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Category: News
Q&A: Carnegie Fellow Stuart Soroka on how media technologies and market pressures drive polarizing news content
He is among 24 fellows selected to explore the causes of political polarization and to identify possible solutions
Citlalli Chávez-Nava
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.
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.
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.
In this interview Stuart discusses his Carnegie-backed project, focused on our news media ecosystem and how it drives political polarization. The interview was edited for length and clarity.
For years you have been investigating the way media succeeds or fails to inform the public about policy issues, and by extension, its impacts on our democracy. Where would you say our media ecosystem stands presently?
I’m thinking of this question in two different ways. Where media consumption is concerned, we have ready-access to more information than ever before — there are 24-hour news channels, and both legacy and new media outlets are easily available online. Mobile technology also means that we have many accurate sources of news in our pockets, albeit alongside many inaccurate sources of news.
There is the potential for new technologies to produce highly informed democratic citizens, provided we can teach both humans and algorithms to prioritize accurate over inaccurate content. But this is of course very hard to do, in part because humans are predisposed to focus on content that supports our predispositions. In fact, the current technological environment makes it increasingly easy for us to consume mainly content that confirms our predispositions. This is one source of polarization.
Where media production is concerned, the current environment is clearly very difficult. Funding news organizations is more complicated because consumers increasingly expect news online to be free. The dissolution of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting doesn’t help, nor do recent limitations in media access to press briefings and to the West Wing. The ability to target specific consumers, either with cable television or online content, also creates an incentive to produce content that confirms partisans’ predispositions. This practice produces a captive audience — but also an audience that is not getting the “full picture.”
And so, there are a combination of technological and administrative challenges facing news organizations, and those challenges likely make it more difficult to provide accurate, balanced coverage. Many good news organizations are findings way to accomplish this goal, to be sure. But there is good reason to be concerned about a trend towards less accurate, more partisan, content. This is also a source of polarization.
Given this landscape, through your Carnegie Fellowship, you will be analyzing how platform design and audience-making happens and how to reduce proliferation of polarizing news content, what are your initial observations?
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. 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. For example: a change in a social media algorithm that de-prioritizes engagement metrics might echo throughout the entire media ecosystem.
What drew you to this research and why is it important in our present political moment?
There are increasing concerns about political polarization, not just in the U.S. but also around the world. Polarizing news content both affects and reflects public attitudes, of course — so changes in news content can only do so much. There is nevertheless a possibility that small changes in the nature of news content can make small differences to trends in political polarization. Moreover, small, de-polarizing, 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.
Overall, are you hopeful about the potential of depolarizing our present media environment?
There are justifiable anxieties about the proliferation of “alternative facts.” But there are also some important factors over which we, governments or companies, have some control, including the nature and competitiveness of media markets, or the behavior of social media and news-aggregator algorithms. I think it is possible to, incrementally at least, produce a news media environment that more effectively contributes to informed democratic citizenship. 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.
Related Story: Stuart Soroka named 2026 Andrew Carnegie Fellow
UCLA names Justin Dunnavant Joan Silsbee Chair in African Cultural Archaeology
UCLA Social Sciences
UCLA has appointed Justin Dunnavant the Joan Silsbee Chair of African Cultural Archaeology recognizing his innovative scholarship and leadership in cultural anthropology and archaeology.
Dunnavant is an assistant professor in the UCLA Department of Anthropology, a core faculty member of UCLA’s Cotsen Institute of Archaeology and a maritime archaeologist. His research explores the historical archaeology of Africa and the African Diaspora particularly focused on the transatlantic slave trade and its ecological impact, maritime archaeology and community-based archaeology.
Dunnavant’s research has reshaped his field’s understanding of African-descended communities across the Atlantic world through his exploration of Black culture through the discovery of lost slave ships — and the secrets they carry. His forthcoming book, “Colonialism, Ecology and Slavery,” under contract with Princeton University Press, investigates the relationship between ecology and enslavement in the former Danish West Indies. His scholarship has also been recognized as a vital contribution to the study of the African peoples and to the training of new generations of students about the potential of African and African Diaspora archaeology.
“Professor Dunnavant’s work is cutting edge and draws on multiple archeological methods, it’s about reclaiming history and countering erasure. He brings this lens into the classroom, engaging and training our students to reconsider the past in new ways,” said Abel Valenzuela, dean of UCLA’s Division of Social Sciences.
