About

Bruce Bimber is a professor who advises approximately five graduate students and collaborates with others through the Political Communication Working Group. His students have diverse interests in political communication both within the United States and internationally, with a common focus on digital media. He does not plan to take on new graduate students for the cohort entering in Fall 2026. Additionally, he occasionally hosts postdoctoral scholars and pre-doctoral visitors from other institutions, though he discourages unsolicited proposals for extended visits without prior interaction. Bimber also provides guidance for new or prospective doctoral students, sharing advice distilled from years of observing the factors that contribute to the success and satisfaction of PhD students.

Research topics

• Sociology
• Political Science
• Computer Science
• Law
• Media studies
• Public relations
• Business
• Advertising
• Philosophy
• Social psychology
• Epistemology
• Psychology
• Cognitive psychology

Selected publications

• Beyond Large Language Models: Rediscovering the Role of Classical Statistics in Modern Data Science

  2024-06-30 · 1 citations

  article

  This study explores the synergy between large language models and classical statistics in contemporary data science. In the field of large language models, we find there is no one-size-fits-all model which satisfies the needs of other scientists. There are differences in the soft results which may be a limitation on their application. To analyze these differences and lack of robustness, we propose a robust methodology that integrates classical statistical experimental design principles with the these advanced models, aiming to identify statistically significant differences among their outcomes. In particular, an experimental design is presented in which the main factors, levels, treatments and interactions that influence the predictions made by different models of complex natural language processing are identified. The main aim of this research is to better understand the influence of some controlled factors that are used in com-plex natural language processing models by applying classical statistical techniques, providing a comprehensive perspective on the relative effectiveness of different zero-shot classification models. It aims to offer practitioners insights into when and where certain models may be more or less sensitive, facilitating informed decision-making in applying these advanced language models. Additionally, computational results obtained from a pilot dataset are presented. These results illustrate the entire process of the proposed methodology, highlighting the importance of considering statistical evidence when making decisions.

  PublisherDOI

• Media Use, Feelings of Being Devalued, and Democratically Corrosive Sentiment in the US

  The International Journal of Press/Politics · 2024-05-22

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  We take two approaches to understanding democratically corrosive sentiment (DCS) in the US, which we operationalize in terms of populist attitudes, conspiracy beliefs, and expectation of fraud in the next election. Our first approach is media use, which is not well understood as a correlate of DCS beyond generalities about the harms of social media and partisan news. We distinguish between mainstream news and right-wing media, and between three categories of social media: those facilitating stronger ties among users, those facilitating weaker ties, and extremist Alt-Tech brands. Our second approach to explaining DCS is attitudinal. For this, we introduce a concept called Feelings of Being Devalued (FBD), which we offer as a complement to status threat and sense of material deprivation. Using a survey of our design ( N = 2,000) fielded in the US in 2022, we show that: (1) mainstream news use and attention to right-wing media have opposite relationships with DCS; (2) not only Alt-Tech social media but also stronger-tie media such as Facebook are correlated with DCS, while use of weaker-tie social media such as X are uncorrelated in a model with a rich set of controls; and (3) FBD is strongly associated with DCS—more so than right-wing authoritarianism, social dominance orientation, and ideology.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Intergroup ethnocentrism and social media: evidence from three Western democracies

  Information Communication & Society · 2024-07-11 · 10 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  International audience

  PublisherDOI

• Dataset used for the article Ethnocentrism, Inter-Ethnic Contact and Social Media Platforms: Evidence from Three Western Democracies

  Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research) · 2023-06-19

  datasetOpen accessSenior author

  This is the dataset, used for the paper <strong>Ethnocentrism, Inter-Ethnic Contact and Social Media Platforms: Evidence from Three Western Democracies</strong>, submitted to the Information, Communication &amp; Society for review. This work was supported by an Audencia Foundation research grant Innovation and Stability.

