Stuart Soroka named 2026 Andrew Carnegie Fellow

Stuart Soroka, a UCLA professor of communication and political science (by courtesy), has been named a 2026 Carnegie Fellow. He is among 24 fellows selected to receive a $200,000 research stipend from the Carnegie Corporation for their work exploring the causes of political polarization and to identify possible solutions.

According to Carnegie, the 2026 nomination cycle drew a record number of submissions. The criteria for winning projects included originality, promise and potential impact on the field, as well as applicants' plans for effectively communicating their research findings to a broad audience.

Soroka's project, "Political Polarization and the News Media Ecosystem," will examine how changing media technologies and market pressures produce polarizing news content. Using a combination of human coding and computational methods to gather content from multiple platforms, including newspapers, television and social media over the past several decades, he aims to show that polarizing content is not the result of a single outlet's editorial decisions, but of a competitive media market that drives news outlets toward sensationalism to attract audiences.

► Read more about Stuart Soroka's project in this Q&A.

"There is competition amongst news outlets such as CNN and Fox News, of course. There is also competition across news platforms, like television and social media. The nature of one outlet's content on social media does not just affect other social media content; it likely affects content on other media platforms as well," Soroka said. "Exploring this kind of co-adaptation across outlets, platforms and audiences may be central for our understanding of the rise of political polarization and the potential for reducing it."

He recognizes that polarizing news content affects and reflects public attitudes, so changes in news content can only do so much. But he thinks adjusting the social media algorithm to de-prioritize engagement metrics, for example, could echo throughout the media ecosystem and society at large.

'A more informed electorate'

"Small, depolarizing changes in news content may lead to more productive and effective news coverage - coverage that increases news consumption, produces a more informed electorate and facilitates government responsiveness and accountability," Soroka said.

At UCLA, his areas of expertise in political communication include negativity bias, misinformation and political behavior. He is particularly interested in analyzing negativity and positivity in news coverage; the ways in which media succeed or fail to inform the public about policy issues; and the impact of legacy and new media on attitudes toward a broad range of policies such as immigration, defense, welfare and health care.

Soroka's publications include "Information and Democracy: Public Policy in the News," "The Increasing Viability of Good News, Cambridge Elements in Politics and Communication" and "Negativity in Democracy Politics: Causes and Consequences."

He expects to use his Carnegie Award fellowship to publish a book.

"I think it is possible, incrementally at least, to produce a news media environment that more effectively contributes to informed democratic citizenship," Soroka said. "Exploring this possibility is the focus of my project, and I am grateful to have the resources to focus on this for the next two years."

When established in 2015, the Andrew Carnegie Fellows Program funded research in the humanities and social sciences. In 2024, Carnegie changed its focus as part of a three-year commitment to understanding political polarization. The class of 2026 is the third cohort focused on developing evidence-based research to strengthen cohesion in the United States, a key priority for the foundation's grantmaking.