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I am an analytical sociologist applying advanced methods of statistical data analysis, laboratory and field experiments, and the toolbox of computational social science to three substantial research areas: social dynamics, norms, and inequality.

My work centers around how people form beliefs to guide their choices (e.g. to select a worthwhile book, to break only irregularly sanctioned rules), how people express their opinions, and how these behaviors interact to bring about often hard-to-predict collective outcomes (e.g. the emergence of bestsellers, normative change, swings in public discourse).

I hold a PhD in sociology from LMU Munich, Germany. My articles received the Robert-K-Merton-Award (2017), the Karl-Polanyi-Award (2016), and the Anatol-Rapoport-Award (2014). My work has been published in journals such as Environment & Behavior, European Sociological Review, Management Science, PNAS, Sociological Methods and Research, Science Advance and Social Forces.

At IAS, I head an international research group studying the dynamics of public discourse based on online text. Funded by a generous grant from the Swedish Research Council, we develop machine-learning applications for the analysis of text in sociology. Using digitized corpora as social sensors, our research explores sudden swings in public opinion and the definition of shared understandings of societal developments and events.

Online presence

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Big city growth escalates the urban-rural divide

Microdata from Swedish population registers provide new insights into cities' economic growth paths. The data reveal a surge in regional inequality, with more and more resources flowing to cities atop the urban hierarchy.
Cities’ attraction of talent escalates the regional divide.

Big cities feed on their hinterlands

Researchers at LiU call into question an influential theory of the self-reinforcing dynamics of urban growth.
young man at desk

Big grant to new research environment

How do the public discourses on immigration form and change over time? What part does social media, traditional media and the political parties play and how do they interact with each other? That are the main questions for a research project at IAS.

Selected works Show/Hide content

Three recent publications

  • Keuschnigg, M. 2019. Scaling trajectories of cities. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
  • Keuschnigg, M., Mutgan, S., & Hedström, P. 2019. Urban scaling and the regional divide. Science Advances 5(1):eaav0042.
  • Keuschnigg, M., Lovsjö, N., & Hedström, P. 2018. Analytical sociology and computational social science. Journal of Computational Social Science 1 (1), 3-14.

Three often cited works

• Keuschnigg, M. & Wolbring, T. 2015. Disorder, social capital, and norm violation: Three field experiments on the broken windows thesis. Rationality and Society 27 (1), 96-126.

• Wolbring, T., Keuschnigg, M., & Negele, E. 2013. Needs, comparisons, and adaptation: The importance of relative income for life satisfaction. European Sociological Review 29 (1), 86-104.

• Keuschnigg, M. & Ganser, C. 2017. Crowd wisdom relies on agents’ ability in small groups with a voting aggregation rule. Management Science 63 (3), 818-828

Publications Show/Hide content

2021

2020

2019

Research Show/Hide content

Kulturell dynamik

Cultural Dynamics

Formulating and testing theories of peer influence among interconnected consumers of culture i.e. songs, books, movies, etc. to understand the emergence of hits, the establishment of new artists and genres, and cultural change more generally.
Books and server hall.

Computational Text Analysis

Computational analysis offers new ways to derive meaning from text. We use large corpora of text as social sensors to measure what people feel, think, and talk about, which allows us to track the emergence of shared social understandings.

Organisation Show/Hide content

Illustration of people surrounded by data

The Institute for Analytical Sociology (IAS)

IAS conduct cutting-edge research on important social, political and cultural matters. The research is sociological - in its original and broadly conceived meaning.
A-building in autumn

Department of Management and Engineering (IEI)

The Department of Management and Engineering (IEI) strengthens and develops tomorrow’s industry, business world and society by ground-breaking research, education and innovation.
Studenthuset on Campus Valla in Linköping

About LiU

Linköping University, LiU, offers innovative education and boundary-crossing research. The students are among the most desirable in the labour market and international rankings consistently place LiU as a leading global university.

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