Research Areas
Polarization, Partisanship, and Democracy
I primarily investigate how the contemporary political information environment shapes polarization, partisan identity, and attitudes about democracy in the U.S. My dissertation research in this area explored how news media exaggerates the extent of partisan conflict and what this means for perceptions of politics and polarization.
Nontraditional Paths to Political Learning
I also study how people, especially those uninterested in politics, interface with the political information around them. I am particularly interested in nontraditional (i.e., non-news) paths to learning about politics, including learning via social media.
Identity and Information
Much of my work examines how identity influences the ways people encounter, attend to, and process information. I approach this from several directions, considering both broad factors shaping information exposure and psychophysiological indicators of implicit cognitive and affective processes.