Jan Zilinsky

Postdoctoral Fellow at Technical University of Munich
Research Associate at NYU Center for Social Media and Politics

Does technology fundamentally disrupt democratic politics or does it mainly render institutional failures visible? ​

I am a computational political scientist and I study the effects of technology on politics and society. ​

I also develop methods for measuring what I consider to be important aspects of contemporary politics: anti-tech sentiment, economic populism, and the political economy of attention.

About

Currently thinking about

  • How do AI systems generate political output (whether prompted by propagandists, or voters themselves)?
  • Will AI-mediated information improve the epistemic environment, or will pandering and optimization dampen potential benefits?

Approach to research

Across projects, my aim is to diagnose trade-offs clearly and provide evidence that helps institutions, platforms, and the public make better choices.

Main Munich projects

Postdoc at TUM

With the Digital Governance research group, chaired by Yannis Theocharis, we designed large cross-national surveys on toxic content, free-speech trade-offs, and content moderation preferences. I co-wrote questionnaires, managed fieldwork, and ran pre-registered experiments. A through-line of this work is mapping what ordinary users actually want platforms to do: when they tolerate incivility, when they draw the line at intolerance, and when threats trigger removal preferences.

Digital governance →

Global survey

Over 13,000 respondents across 10 countries; people value expression but majorities favor removing incitements to violence and worry about platform power. Many also feel online hate/incivility is becoming unavoidable.

2025 Report →

APSR article (2024)

Users' demand for moderation is limited; threats reliably trigger support for action, and target identity matters (e.g., harsher views on threats vs. insults; more tolerance when targets are high-status like billionaires).

Paper →

AI, Politics and Society

Social Media and Politics

How digital platforms shape political discourse, from influence operations to filter bubbles.

False Beliefs

Understanding the spread and appeal of conspiratorial thinking across countries and contexts.

Voting Behavior and Public Opinion

What drives vote choice, partisan identity, and how voters process political information.

  • Explaining 2020 Trump support: The role of anti-Muslim, pro-police, and anti-BLM attitudes(2025) Electoral Studies
  • Demographics Reveal Little About Voting and Partisanship(2024) Political Behavior
  • Economic evaluations and partisan faultfinding in surveys(2024) PSRM
  • The Trump advantage in policy recall among voters(2024) American Politics Research
Google Scholar Research CV Longer Bio AI Course Data Visualization Course
A random moment

The best way to reach me is by email at: jan.zilinsky@tum.de.