Bio
Rebekah Tromble is associate professor in the School of Media and Public Affairs and director of the Institute for Data, Democracy & Politics at George Washington University. She recently joined George Washington University after spending eight years at Leiden University’s Institute of Political Science.
Her research focuses on political communication, digital research methodology and research ethics. She is particularly interested in political discourse on social media, as well as the spread and impact of online misinformation. Her research has been published in leading journals such as New Media & Society, International Studies Quarterly and Political Communication.
Tromble is currently leading two large research projects. The first, funded by Twitter, brings together a team of international researchers from both the social and computer sciences to investigate the “health” of political conversations on Twitter. The project is developing metrics for assessing the extent of phenomena such as echo chambers, incivility and intolerance across political topics, different geographical regions and languages. Her second project, titled “The (Mis)Informed Citizen” and run in collaboration with scholars at Utrecht University and the Alan Turing Institute, seeks to develop computational tools that will allow researchers to analyze and assess the quality of online news content. Such tools will, in turn, permit scholars to better understand the impacts of misinformation on people’s beliefs, attitudes and behaviours — including voting behaviour.
Tromble consults regularly for both industry and policy makers, in particular on topics such as digital platform accountability, responsible data use and best practices for combatting the effects of misinformation.