Joe B. Bak-Coleman

Collective Behvaior, Computational Social Science, Metascience, Statistics.

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Based in Brooklyn, NY

I’m a computational social scientist whose research explores how collectives make decisions in the face of uncertainty, focusing on the impact of digital technologies on collective behavior. Currently, I am a Consulting Expert for the United Nations Development Programme Human Development Reports Office, an external affiliate at the Harvard Berkman Klein Center and a Collaboration Partner at the University of Konstanz’s Centre for the Advanced Study of Collective Behaviour. MY work spans topics such as misinformation, polarization, and the development of evidence-based tech policy, with publications in Nature, Science Advances, and PNAS. I have a forthcoming book, Of Fish and Fascists, set for release in 2026 by Princeton University Press.

Before my current role, I was an Associate Research Scholar at Columbia University’s Craig Newmark Center for Journalism Ethics and Security. I earned my Ph.D. in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology from Princeton University in 2020, where I worked with Iain Couzin and Dan Rubenstein, followed by a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Washington’s Center for an Informed Public. Over the past decade, my research has examined decision-making in human and animal collectives, from fish schools and zebra herds to social media users and scientists.

news

May 17, 2023 New comment out in Nature: Create an IPCC-like body to harness benefits and combat harms of digital tech
Nov 21, 2022 New opinion piece out in Scientific American: Twitter Is Not Rocket Science—It’s Harder
Jun 23, 2022 New publication out in Nature Human Behavior: Combining interventions to reduce the spread of viral misinformation
Mar 01, 2022 New article out in Scientific American: A High-Speed Scientific Hive Mind Emerged from the COVID Pandemic
Nov 24, 2021 Op-ed published in The Conversation :The thousands of vulnerable people harmed by Facebook and Instagram are lost in Meta’s ‘average user’ data

latest posts

selected publications