Junck Colloquium with Eunji Kim

The UNC Hussman School of Journalism and Media and UNC-Chapel Hill Department of Political Science will host a Mary Junck Research Colloquium/American Politics Research Group talk about the impact of social media creators on mass politics with Eunji, Kim, Ph.D., Friday, Jan. 23.

We will serve lunch at 11:30 a.m., with the talk, titled, “How social media creators shape mass politics: A field experiment during the 2024 U.S. elections,” to follow at noon, all in the Pleasants Family Assembly Room, located just inside the main entrance to Wilson Library. We request that attendees register below to help with food planning.

SPEAKER

Eunji Kim is an assistant professor of political science at Columbia University. As a political communication scholar, she primarily studies the impact of media content on mass attitudes and political behavior. Her book, “The American Mirage: How Reality TV Upholds the Myth of Meritocracy” (Princeton University Press, 2025) examines how Americans’ consumption of entertainment media distorts their belief in upward economic mobility and affects their redistributive policy preferences.

Keynote

How social media creators shape mass politics: A field experiment during the 2024 U.S. elections

Political apathy and skepticism of traditional authorities are increasingly common, but social media creators capture the public’s attention. Yet whether these seemingly-frivolous actors shape political attitudes and behaviors, which election campaigns and partisan media struggle to shift, remains largely unknown. Kim and her research colleagues conducted a field experiment in which participants were encouraged to follow sets of social media creators grouped by how much of the creators’ content was political. Their findings of how participants’ political views changed reveal the critical yet complex role of social media creators as modern-day opinion leaders.