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Kristina Aleksandrovna Ped­er­sen

Postdoc

Subjects
Big data Media Social media Democracy Politics Russia

Primary research areas

Auto­cra­cies and In­form­a­tion Con­trol
My on­go­ing re­search ex­am­ines the use of in­form­a­tion con­trol by auto­crat­ic re­gimes and its im­plic­a­tions with a spe­cial fo­cus on Rus­sia. I am par­tic­u­larly in­ter­ested in how dy­nam­ics of in­form­a­tion con­trol un­fold in re­la­tion to di­git­al and tra­di­tion­al me­dia plat­forms.
Polit­ic­al com­mu­nic­a­tion and be­ha­vi­or
In­vest­ig­at­ing on­line polit­ic­al ex­pres­sion and be­ha­vi­or in both auto­crat­ic and demo­crat­ic set­tings. Re­cent pro­jects in­volve in­vest­ig­at­ing the im­pact of in­form­at­ive in­ter­ven­tions on con­sump­tion and in­ter­ac­tion with polit­ic­al con­tent on Tik­Tok as well as the im­pact of re­press­ive le­gis­la­tion in Rus­sia on people’s will­ing­ness to en­gage in polit­ic­al ex­pres­sion on You­Tube.
Busi­ness Ty­coons in of­fice
I am a Postdoc­tor­al Fel­low on the Ty­coon Can­did­ates pro­ject in­vest­ig­at­ing the mech­an­isms be­hind wealthy busi­ness people be­ing elec­ted to of­fice and the so­ci­et­al and polit­ic­al im­plic­a­tions.
Quant­it­at­ive and di­git­al meth­ods
I primar­ily work with quant­it­at­ive and com­pu­ta­tion­al meth­ods – ex­ploit­ing the vast amounts of di­git­ally avail­able data and em­ploy­ing both de­script­ive and quasi ex­per­i­ment­al ap­proaches. My re­search draws heav­ily on a vari­ety of NLP and LLM ap­proaches as well as quasi-ex­per­i­ment­al designs to in­vest­ig­ate con­cepts like me­dia bias and on­line polit­ic­al ex­pres­sion in text data. For the Ty­coon Can­did­ates pro­ject, I’m also work­ing on de­vel­op­ing steps to (fuzzy) match elect­or­al and com­pany own­er­ship data across many coun­try con­texts.

Un­der­stand­ing in­form­a­tion con­trol and its con­sequences in an age of un­cer­tain­ity and demo­crat­ic back­slid­ing

My research examines how information control, misinformation, and repression reshape political participation in both democratic and autocratic contexts. I study how media systems and digital environments influence what people say, and what they stop saying, when democratic norms erode. 

My work helps understand and counter threats to democratic resilience in the context of information control by state actors.  I use big data and digital methods to study these dynamics at scale in both descriptive and causal frameworks.  

In addition to my postdoc position at CBS I am a Postdoctoral Research Affiliate at the Center of Social Media and Politics (CSMaP), NYU, where I am currently working on a project investigating how “foreign agent” targeting by the Russian regime impacts online political expression. 

I value the importance of communicating complex research findings and providing context for the broader population through teaching, public lecturing and media dissemintaion.