Katherine (Katya) Ognyanova studies the effects of social influence on civic and political behavior, confidence in institutions, information exposure/evaluation, and public opinion formation. Her methodological expertise is in computational social science, network science, and survey research. Her recent work examines the links between misinformation exposure and political trust. Ognyanova is one of the founders and a principal investigator for The COVID States Project – a large multi-university initiative exploring the social and political implications of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Ognyanova’s research areas include quantitative and computational methods, network science, social use of technology, political communication, and mass communication. Her work examines the impact of social structures and technology on civic behavior and the spread of misinformation. More recently, she has explored the social and political disruptions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as the flows of information about it.
Katherine Ognyanova’s work has been supported by the National Science Foundation and the Russell Sage Foundation. Her work has been covered in news outlets including the New York Times, NPR, Politico, the Washington Post, and WIRED, among others.