As the University of Washington’s Center for an Informed Public ramps up work in 2024 studying election rumors, Danielle Lee Tomson is now leading efforts as research manager.
The CIP’s 2024 “election rumor research” adapts innovative research methods — integrating qualitative, quantitative, visual, and generative AI approaches in the analysis of online information flows — to the challenge of rapidly discovering, analyzing, and reporting on election-related rumors and disinformation campaigns.
Tomson co-authored two recent election rumor research blog posts, “Discrepancy in implementations of social media election information policies in English and Spanish in-platform searches,” and “The anatomy of a resurging rumor stemming from peer-reviewed research that non-citizens vote in U.S. elections.”
Receiving her doctoral degree in Communication from Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in 2023, Tomson’s dissertation is an ethnography of political social media influencers. Her research focuses on the ways political actors use the performance, storytelling, and entertainment conventions of popular culture to achieve their goals. Her expertise touches on themes of public trust in institutions, alternative epistemologies, propaganda, political subcultures, platform politics, and nationalist-populism.
Tomson’s writing and commentary have appeared in The Wall Street Journal, Politico, The Washington Post, HuffPost, CNBC, Fox News, Brookings, Mother Jones and more.
Previously, she was the founding membership director and later director of forums at Civic Hall, a leading community center for collaboration and education in civic technology. She also acted as Director of the Personal Democracy Forum, a long-standing summit started by Civic Hall’s founders that brought together leaders in tech, politics, government and media. In her consulting practice, she has leveraged her academic and professional expertise to support clients in non-profit, advocacy, and in the Fortune 100.
Tomson received her BA from Yale University. Danielle is an affiliate at University of North Carolina’s Center for Information, Technology, and Public Life.