This spring, Dunnavant earned a Chancellor’s Arts Initiative grant to produce a documentary that follows divers searching for Marcus Garvey’s sunken Black Star Line, a project that reclaims history and challenges of erasure.
Dunnavant is also the co-founder of the Society of Black Archaeologists and an AAUS Scientific SCUBA Diver. In 2021, he was named a National Geographic Emerging Explorer and was inducted into The Explorers Club as one of “Fifty People Changing the World that You Need to Know About.” A Howard University graduate, Dunnavant, received his Ph.D. in anthropology from the University of Florida in 2017, completing a doctoral dissertation based on his archaeological research among the Wolaita ethnic group of Ethiopia.
The Joan Silsbee Chair in African Cultural Archaeology was created in honor of Joan Malloy Silsbee ‘53, following her passing in 2011. During her lifetime, Silsbee made numerous trips to Africa and developed a love of its rich history. The prestigious position was designed to support archaeological research and student training.
“I am honored to hold the Silsbee Chair in African Cultural Archaeology and look forward to developing our newest endeavor exploring the deep history of terrace communities in the Anti-Atlas Mountains of Morocco. With scholars like Merrick Posnansky and Willeke Wendrich, UCLA has played a central role in African archaeology,” said Dunnavant. “In the coming years I intend renew our commitment to this rich legacy and help to train a new generation of terrestrial and maritime archaeologists.”
Endowed chairs at UCLA are among the university’s highest faculty honors, supporting scholarly excellence and advancing research, teaching and public engagement across disciplines. They are made possible by the generosity of alumni, former faculty members and friends of the university. UCLA’s Division of Social Sciences has approximately 300 faculty members, and 35 endowed chairs.
Learn More:
UCLA Magazine | Deep Diver: Justin Dunnavant
University of California | Digging, diving and discovering stories untold
Kelly Lytle-Hernández elected vice president of the Society of American Historians
Her deeply researched historical writing has challenged dominant narratives of U.S. history
Citlalli Chávez-Nava
UCLA historian Kelly Lytle Hernández, the holder of the Thomas E. Lifka Endowed Chair in History, has been elected vice president of the Society of American Historians, further cementing her deeply researched historical writing challenging dominant narratives of U.S. history.
A member of the society since 2019, Lytle Hernández will join its executive board, the principal governing body of the society, which guides the fulfillment of the organization’s mission.
“It’s a career honor to serve the Society of American Historians,” said Lytle Hernández. “The Society’s mission, to advance and recognize excellence in historical writing, is increasingly urgent in our world.”
Founded in 1939, The Society of American Historians, was founded with the mission of promoting literary distinction in the writing of history and biography. The Society’s membership includes more than 450 academic scholars, public historians and professional writers working on topics in American history. Members are elected based on achievement in the vivid and compelling presentation of history and biography in a variety of forms, including books, essays, film, drama, museum exhibitions and other emerging forms of public communication.
Known for her unflinching examinations of race, power and state violence, Lytle Hernández is the author of several award-winning books. Her 2010 publication, “Migra! A History of the U.S. Border Patrol” (University of California Press), traces the untold history of the United States Border Patrol from its beginnings in 1924 to its emergence as a large professional police force drawing on lost on archival materials stored in garages, closets, an abandoned factory and in U.S. and Mexican repositories.
Her 2017 book, “City of Inmates: Conquest, Rebellion, and the Rise of Human Caging in Los Angeles” (University of North Carolina Press), investigates how Los Angeles became the global epicenter of incarceration and chronicles the resilience and rebellion of targeted communities. Her latest book, “Bad Mexicans: Race, Empire, and Revolution in the Borderlands” (Norton, 2022), tells the dramatic story of the magonistas, the migrant rebels who sparked the 1910 Mexican Revolution from the United States. Her forthcoming book, “Racist by Design: Two Centuries of U.S. Immigration Control,” will be published by Norton in Oct. 2026.
In 2019, Lytle Hernández received the prestigious MacArthur Fellowship in recognition of her historical and contemporary work, from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.
Lytle Hernández co-directs Mapping Deportations, a project that uses maps, data, and timelines to unmask the relationship between race and U.S. immigration enforcement throughout U.S. history and was the founding director of Million Dollar Hoods, a big data research initiative housed at UCLA’s Bunche Center for African American Studies that maps the fiscal and human cost of mass incarceration in Los Angeles. She is also a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Pulitzer Prize Board.
This year, the society also elected Alexandra Minna Stern, dean of the UCLA College Division of Humanities, to its membership.
