My research has meandered along the following lines: (1) How do people process (mis)information and what is the role of source crediblity and media trust? (2) How are political attitudes are affected by media exposure, specifically through web browsing? (3) What is the role of deliberation and represenation in achieving democratic outcomes? I have used data from online experiments, surveys, social media, trace data, and geospatial administrative data. Methodologically, I am interested in computational methods, measurement, causal inference, AI-based methods, and open science. Below, an overview of my publications (work in progress greyed out).
Misinformation, fake news and source credibility
"Truth and Bias: Left and Right. Testing ideological asymmetries with a realistic news supply", Public Opinion Quarterly, 2023
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"When Do Sources Persuade? The Effect of Source Credibility on Opinion Change", with Andy M. Guess (Princeton University), Journal of Experimental Political Science, 2022
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"Horseshoe Patterns: Visualizing Partisan Media Trust in Germany", with Paul C. Bauer (MZES University of Mannheim), Socius, 2021
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"Believing and Sharing Information by Fake Sources: An Experiment", with Paul C. Bauer (MZES University of Mannheim), Political Communication, 2021
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"Truth and Bias: Robust findings?", 2020
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"An Ocean of Possible Truth: Biased Processing of News on Social Media", 2018
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"The Cure Worse Than the Disease? How the Media's Attention to Misinformation Decreases Trust" with Emma Hoes (University of Zürich), Theresa Gessler (European University Viadrina), Sijia Qian (UC Davis), Magdalena Wojcieszak (UC Davis), review & resubmit at Political Behavior
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Media effects and exposure
"Causes of perceived polarization: An over-time analysis of the effects of media coverage of polarization in three countries" with Magdalena Wojcieszak (UC Davis) and Ericka Menchen-Trevino (American University), review & resubmit at Political Communication
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"Incentivizing news consumption with bots on Twitter", with Hadi Askari (UC Davis), Michael Heseltine (University of Amsterdam), Magdalena Wojcieszak (UC Davis), Ericka Menchen-Trevino (American University), Zubair Shafiq (UC Davis) and Anshuman Chabra (UC Davis). PNAS Nexus, 2024.
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"Non-news websites expose people to more political content than news websites: Evidence from browsing data in three countries", with Magdalena Wojcieszak (UC Davis), Ericka Menchen-Trevino (American University), Sjifra de Leeuw (University of Amsterdam), João Gonçalves (University of Rotterdam), Sam Davidson (UC Davis), Alexandre Gonçalves (Columbia University), Political Communication, 2023
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"Null effects of news exposure: a test of the (un)desirable effects of a 'news vacation' and 'news binging'", with Magdalena Wojcieszak (UC Davis), Andreu Casas (VU Amsterdam), Ericka Menchen-Trevino (American University), Sjifra de Leeuw, Alexandre Gonçalves (UC Davis) and Miriam Boon (University of Regina), Humanities and Social Sciences Communications, 2022
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"The (Null) Over-time Effects of Exposure to Local News Websites: Evidence from Trace Data", with Jane Cronin (American University), João Gonçalves (University of Rotterdam), Magdalena Wojcieszak (UC Davis), Ericka Menchen-Trevino (American University), Journal of Information Technology & Politics, 2022
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"Micro Influence and Macro Dynamics of Opinion Formation", with Michael Mäs (University of Groningen) and Bary Pradelski (CNRS/Grenoble), 2017
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Deliberative democracy and representation
"Does School Debating Reduce Vulnerability to Misinformation? A Field Experiment in Poland" with Krzys Krakowski (Collegio Carlo Alberto) and Davide Morisi (Collegio Carlo Alberto), Journal of Politics
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"Who wins? Who runs? Descriptive represenation in the German Bundestag over time" with Sebastian Stier (GESIS)
Other projects
"Wolf attacks predict far-right voting", with Anselm Hager (HU Berlin), PNAS, 2022
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"Why Do Candidates 'Go Negative'? Unpacking the Mechanisms of Negative Campaigning" with Sebastian Stier (GESIS), Corinna Oschatz (University of Amsterdam), Alessandro Nai (University of Amsterdam), Jürgen Maier (RPTU Kaiserslautern-Landau) and Nora Kirkizh (TU Munich). Work in progress.
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"The effect of legal hunting on livestock depredation", with Neil Carter (Michigan State University), Leandra Merz (Michigan State University) & Jeremy Bruskotter (Ohio State University). Work in progress.
"Do wolf attacks affect electoral behavior? Evidence from the U.S.", with Neil Carter (Michigan State University), Leandra Merz (Michigan State University). Work in progress.
"Predictors of Negative Campaigning at the local and national level" with Sebastian Stier (GESIS), Corinna Oschatz (University of Amsterdam), Jürgen Maier (RPTU Kaiserslautern-Landau). Work in progress.
Methodology
"Large language models as a substitute for human experts in annotating political text", with Michael Heseltine (University of Amsterdam). Research and Politics, 2024.
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"Statistical analysis of we brosing data: a guide", with Sebastian Stier (GESIS), Ana S. Cardenal (Universitat Oberta de Catalunya), Andy Guess (Princeton), Magdalena Wojcieszak (UC Davis) & Ericka Menchen-Trevino (American University). Social Science Computer Review, 2024.
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"Survey professionalism: New evidence from web browsing data", with Tiago Ventura, Tiago Ventura, Jonathan Nagler, Ericka Menchen-Trevino, Magdalena Wojcieszak. Work in Progress.
Bernhard Clemm von Hohenberg
Quantitative Political Scientist