Dylan Thurgood

Digital Social Science (2020 cohort)

Dylan Thurgood is a second-year DPhil in Social Data Science student at the Oxford Internet Institute (St Cross College, University of Oxford). He holds an MSc in Social Data Science from the University of Oxford 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 primarily interested in how individuals update their beliefs in the contexts of immigration, the EU and climate change when they encounter news online via websites or social media platforms, focusing on AI-generated news, hyperpartisan news and public broadcaster news in particular. Besides gaining a better understanding of opinion formation at the micro-level and analysing the implications this has for society as a whole, his work focuses on interventions that could enhance collective intelligence and mitigate polarisation. His research is generously funded by the Economic and Social Research Council.