The University of Iowa’s Center for Social Science Innovation (CSSI) has selected Brian Ekdale, professor of journalism and mass communication in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, as its next CSSI Faculty Research Fellow.

Ekdale’s project, “Outliers and Amplifiers: Understanding How People and Platforms Drive Political Polarization,” will examine how a small set of highly active users and platform technologies elevate fringe content into broader visibility. He plans to blend several case studies with original survey data to better understand the motivations and behaviors of these “superusers.” 

You can read more about this research and the research fellowship here.