February 2025 Postdoctoral Position in the DHSS Hub  Call for Applications   The DHSS Hub invites you to submit to a post-doctoral position in digital humanities and social science. The recipients of our post-doctorate take active part in the various activities of the DHSS Hub, such as the monthly seminar, workshops, the summer school and more. Furthermore, they have the opportunity to collaborate with faculty members from the Open University. More details on the submission here. Last date for submissions is 10th March. Check out our previous post-doctorates.   The DHSS Hub Seminar Shakespeare's Figurative Networks and a Computational Classification of the Body Politic Wednesday, 12th March You are cordially invited to the DHSS Hub Seminar on Wednesday, 12th March, for a lecture by Gilad Gutman, the head of DHSS Hub research methodologies. Gutman will present his computational research on the body politic in 17th century tragedies, in which he maps the figurative language of the plays, using various methods such as machine learning and network analysis. In his research, he develops a dialogue between distant and close reading, uncovering both wide patterns in the corpus as well as nuances in particular plays. Dark Cycles: Social Engineering and Political Chatbots in Netanyahu's 2019 Election Campaigns Anat Ben-David and Elinor Carmi   The study introduces the concept of dark cycles, which describes how chatbots in Netanyahu's 2019 campaign combine social engineering and dark pattern design to function as under-the-radar, peer-to-peer propaganda tools. These chatbots use one-on-one interactions to influence voter behavior while avoiding public and regulatory oversight, raising significant concerns about the implications for democratic processes. This article has been a long time in the making. Since Prof. Anat Ben David and Dr. Elinor Carmi began this work, devastating events have unfolded, taking an even darker turn and highlighting the urgent need to critically engage with the intersections of propaganda, AI, elections, and war. The article has been published in International Journal of Communication, Vol. 19, 2025. Read the full article here.

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