The Information Integrity Institute is hosting Professor Natalie (Talia) Stroud as a keynote speaker at the CCI RIC 48th Annual Research Symposium on Wednesday, March 18, from 11a.m. to noon. Her keynote address, “Polarization and Connection in the Digital Media Age,” will examine political polarization and social connection in digital media.
Stroud is a professor in the Department of Communication Studies and the School of Journalism and Media at the University of Texas at Austin, where she also directs the Center for Media Engagement, a research center focused on understanding how the media ecosystem supports democracy.
Her scholarship has helped shape how researchers and journalists think about news choice and political polarization. In recent work, Stroud and her collaborators have studied interventions that can reduce friction in political conversations online. Her research also examines the practical mechanics of trust and credibility in digital environments.
Stroud serves as an academic co-lead of a collaboration between Meta and the academic community assessing the effects of Facebook and Instagram during the 2020 US presidential election. She is also collaborating on a project New Public to re-envision public life on platforms.
Stroud’s research on the media’s role in democracy has received numerous national and international awards, including the International Communication Association’s (ICA) prestigious Outstanding Book Award for her book Niche News: The Politics of News Choice, and the inaugural Public Engagement Award from the Journalism Studies Division of the ICA.