Erik C. Nisbet

About

Erik C. Nisbet is the Owen L. Coon Endowed Professor of Policy Analysis & Communication and the director of the Center for Communication & Public Policy at Northwestern University. His research lies at the intersection of communication, public opinion, and public policy, focusing on science, technology, environmental policy, democracy and elections, and international security. He is an expert on cross-national survey methodology and field experiments, having led research projects in multiple countries including the United States, Russia, Ukraine, Serbia, Turkey, Iran, France, Great Britain, Germany, Poland, and several Arab countries. His work has been supported by grants from organizations such as the National Science Foundation, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, and the U.S. Department of States. Nisbet holds a Ph.D. in Communication and Comparative Politics from Cornell University and has affiliations with several research centers, including the Center for Communication & Public Policy, the USC Center on Public Diplomacy, and the OSU Mershon Center for International Security Studies. His contributions include extensive research on media, public opinion, and public policy, with a particular focus on science communication, misinformation, and international political communication.

Research topics

• Political Science
• Sociology
• Psychology
• Social psychology
• Medicine
• Computer Science
• Political economy
• Public relations
• Law
• Gerontology

Selected publications

• Changes in COVID-19 Vaccine Hesitancy Among Black and White Individuals in the US

  JAMA Network Open · 2022 · 199 citations

  Importance: COVID-19 has disproportionately affected Black individuals in the US; however, vaccination rates among Black individuals trail those among other racial groups. This disparity is often attributed to a high level of vaccine hesitancy among Black individuals, but few studies have examined changes in vaccine hesitancy over time. Objectives: To compare changes in vaccine hesitancy between Black and White individuals in the US and to examine mechanisms that might help explain the observed…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• The presumed influence of election misinformation on others reduces our own satisfaction with democracy

  2021 · 41 citations

  1st authorCorresponding

  Pervasive political misinformation threatens the integrity of American electoral democracy but not in the manner most commonly examined. We argue the presumed influence of misinformation (PIM) may be just as pernicious, and widespread, as any direct influence that political misinformation may have on voters. Our online survey of 2,474 respondents in the United States shows that greater attention to political news heightens PIM on others as opposed to oneself, especially among Demo-crats and Inde…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Russian News Media, Digital Media, Informational Learned Helplessness, and Belief in COVID-19 Misinformation

  International Journal of Public Opinion Research · 2021 · 31 citations

  1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract The COVID-19 pandemic has been paired with a global misinformation “infodemic.” Citizens in authoritarian countries, where most media is state controlled, often do not have access to credible information sources to help combat misinformation. In fact, the news media in these countries may be the primary drivers of misinformation while digital media may be sources of more accurate information. We test how news and digital media in an authoritarian context are associated with endorsing mi…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Swaying the Public? Impacts of Election Forecast Visualizations on Emotion, Trust, and Intention in the 2022 U.S. Midterms

  IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics · 2023-01-01 · 28 citations

  article

  We conducted a longitudinal study during the 2022 U.S. midterm elections, investigating the real-world impacts of uncertainty visualizations. Using our forecast model of the governor elections in 33 states, we created a website and deployed four uncertainty visualizations for the election forecasts: single quantile dotplot (1-Dotplot), dual quantile dotplots (2-Dotplot), dual histogram intervals (2-Interval), and Plinko quantile dotplot (Plinko), an animated design with a physical and probabilis…

  PublisherDOI

• Walking Through Firewalls: Circumventing Censorship of Social Media and Online Content in a Networked Authoritarian Context

  Social Media + Society · 2022-10-01 · 23 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  The early hopes of the internet as a technology of “liberation” have turned into a reinforcing spiral of control, innovation, resistance, and counter-innovation between authoritarian governments and those that seek to bypass censorship and digital repression. This spiral reflects that even the most robust censorship mechanisms are vulnerable to circumvention, which has become a key concept for illustrating the contemporary online communication experience of citizens. Yet, the scholarship examini…

  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Elizabeth Stoycheff

  Wayne State University

  8 shared

• Ayse Lokmanoglu

  7 shared

• Chloe Mortenson

  7 shared

• Aysenur Dal

  Bilkent University

  6 shared

• Fumeng Yang

  6 shared

• P. Sol Hart

  University of Michigan–Ann Arbor

  6 shared

• Matthew Kay

  Northwestern University

  6 shared

• Olga Kamenchuk

  Northwestern University

  6 shared

Awards & honors

• Owen L. Coon Endowed Professor in Policy Analysis and Commun…
• Director of the Center for Communication & Public Policy

Similar researchers at Northwestern University

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