Josh Pasek is Professor of Communication & Media and Political Science at the University of Michigan, where he is also a Research Professor in the Center for Political Studies and Core Faculty in the Michigan Institute for Data & AI in Society.
His research examines how information, identities, and communication environments shape political beliefs, public opinion, and political behavior. Drawing on perspectives from political communication, political psychology, and public opinion research, he studies how people make sense of political information, why citizens exposed to similar evidence often reach different conclusions, and how these processes influence democratic decision-making.
Josh also studies how public opinion and political behavior can be measured accurately. His work evaluates when surveys, social media data, open-ended text, and other digital trace data can be used to draw valid conclusions about populations and social processes. Recent research explores how diverse forms of social data can be integrated to improve our understanding of public opinion, elections, and social change.
His scholarship has appeared in leading journals across communication, political science, psychology, and survey methodology. He is coauthor of Words That Matter: How the News and Social Media Shaped the 2016 Presidential Election and Democracy Amid Crises: Polarization, Pandemic, Protests, and Persuasion. He maintains the R packages anesrake and weights and has provided consulting and expert testimony on matters involving elections, public opinion, polling, and social-scientific measurement.
Short Version:
Josh Pasek is Professor of Communication & Media and Political Science at the University of Michigan. His research examines how information, identities, and communication environments shape political beliefs, public opinion, and political behavior. He also studies how surveys, digital trace data, and other forms of social data can be used to measure public opinion and better understand society.
Contact Josh at:
Department of Communication and Media
105 S. State Street, 5413 North Quad
Ann Arbor, MI 48109
734-764-6717
josh@joshpasek.com