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CCPP Director Erik Nisbet Featured in WGN Investigates Report on Threats Facing Local Leaders

A recent WGN Investigates segment, “It’s Not Just National Political Figures Facing Fury — Local Leaders Also Under Threat,” featured insights from Erik Nisbet, Director of CCPP and Owen L. Coon Professor of Policy Analysis & Communication at Northwestern University. The news segment examines the growing number of threats, intimidation, and harassment targeting local officials

New Publication by CCPP Faculty Affiliate Ayşe Lokmanoğlu Introduces the VisTopics tool for Topic Modelling of Video and Image Data

Congratulations to CCPP faculty affiliate Dr. Ayşe D. Lokmanoğlu, whose new co-authored article, “Topic Modeling of Video and Image Data: A Visual Semantic Unsupervised Approach,” has just been published in Communication Methods and Measures. The paper introduces VisTopics, an innovative computational framework for analyzing large-scale visual datasets by combining AI-powered image captioning, unsupervised clustering, and

CCPP Event Recap: America’s Soft Power & Reputational Security in Crisis? Conversation with Nicholas J. Cull

On May 22, 2025, the Center for Communication & Public Policy and Northwestern University’s Buffett Institute for Global Affairs hosted a campus conversation with esteemed historian and academic Nicholas J. Cull from the University of Southern California to explore his concept of “reputational security”—the idea that a nation’s safety and security are strengthened by its

CCPP Director Co-Edits IJPOR Special Issue on Global Perspectives on Science, Polarization, and Populism

The International Journal of Public Opinion Research has released a special issue titled “Global Perspectives on Science, Polarization, and Populism,” co-edited by CCPP Director Erik C. Nisbet (Northwestern University) and Aysenur Dal (Bilkent University). The special issue brings together scholars from across the world to examine how political polarization and populism shape public opinion about

CCPP in the News: Science News Highlights Study on Using AI to Detect Climate Misinformation

A new article in Science News spotlights groundbreaking research led by CCPP Graduate Student Affiliate Mowafak Allaham, co-authored by CCPP Faculty Affiliate Dr. Ayşe Lokmanoğlu (Boston University) and CCPP Director Dr. Erik C. Nisbet. The study, titled “Enhancing LLMs for Governance with Human Oversight: Evaluating and Aligning LLMs on Expert Classification of Climate Misinformation,” was

Do People Really Believe the Election Falsehoods They Share? New CCPP Study Published in Political Communication Shows They Do

A new article co-authored by CCPP Director Erik C. Nisbet, along with R. Kelly Garrett and Robert Bond of The Ohio State University, has been published in the journal Political Communication. The study, titled “Self-Reported Exposure and Beliefs About Misinformation Across a U.S. Presidential Election Cycle: Expressive Responding and Motivated Reasoning,” investigates how Americans report

CCPP Researchers Publish Guidance on How to Counter State-Sponsored Disinformation Campaigns

CCPP Director Erik C. Nisbet and CCPP affiliate faculty member Olga Kamenchuk have co-authored a new book chapter, “Unpacking the Psychology of State-Sponsored Disinformation Operations and Implications for Public Diplomacy Counterstrategies,” published in Handbook on Public Diplomacy edited by Sean Aday (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2025). The chapter challenges the dominant focus on technology in discussions

CCPP Researcher Publishes New Study on the Dynamics of Domestic Influence Campaigns in Southeast Asia

CCPP Graduate Research Affiliate Fatima Gaw, a PhD candidate in Media, Technology, and Society at Northwestern University, has co-authored a new article in Political Communication, one of the leading journals in the field. The article, titled “Towards the Comparative Study of Domestic Influence Operations: Cyber Troops and Elite Competition in Indonesia, the Philippines, and Thailand,”

New CCPP Study Shows Americans’ Willingness to Trade Democratic Norms for Economic Well-being

CCPP Graduate Affiliate Chloe Mortenson and CCPP Director Erik C. Nisbet recently had their co-authored article, “Benefit-Seekers or Principle-Holders? Experimental Evidence on Americans’ Democratic Trade-Offs,” accepted for publication in Perspectives on Politics. Their study investigates how Americans navigate trade-offs between core democratic principles, such as political equality, rule of law, and freedom of expression, and