Aleksandar Tomašević, Associate Research Professor

I'm an Associate Research Professor at the Scientific Computing Laboratory of the Institute of Physics Belgrade.

I study online communities as complex social systems, combining behavioral data, network analysis, machine learning, and simulation. My current work focuses on LLM-agent simulations of online platforms, community sustainability, trust and reputation processes, political communication, populism, and AI-mediated social dynamics. I also build open-source tools for analyzing emotion in text, images, and video.

I earned my PhD at the University of Novi Sad in 2019, working on quantitative methods and network science. I was a Fulbright Scholar at the University of Virginia in 2023–2024, an invited speaker at the International Meeting of the Psychometric Society, and one of the developers of YSocial.

I am an Editorial Board Member at BMC Psychology and an Academic Editor at PLOS One. I serve as an ad hoc reviewer for a multitude of scientific journals, such as Personality and Individual Differences, Scientific Reports, Humanities and Social Sciences Communications, EPJ Data Science, Computational Communication Research, Quality & Quantity, and Acta Psychologica.

Erdős number 4: Paul Erdős → Béla Bollobás → Guido Caldarelli → Marija Mitrović Dankulov → Aleksandar Tomašević.

News & Updates

2026

• • Preprint “Oh No, the Robots Are Here”: AI identity labels, social uptake and sanctioning in mixed human–AI communities on PsyArXiv. The experiment data are on Zenodo.
• • A case was accepted for Sage Research Methods: Using AI for Research.
• • Accepted oral presentation at Complex Networks 2026 (Granada, 2–4 December): “Structural Dynamics of Online Social Networks: From Empirical Cohort Mixing to Generative Network Models.”
• • Livestream seminar with Hudson Golino, AI-Based Emotion Analysis for Text, Image, and Video, Statistical Horizons, 4, 6, and 7 November 2026.
• • Editorial Board Member at BMC Psychology.
• • The latent oscillator measurement model paper is on arXiv: A Latent Oscillator Measurement Model to Simulate Emotional-Expression Score Dynamics in Video (PsyArXiv).
• • Paper on Reddit deplatforming and cohort mixing in generalist Voat communities published in Scientific Reports (arXiv preprint).
• • The dynEGA case-study paper was published in Psychiatry Research Case Reports (OSF preprint).
• • Our paper, “Between ‘we’ and ‘well-being’: Do basic psychological needs mediate the relationship between interdependent self-construal and adolescent subjective well-being?”, was published in Applied Psychology: Health and Well-Being (OSF preprint).
• • Served on the examination committee for the Italian National PhD Programme in Artificial Intelligence, AI for Society track, at CNR Pisa.
• • Invited seminar at ISTI-CNR in Pisa: “From Simulated Online Communities to Hybrid Publics with YSocial: Operational Validation and Experimental Evidence” (official event, slides).
• • Our work “From Agents to Humans: Network Structure and Homophily in LLM-Simulated and Mixed Online Communities” was presented by Sara Major at Sunbelt 2026.
• • YSocial operational validation paper published in EPJ Data Science.
• • Paper on analytical robustness in the social and behavioural sciences published in Nature.
• • Paper on personal, relational, public, and collective identity orientations published in Identity.
• • Paper on depression and anxiety symptoms in adolescents across 30 countries in Journal of Affective Disorders.
• • Paper on AI-based student feedback analysis in College Teaching.
• • Paper on transforEmotion published in Computational Communication Research.
• • Talk on "transforEmotion: Multimodal Emotion Analysis in R" at IAAP Webinar: AI & Emotion in Digital Life.
• • Talk on "transforEmotion in Practice: Multimodal Emotion Analysis in R" at Vanderbilt University QMDA Colloquium.

2025

• • Preprint Reddit Deplatforming and Toxicity Dynamics on Generalist Voat Communities on arXiv.
• • Preprint Towards Operational Validation of LLM-Agent Social Simulations: A Replicated Study of a Reddit-like Technology Forum on arXiv.
• • Paper on cross-national invariance of externalizing problems screener in Development and Psychopathology.
• • Paper on positive and negative emotional experiences in adolescents across 32 countries in Applied Research in Quality of Life.
• • Paper on understanding democracy in Europe in Sociologija.

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