From Classroom to Collaboration: A Research Partnership Examining Digital Politics

In 2016, the presidential election took the nation by storm. Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton were competing head-to-head, but there was a quieter third player who was influencing the race from behind the scenes. As Americans increasingly turned to social media for information on the presidential candidates, few realized who was actually serving political ads and posts to the public.

Young Mie Kim, a professor at the School of Journalism and Mass Communication (SJMC), focuses her research on how media and politics engage with one another. And specifically, their relation in the age of data-driven digital media. Because of this focus, Kim was among the first researchers to identify Russian involvement in the 2016 presidential election.

Back in 2016, Kim was teaching a class about data collection and mass communication. Dahlke was a student in Kim’s undergraduate class and took a keen interest in the lectures about correlation versus causation, data collection and research methods. Quickly becoming a star student, Dahlke emailed Kim examples he’d found online of correlation being mistaken for causation, adding notes like: “I really enjoyed the past few lectures.”

As the years passed, Dahlke went on to pursue his Ph.D. at Stanford University and Kim dug deeper into her research about digital campaigns. It was at Stanford, through the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences (CASBS), that they reconnected. Kim was working on a paper about causal analysis, the same topic that had first connected the two in Kim’s undergraduate course, and the project sparked a new mentorship relationship between them. One that has allowed them to make monumental strides in the world of research.

The two recently published a paper in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) which examined how targeted digital political advertising can suppress voter turnout.

“It was such a rewarding experience to hear how Ross has grown as an emerging scholar,” Kim said. “And I’m learning a lot from him about causal inferences by working on this paper. I’m teaching him, inspiring him and then learning from him.”

Their work together has focused on studies and data research about voter suppression, and the negative effects of digital targeting on voter turnout. With the technological state of our world today, it’s safe to say that the era of digital media isn’t slowing down anytime soon.

“Collecting these sorts of data is very hard. It’s really difficult,” Dahlke said. “But it’s worth it to do and the sort of outcomes and the things you can learn about the world are so much stronger.”

What began as a curious undergraduate student emailing his professor after class has grown into a research partnership tackling some of the biggest questions in digital politics. Nearly a decade after the 2016 election, the questions Kim first began asking about political influence through digital media remain urgent. Through their collaboration, Kim and Dahlke are helping uncover how online campaigns shape real political behavior. And their work may be the missing piece for fellow researchers, policymakers and voters alike, helping them to better understand the invisible forces shaping modern democracy.

Read more about Kim and Dahlke’s study here.