UCLA Cotsen Institute hosts ceremony to repatriate remaining limestone burial jars to the Philippines
The artifacts are part of the larger Sally von Dem Hagen Collection discovered during hunting expedition in the 1970s
Seated, left to right, Celina Duffy, Yey Coronel-Alcid, Jeremy Barns, Marianne Ubalde-Baclor.
Photo: Paul Connor/UCLA Social Sciences
UCLA Cotsen Institute of Archaeology
Eight remaining artifacts from the Sally A. von dem Hagen Collection of limestone burial objects from the Kulaman Plateau in Cotabato were formally repatriated to the Philippines at a ceremony hosted by UCLA’s Cotsen Institute of Archaeology held on April 10.
At the event held at the Fowler Museum at UCLA, Yey Coronel-Alcid, former executive director of the Filipino American Services Group, Inc. (FASGI), turned over the artifacts to Director-General Jeremy Barns of the National Museum of the Philippines. The turnover was witnessed by Celina Duffy, chairperson of FASGI, and Marianne Ubalde-Baclor, director of the National Museum of Anthropology of the Philippines. The event marked the return of the final pieces of the collection that had remained in the United States under the care of FASGI, with representatives from the Philippine Consulate General in Los Angeles, Consul Levi Malaylay and Cultural Officer Bembit Villa, in attendance.
The repatriation process involved collaboration among several institutions and individuals, including the National Museum of the Philippines, Philippine Consulate General in Los Angeles, FASGI and UCLA’s Cotsen Institute of Archaeology, where the artifacts were temporarily safeguarded prior to their return. The ceremony symbolized the completion of this effort and highlights the role of diaspora organizations and academic institutions in safeguarding cultural heritage while facilitating its return to its country of origin.
“This repatriation is symbolic in many ways,” said Stephen Acabado, chair of UCLA’s Archaeology Interdepartmental Program and director of Center for Southeast Asian Studies. “For decades, these objects were separated from the communities and landscapes where they were created and used. Returning them restores an important connection between heritage and place.”
The artifacts are part of the larger Sally von dem Hagen Collection, a group of limestone burial jars and associated objects originating from the Kulaman Plateau in what is now Sultan Kudarat, Mindanao, a mountainous region that remains home to Manobo communities whose cultural traditions continue to shape the social and historical landscape of the area. The artifacts were acquired in the early 1970s by American businesswoman Sally von dem Hagen after Dulangan Manobo hunters discovered them in caves during a hunting expedition. When von dem Hagen left the Philippines in 1979, she brought the objects with her to the United States, where they remained for decades.
In 2024, most of the collection—52 limestone burial jars and related objects—was repatriated and officially transferred to the National Museum of the Philippines through the initiative of von dem Hagen’s children and in collaboration with scholars, cultural institutions, UCLA students enrolled in a class titled “Collaborative and Community-Engaged Archaeology” that produced a virtual exhibit as part of this effort and members of the Filipino American community.
“The limestone ossuaries are unique within Philippine archaeology,” said Acabado. “Unlike most burial jars in the country, which are made of clay, the Kulaman examples are carved from limestone blocks and date to approximately the mid-first millennium C.E., reflecting burial traditions practiced in parts of Mindanao during around 1,500-2,000 years ago.”
In 2023, UCLA students enrolled in a class titled “Collaborative and Community-Engaged Archaeology,” produced a virtual exhibit to document the repatriation process: Cotabato Limestone Urns: Navigating Repatriation.
Once received by Director-General Barns, the eight artifacts will be transferred to the National Archaeological Collection of the National Museum of the Philippines, where they will join the rest of the repatriated von dem Hagen materials. The objects will contribute to ongoing research on ancient burial practices, stone-carving technologies and the complex cultural histories of Mindanao. The collection can be viewed at the National Museum of Anthropology of the Philippines.
“By working with partners in the Philippines and the Filipino American community, we can help ensure that these materials return to the institutions and communities where they hold the greatest significance,” said Acabado.
The recent ceremony underscores the importance of cooperation between scholars, cultural institutions and diaspora communities in ensuring that heritage objects are treated with respect and returned to the public domain where they can be studied and appreciated.
“Events like this show how universities can contribute to responsible stewardship of cultural heritage,” said Abel Valenzuela, dean of UCLA’s Division of Social Sciences. “It’s an example of UCLA’s commitment to archaeological practices that respect communities and a recognition that heritage objects carry meaning beyond the academy.”
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