Associate Professor of Communication and Political Science (Secondary)

University of Pennsylvania

Biography

Most of my work focuses on (affective) polarization, political information processing, and political ideology and identities. I am particularly interested in the interplay between information environments and these variables. In my research, I rely on a variety of quantitative tools, including survey, field, and natural experiments, as well as survey and geospatial data. I'm also the director of the Democracy and Information Group, where we explore these and related issues, and the co-director of the Polarization Research Lab.

Before joining the University of Pennsylvania, I was faculty at the Amsterdam School of Communication. I received my Ph.D. from Stanford University. My research has appeared or is forthcoming in various journals in Communication, Political Science, and Psychology, including the American Political Science Review, American Journal of Political Science, PNAS, the Journal of Politics, Nature Human Behavior, Journal of Communication, Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, the British Journal of Political Science, Public Opinion Quarterly, Journal of Experimental Political Science, Political Psychology, the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, and the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology.

Interests

  • Public Opinion
  • Political Communication
  • Political Psychology

Education

  • PhD in Communication, PhD minor in Psychology, 2012

    Stanford University

  • MA in Political Science, 2007

    Temple University

  • BA in Political Science and Journalism, 2005

    University of Wisconsin

Recent Publications

Quickly discover relevant content by filtering publications.
kokil jaidka, alvin zhou, yphtach lelkes, jana egelhofer, sophie lecheler (2022). Beyond anonymity: Network affordances, under deindividuation, improve social media discussion quality. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, (27), 1, pp. zmab019.

kokil jaidka, subhayan mukerjee, yphtach lelkes (2022). Censorship on social media: The gatekeeping functions of shadowbans in the American Twitterverse. Available at SSRN.

eunji kim, yphtach lelkes, joshua mccrain (2022). Measuring dynamic media bias. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, (119), 32, pp. e2202197119.

amber hye-yon lee, yphtach lelkes, carlee b hawkins, alexander g theodoridis (2022). Negative partisanship is not more prevalent than positive partisanship. Nature Human Behaviour, pp. 1–13.

sean fischer, kokil jaidka, yphtach lelkes (2022). Reply to: Local news in Google News. Nature Human Behaviour, pp. 1–3.

See all publications

Contact