GEIS closed out the semester with new preprints, new courses, and a successful community event.
New Preprints on Persuasion and Polarization
Do Won Kim and Giovanni Ciampaglia posted a new preprint, “Challenging Partisan Expectations Reduces Political Polarization,” finding that political conversations reduce polarization most when they challenge what people expect about partisan boundaries. Krystal Gong, Julia Mendelsohn, Yiwei Xu, and co-authors also released “The Persuasion Index,” a theory-guided framework for analyzing rhetorical strategies across domains, building on the paper’s earlier acceptance at IC2S2 2026. A separate submission examining TikTok, led by Cody Buntain with Masha Krupenkin, Patricia Alegria, Benjamin Guinaudeau, and Joshua A. Tucker, has been accepted to the Political and Computational Social Science pre-conference in September.
New Courses on AI and Social Computing
Julia Mendelsohn’s new undergraduate course, “AI for Text Analysis,” has been formally approved and will be taught for the first time this fall, with companion MS and PhD syllabi also in development. Giovanni Ciampaglia is teaching a new doctoral seminar on modeling and simulation in social systems, and Tiziano Piccardi is launching a graduate course on social computing structured around student-led weekly discussions.
ICWSM Community Event
GEIS’s ICWSM gathering came together as a lightweight, well-attended event—roughly 14 to 15 members and collaborators across career stages and institutions. The low-overhead format worked well and is likely to inform planning for the group’s upcoming IC2S2 event in Burlington, VT, and its APSA event in the fall.
