Political scientist in me: slowly nodding, checking off the 2020s

Flashback to last year’s Data4Good Hackathon challenges! 🏛 Municipal Innovation (with @bertelsmannst.bsky.social): > Participants tackled the Wegweiser Kommune dataset, using 400+ indicators to map out the future of German municipalities.

This is the week we’ve been waiting for: The Data4Good Festival 2026! We are excited to host 70+ students from across Europe at the Hertie School for a weekend of data-driven innovation and creativity in the heart of Berlin.

Thanks for referring to our research, @donmoyn.bsky.social! For those who want to understand the actions of authoritarian security organizations, here is the info kit of our forthcoming book “Making a Career in Dictatorship”. It includes short chapter summaries and more: tinyurl.com/599d6uc5