  PublisherDOI

• Women learn while men talk?: revisiting gender differences in political engagement in online environments

  2023-02-07 · 5 citations

  book-chapterSenior author

  There is an inconclusive debate on whether male and female users of social media platforms engage with political content differently.While some highlight minimal differences others evidence an engagement gap where male are more visible within online environments.Drawing on data from a representative survey of citizens in France, the UK and USA we explore the engagement gap in more granular detail.Our data shows minimal gender differences for most forms of online political engagement, but there remain some indications of a gendered divide.While the feeling of external efficacy is crucial to engage online regardless gender, women appear to need a sense of higher levels of competence in order to engage with online political content, especially for sharing and commenting.The study confirms interest in politics, extreme political ideological views and large social media network as prompt for more eager political engagement, but we do not find any substantial gender differentiation.Our findings suggest some minimal country differences on women engagement in commenting.Overall, our data indicates that while women may be as likely as men to participate in online political expression, through sharing and commenting, and may have an equal overall share of voice, the voices of many women are at least more muted in open public political discussions environment.

  PublisherDOI

• EPR volume 14 issue 2 Cover and Front matter

  European Political Science Review · 2022-05-01

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. As you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Social influence and political participation around the world

  European Political Science Review · 2022-04-04 · 14 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract Social influence among people is widely understood to be a universal component of the human experience. However, studies of political behavior have generally approached social influence as specific to a type of behavior, such as voting, in a particular national context. There are good reasons to expect that social influence is observable across diverse behaviors and national contexts. In this study, we test this expectation using a two-wave panel survey of national samples in 19 countries. We employ autoregressive models that address some of the endogeneity challenges associated with attempts to measure social influence with survey designs. Our measure of social influence is predictive of diverse political behaviors in many countries with average effects comparable in size to important standard predictors of behavior.

  PublisherDOI

• Mitigating Covertly Unsafe Text within Natural Language Systems

  arXiv (Cornell University) · 2022-10-17 · 2 citations

  preprintOpen access

  An increasingly prevalent problem for intelligent technologies is text safety, as uncontrolled systems may generate recommendations to their users that lead to injury or life-threatening consequences. However, the degree of explicitness of a generated statement that can cause physical harm varies. In this paper, we distinguish types of text that can lead to physical harm and establish one particularly underexplored category: covertly unsafe text. Then, we further break down this category with respect to the system's information and discuss solutions to mitigate the generation of text in each of these subcategories. Ultimately, our work defines the problem of covertly unsafe language that causes physical harm and argues that this subtle yet dangerous issue needs to be prioritized by stakeholders and regulators. We highlight mitigation strategies to inspire future researchers to tackle this challenging problem and help improve safety within smart systems.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• A Case Report of Holistic Review of Graduate Applications

  PS Political Science & Politics · 2022-08-29

  articleSenior author

  An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content.

  PublisherDOI

• Platform affordances and political participation: how social media reshape political engagement

  West European Politics · 2022-07-15 · 128 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Political participation opportunities have been expanding for years, most recently through digital tools. Social media platforms have become well integrated into civic and political participation. Using a cross-national sample from the United States, United Kingdom and France, this article examines whether acts of participation associated with social media should be classified using a traditional, five-factor solution to the structure of participatory acts. The distinction between online and offline participation is set aside, focusing instead on acts supported and enabled by social media, and in particular on differences between the use of Twitter and Facebook. The analysis shows that acts enabled by social media do not load with traditional factors in the structure of participation. Political acts employing Twitter and Facebook are distinct in the factor structure of participation.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Recent grants

• Technological Change and Collective Association: Changing Relationships Among Technology, Organizations, Society, and the Citizenry

  NSF · $250k · 2004–2009

Frequent coauthors

• Homero Gil de Zúñiga

  Pennsylvania State University

  47 shared

• Pablo Labanino

  Iscte – Instituto Universitário de Lisboa

  36 shared

• Martin B. Carstensen

  Roskilde University

  36 shared

• Pedro C. Magalhães

  36 shared

• Mariano Torcal

  Pompeu Fabra University

  36 shared

• Matt Qvortrup

  Coventry University

  36 shared

• Mary Cenci

  Universidade Nova de Lisboa

  36 shared

• Arthur Benz

  36 shared

Education

• PhD, Political Science

  Massachusetts Institute of Technology

  1992

• B.S., Electrical Engineering

  Stanford University

  1983

• BS, Electrical Engineering

  Stanford University

  1983

Awards & honors

• Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Sc…
• Fellow of the International Communication Association
• past Fellow of the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavior…