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ANN ARBOR—At a time when political division increasingly shapes online conversations and daily life, a University of Michigan researcher has been selected as one of the nation’s newest Andrew Carnegie Fellows to study how technology might help bridge those divides instead of deepen them.

Ceren Budak, associate professor of information and of electrical engineering and computer science, is one of 24 scholars who will each receive a $200,000 research stipend to explore the causes of political polarization and to identify possible solutions.

“I am honored to be named an Andrew Carnegie Fellow,” said Budak, who also serves as associate director of the Center for Social Media Responsibility and is a faculty fellow at the Center for Political Studies at the Institute for Social Research.

A computational social scientist trained as a computer scientist, her research examines public discourse and collective behavior on digital platforms, with a particular focus on political polarization, misinformation, and collective action. Her work integrates large-scale field experiments, machine learning, and network science.

Budak’s research has been published in leading journals and venues across general science, computer science, communication, and political science. She has led and contributed to major multi-institutional field experiments examining social media interventions at scale. She served on a National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine committee on social media’s impact on youth well-being, and was a 2023–-4 faculty fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University.

The project, “User Agency and the Trade-offs of Reducing Polarization Online,” builds on her research showing that algorithmic interventions on social media vary in their effectiveness across individuals and platforms and can involve meaningful trade-offs among desirable outcomes. 

“I often see overly simple narratives about the interplay between polarization and social media in public discourse,” she said. “The discourse oversimplifies a complex problem, leading to ineffective allocation of attention and resources. I want to move beyond this and develop educational materials grounded in rigorous scholarship that inform the public about the real trade-offs inherent in social media interventions. 

“Most such interventions have also been top-down, designed by researchers or platforms without user or community input. I am excited to build on an alternate vision and test whether empowering users and communities to navigate these trade-offs themselves can yield better outcomes.”

Carnegie has committed $18 million to scholarly research focused on polarization, providing grants to 78 fellows since 2024. The funding allows scholars to take a sabbatical of up to two years and devote themselves to their work.

“Andrew Carnegie saw it as his mission to encourage, in the broadest and most liberal manner, investigations, research, and discovery, and the application of knowledge to the improvement of mankind,” said Dame Louise Richardson, president of Carnegie Corporation of New York and chair of the Andrew Carnegie Fellows jury. 

“Through support of our fellows, we are continuing that mission and seeking to harness the insights of scholars of all ages, stages, and disciplines to help us understand the nature of political polarization in the United States today and to devise a means of mitigating its impact on American society.”

Contact: Jared Wadley, 734-834-7719, [email protected]