Research & Publications

Background
Since 1995 I have studied how democratic politics works when digital media are in the mix. In recent years, I have focused on the accumulating problems for democracy that are associated with social media: selective exposure, polarization, populism, and disinformation. One of my long-standing interests has been how digital media facilitate like-minded people finding one another and acting together, with or without the support of established organizations and their agendas. Throughout the 2000s and early 2010s, there were lots of cases of this kind of mobilization contributing to the richness of democracy, such as the Occupy Movement. More recently, the dark side of this process has become more apparent as people with hateful and extremist messages find one another and act together, and as people across societies are mobilized by conspiracy theories and other falsehoods. Generative AI is poised to make these problems considerably worse.

Current Research

My current projects use Large Language Models to examine democratically corrosive content in social media, and also comparative survey data in the US and Europe to understand relationships among media use, psychological traits and emotions, and democratically corrosive sentiment. My CV is here.

Select Recent Articles

Theocharis, Y., Boulianne, S., Koc-Michalska, K., & Bimber, B. (2023). Platform affordances and political participation: How social media platforms reshape political engagement. West European Politics, 46(4), 788-811. DOI: 10.1080/01402382.2022.2087410

Bimber, B. & Gil de Zúñiga, H. (2022). Social influence and political participation around the world. European Journal of Political Science, 14(2), 135-154. DOI: 10.1017/S175577392200008X

Koc-Michalska, K., Bimber, B., Jenkins, M., Gomez, D., & Boulianne, S. (2020). Public beliefs about falsehoods in news. International Journal of Press/Politics, 25(3), 447- 468. DOI: 10.1177/1940161220912693

Boulianne, S., Koc-Michalska, K., & Bimber, B. (2020). Right-wing populism, social media and echo chambers in western democracies. New Media & Society, 22(4), 683-699. DOI: 10.1177/1461444819893983

Bimber, B. & Gil de Zúñiga, H. (2020). The unedited public sphere. New Media & Society, 22(4), 700-715. DOI:0.1177/1461444819893980