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Petter Törnberg Profile
Petter Törnberg

@pettertornberg

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Assistant Professor in Computational Social Science at ILLC @UvA_amsterdam | Studying the intersection of AI, social media, and politics

Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Joined December 2009
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@pettertornberg
Petter Törnberg
3 years
Social media has been broadly linked to intensifying political polarization. But why would social media drive polarization? . My new paper in PNAS suggests that the reason might not be what you think. 🧵.
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@pettertornberg
Petter Törnberg
21 days
PhD position out at University of Amsterdam. We’re looking for a computer scientist interested in LLMs, social media, and politics . Offer a lot of freedom and an exciting environment! . Please share!.
werkenbij.uva.nl
The Institute for Logic, Language and Computation (ILLC) at the University of Amsterdam is inviting applications for a fully funded PhD position in the NWO VIDI project "Improving Social Media Using...
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@pettertornberg
Petter Törnberg
30 days
RT @NoemaMag: As we transition from industrial to digital modernity, business tycoons no longer view humans as cogs in machines. Now, as pl….
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noemamag.com
As today’s platforms become all-powerful, the metaphors we use to describe our digitally infused world exemplify a new, stealthier form of domination that is emerging.
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@pettertornberg
Petter Törnberg
1 month
On how hype emerged at the heart of contemporary capitalism.
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@pettertornberg
Petter Törnberg
1 month
As capitalism itself, its critical study needs a cultural turn -- a 'critical hype studies' that views capitalism as neither mechanistic nor rational, but as a complex interplay between narrative, technology, and economic power. And that seeks to challenge its stories.
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@pettertornberg
Petter Törnberg
1 month
"An economic theory does not have to be true; it simply needs to be believed", as Callon put it. And today, stories about the economy have themselves become the central battlefield of financial capital.
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@pettertornberg
Petter Törnberg
1 month
In casting platform capitalism as all-powerful and evil, the critical literature may hold it in too high an esteem. It may be more accurate to view capitalism not as all-powerful and malicious, but rather as irrational and absurd.
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@pettertornberg
Petter Törnberg
1 month
Such stories do not merely describe reality – they create it. For investors, “digital Feudalism” isn't a menacing threat – it's an investment opportunity. By fueling investments, these stories give platforms very real powers; thus functioning as self-fulfilling prophecies.
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@pettertornberg
Petter Törnberg
1 month
The platforms themselves seem more than willing to spread these narratives. Netflix even made a documentary attacking their own business model, detailing to a viewership of 38M the awe-inspiring totalitarian powers of platforms to manipulate our behavior.
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@pettertornberg
Petter Törnberg
1 month
Take the case of ‘surveillance capitalism’. Literatures have warned of the unprecedented digital powers of platform firms, whose sophisticated algorithms and vast data are enable detailed behavioral modification and control – perhaps even heralding new forms of Feudalism.
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@pettertornberg
Petter Törnberg
1 month
The capacity to control the narrative - and therefore the flow of capital - becomes the real game. 'Financial narratives’ become the dominant mode of accumulation. Capitalism becomes centered not on factories and production, but on stories -- attention, influence, and hype.
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@pettertornberg
Petter Törnberg
1 month
The emergence of speculative assets such as crypto or NFTs are only the most blatant examples of this broader shift in capitalism. In which the reality of the economy is becoming more and more detached from financial valuations - which now operates in the realm of storytelling.
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@pettertornberg
Petter Törnberg
1 month
Financialization means that “asset ownership eclipses commodity production and circulation” (Shapiro 2023). We have now entered a stage of financialization in which investors do not run away from bubbles, but towards them - in the hope of profiting from their rapid inflation.
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@pettertornberg
Petter Törnberg
1 month
"Hype" seems to have become a core feature of Big Tech – seen in the rise of hype men like @elonmusk and @sama. But why? What is the role of hype in contemporary capitalism?. My new paper argues the creation of a Critical Hype Studies. 🧵.
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journals.sagepub.com
The rise of platforms has transformed our understanding of contemporary capitalism, with the critical literature describing how these firms leverage unprecedent...
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@pettertornberg
Petter Törnberg
2 months
RT @cbarrie: 🤖💡 Are LLMs really developing social behaviors—or just reproducing familiar patterns from training? In our new paper, @pettert….
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@pettertornberg
Petter Törnberg
2 months
RT @BigDataSoc: 📢: Check out this new publication on "Artificial Intelligence and the State: Seeing like an Artificial Neural Network" by @….
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@pettertornberg
Petter Törnberg
3 months
From Elon Musk's DOGE to the UK's AI Action Plan, states are adopting AI as key tool of governance . But what happens when states see their populations through AI? How is AI changing the nature of the state? . Our new OA paper sets out a research agenda.
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@pettertornberg
Petter Törnberg
4 months
Society is not like a flock of birds. In the social world, emergent patterns are not.just self-organizing structures: they are named, institutionalized, and capable of exerting downward causation. Generative ABMs may be the only means of studying actual social complexity.
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@pettertornberg
Petter Törnberg
4 months
Despite all this, we argue that generative ABMs are valuable, and that they do bring something qualitatively new: . They enable us to study what is distinct about the complexity of the social world.
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@pettertornberg
Petter Törnberg
4 months
In many cases, it is moreover not clear what value the LLM brings to the simulation as compared to a traditional ABM. If our social mechanism can be captured by a conventional ABM, the introduction of LLMs arguably only brings downsides.
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