A thread you never asked for:

UK Political shops ranked.

Here we go.

🧵 Rankings based on subjective scores related to:

Each given a score out of ten:

-Store front usability 📃
-Uniqueness 🦄
-Quality 💎🗑️
-Variety 👀
-Christmas range 🎅

Now, from best to worst...

My final word on the BBC report on the abuse to MPs via Twitter, before I pop off for a bit, is that this is all very frustrating.

This is why: 1. This poor reporting could have been avoided by reading some of the work by people *who have already researched this topic* - in some cases for years.

Their work supposedly took 8-months. Not once did they seemingly look at our work, or even get in touch.

The BBC report on the abuse of politicians is unhappy reading, & certainly more needs to be done.

But as we found with our research, AI driven approaches miss important elements of abuse (such as direction) and are inaccurate.

Let me show you why👇🧵.

bbc.co.uk/news/uk-633308… Perspective is the AI used to find abusive messages, has a testing area.

First off, it clearly doesn't understand the direction/target of a message. All these messages have a high probability of being toxic, but are they abusive if they mention an MP?

Some of this advice is what Twitter might call a "bad take."

When you treat Twitter like a top-down platform to *distil your holiness upon others*, rather than as a community or as a network, then you're part of the problem.

Here's my commandments: 👇🧵

https://twitter.com/timeshighered/status/1511352712771813378

1) Twitter isn't your personal broadcast tool. Share the success of others, especially ECRs who are often creating some of the best and freshest research.

There is nothing worse than 20 people all in a room screaming at each-other and not listening.

I'm seeing the argument that YouTube provides the diversity that #Channel4 was created for. Here's why they're wrong:

💰Financial: If YouTube is profitable for mainstream channels (& their content), they'd be all over it. They're not.

🧵 1/? The advertising cut by YT is substantial & the per-viewer income lower. There is a reason YT isn't funding films or series which require large prop departments, a range of talent, writers, and so on.

In fact, for many YouTubers, getting picked up by a network is the dream.

This person is called Chung Ng Wai, as an e-sports competitor he also goes by @blitzchungHS.

You probably don't know who he is.

But you should listen how his experience highlights the result of states using culture & sports for coercive soft power (THREAD) 👇#Blizzardboycott Chung is from Hong Kong and plays a video game called Hearthstone competitively.

These Hearthstone tournaments can involve some serious money, and for many, is their livelihood.

I just got a #libdem leaflet, ignoring the normal graph jokes, there is actually something abhorrent in there that needs to be called out.

This statement basically says the Lib Dems believe rich people should get more police officers.

Here is why it is wrong 👇 The leaflet is targeting a fairly economically prosperous area in Manchester called Didsbury. The average house price is £326,995. Although it's incredibly common to see three+ bed houses to go for over £600k.

As a researcher in social media & pol. representation, I've been thinking of the role social media has had in the creation of the #Independantgroup. My initial thoughts are it's hard to see... (thread)

#LabourSplit / #TorySplit Obviously it's clear that social media has had a pivotal role in the groups media management. Using it for getting their name out there and trending.

Meanwhile journalists and commenter's have kept the groups name fresh by multiple comments.

This is a great example of a YouTuber taking a bunch of academic concepts on social media, and regurgitating/plagiarising them into a utter bumblefuck. @veritasium.



So for anyone who is interested in the facts, and not the rants here's a thread: For starters, there's a good reason why you should be annoyed about this video if you've ever studied the social sciences.

Look at any of @veritasium's other videos. For example his most popular video that looks at the Magnus Effect. You'll see citations.