Katherine Ognyanova (Katya) is a researcher and educator exploring the structure of social and political processes in a digital age. She works as an assistant professor at the School of Communication and Information, Rutgers University. Her research areas include quantitative and computational methods, social use of technology, political communication, and mass communication.

Katherine studies the effects of social influence on civic and political behavior, confidence in institutions, information exposure/evaluation, and public opinion formation. Her methodological expertise is in computational social science, network science, and survey research. Her recent work examines the links between misinformation exposure and political trust. She is also a co-lead on The COVID States Project – a large multi-university initiative exploring the social and political implications of COVID-19.

Prior to joining Rutgers, Katherine was a postdoctoral research fellow in computational social science at the Lazer Lab, Northeastern University and IQSS, Harvard University. She received her Ph.D. from the Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism, University of Southern California.

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