Dylan Thurgood is a final-year DPhil in Social Data Science student at the OII. He holds an MSc in Social Data Science from the OII and a BSc in Economics from the University of Warwick, during which he spent one year studying at Universitat Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona. Dylan’s research lies at the intersection of political science, data science, psychology and communication studies. He is interested in the role of the digital media environment in shaping individuals’ political beliefs, with a focus on news articles from mainstream and partisan outlets, AI-generated news, and conversations with AI chatbots. Besides analysing opinion formation at the micro-level and its implications for democracy, his work focuses on interventions that can mitigate political polarisation. His research is generously funded by the Economic and Social Research Council.
Opinion formation; AI-generated news; persuasiveness of AI chatbots; political polarisation; populism; public broadcaster news; partisan news outlets; trust in institutions; science communication.
This programme supports research on AI, Government and Policy.
This project seeks to assess the persuasiveness of AI-generated news stories in the context of climate change by comparing in an online experiment how persuasive such news stories are compared to news stories written by humans.
4 June 2024
With millions of EU citizens set to take to the polls this week, OII researchers consider how digital technologies intersect with the European Parliament elections.
24 May 2024
South Africa is approaching a watershed election on May 29th, 2024.
9 November 2023
Eight OII DPhil students have received Dieter Schwarz Foundation (DSF) funding to enable them to begin a 12-month research project during the course of their studies.
Senior Policy Fellow, Associate Professor
Associate Professor and Senior Policy Fellow. Her research focuses on the opportunities and risks experienced by children using digital technologies; she also leads OII engagement on Internet regulation and digital policy issues.
Professor of Digital Markets and Competition
Greg Taylor's research focuses on the economics of competition policy and regulation for digital and technology markets.
